24th May 1999, Monday, 1015hrs. Reeeally sunny – La Rochelle We opted for a bit of non-Med seaside sunshine at La Rochelle, and seem to have arrived in the middle of the French equivalent of Cowes week – the yachties make Gemma feel at home! We got here via a 3 hour whistle-stop in Poitiers. Bit of a boo boo – the first train we caught to try and get to La Rochelle went about a mile from Tours taking about five minutes, stopped, everyone else got off, and then we went back to Tours. Oops. Still, we’re here, we’re camping, the weather is gorgeous and we’re going to Toulouse tomorrow. Last night when we arrived, we met a couple of German fellow-Interrailers off the train, which was cool – Nick and Suzanne. We took about an hour to find the site, so Nick’s almost-fluent French came in handy! We’re going to hire a couple of bikes today as La Rochelle seems quite flat, and the area beautiful. Last night we treated ourselves to a half-litre of Stella each. 1 Stella cost 21F, but our bill for two was just 22F – we’re going again tonight!
La Rochelle was baking ever so gently underneath the sun and the slowly waving palm trees which lined its streets. A small alcove sunk into a road island was home to a hundred bright yellow bicycles, two of which we hired and, whilst pedalling wobblingly around the circuitously looping one way traffic system of the town we broke off the roads as soon as possible and headed off along the coast.
Gemma and I were skirting down the sandy coast south of La Rochelle on a winding and hedged path which rose and dropped like the grassy dunes to our left and the distant blue of the waters of the Bay of Biscay to our right on a fine sunny day with a gentle breeze whipping sand across the stones of the track we rode on.
Like joggers and other people who take up recreational exercise on the highways and byways of the world, there appeared to be a sort of casual brotherhood of the bike which we were all of a sudden a part of. Cyclists heading in the opposite direction to us nodded and smiled congenially, stopping to let us pass.
We rode down the coast for a couple of hours, and turned back when we began to feel tired. In the natural order of all things, this meant that by the time we got back to La Rochelle our legs were only good for quivering occasionally and giving way whenever we put weight on them. It’s a kind of law.
The evening meal was a baguettes and brie picnic, eaten on the grass outside our tent under the palm trees...and we walked around the town in the evening, which was lively and vibrant with the festival. We found ourselves by the beach.
It was twilight, the sand was gritty and grey, The bench we were sitting on was a white cool smooth concrete, the wind was blowing warmly off the sea and towering clouds hung over the horizon in a hash of orange red and grey. Out of sight on the beach someone was playing bongos and the sound of it grew with the blowing wind, taking the thrill of realisation and hurling it onwards in the imagination to the months of travelling ahead. We were tired but relaxed. We were still, sitting and looking at the sea, and we knew exactly where we were.
We were off.
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