Ken's Blog

They were everywhere. Hideous, deformed creatures. Yesterday it was Angerville, then Mereville. This was Gnomeville. The campsite had looked idyllic on the website, and to be fair, the reception – more a small chateaux, was enchanting. But, beyond the trees that circled the small lake in front of the house, lay the private mobile homes. A tacky world of cheap statutes, tired garden furniture and the gnomes. Horrible ones. They seemed to be the only residents. I decided it was time to walk into the nearby town of Etampes.

Harry had a passion. Languages. As a boy he’d been fascinated by them. Not just French. Or German. But also Dutch. Fluently. Together with wife Jean, they’d travelled a lot in Europe. They were on their third caravan. We met on a campsite south of Chartres. The place had seen better times. The normally neat privet hedges between pitches were unkempt. Broken lavatory seats in the washrooms. Reception was closed for the day. Nobody seemed to care.

Harry and Jean Dixon were heading home after five weeks in the south. This was just a brief overnight stop on the journey north and they were equally unimpressed. They invited me over for dinner. They apologised, quite unnecessarily, for the lack of space inside, but, they explained, it was just too time-consuming to put the bed away and set up the table for just one evening. I didn’t mind. Having a stool to sit on after weeks in a tent had an appeal all of its own. Besides, they had a fridge. It came with a delicious salad and a cheese board. And plenty of red wine.

We chatted late into the evening. Then a generous night cap of whisky. I left with orders to return at 8.30 sharp for breakfast. There was lots of it, and I returned to the tent with more rations for later in the day.

Fabienne greeted me with a smile. Opposite the school in the small town of Mamers, she knew her market. Alcohol free cocktails, music channel on the large screen, pinball machine at the back. Smart decor. The lunchtime rush had come and gone. That left just me. I ordered a cheeseburger. It had been a damp day. ’Avec frites?’ she guessed. I nodded.

She continued cleaning whilst I ate. The place was spotless. A little later she brought me the visitors book and indicated that I add something. There were a few entries, and some press cuttings of the opening of the ’Loft Cafe’. She had the same beaming smile in the photographs that had welcomed me earlier.

I made a brief entry – ’Je m’appelle Ken Roberts. Je fait le tour du monde a velo. Le repas dans ’Loft Cafe’ etait delicieux’ (My name is Ken Roberts. I am cycling around the world. The meal in the ’Loft Cafe’ was delicious). She looked pleased. I thanked her again for her hospitality and left.

This may seem a little strange, but only now am I beginning to contemplate the enormity of the task ahead. I know the theory – take it bit by bit – and reckon I’m pretty well equipped, both in terms of what I carry and the training I’ve done. The tangible stuff is fine – can be a bit tough a times, but the problems you encounter can be bounded, they can be broken into manageable chunks.

The psychological aspects are a little different – grasping the notion of four years – actually three years and eleven months – is almost beyond comprehension. Knowing you are going home, having contact with family, friends or just interested well wishers visiting the website, helps enormously. And yet meeting English people abroad can be problematic – the company is always appreciated, often relished, but in the background lurks the unsettling certainty that, unlike you, they’ll be going home soon.

This was always to be expected, just a question of when. Eight hours a day in the saddle is a lot of thinking time. Writing the blog has become very important, keeping the grey matter busy as I pedal along, toying with how best to convey to the reader a flavour of what I’ve seen or experienced. In a honest but, I hope, interesting style. And the certainty that, back at home, people are reading it helps maintain that vital link with the world I’ve left behind. The tent can be a lonely place.

Fabrice was also a traveller. Within France. ’It’s a big country’ he explained, in a very good English. Once the site outside Fresnay-sur-Sarthe closed he would head south towards Marseilles for the winter. He shared some Gaelic humour with me. ’Someone who speaks two languages we say is bilingual. Someone who speaks just one we say is…. French’.

I’d expected ’English’ to be the punch line, and really couldn’t have argued with that. But it seems that, unlike their German neighbours who love to go roaming all over Europe, the French generally stay within their borders. If they do wander further afield, it tends to be to former colonies like Algeria. Doesn’t sound like the Brits at all then.

Charles had got me thinking. Four years. That’s a long time on the road. My niece, just a few weeks old when I saw her shortly before I set off, would be about to start school by the time I returned. I pictured the comings and goings of the seasons, the village fete in summer, and the joviality of friends around for drinks on Boxing Day, enjoying the generous warmth of the woodstove. Birthdays I would miss. Otherwise shared experiences that would pass me by.

Charles suspected, that for all the wonderous experiences that lay ahead, I would always be looking forward to returning home one day. Perhaps because to really appreciate what you have, you have to do without it for a while. Four years would be ample.

French cuisine – Coq au Vin

Napoleon would have been proud – a chicken still on the bone – more a chick really – with all the vegetables, in a tin

Fabrice explained that the campsite’s name – ’Sans Souci’ – meant ’Without worry’. I hoped so. He presented me with a few pamphlets, amongst which was a guide to the Sarthe region in English. The marketing types had dug deep to find connections with l’Grande Britaine, suggesting the area had a ’slightly British air through its link with the Plantagenets, its taste for vintage and sports cars, gardens and golf.’ I dreaded to think what they’d done with the German version.

The site lay the outskirts of the small town of Fresnay-sur-Sarthe at the southern end of ’Parc naturel regional Normandie-Maine’. I’d visited Fresnay the previous night in the company of fellow Englishman Charles, and had explored a little more the following morning. It looked much like any other French town I’d passed through, and yet you felt it was a little different, perhaps a bit more conservative. I would return after breakfast for a further foray.

The guidebook advised that shops in France are normally closed on Sundays and Mondays. For the most part this seemed to have been ignored, but not in Frenay-sur-Sarthe. Just a few shops open. The boulangerie of course. There was a time in England when visiting the newsagents, emerging with a paper rolled under one’s arm, was all part of the daily ritual. In France they still do it, but it’s ’la boulangerie’ (’the bakers’), and it’s freshly baked baguettes. You can buy bread in supermarkets, but they look upon you with distain.

As for the other shops, you could buy flowers, a headstone or bottled gas. But no groceries. Still, you could at least commiserate with an early morning beer in the village square. I chose not to, but returned in the early evening for a final drink. A few elderly gentlemen sat inside. Some seemed familiar from earlier in the day. Photographs of famous French actresses – Catherine Deneuve, Rorry Schneider and Brigitte Bardot – hung on the walls, by now a little yellowed. A steady stream of younger customers came only to buy cigarettes. I finished my drink and left.

Charles had travelled extensively in France, mostly on his small folding bike. He was spending a few days camping in Fresnay-sur-Sarthe. We wandered into town in search of a beer. Jean ran a popular ’cafe tabac’. He knew Charles. We were welcomed as locals. It was still early – a little after eight on a Saturday evening – but people were already beginning to drift away.

Charles explained that opening hours could be a bit unpredictable. You had to look for the signs. Complementary nibbles with our drinks was good, but then Jean began to stack away the chairs out on the pavement. Ominous said Charles. When the shutters were lowered we knew it was time to leave.

Not yet nine, the town was empty. But one more drink seemed in order. Wandering around the back streets we eventually found a small bar still open. It had more the appearance of a bookshop than a drinking establishment. There was something slightly out of place about it, but exactly what eluded me.

I returned the following day for morning tea. The service, whilst impeccable, was overly fussy. I gazed at the book shelves searching for inspiration. A selection of biographies of tortured cinematic souls – Dietrich, Bergman, Garbo and the like. A French translation of ’The Art of War’ sitting uncomfortably alongside ’Religions du Monde’ (’Religions of the World’). An array of home style guides. I drank my tea, thanked the two gentlemen, and left.

Back in Blighty we tend to view Europe as an unfortunate appendage, a miscreant child that needs sorting out once in a while. Nice to visit. We seem to think our friends across the Channel would embrace all things European. There just isn’t enough leiderhosen or escargot to go around.

But I was beginning to sense resistance. I noticed it first in the village of St-Denis-de-Gastines. Prices in the village shop were prominently displayed in Euros, but underneath, in much smaller print, were the equivalent in French Francs. At first I thought it was an aberration – a futile local protest – but I encountered it again later in a decent sized branch of a national supermarket chain. Perhaps we have more in common with our European neighbours than we think.