I am too delicate for this world: Argenton-les-Vallees to Parthenay

April 6, 2015

Lovely old direction post. Not many of those left these days

WHY are things so complicated? Why does nothing work the way you expect? And why don't I have a nurse to guide me gently through life with a cup of tea and a biscuit?

Take this morning, for instance. The others went off on a ride, exploring the area before spending another night at the château and then dispersing. I waved them away and made a second mug of coffee while I waited for the light frost to melt. What did I care? I had just a gentle ride to get back to the bed-and-breakfast that signalled the end of the trip. Easy.

I waved the others farewell and made myself another coffee

And so off I went, following the map clipped to my bars, wandering down quiet roads among surprised rabbits and curious cows, getting on perfectly well until the moment I went wrong. It was then that I got out the GPS, entered the coordinates of the bed-and-breakfast, and rode on left, right or straight ahead as the white arrows told me. Touring-without-thinking.

It was a lovely day. The wind blew me along, the sun shone and cats dozed in quiet villages. Blissful. Except that for all the GPS told me I had only half an hour to ride, there was no sign of Poitiers. Not even any sign for Poitiers. It's not that big a place, I admit, but there's little else to signpost and, later than it should have, the absence made itself felt.

So I stopped. I got out the map. An old-fashioned map, like we used back in the days when people expected to add up numbers without a calculator. When we still asked people the way. When pencils were still seen as perfectly feasible.

And what did I find?

...except that this one at St-Varent celebrates cycling

I found, as by now you well know, that I wasn't anywhere near Poitiers. So I put in the numbers again, and still the GPS told me I was going the right way and that Poitiers was in a field just a little further on.

You're going to assume now that I used the wrong numbers. But I hadn't. They were the numbers which, on the GPS in the car, got me to the bed-and-breakfast effortlessly. And now the bike GPS insisted repeatedly that they were somewhere else.

I was as delighted as you'd think. I'd ridden further than I expected and yet I was still much of a day's ride from where I wanted to be. But, hey-ho for the open road... what else in my life was so pressing that I couldn't spend another day cycling? What else would I have done with the day?

I looked around Sérignac for a campground before agreeing with the GPS and passers-by that there wasn't one. There were hotels in Parthenay, much of an hour away along a grumpy road that rolled up and down unnecessarily, and that's the way I went. I'm sitting now in a hotel and looking down on people buying pizzas in the street below. In a moment, I shall go and join them.

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