June 4, 2017
Day Sixty Nine: Pornic to Le Pellerin
Dodie was not terribly enthused about our expensive hotel, branding it as a "rip off". I was a bit happier, because the room had a desk for doing this blog. But the hotel sealed its review when on leaving Dodie asked the desk to pop some stamped, ready to go grandkids' postcards into their mail. The reply was "I will have to check with my colleague, there is a charge for that service". Dodie did not say anything, exactly, but she did make a certain noise with her lips and tongue.
The box store district of Pornic where we found ourselves with the expensive hotel had a steak house that we passed on our way to finding the bike path. We were amazed that this restaurant was attracting clients with a lurid poster of a basically raw steak. We started off in ugly American (Canadian) mode then, failing to understand the hotel fees or the cooking (or not) practices.
The branch of the veloroute that we jumped on took us to St Michel Chef Chef by a shortcut route, compared to following the shoreline. It was a bit freaky because there was no one about in the town. Good for car free, people free photos! Unfortunately we were also too early for the biscuit factory to be open. We did have a chance at it, since their sign said 7 days a week. On the other hand Sunday on Pentecost weekend is pushing it. It's too bad, because St Michel is an excellent brand of cookies, and we were operating on just one slice of Jeanette cake so far.
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The next bit of the day's odyssey took us through boring residential areas, past St. Brevin. As usual, the routing kept us well away from any services, open or not. But we did go by the famous sign that marks the intersection of several major European bicycle routes. There is Eurovelo 1 that goes from Norway to Portugal, and Eurovelo 6, that goes from here to the Black Sea. Piggy backing on these (or vice versa) there is the Velodysee/Velocean from Hendaye, and La Loire a Velo, that leaves here for 860 km up the river. We are just coming off Velocean and jumping on to Loire a Velo here.
Given the high profile of the cycle routes going north, south, and east from here you would hope that to get the ball rolling there would be a good bicycle way to cross the river. Not so. The bridge it St. Nazaire is tall and has no bike lane. (The cycling group that Michel belongs to in Nantes got its start lobbying for that bike lane, but failed.) Many cyclist will opt instead to go 20 km up river to take the ferry at Le Pellerin. That will certainly be the way for us.
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Finding no food at St Brevin,we set our sights on Paimboeuf. Cycling to and out of St Brevin involved passing through endless residential areas. Unlike down the coast where we had the signature villages of white houses with orange roofs and blue shutters, here it was just houses. Some of the coastal houses were scattered in, but there was no real theme.
Paimboeuf is a little different. It wants to be a standard crumbly white village, but in deference to the coast perhaps, some of the buildings are pastel coloured. There is only one street, it seemed. This runs parallel to the river and is comprised of the crumbly not all white buildings. Then there is also the row of buildings that face the river.
We were now eagerly looking for some crepes, and swept down the river frontage looking for a creperie. No luck, in fact, no nothing. So we turned around and beat our way against traffic up the one way main street. Well ok, there was no traffic. The place was dead, and certainly no crepes in sight.
I asked two men who were talking on the sidewalk about a creperie, and they identified one at the west entrance to town, recommending it highly. Ok, so we went down there.
We found it and were pretty smug because as we arrived the church bell tolled noon. Midi, lunch time in France!! But the restaurant had other rules to use to try to starve the Grampies. This one: "No crepes on Sunday". I could not quite catch if this was because there are too many or too few customers on Sunday to be fooling with crepes. And the guy was unmoved when I suggested "How about galettes?"
But we had in our complete survey of the town found that of the three bakeries, one was open. We zipped over there and struck it lucky. We beat their "closes at 1 on Sunday" rule. They made us sandwiches, which were fine!
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Suitably fuelled up we now had to do those 20 km over to Le Pellerin. Michel had found us a little hotel (the little hotel) in town, which is called l'Esplanade. It faces the river and the ferry and is very atmospheric. Used to be the post office in the 19th century. I had emailed them last night but no response, so at noon I called (when not fighting with the restaurant over crepes.) The hotel lady seemed scattered, or maybe she could not hear or understand me, but eventually I was satisfied that they would be expecting us. She did mention that reception would only open at 5.
So we charged on down the path, that runs beside the Canal de la Martiniere. The only thing of interest to watch here was the many people set up canal side with many fishing rods in the water. After setting up, they just sit - for hours. We did notice that next weekend there will be a giant fishing competition here. All the sitting locations are reserved. And they already have out their Route Baree (Road Closed) signs, to control the crowds. It means the people we see here now are not just sitting, they are in intense training for competition!
By 4 we were in front of the hotel, and as promised it was locked tight. So we went down the street by the (open!) bakery and set out our camping chairs. I started to write this blog but was soon interrupted by a couple who had cycled the Danube and who wanted to hear our story. I obliged, even throwing in commentary about the Danube route. In the end the man complemented me on my French. But he was wrong. It's just that I have told the story of this trip to so many people who ask as we go along. I am much weaker on unrehearsed material. for example, when trying to say "This rim is cracked. Can you find another with 32 holes, take the spokes and cassette from the broken one and rebuild another wheel?"
Well, it's actually not that hard - at least "cassette" is the same in both languages!
At 5 the hotel was still locked, but some tapping did produce the couple that runs/owns it. How can you run a business, even in France, if your doors are locked? Well everything was then fine until we mentioned that we would like to get our bikes from the garage around 7 or maybe 7:30. Horrors. In France on a holiday nothing moves before 8:30, if it is going to move at all. We negotiated 8. Then we carried our bags up the stairs and tried to find our room. The lights are normally off, and the timed switch impossible to find. I peered through the gloom. Our room was #14, but here was only #3. We finally found the switch, and #14, which is just beside #3. Say what? In our room was the evacuation plan and map of the floor. Yup, 11,12, 3, 14, 15. We decided the "1" had fallen off the door and they decided "ok, then, so it's #3!). Now that's thinking outside the box! There may be hope for French business yet?
Tomorrow - up the Loire!
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Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 3,248 km (2,017 miles)
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