Day Sixty Three: Rochfort to Marans: Super U!

May 29, 2017

We are eager to learn what our French friends, and other friends thought of our restaurant experience yesterday. Let us know on the Guestbook.

By the way, when the restaurant lady said the burger was cooked "au point", she meant perfectly cooked. But perfectly cooked in France is what is known to us as "rare". And we say Dodie's burger was "raw". she felt she could reuse it to make meatballs. For more on this, check here.

The TV this morning had a review of the Ascension day long weekend around the Arcachon Basin. They had good footage of traffic jams and crowded beaches. So at least we were not the only ones to notice this phenomenon.

The whole thing piqued our curiosity about Ascension day. Strangely, things began to clear up a bit when we read references to this as the German Himmelfahrt. This seems to be the name by which we know this best. But Wikipedia added some interesting information.

Ascension is not to be confused with Ressurection. "According to the New Testament, after the Romans crucified Jesus, he was anointed and buried in a new tomb by Joseph of Arimathea but God raised him from the dead and he appeared to many people over a span of forty days before he ascended into heaven, to sit at the right hand of God."

As far as the Holiday goes:

"The Feast of the Ascension is one of the ecumenical (i.e., universally celebrated) feasts of the Christian liturgical year, along with the Passion, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on the sixth Thursday after Easter Sunday, the fortieth day from Easter day, although some Roman Catholic provinces have moved the observance to the following Sunday to facilitate the obligation to attend Mass. Saint Jerome held that it was of Apostolic origin, but in fact the Ascension was originally part of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit, and developed as a separate celebration only slowly from the late 4th century onward. In the Catholic tradition it begins with a three-day "rogation" to ask for God's mercy, and the feast itself includes a procession of torches and banners symbolising Christ's journey to the Mount of Olives and entry into heaven, the extinguishing of the Paschal candle, and an all-night vigil; white is the liturgical colour. The orthodox tradition has a slightly different calendar up to a month later than in the Western tradition; the Anglican communion continues to observe the feast, but most Protestant churches have abandoned the traditional Christian calendar of feasts"

What this entry missed out was the going to the beach and filling up all the hotel space part. Well for that you need only read this Grampies blog!

We started out today in the rain, which was fine by us. After the heat of the last days we looked on the rain as merely a cooling spray laid on for our benefit. The trail started out very nice as well - paved, level, separate from cars. As on other days, that did not last. In fact we encountered all manner of surfaces and situations this day.

One of the surfaces and situations we encountered was a no shoulder road, part of the Velodysee, on which drivers seemed to be speeding along rather carelessly. It was ok until a school bus - yes, a school bus full of kids, honked and then sideswiped us. Or at least it passed within a couple of feet, at speed.

We had noticed this bus a few minutes earlier as it rested temporarily at a stop. I noticed then that is was run by the Departement, and was labelled Charente Maritime. After the sideswipe, we almost succeeded in running it down at the next stop, but it got away. Had we got it, we would have bawled out the driver. But now, all we could do would be to write to the Departement about driver training for travel on this Europe level veloroute. Probably by the time we get home it will be forgotten. What would you do?

Our path started out fine, if a little boring.

But soon we were on a no shoulder road with a a few cowboy drivers.

The veloroute decided we would like to see the beach, on a gluey path

With the relatively good cycling conditions, it was not long before we were on the outskirts of La Rochelle. We had been passing through generally boring surroundings, though we did see a few nice houses. Things picked up when we reached a pleasure boat harbour outside La Rochelle. There we saw lots of boat hoisting and repair activity, and many many moored boats. I thought all their myriad bits of rigging made an interesting image.

When signs gve the distance to La Rochelle as 1.5 km, we still did not see anything looking like a famous 18th century town and port. It's just hat a big town then is not very big by our standards today. But when La Rochelle did appear, it was satisfyingly impressive, with its port entrance guarded by two towers (tour de la Chaine and Tour de la Lanterne, and the elegant tour St Nicholas over to one side.

The U shaped harbour is lined, as it should be, with elegant buildings housing restaurants and hotels. Near the middle is a gate which is the threshold to the rest of downtown, on a street that also houses the cathedral.

Before we could go check out these attractions we directly ran in to Paul and Herma, the Dutch cyclists on their way to the Loire. They had camped near here last night and gotten soaked. Their tent is wet and they were at a bakery stoking up, since it had been too wet to cook breakfast.

We expect we will see these two again. Despite differences in speed, it just works out that way on the trail.

We continued down, through the gate, and to St Louis' cathedral. This one is fairly recent. There were of course churches on the site very early - the twelfth century. But the church was destroyed in 1568 in the War of Religion. The Protestants built a temple on the site, but after the siege of La Rochelle in 1627-28 the Catholics apparently took over again. After a fire in 1687, a decision was taken to build a new cathedral.

Work then only began in 1742 and continued through the 18th century. By 1789 it was still a construction zone, and two planned towers never did happen. The whole thing was only completed in 1862 (but still no towers). The style was quite somber also, reflecting the Catholic counter-reformation.

Then in 2017, the Grampies roll into town and say "Hey, no towers, what a loser cathedral". It's hard to win in the cathedral game. Similarly, a lot of the windows did not appear to be leaded glass, but rather paintings. Spoiled Grampies prefer leaded glass. Oh well.

Having seen the harbour, main street, and cathedral and with the day still young, we decided to beetle off to the next town. We headed back down the main street and directly ran in to Peter and Hotshe, the other Dutch cyclists, the ones we had met somehere around Lacanau. They are not camping, but looked at the rain and decided to stick at La Rochelle. So now we are a day ahead of them, meaning we will soon meet them on the trail again, as they make up our head start and pass us.

There were a few nice houses to look at.

Near la Rochelle, a large harbour afforded some interesting photo subjects

At last we came to the St Nicholas tower

And the two, but nt twin, towers guarding the harbour

The designated route was chewed up by construction, so we had to work our way around. The sign says helmets required, so hey, we qualify.

In the inner harbour there were many beautiful sailing yachts

Yelo is the city bus company, but we read that they were the first to come up with a system of rental bikes stored at stands around the city.

Inside the cathedral, no fancy ceiling painting

This window does not apear to be leaded glass. The imagem though, is interesting fantasy fiction, as a winged angel picks on a winged demon.

One of the side streets in old town La Rochelle

Th route from La Rochelle follows a canal, with a slightly rough tow path and generally not much to look at. We continued to notice how the veloroute takes great care to keep the cyclist away from any services or anything else of interest. We took a few photos near Dompierre, showing the path bending over backwards to stay totally ou of town. Oh well, we did see some interestingly spotted cows, also exiled out there beyond the city limits.

The canal itself does seem to be interesting to fishers, at least. However, like all French fishers, they just sit there and never catch anything. One fellow did have four rods on a special holder. The guy himself was in a nearby tent, probably watching TV.

At La Rochelle the Velodysee joins the Via Francette, which is coming from Normandy. This departement of Charente-Maritime has at least a chunk of eight veloroutes, such as Le Canal des 2 Mers and La Scandiberique which takes a different direction from Velodysee at Royan, toward Santiago de Compostella.

Beyond La Rochelle, as always, Velodysee looks for boring back routes.

Here is Velodysee politely staying totally off any paved part of the town

Velodysee tip toe-ing just beyond a town wall.

We had not tried to locate or book a place to stay, following our mishap in not reaching La Rochelle on time. So we rolled into Marans with no idea of what was where. Fortunately Tourist Information was open, and they found us just the most splendid place. It is a two bedroom apartment, on the ground floor, with a ground level patio accesed by sliding doors. There is a complete kitchen, and a real dining room table for typing this blog at! We can open sliding doors and regulate air flow perfectly, we can sit on a sofa and watch TV, the bed has a fluffy quilt!

(For the record the place is called Park&Suites. The posted price is 99 euros, but as cyclists we were given 1/2 price. There is also a pool and restaurant, and a tennis court!)

Best of all, just down the lane is Super U! Super U and Intermarche are the two major grocery chains in this part of France. Typically, they also sell hardware, electronics, bicycles, and such. So like e Leclerc they are more or less like a Walmart Supercenter. But the thing about Super U, like almost any grocery in France, is that the products are super quality compared too what we have back home. Certain categories are insane - like the huge cooler wall of prepared "puddings" - creme caramel, Liegois, chestnut, there is so much and all great. Cookies too are a specialty - a whole aisle of quality packages. And cheeses!

One cheese that our friend Michel introduced us to is "Caprice des Dieux". It is Brie-like. We love it. At Super U we found a cycle friendly size of it. What a joy.

When my tablet fried I was left without an efficient way to upload photos from my camera and into this blog. I have been using a slow workaround. What I needed was a card reader that could connect to our spare tablet. Did Super U have it? Well, yeah! So here I go to give it a whirl, and if you see photos on this page, it means my 30 euros was well spent!

Super U even sell fridges. Look how conservatively they are sized.

At Super U, Coquille St. Jacques. Not for these pilgrims!

Marans is famous as the name of a breed of chickens that lays dark brown eggs, like these.

A cooler of high quality pudding type things.

Just the right size of one of our favourites.

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 2,884 km (1,791 miles)

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