Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Find A Little White-Walled House By The Sea

August 25, 2007 by Mike

La Rochelle

A couple of days in La Rochelle -- the first spent, at least in part, recovering from my first evening in the city. *hic* My excuse, if I wasn't doing very much? That I was simply trying to blend in. (I also washed my clothes, but I'm trying to keep the boring, workaday details of this trip out of the blo-- I mean diary. There's no glamour in soapsuds.)

I met a British biker. I fear we were never destined to be best buddies.

"Good to see another English biker," I cried out as I spotted an older man valiantly bestriding a Japanese sportbike with 'GB' plates like a.. like a.. well, like a man who's 30 years younger than him. "Where are you from?"

"Scotland."

So. Not a very English biker, then. Strike one.

It got worse when I merrily offered that the limit of my technical knowledge is how to get the petrol cap off the Bonneville; for the rest, I rely on official Triumph dealers.

Compared with: "I once stripped my Kawasuki A1-299GTi blindfold and blind drunk, re-calibrated the whizziwig manifold intake dibdab, tweaked the nipple of the rear carburettor and bored a something in the somethingsomethingsomething..." He explained in great detail what he'd done to his bike. I was losing the will to live.

And our new friendship was surely sealed when I confided that the best thing about the Bonnie was that I could ride slowly, and nobody minded. Whereas he'd touched 135 on the way into town -- and we weren't talking kilometres per hour -- and reminisced fondly about riding faster down one particular road than a friend of his -- in 1988! And he's still talking about it!!

--

Saturday was more refreshing, but I kinda knew it would be as I was taking travel advice from the man who plays keyboards on stage with REM.

(A travesty of a singularly interesting career to describe him thus, for Ken Stringfellow is both a Posie and a member of Big Star, a recording artiste in his own right and an urbane man of letters.. but I imagine the fact that he tours with REM will mean more, to more people.)

But as I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself, Ken spends time on l'ile de Re, and finds it
"the ultimate recharge. The air is so clean it pulverizes you, in the face of its purity you can’t stand conscious, I’m nodding out by 10pm here, my body enveloped in a furious state of inventory and repair. When the sun comes out.. it's like the end of a movie all the time…exaggerated sweetness, a kind of summative beauty, the credits are just about to roll and order has been restored to the cosmos."

Damn, he writes well! (Thanks Colin for pointing this out to me.)

So did I. There's a beautiful, gently curved bridge over from the mainland. You want to like the island before you even get there.

The receptionist at the Youth Hostel had recommended the first beach immediately after the bridge but, ever the contrarian, I decided to bike round the island first to see what's what (and to do my besidetheseaside thang) and ended up spending the day on the beach farthest away instead, at Les Portes. It was quiet: I had a loooong stretch of beach to myself for most of the day, and when my patch was invaded it was by the incoming tide, but also by small, gregarious French families with trilling grandchildren, glamorous mothers, moody fathers with greased-back hair and half-cut grandparents. I can live with that.

More importantly, I found the strongest candidate yet for The Little White House By The Sea With Space To Hang The Hammock.

I was on the outskirts of Ars en Re (in itself, not the most inspiring address, I think you'll agree) and happily trundling along. The main road round the island isn't much of a coast-hugger, and it's full of motorhomes doing their tortoise impressions, locals who wait until you're nearly at the junction before they pull out in front of you, and families of cyclists who specialise in riding side-by-side instead of nose-to-tail.

So far, not so great, though the coast was cute and a couple of the small towns, especially St Martin, the largest of the island communities, were luvverly. Being luvverly, of course, they were rammed with tourists.

Ars en Re was lining up to be more of the same... tick, seen it, pass straight on.. but as I was approaching from the south my attention was held.. *captivated*.. *entranced*.. by an apparition off to my left.

Three small towers. Windmills, or rather converted windmills, because the wings have long since disappeared, grouped at the end of a small dead-end lane. They were a couple of hundred metres apart from each other. Each was clucking broodily over a little family of buildings, single story white walled cottages grouped around a courtyard.

Realising that I was still riding down the main road while craning my neck further and further round to keep looking at this heavenly vision, I quickly pulled over to the side of the road to let the motorhomes crawl past, then did a quick U-turn and backtracked to the side road leading to the three towers.

(My version of a "quick U-turn" is a three-point turn. I'm *still* not a very good biker.)

The three compounds are far enough apart to be private; close enough together to have a sense of community, a oneness against the big, bad world. All are lived in: there were cars parked beside each of them. Each mill -- each tower -- has been converted differently, but all clearly have rooms on each level - 3 or 4 in total, with sky-lights or glass roofs at the top. The cottages or out-houses were white-walled with red tiled roofs. Windows were shuttered -- I like this more and more, as I get used to it -- the shutters painted primary blue or red or green -- very safe, very formalised, very elegant, very simple -- very comme il faut. The sides of cottages that presented to the small, dirt road were quietly blank, very dignified, with eye-high walls extending the privacy around gardens, green lawns and vegetable patches. (The people who built them hadn't counted on nosy parkers riding past standing tall on their motorbikes in order to leer inside.)

So all three were.. perfect. Except one was more perfect than the other two. Something about the choreography of tower-to-cottages, the line of the walls, the colour of the shutters, it's position in relation to the road, to the town, to the beach (oh, didn't I mention? we're 50 metres from the beach at this point) made this one slightly more perfect. It was also surrounded by vines. This one isn't just the perfect home - it's a vineyard too. Yes! Perfect squared. Perfect times perfect. Perfect, perfected. *hic*

Then I saw The Owner.

Imagine, kind reader, if I may take a moment of yr time to invest yr own thought processes and imagination in this narrative, A Frenchman.

Go on. Take a moment.

He's French.

Ready?

He's pot-bellied, yes? Wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt and beret? With onions around his neck, riding a bicycle? Does he have a moustache?

OK. Take away the striped top, the beret and the onions, take away the moustache but not the five o'clock shadow -- but keep the essence of them. Keep the belly too, and keep the bicycle. It's old, black, rusty, sit-up-and-beg. He's old and rusty too. His nose is pickled. He laughs when he talks.

You can imagine his voice when I stop to greet him. He leans across the bicycle, beams: the smell of garlic hits me plum on the nose.

"Bah OUI, ehhhhhhh-enfin BBBBBonjooooOOOUR m'sieu'. Heh heh heh. Bah'oui-eee. Hah hah zoot alors."

I think I'm in love.

.. with his *house*!

Because.. of course.. his is the loveliest of the three homes. He nods expressively.

I make an immediate offer. I'm not subtle.

"Whatever you ask for it, I'll pay."

"Bah NON, ehhhhhhh-enfin m'sieu'. Heh heh heh. Bah'noo-oooon. Hah hah zoot alors."

I don't press him.

I'm playing a longer game than that.

M'sieur isn't in the full flush of youth. That nose suggests he's put most of the grapes to personal use. There's no obvious sign of children around, of grandchildren's toys and bikes littering his lawn.

Mercenary that I am, I'm ready to wait for this place to come on the market. Hopefully not 'til I finish this trip.. but then I'll need somewhere to sit and contemplate my naval.

And this could be it.

--

A sad, or at least slightly miffed, coda. The bike's been parked outside almost every night of the trip. The last time it was indoors.. off the top of my head..? ... could it be northern Denmark, when the bike was safely stored in a garage, but there was no lock on the bedroom door, so I didn't dare leave my stuff unguarded?

DSC04705.JPG

Anyhoo. It's been outside, with two things secured but not locked to it: my rainproofs, and the video-camera tripod. No way to stuff them inside the panniers. No way to lock them down. No trouble... until last night. Someone swiped the tripod. It wasn't expensive or special; when I replace it I'll try to find one that I can lock in some way; it's just sad that I'll always have a twinge when I think of this place.

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