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In Which I Turn A Corner
August 16, 2007 by Mike
Le Conquet
Route: Plougrescant - Perros-Guirec - Lannion - Henvic - Plouvorn - Plouescat - Brignogan-Plages - Le Conquet
Elvis. 30 years. It's been too long. Where are you, buddy?
--
If any of you luvverly ladies care to join me on the trip...?
--
Breakfast this morning in my B&B -- you couldn't call it petit dejeuner in the strictest sense:
the table piled high with plates, the plates overflowing with crepes, boiled eggs, yoghurts, three sorts of bread, toasted and untoasted, freshly squeezed orange juice, a vat of darkly black coffee, brown sugar cubes, white sugar cubes, granulated sugar, two types of sugar-substitute, (the sugar cubes were shaped into hearts).
All this in the front room of the house, a dark room despite the bright sunshine outside. Heavy drapes framed by heavy, striped curtains. The wallpaper featured dark green stripes. There were two armchairs, dark and green and stripey, a tall bookcase and a great armoire, both of dark, heavy wood, the walls liberally covered with paintings of sea storms and shipwrecks.
This, truly, is The Land That IKEA Forgot.
Zavatta Watch
No sign of the circus before I left. They must sleep in even later than me.
And no more Zavattas to report. Bretons are not circus fans, clearly. Just signs for the Cirque Fratellini -- do the Zavattas know about this? Couldn't a femaile Zavatta marry M.Fratellini and convince him to change his name?
--
I broke a Golden Rule today. (And to think, yesterday I retraced my steps. I'll be travelling by car by the end of the week!)
Having weaved, sometimes tortuously, always happily, along the coast road from Plougrescant, not always too close to the sea but usually within sight, I found myself riding towards some almighty storm clouds. They were pitch black. And.. they were static, clearly defined, huge, bucketing water over the coast straight ahead of me: St-Pol-de-Leon and the channel port of Roscoff.
I'm not having any of that, I thought to myself. Though my language my have been slightly more colourful. I beat the rain by weaving inland like a biking version of chequers -- two steps southwest, one step northwest, one step southwest, straight north -- a 40 mile diversion deep inland to avoid a rainstorm that can't have been more than three or four miles wide. I'd have ridden through it in less than five minutes. Ha ha ha.. but I didn't.
--
Onwards again, making up for my inland miles by hugging the coastline and exploring every last dead-end road down to the sea until, somewhere after Ploudalmezeau, the road turned imperceptibly to my left, just as it has a thousand times before, a hundred times every day.
But this turn was different: we had just turned, the road, the bike and I, south.
Way back on December 9th I stood at Skagan, the northernmost tip of Denmark, realising that from that moment I would be heading south and west until I got to southern Spain. Well, it's mainly south rather than west for the next few hundred miles - clear all the way to Spain, in fact.
Through the small town/ big beach of Porspeder when I see more rain clouds ahead. The sky is deep blue in the bike's mirrors. It's time to stop for the day. But as I circle round Porspeder, wondering if I dare hammock it with more rain forecast, I glance up and relise it's now cloudy here and blue further down the coast. It's one of the those days.
I plough on -- past the coastline devastated by oil spilled from the Amoco Cadiz - how can that possibly be 29 years ago? -- to Le Conquet. It's the last place of any size before Brest and gets my vote because the staff in the tourist office assure me it's going to be sunny all day tomorrow. Hmmm we shall see - I'm in need of a relaxed day on the beach after all this stress*.
* Please note: I'm being ironic at this point.
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By KC | August 19, 2007 5:55 PM
Very amusing says ma!!!!!
Have just read yr latest to Anne and Ma - Pa asleep tho he did grunt when I asked him if he could hear!!!!!
We have had a feast at my local pub by the river.Quite hard getting our show on the road but worth it from time to time. LOVE KC sis