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In Which It Looks Like I Spent All Day Writing, But Didn't

May 6, 2008 by Mike

A Campsite Quite Near St Tropez

Route: Marseille - La Ciotat - Six-Fours - Toulon - Hyeres-Plage - St Tropez - A Campsite Quite Near St Tropez

So there I am, chatting to Franck, a French biker, about how cool and great we are. (As you do.) (Or at least, as bikers do.) We're on a high road overlooking the bay of Toulon, 'the Big Bay', a stunning panorama, and I've just ridden ten of the most exciting miles of coastal road ever invented. I'm secretly thinking to myself that I should grow up and get a haircut like Franck's -- short but not conformist, with a hint of a Caesar fringe because I'm starting to recede ever so slightly.

A group of middle-aged teenagers are flying their remote-contolled gliders high and wide over the crashing surf 100s of feet below us, showing off for my benefit by attempting a mass fly-past, on a day that started wet and miserable but that has become hopelessly blue and sunny.

Franck's mobile rings, he answers, and suddenly I am standing next to a man who's talking to the man who customised Johnny Hallyday's Harley-Davidson.

Yes! I haven't been *so* close to rock royalty since the lead singer out of Smokie let me buy him a drink in Tromso.

Oh, and the funniest thing: the ringtone on his mobile is "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals.. one of whom I know even better than the lead singer out of Smokie. (David - I hope you find it in yr heart to forgive Franck, especially if you didn't get paid for him downloading yr song. He's a charming and generous man, invited me for a drink any time I'm near his BMW dealership in Autun -- about as far from the coast as it's possible to get in France, but it's the thought that counts -- and I'm sure he'd do the same for you. He might even rustle up a Harley for you.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Left Marseille in drizzle, having taken the time to ride the dead-end road out to Callelongue first -- recommended -- before cutting back and inland to navigate past the Massif du Puget and the dramatic cliffs and coves of the Calanques, beautiful coast but to be reached only on foot or by sea. Nevertheless, I'm enjoying the road and being back on the bike. It's stopped raining and it looks like the roads will dry off too.

But after the small and pretty town of Cassis.. round the coast to La Ciotat.. whoah. *This* is a road.. this is a *road*.. this *is* a road. Etc etc.

It's a beautiful road: straight into the Top Ten. High cliffs, switchbacks and little wee turns and sweeping curves, gaining and losing height as the road darts back and forth like a viper across the arid hillsides, coves and inlets. Great tarmac, too.. and next to no traffic on the road today. Seriously: go to GoogleEarth, type in Cassis and follow the road north to La Ciotat. It'll be just like my ride this morning -- only you'll be in sunshine ;-)

Turns out it's a very well-known road: the Route des Cretes. In fact, hop over to YouTube and you'll notice that lots of bikers have filmed themselves riding this road. Which, I'm ashamed to say, is more than I managed. The, err, the, ummm, the helmet cam that broke in Finland.. is, err, ummmm, still not fixed.

(I should also point out that most of them seem to have ridden the road a danged sight faster than I managed. No surprises there, then.)

And I was having too much fun to stop, set up the video camera(s) on a tripod and film myself whizzing past or up or down or round. I just got on with the ride.. and loved it to bits.

I know this picture, taken in Portugal last October, is one of my Pa's favourites:

... so I recreated the 'edge of a very tall cliff' look today on the Route des Cretes. That's what six months without a haircut can do to a man:

Next stop was due to be Toulon. It's the heart of the French Navy and, just as no tourist in the UK would want to miss the myriad delights of Portsmouth -- or Faslane -- I wanted to get to grips with that aspect of France's relationship with the sea. Toulon had other ideas.

The Fort Napoleon - is currently hosting a stamp exhibition
The Balaguier Fort - is closed on Tuesdays
The Musee National de la Marine - is open every day.. except Tuesdays. And Christmas Day.

I tried. Really, I tried. This was the site of Napoleon's first major success as a young officer in the French Army. But if he'd turned up on a Tuesday.. well.. history might have been very different. Beunoparte would never have become Bonaparte, let alone Napoleon. We might have made a nation of shopkeepers out of the French.

And as for the centre of Toulon, down by the docks and the Navy shipyards. Well, everything you ever hear/ fear about sailors is clearly true. Toulon features more "lingerie boutiques featuring LIVE MODELS" than any town I've ever seen. And sex shops. And tattoo parlours.

On and on. The road kept to the coast. I kept to the road. I kept going. I planned to stop at Hyeres-Plage (hello to the Englishman whose son rides a 1942 Indian -- give him a Thumbs Up from me) but the campsites just seemed to disappear in my rear-view mirror. Cap Benet came and went; le Lavandou; as I rode through Cavaliere I started singing Grooving because the Rascals' lead singer was called Felix Cavaliere and I'd like to think that most people do the same. Would you?

Signs to St Tropez started to appear -- and it was only 50km.. then 35.. and it didn't make any sense not to ride on to the most famous resort down here in the Riviera.. the Cote d'Azur.. names which scream glitz and glamour and beauty and money.

Sure enough, the houses started to get bigger, the gardens more ornate, the coast more devastatingly and outrageously photogenic. Houses are spread across every hillside, above the road and down towards the sea, but every single one has space and enough greenery, pine trees and cork trees, to hide from each other -- and from motorcyclists trying to gawp into private lives as they ride past. I could swear the sun was growing warmer as the afternoon turned to early evening. That's rich.

And.. but you've guessed it, haven't you?.. having got glitzier and more glamorous, more beautiful and richer, as I reached St Tropez I couldn't help noticing that it suddenly became a bit tacky, a bit tawdry, a bit tired. Too many greedy eyes have been drawn to it and there's nothing left for the rest of us to enjoy. It used to love the attention but somewhere along the line it all got too much. The old lady of the Riviera should just be left alone.. but still we come.

Seen a picture of Brigitte Bardot recently?

There are designer shops you've heard of, and shops selling "designer" clothes at extortionate prices that nobody in their right mind would ever wear. There are lots of women and men wearing these clothes, in St Tropez.

There are swank restaurants and black'n'chrome bars. The women and men in the comedy outfits perch in them, making sure they can be seen from the street.

Lots of bikes parked in the port area. Wall-to-wall Harleys, customised and polished and screaming LOOKATME and they look like they never actually move.

And above all, there are the superboats and the superyachts. And the supersuperboats. They. Are. Huge. And for the time it takes to walk alongside them (several minutes in some cases) it's nice to imagine owning one.. or even being invited onboard. There's more chrome, smoked glass, purest white fibreglass and acres of decking.

The decking in my old back garden never looked this good. Or this clean.. because there are members of staff on the bigger yachts conspicuously hard at work, scrubbing and scrubbing.. suspiciously so. It occurs to me they're actors, hired to look like they're scrubbing, whereas we all know the supersuperboat owners are far too rich to actually get dirt on their shoes. So their supersuperboats would never need scrubbing. But then we wouldn't be able to look at the staff scrubbing, and realise just how supersuperrich the supersuperboat owners are. Which, lest we forget, is why the supersuperboats are parked here, in view of the common tourists like me, instead of being parked at a private marina or off their private islands somewhere.

It's not enough to be supersuperrich: they have to be *seen* to be supersuperrich. That's the whole point of them being here.

That's why St Tropez is full of scrubbers.

Mike's First Definition of Conspicuous Consumption, St Tropez-style:
Your supersuperboat is only really supersuper if there are staff conspicuously cleaning on at least three separate floors of the boat. In the ten minutes or so before I lost interest, to my surprise, I only counted one *real* supersuperboat.

I could have stayed in the cheapest pension in st Tropez for just under 100€ a night -- which is why I'm in the nearest campsite instead. It's seven miles from the town.. and a couple of miles from the sea.. but that's quite close enough from me.

Beside the Seaside

In Which It Looks Like I Spent All Day Writing, But Didn't

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