COUNTRY BIKE RIDE

June 10, 2005

Our stay in Gavres is coming to an end.  One week is enough for us here.  I have gotten to know the grocer and the ferryboat operators.  Our house is across the street from one of the boatmen and whenever he is not driving the shuttle bus around the fat end of the peninsula or operating the ferry boat he parks the bus in front of his house and hangs out at home.  What a life.

The weather has been sunny and blue all week. Except for a brief moment the day we arrived we have been very lucky with the weather here. Everywhere I look I see the blue ocean, the blue sky.

Today we decided to do a real bike ride, so we set off along the long peninsula back to the mainland.  The road goes through a military base and this day they were having some kind of artillery practice on the beach.  Red flags were out everywhere and various roads were blocked, so the route that Don had planned along the south side of the peninsula could not be used.  Don and I both agree that, even though the arm of the peninsula is only 4 miles long, it feels like 15 miles.  It is just a long stretch of sand dunes.  The scenery is not very interesting and it feels like it takes an hour to ride it.

We stopped in the town of Etel, at the mouth of the Etel River, and then headed inland to the farm country for a pleasant ramble through the wheat fields and forests.  We stopped at a nice park for our picnic lunch.  There were some children playing there and after awhile we realized that they belonged to some camp trailers parked on the river side of the park.  Our hosts here have been quite vocal about Gypsies, and so Don decided that these people must be Gypsies.  He has been suspicious about a few people we have seen along our way over the past few weeks. 

Now he has me doing it too.  After we left the picnic area we passed another open area, which was filled with several campers, lots of kids and swarthy looking adults.  I imagined that these were those treacherous Gypsies and worried that they might follow us and try to get our money somehow.  Forgive me, my imagination runs rampant when I am cycling and have no conversation for hours on end.  Actually, according to our French hosts, the Gypsies are truly a problem in the summer.  They come to the French countryside, from where I am not sure, and seem to steal anything that is not nailed down.  This is what we are told, anyway.

We rode our bikes through a bunch of Ker-towns.  I want to know what this prefix means.  I suspect it is Breton, but so far I haven’t been able to find out what it means.  I would guess that about 75%-80% of the towns in this area start with the prefix, “ker”.  We rode through Kerbascuin, and Kervarlay, and Kerrous, and Kermorin, Kermainguy, and Kerzo, and Kerplunk and Kerchoo, (well, not the last two, but you get the idea).  Don did a great job with the route and we stayed on little back roads for most of the time.  We decided to take the ferry from Port Louis instead of doing the bike ride back through the military base.

Saturday, our last day in Gavres, we went over to Port Louis for market day, just to see the fruits and vegetables and fish stands.  Cherries and apricots are in the markets now.  There is always lots of seafood--mussels, oysters and shrimp, and, of course, Don’s favorite, andouille (eel).  We spent the rest of the day hanging out and cleaning the house to prepare for our departure tomorrow morning.  We have a tight connection to get our bikes and trailers from one ferry dock to the next.  We arrive at 10:13 in Le Lohic and we have to be over to the other departure point by 10:25.  If we miss the boat we won’t have time to get to the train station in time.

The fellow who lives next door stopped by to let us know to expect a wild, loud, noisy time tonight because he is having a party. Just what I need on the last night. I will have trouble sleeping anyway, what with worrying about making connections, making sure the house is in good order and getting the keys dropped off a the right neighbor’s house.

Around 9pm people began to arrive for the big party. By 11pm the party was in top form. Everyone was sitting around a table in the sunroom, very civilly chatting and eating and having a beer or glass of wine. The “wild” party continued this way until about 2am. Everything was quite subdued and very civilized. I went to bed around 2am, and it seems that everyone at the party just slept over because all of the cars were still there in the morning.