I left the Macon campsite with back roads in mind but at the last minute decided to take the main highway. It was great – light traffic and wide hard shoulders, straight and flat. An hour onto my daily run Ron and Carol gave me a cheery wave as they passed en route Calais.
Just south of Le Mans I spotted a cycle shop so called in to replenish my stock of spare rear wheel spokes and a front gear-set bolt that had mysteriously disappeared (but not the rest of the assembly luckily). As I emerged a man on what appeared to be a child’s bike asked me (in an American accent) if I spoke English. I replied ‘yes, but not the way you do but let’s see how we get on.’ He didn’t see the joke.
He asked me if I knew how to get to Bordeaux, so I told him it was straight down the road about 600km. I asked him what maps he had and he produced a page torn from the back of a pocket diary that had France on it. I gave him the bottom half of mine, we being right at the join. I asked him how he came to be on a kid’s bike heading for Bordeaux, with a bag tied to the handlebars and a coke can where a water bottle normally goes, and did he have any tools or camping gear. His answer to my last two questions was no and the ‘story’ unfolded.
He said his name was Larry and he was from Michegan and that he’d being working as a cameraman for a Jeremy Irons movie, (but couldn’t remember the title). He then went on to say he’d been refused entry into Britain because he only had a single ticket and was sent back to France (I think). He said he’d bought the bike in Paris for $50 and originally had two bags (tied on with string) but one was stolen in Paris. The he asked me (me being so generous with the map) if i wanted the unused portion of his Eurostar London Paris ticket because they wouldn’t give him a refund. I naturally accepted thinking it might come in handy sometime and said all I had to trade was a muesli bar which he immediately accepted.
He rummaged through his (one remaining) bag and I caught site of an official immigration letterhead, but no Eurostar ticket was to be found. I thought to ask for my muesli bar back but by then it was already too late.
I wished him a swift and safe journey, wondering where he planned to stay en route if he had no tent, sleeping bag, nor apparently money to buy a bus ticket. He and his equipment didn’t otherwise have much to edify all the long haul cyclists I’d encountered.
South of Le Mans the National Highway is in fact the Le Mans racing circuit. Really good for bikes too!
At Le Mans I decided the National Highway had been a bit dull, straight, flat, safe, fast an uncongested as it had been, so (silly me) i decided to swing east onto more minor roads looking for more interesting villages and such like.
All I found was hill after hill, heavier traffic and no hard shoulders, but I’d already gone too far by then to turn back.
Sometime after 5pm I came to the town of Bellem that boasted a campsite with heated pool. I pondered scouting it for company and an early day alas my ego got the better of me because another town lay 17km ahead and in between the speedometer would register 1800km as well as the 1700kms I d passed earlier in the day (1800km representing of course 90% of the journey complete) and another 120+km day chalked up.
I arrived at Mortagne at 6:05pm, five minutes after the Tourist Office had closed. There were no campsites. I had the choice of continuing a further uncertain 30km to the next town or going back to Bellem. The sun still burned hot – I was going to have to find a bed. I was too tired and hot to fall back on my last resort of playing me pipes at a bar with my sign asking for a garden to camp in.
I wondered how many interesting people I’d missed at the Bellem campsite (with heated pool). Worse still there seemed to be only two hotels of any sort in town. The receptionist in the first seemed disinclined to invite me in (waiting behind me and my grease and sweat stained cycling shirt stood a man in a suit) and seemed uncertain of any vacancies. The receptionist also wanted an exorbitant Euros 80 so I went off to the only other hotel in town just up the road with a sinking heart.
Ten minutes later I was soaking in a hot bath, wine in hand, damp book in the other, contemplating some long overdue body maintenance.
