Notes from the river.
Reflections as I cycle the Rhône.
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A kind of travel journal, written on my phone so excuse typos etc.
Friday
Sitting on the train to the airport, I remember something I read recently that suggested punctuating one’s day with small moments of remembrance of the bigger picture, briefly contemplations that take us away from mundane daily activities - like one’s own death. The moment I do this, I find myself suddenly entranced by the shadows cast on the floor, flitting and moving as the train moves rapidly past the trees outside in the hot July sunshine. ‘One day I will wish I could sit here and observe something so simple’, I think to myself. I instantaneously feel grateful for my fortune and foolish for ignoring life around me for most of my waking hours.
We eat some snacks on the train and I make a pun about eggs which I’m quite pleased with. Lucy doesn’t respond though so I assume she hasn’t heard it and say it again, and I’m met with silence again. A minute later she says “Did you just repeat your joke in case I hadn’t heard it?”, which makes me laugh especially when she remarks that I said it quietly the second time, as if ashamed.
Our flight is delayed and the airport train in Lyon is out of service so we arrive at our apartment much later than planned. Lucy has to collect the key from somewhere inconvenient a short taxi ride away so Ren and I wait outside the apartment, sitting on a bench overlooking the Rhône. It’s almost midnight and I read books to him by the light of street lamps, occasionally pointing to trams on the lit up bridge. Somehow, after nine hours of travelling in sticky heat, he’s still fully awake and in good spirits.
When we finally get into the apartment, the heat is even more intense than outside, and more humid too. It’s a big old apartment block with thick walls and high ceilings but on the fifth floor it feels like a sauna.
There’s two cats in the apartment. Ren is a little hesitant at first. I’m not particularly fond of cats either but that seems to be changing. I squat down and offer my hand to the cat. Ren squats next to me and holds on tightly to my leg. “Hey kitty,” I say gently. The cat comes closer and inspects my hand and arm with her nose.
“See, she’s friendly Ren,” I say, “She’s just smelling me to check I’m safe.”
I’ve no idea where this statement comes from, it’s possibly complete nonsense and I know very little about cats but Ren puts his hand out and the cat sniffs him too. A few minutes later he’s following the cat around the apartment calling “Hey kitty.” The cat looks much more nervous than he does now.
Saturday
Ren is up at his usual time despite going to sleep four hours later than normal. We lift him into our bed and indulge in the fantasy that he’ll have a lie in with us.
After ten futile minutes or so, we’re up. When I enter the kitchen, the floor is so hot that I’m convinced there’s underfloor heating on, and then realise it’s not. It’s just the heat from outside and below. I’m sweating just standing still.
After coffee for us and breakfast for Ren, we encourage a swift exit by promising him a fresh croissant. We’re staying in a neighborhood that seems to have several bakeries and cafes on every street, so shortly after we leave we’re in cafe watching Ren tackle a sticky croissant. We have a taste too; lately Ren has developed the endearing habit of insisting on sharing his food and drink with us.
Outside a local supermarket, there’s a man sitting on the street. Our eyes meet as he asks me, I think, for money. I apologise in my basic French and then inside the supermarket I feel guilty because I know I have some loose change. I fish some coins out and resolve to give them to him when we leave. When we come back out though, the man seems disinterested in us and for some reason I lose my nerve, perhaps worried about insulting him in some way.
After lunch back at the apartment, we attempt to get Ren down for a nap, certain that he must be knackered by now. Instead we spend half an hour tussling in bed in a semi doze. Lucy is playing audio versions of children’s books on her phone, in an attempt to lull Ren to sleep, and I must have dozed off at some point because the stories change, and merge into a weird fever dream where the Gruffalo, Stick Man and a witch all exist in the same place.
We head out for a walk in the old town and Ren ends up sleeping in the bike trailer while we sit and enjoy a beer in an outdoor cafe. We have forty-five minutes of uninterrupted bliss, catching up on life and talking about the excellent books we’re both currently reading. Across the road there’s a flea market and the sounds of jazz and reggae drift over from the vinyl stall as we chat
There’s much more to the day but this time for the two of us and the time we’ve all had together already feel nourishing enough. I almost feel greedy.
Sunday
Bikepacking trips are rarely straightforward, and that is part of the pleasure they offer. Planning for them is essential, but always with the knowledge that you will, at least once during your journey, rip up your plans once you’re on the road due to something completely unforeseen.
Today demonstrates the principle. Our bikes are scheduled for pickup at 11.30 with a short train ride afterwards to avoid a busy main road at the start, meaning we have an hour or so of cycling and should arrive fairly fresh at our B&B mid afternoon. None of those things will happen.
Relieved to leave our boiling hot apartment, we head for a leisurely morning coffee, figuring we can run slightly late to collect our bikes. We are just finishing up at 11.45 when Lucy remembers the bike shop closes for lunch for two hours from 12pm.
So a new plan. Lunch, collect bikes, get on the later train. I book train tickets after three attempts with a glitchy website. Then the guy at the bike shop tells us the train is unlikely to allow our trailer on board.
Another new plan. He recommends an alternative cycling route. “A couple of hills but short ones” he says. “No shade though.” We decide to go for it.
After the inevitable faff of adjusting our bikes and other equipment, we leave the shop at 3pm. We don’t know it but we have over 6 hours of cycling in baking heat ahead of us.
After 50km of gruelling heat and steep hills, we cross the Rhône towards Vienne, feeling somewhat triumphant as the sun begins to dip behind the western hills. We stop on the bridge and I read some messages from our B&B owner who is aghast that we were going to attempt to reach her hilltop property on bikes.
“It’s not possible on bikes,” she says in a message. “Maybe e-bikes but definitely not standard bikes.” I haven’t even mentioned the 80kg of toddler, trailer and luggage we are towing along.
She sends me another message. “Stay there. I’m coming to get you.” Ten minutes later, she arrives in her 4x4, a look of shock on her face as she sees our set up. She even puts her hands to her head in a cartoonishly Gallic gesture.
She has enough boot space for our bags thankfully although not us, our bikes and trailer. Then, translating through phones again, she says “Follow me.”
For the next forty-five minutes, we wind our way up four kilometres of steep hills that would be a challenge with just a road bike but are completely brutal with our added weight at the end of a scorching day. I dare not stop with such a heavy load, it can be fatal on such a taxing hill.
Yet the mood stays light, embellished by stunning red and purple sunset views of the rolling hills of Vienne, and the sound of Ren chattering excitedly into Lucy’s ear from his rear seat, like Yoda on Luke Skywalker’s back. Given she doesn’t do regular long distance cycling, I’m stunned by Lucy’s endurance and strength.
After cresting the very top of the hill, we finally arrive and somehow find the energy to set up Ren’s bed, shower and put him to sleep with one eye on the World Cup final which plays silently in the background. I foolishly stay up for extra time too before falling into a fitful sleep.
Monday
The second day of a bikepacking trip is when it feels like it really starts: your bike is all set up, you know where your kit and clothing is, you begin to get into a groove of morning routines and mealtimes.
We leave mid morning, roll down the steep hill, ringing our bells and whooping. Pretty soon we’re on the cycle path next to the river, blissfully flat and empty. The morning heat is pleasant, almost cool.
It’s a mostly uneventful day cruising along the river and through woodland, except for two things, the first a trivial argument over a luggage strap between me and Lucy which briefly threatened to escalate and become disproportionately affecting.
The second is at a small local bakery where we stop for lunch. As we’re about to leave, one of the two cyclists behind us, a young man, calls out to me in French, wishing us luck I think. When I tell him my French is terrible, he switches to English.
“I love this little constellation you have” he says, gesturing towards our bikes, trailer and Ren, a family on the move.
He asks where we’re from. I tell him England but we live in Berlin. His eyes light up.
“No way! I was born and raised in Berlin!”
“Where?” I ask.
“Kreuzberg.”
“Ha, we live just next to there and he was born in Kreuzberg” I say nodding at Ren.
“No way!”
Lucy chips in with the name of the hospital Ren was born in.
“Me too!” says the young guy, and then adds the delivery room number, a fact he is proud to remember.
It turns out he lives in Switzerland now and is cycling the Via Rhona with his uncle. We chuckle at the serendipity of it. It’s a pleasant exchange, the sort in which there’s an easy warmth because of the shared endeavour we’re participating in.
As we’re about to part for a second time, he says something I don’t quite understand and ask him to repeat.
“Bon route!” he says with big grin. “It means good journey!”
Tuesday
We’re staying in Andancette in an incredible gîte right on the Rhone. It’s a huge old house that has been partially renovated by the owner, who lives in one wing of it and currently has her teenage grandchildren with her. She keeps cockerels and tortoises in her vast and immaculate garden, which also has a swimming pool overlooking the river. There’s a sauna tucked away in one corner. All for less than the price of a budget hotel.
As I’m coming in from the garden last night, something in the gloom of the wide hallway catches my eye. At first I think it is collections of twigs in jars, hundreds of them in an old floor to ceiling wooden display cabinet. As I peer closer, I see miniature wooden sculptures of the crucified Jesus inside a variety of glass bottles in different sizes. I recoil and feel momentarily spooked.
At check out this morning, the owner, a French woman perhaps in her 70s, asks if I’m from India. I tell her my parents were. “I have been to India several times,” she says proudly. And then adds, almost as an aside, “on a motorbike.”
I’m about to ask where in India she’s been to when this last bit registers with me. “On a motorbike??”
“Yes,” she says in her heavily accented English. “I toured around, in Kerala, in Odisha, all over.”
I say something that broadly expresses I think this is fucking cool, and she says “Come, come, I show you something” and this short grandmother leads us to her garage where she shows me her beautiful Royal Enfield motorbike and her other large touring motorbike “just for France”.
Making chit chat as we’re about to leave, Lucy asks her plans for the day. “I’m going to buy some chickens,” she declares. “Yes the foxes have taken some unfortunately. And also I want blue eggs.” Then she adds with a smile. “Because I’m a bit mad.”
This morning a dragonfly hovers ahead of my front wheel for a while, before zipping away again.
Later, I ask Lucy if we had a conversation about cutting our family’s toenails. When she says we didn’t I realise I must have dreamt it. I’m not sleeping well.
Wednesday
Your body does strange things after several days of the same activity. There comes a point where all it wants to do is the main thing you’re doing. On a bikepacking trip years ago, after several days of hard riding that had left us almost crooked and very sore, one of friends said “I feel like my bike is the only place I’m comfortable now.”
And it was true. I’m full of lactic acid and my muscles are so stiff that I feel them when I’m sitting still. But as soon as I mount my bike and start pedalling again this morning, it has a magical effect; the pain vanishes as if my bike and body have been waiting to resume my natural mode.
We leave a small but lovely town called Valence after breakfast, now experts at packing up quickly and efficiently. On the way out of a father is cycling with his two daughters, who look no older than eleven or twelve. All of them have bikepacking bags strapped to their bikes and are spinning along at a steady click. He’s riding behind them and chatting encouragingly, positioned out into the road a foot or so to protect them from traffic. It’s an endearing scene. I wish him good morning as we pass.
We’ve shortened our route today, taking a train from halfway to avoid a road closure and big hill. After 150km of heavy riding, we feel we’ve earned it.
Cruising through some farmland, we see a murmuration of swifts in field of corn up ahead, flying close to the ground. They take off again just as we approach and sweep across the road before looping away to the left again.
After a short train ride, we arrive in Montelimar in time for lunch. At the station Ren and I playfight and chase each other in circles while Lucy finds somewhere to eat.
It occurred to me yesterday that if you’d asked me ten years ago what I wanted my life to look like, I would have described exactly what I’m doing now.
The town has that Mediterranean toasted white sand aesthetic to the buildings and streets, an encouragement to go slow in the heat and enjoy the shade. We chance upon a little Sicilian cafe for lunch and tuck into some delicious food. Ren runs laps around the table asking us to be German ticket inspectors to which we oblige.
There’s a couple who sit down at the table next to us. They seem to have nothing to say to each other but the woman looks over at us frequently and I find myself looking back. She occasionally says something to her partner after looking at us and he speaks quietly back without looking our way even once. It makes me feel uncomfortable and slightly irritated although I’m not entirely sure why.
After lunch, we see cockerels roaming free around the park in the centre of town. Their plumage looks magnificent. The origin of the cockerel as unofficial emblem of France dates back to the Romans and a pun involving ‘gallus’, a Latin word both meaning Gaul and cockerel.
There’s a short visit to the modern art museum to see an exhibition of the work of Nicolas Bouvier, a Swiss artist who travelled through the Levant and Asia in the 1950s ending up in Japan for a while and later New York. Too much to say on that.
Later, as I’m heading back to the hotel to get something, a man in a car park speaks to me in French. I have a sense he asking for money and tell him my French is bad but I can speak English.
“Can you spare a few coins for me and my dog?” he says, in perfect English. I dig out some change from my bag and we chat a little as I’m doing so.
On the way back, I’m about to pass the man again. A small group walk past him and I see he asks them the same thing in French. They shrug that they don’t understand. “Maybe English? Can you spare a few coins for me and my dog?”
One of the group shrugs again and says “German”.
“Ah Deutsch….” says the man with the dog and switches to fluent German.
I don’t see how the rest of this encounter pans out but I’d love to know the story of this guy with a dog.
Thursday
It’s never quiet on the bike. Even away from urban environs and into the green places alongside the river, there’s lots to hear. The cicadas are almost constant in the woodland, at times a cacophony (Ren told them to be quiet at one point).
Then there’s the swishing sound of the tall grass alongside the fields and the thick rustling of the trees in the wind, particularly loud today with a strong easterly that offers some cooling relief from the heat. Every now and then, the familiar chirping of birds in the trees. And of course the comforting sound of a whirring gear cassette on my back wheel.
A sparrow and a pair of dancing white butterflies in front of my wheel today.
We spend the late afternoon looking for a place to dip into the river and eventually chance upon a creek that has runs into the Rhône. With Ren fast asleep in the trailer, we get out of our sticky cycling gear and wade into the middle. There’s water is refreshing although not quite as cool as I hoped.
Small fish immediately cluster around my feet, a few of them taking a little nibble at my skin. It reminds me of a fish spa I went to in Kuala Lumpur, not an experience I enjoyed but this time it feels pleasant.
As I sit back and float with only my head and shoulders above water, a bright green leaf drifts past me. I watch as it gently swerves its way down the stream, moved by invisible currents. I used to spend hours doing this as a kid.
Just ahead of us, two navy blue butterflies flutter just above the surface of the water. As we sit in the river, Lucy and I chat about the art of good travel and how much we’re enjoying this trip, the long days spent outdoors on the move, the many things we’ve seen, the people we’ve met and the quality playtime we’re having together.
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What wonderful memories Ren will be filing away...