Notes from the river pt.2
Reflections as I cycle the Rhône.
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A kind of travel journal, written on my phone so excuse typos etc.
Friday
We arrived at a campsite in Bourg Saint Andeol last night where we’re staying for two days. The cabin I’ve booked has no air conditioning and it was over 30C today.
At night time, it hadn’t cooled down much and felt hotter inside than outside which left us with choice of windows open and an open invite to mosquitoes, or windows closed and bake. We opted for the former.
We lay in bed, hot and exhausted, finding humour in it all:
“Is your pillow like a balloon? I feel like I’m sleeping on bubble wrap.”
“You mean you don’t like sleeping on plastic sheets after a day of cycling in scorching heat?”
(Laughing)
“I’m off to get my PVC duvet.”
(More laughing).
A few minutes later. “It’s like sleeping in a Tupperware box.”
(Giggling.)
We eventually fall into an uncomfortable sleep. In the middle of the night, I wake up cold and pull random items of clothes out of my rucksack to keep me warm. I have to do this several times, and when I finally wake up, feeling like I haven’t slept at all, I notice there’s a thick blanket next to my bed.
We’re taking a rest day today. We do as little as possible with a toddler, making a picnic lunch, going to the swimming pool, playing cards (we manage to teach Ren a simple version of Uno). It’s a refreshing change to not have to pack or leave or be on the move, although I notice myself almost wishing we were.
This morning, a gardener is trimming the grass on the campsite with a handheld mower. He’s under a tree and the grass is very dry, so clouds of dirt are billowing up from the parched earth which is then caught in the sunlight between the tree branches. It creates a surreal scene, as if he’s surrounded by dozens of beams of light coming up from the ground.
Saturday
The weather can solely determine the nature and mood of a cycling day. So far on this trip, we’ve had a tailwind at our backs from the north. Today our luck changed.
The moment we leave the campsite, heading south again, we’re met with a persistent gust. It’s perhaps only 15-20km per hour in strength but this makes all the difference when your average speed is 15km per hour. We were in for a grind.
It reminds me of a day many years ago on the Californian coast. On that occasion, somewhere near Brookings, we were heading south into a 20mph headwind that lasted all day and was coupled with a route that included long hills. It was eased somewhat by the sight of Pacific breakers breaking onshore to our right and dense gigantic redwoods to our left.
We’re soon in farmland again. Somewhere to my right in the trees, there’s a manic and high pitched birdsong that I’ve never heard before.
Soon after that, there’s giant agricultural machinery, a row of crop sprayers with their enormous stanchions and wheeled towers controlled by radar. The giant truck-treaded wheels are stationary and coated in thick sandy dust. It reminds me of rust belt America.
We’ve seen a lot of agriculture in this part of France, perhaps no surprise next to a river as old and reliable as the Rhône. Today we see long fields of pumpkins, tomatoes, corn, berries, peaches and pears. There’s also sunflowers, some greeting us like perky and upright sentries, and others turning their faces away from us and drooping in the heat, as if ashamed - or dying.
We take a coffee stop next to a Saturday morning village market. We try teaching Ren the French for thank you very much. He repeats it back: “Merci baboo.” Close enough.
As we set off again, we notice the air has thickened even more and there’s a smell of rain in the air. As we cross back over an old bridge, the headwind suddenly makes sense: half the sky to the south is covered in angry purple grey clouds. I can see rain falling over the hills on the horizon. A storm is on the way to us.
Turning south, the headwind whips into us again, whistling in my ears. With the load I’m towing, it’s hard riding. We decide to try to make it to the next town and we get to a small supermarket on the outskirts just as the rain arrives. Two cyclists, a German couple, are already sheltering inside.
We make some cheese and salad sandwiches and sit on the floor outside the covered entrance, watching as the thunder and lightning get closer and stronger.
Suddenly the rain is teeming down, bouncing off the tarmac. As always, the metallic smell in the air takes me straight back to childhood. Ren is watching with us and eating one of the delicious local peaches, juice dripping down his chin.
Another cyclist arrives and takes shelter, a young guy on what looks like a homemade and semi-motorised bike. He’s wearing a skateboarding helmet and pulling a ramshackle wooden trailer behind him, and on his handlebars there’s an EU flag and a small bunch of flowers.
As the centre of the storm arrives, a lightning bolt hits something in the car park in front of us, either a car or a power box. The thunder that accompanies it is deafening. My toes tingle and I feel the windows of the supermarket reverberate behind me.
The temperature has dropped but it’s still sticky and hot. The rain intensifies, small rivers now flowing through the car park.
We need to wait this out. Lucy buys a box of ice creams from inside and we share them with the other cyclists. Customers try to dodge the deluge as they rush into the supermarket from their cars, most of them smiling at us with a hello or wishing us luck.
People have been messaging me about the wildfires in Spain and France, checking that we’re ok. I don’t know what they mean so go online and check the news which I find disturbing in all sorts of ways. Fortunately I don’t have time to swell on it today.
After an hour or so, there’s a break in the weather and everyone begins to pack their kit up. We wish the others good luck and set off.
The sun has broken through again and the roads give off clouds of steam. It’s cooler but only briefly and soon it’s hot and humid again. From nowhere we’re caught in a rain shower which threatens to soak us but only lasts ten minutes or so, enough to make us wet as well as sweaty.
The headwind has eased so we make good time towards Orange. Ren and I sing songs together and every time we go under a bridge we whoop and roar for the echo effect.
It ends up being an easy end to the day although Lucy isn’t feeling well and has battled through it.
Later, I’m heading to the grocery store in the centre Orange and walk down a weathered and quaint looking shopping street. As I pass one of the shops, I hear music from a speaker, a jazzy American cover version of ‘Your Song’ by Elton John. A few metres after the shop I realise I can still hear the song, as if it’s following me. I reach the end of the street and I can still hear it, now feeling like a strange soundtrack to my walk. I realise then that there’s small speakers above the shops along the whole street, all playing the same song.
Later we watch the thunderstorms roll in again. The sky is streaked with lightning and it pours down once more. Ren is transfixed by it.
Sunday
A rest day in Orange today. We have a slow start to the morning - coffee, breakfast, some games. There’s some troubling news about illness in our extended family which we talk about.
Lucy still feels unwell and needs some rest so Ren and I head out together. We’ve walked for five minutes when he declares he’s hungry and fortunately we’ve just arrived in a pretty little square in the centre of town, lined by cafes and restaurants and shaded by plane trees.
A restaurant owner gives us a friendly hello and manages to coax a high five out of Ren. I initially tell him we’re going to check out some options for lunch but then I wonder why I’d bother and we take a table. We play a little Uno and then Ren has a pizza while I drink coffee.
The men serving us are unfailingly friendly. Ren finishes with an ice cream, we settle up and make it five metres before he spots a little merry go round. I part with three Euros and he jumps into a mini fire engine for a few minutes.
He asks for a playground next so we head a few minutes out of the centre to a small one which has hardly any shade and little to play with. It has a slightly sad quality to it for me but Ren seems happy enough.
There’s two quiet and friendly sisters playing on one of the small structures. Ren wants to go on it but not while they’re there so we stand and wait for a while. We eventually go on the swings instead. He is often very reserved around kids he doesn’t know in public spaces and I find an old frustration rising in me, something I discuss with Lucy later.
There’s so many small judgments to make in parenting and so much of your own shit that needs to be acknowledged and parsed out from the stuff that actually needs addressing.
There’s a huge Roman amphitheatre in the centre of Orange and we visit the small museum next to it. The work of an artist called Albert de Belleroche catches our eye, with an unusual life story starting in Swansea born to French aristocracy, taking in Paris, boxing clubs, Oscar Wilde, Emile Zola and Sussex, before ending in Nottingham.
There’s a piano on the top floor that visitors are encouraged to use. Ren sits down, bangs on the keys and demands that Lucy and I dance, so we oblige with jerky interpretative movements. We remark later that one the joys of being a parent is the permission to act the fool in public and not care one bit - with the afterthought that the permission isn’t actually needed.
Later, after Ren has gone to bed, Lucy and I enjoy a beer on the small concrete balcony attached to our apartment. Across the road, there’s a man who I’ve noticed sits on the tiny corner underneath a tree with two camping chairs. Yesterday his cat was sitting in one, today it’s two older women. As apartment dwellers, I like how they’re using the street as their garden, a very Mediterranean practice.
There are large and loud crow murmurations all around us. They take off and gather again in the various plane trees around us. The cacophonous cawing has a very Hitchcockian feel to it. I wonder what they know.
Monday
Standing on the balcony in the hot early sun this morning, I see a couple, perhaps in their fifties, walking down the street hand in hand. They are both blind or partially sighted and using long sticks to navigate the pavement and roads. When I was younger, I might have felt a misplaced pity, now I feel grateful and reminded of my fortune. Perhaps when I’m older I’ll feel something different again.
Our ride today is only 35km and very flat. We cover over half of it in an hour and stop for lunch in a spot on the riverbank flanked by bamboo, tall grass and water flowers. It’s the first time we actually had chance to be in the Rhône.
I wade in a little to enjoy the water on my feet before we have our picnic. Ren spends some time collecting stones and waving a tall piece of bamboo. It’s even hotter today, somewhere around 36C, still and humid. Uncomfortable now we’re not on the move.
We consider taking a proper dip in the river but then Lucy checks the water quality and reads that it is not advised; the Rhône has been polluted for years by heavy industry along the river and is now partially toxic with various chemicals and heavy metals. We’ve noticed this along our route, dozens of big industrial plants with pipes running into the water: concrete factories, mining, paper mills, automotive parts. Fish from the river is now banned in France. What are we doing??
The rest of the day is almost an anticlimax. We cover the rest of the distance with ease, cruising into Avignon over one of the ancient bridges. We feel a pang of sadness as we return our rental bikes. Being on the move has been the central feature of trip and although it’s nice to know we’ll stay put for a few days, I also notice I already feel a little confined. Almost domesticated.
We celebrate our 280km journey with ice creams in one of Avignon’s very picturesque old squares. There’s dinner later in another old square and afterwards we’re approached by an older French woman with short grey hair who politely asks if she can draw Ren, who is asleep in the trailer. After managing to understand what she’s asking, I say no and she immediately turns on her heel and marches off before shouting a few angry words over her shoulder at me.
It’s a confusing reaction. Lucy thinks she was perhaps just an artist practicing. My instinct is that she would want money for her drawing, but regardless, to me it feels strange to ask to draw a stranger’s sleeping child. Perhaps something was lost in translation.
Tuesday
It’s my turn to be up early with Ren this morning. Our hotel is right on the edge of the old town so as soon as we’re dressed, we head out for a walk. The streets of the old town are very quiet, most shutters still down, some shops and cafes beginning to open. I love walking in a city before it has properly woken up.
We amble around the streets, Ren carrying a balloon which I later swap for a small inflatable beach ball which we kick around the narrow stone streets.
Eventually I find a cafe that’s open and we stop. Usual order - croissant and babycinno for Ren, black coffee for me. We sit outside and play a little Uno. I can feel the sun starting to heat one side of my face as it creeps around the corner of a side street. It’s frighteningly hot already.
There’s quite a few people on old shopper bikes zooming around now, presumably to work. It reminds me of Berlin a little. And there are several people actually walking through the streets with a fresh baguette under their arms.
A young punky looking woman comes out of the cafe just Ren asks if we can play football. I tell him yes, after we finish our drinks. She stops with an exaggerated gesture: “Dude, you’ve made it. This is the life! You finish your -“ She pauses as she peers into Ren’s cup “- steamed milk and then you head off to play football! It doesn’t get any better than this!” We exchange a few laughs although Ren seems oblivious to it all.
We finish up our drinks and head off again, kicking the ball in front us. Being a beach ball, it swerves unpredictably, often into the path of other pedestrians. At least half a dozen of these strangers smile at us and join in with a little kick or flick of the ball. It’s delightful.
Lucy meets us a little further up the road, outside a tarot shop that is next to a Brazilian coffee shop. It’s a narrow street, only a little wider than a vehicle and flanked by tall old buildings. We’re kicking the ball around when we’re joined by a middle-aged French Arab woman and an elderly man, either her father or someone she cares for. Before we know they join in with glee. The elderly man is hunched and moves with difficulty but is grinning and occasionally shouts “Allez! Allez!” Some shopkeepers who know him come out to watch calling his name, Davide.
A couple of minutes later, two French women in their sixties join in. They’re waiting for the coffee shop to open and the ball swerves their way. They pass it back and join the circle in this narrow street increasingly packed with morning commuters and tourists.
Ren is kicking the ball with gusto and to warm encouragement and applause from the adults. At one point, one of the French women attempts to pass it her friend and kicks it straight into her head. They both giggle and carry on. Various passers by join in too, with a few shouts of “Allez Les Bleus!” and laughter.
I’d assumed this would be a brief encounter but it continues for at least fifteen minutes until the coffee shop opens. The two French women wave goodbye and wish us a good day. Davide and the French Arab woman, who speaks a little English and has been ignoring her phone which has been ringing in her handbag, thank us for the game. We thank them too, a unique moment with a group of strangers, all brought together by a makeshift football and a toddler.
There’s more to the day but Lucy and I both agree this is the highlight.
Wednesday
Our last day in Avignon before we leave tomorrow. We’ve taken to this place. It has the rustic charm of southern France without being too flashy and it is endlessly beautiful. Turning any corner can present you with a scene straight out of a postcard: a tiny square with cobbled streets and huge trees, somehow crammed with several bistros and bars doing a roaring trade.
We take a guided tour of the city on a small train that somehow navigates the incredibly narrow streets. Much of it centres on the old papal palace in the centre of the old town. It is mentioned as an aside that people’s homes and windmills were demolished to make space for the palace.
Later in the evening, we have beers in a cave bar by a river that runs between the buildings. It seems to be a hangout for locals so has a buzzy yet laidback vibe to it. We’ve not been there long when the grey haired woman who asked to draw Ren approaches our table. This time she has already done a pen drawing of the three of us. She places it on the table and it’s a nice, simple sketch. The woman doesn’t seem to recognise us.
Lucy has no change in her purse and I’m briefly reluctant after the reaction I had the other day but I fish my wallet out. Were it not for the drawing she’s done and that I’m not in the mood for any hassle, I’d probably not. She very grateful for what I give her and leaves to sit on the kerb sketching again.
She returns a few minutes later, this time with a sketch just of Ren. She hands it over without asking for any money. She heads to her sketching spot again and I notice her approaching other tables.
Half an hour or so later, Lucy and Ren are away from our table when she returns again. This time she has another sketch of the three of us, and she has drawn a decent likeness of my scruffy beard and cap, my gaze into the distance somewhere. I’m about to reach for my wallet when she says in English, “The last one. For free, please.”
I show Lucy when she returns. I’m puzzled by this series of interactions with her and notice I warmed to her after she presented the first drawing. Clearly I misjudged something about her although Lucy points out I was right to assume she might want money. Anyway, it’s nice to be proven otherwise and we have three small hand drawings as souvenirs and a story to remember.
As we leave, she shouts out goodbye from her vantage point. I walk back with Ren to offer her some more money. She reluctantly accepts but is more keen to have a small handshake from Ren to which he obliges.
We’ve left dinner very late this evening but chance upon an Afghan restaurant and the food is delicious. My spinach and rice dish is very similar to Punjabi saag.
The heat is intense, now in the high 30s and stifling. We’ve talked about it a lot and with the wildfires and our general awareness of the accelerating effects of climate breakdown, I can’t help but feel a huge sense of dissonance. At times it even feels strange or wrong to be on holiday, as if we’re pretending there’s not something seriously wrong.
Tomorrow we head back to Lyon. We both agree it’s been an incredible trip, the type of adventure we wanted and full of varied experiences. It has, for me, involved much of what I find enjoyable and essential about good travel: being on the move, being outdoors and in contact with the world, meeting lots of new people, trying different foods, visiting places off the beaten track, and the element of randomness and uncertainty, spanners in the works that make the whole thing that bit more thrilling and memorable.
“X.”
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