31.8 mi / 10.4 mph / 767 ft. climbing
Home: Camping Municipal Le Rayonnement

With a shorter ride today, and a landscape that would never rise more than 80 feet above the nearby sea level, we could dally until nearly 10am before heading out. However, we ended up moving more-slowly than our previous two days, mostly because the wind crossing from our left was strong enough to feel like it was coming from our front, but also partly because the roads were consistently bumpy. It was strange, the roads in France have never done anything up until now to even make me think about their surface quality (except when noting how smooth and fast the gravel bike paths are!), but suddenly, no matter what type of road we were on, someone seemed to always find a way to roughen it. We have just crossed into a new region of France (Nouvelle-Aquitaine, one of 13); I have no idea how roads are funded in this country, but this seems like a good hint that it might be done on a regional basis!

Seven miles brought us to La Rochelle, and luckily our route took us right through the historic heart, because I’d had no expectations, and could have easily missed a unique oceanfront city. Rett was (initially) less-excited, because it nailed the frustrating middle for her: neither a place that we would stop and explore while wearing fashionable clothes, nor a place that was stress-free and easy to just pedal through. So I was glad that after a brief argument, she was willing and able to force down her unyielding expectation that there is only one way to properly “do Europe”. We ended up calmly walking our bikes around all the pedestrians, while stopping regularly to absorb the environment around us. Yes, it’s not the same absorption we would have gotten if we’d spent an hour lingering with coffees outside one of the harborside cafes, but since we’re unlikely to ever return to La Rochelle, I’m glad that we were able to see more than we would have if we’d simply tried to exit the town as quickly as possible.

The harbor route required us to walk over a couple of narrow pedestrian bridges, but our slow-going enabled a brief conversation with a couple who were curious about my helmet mirror. It was the second such query I’ve gotten in a couple weeks, and since that’s really the only bike-related interest we’ve received, I suddenly realized that it’s probably a novel item to French cyclists because drivers’ respect for cyclists makes a rear-view mirror almost unnecessary here!

Usually our bikes themselves are enough to be an icebreaker, but since bike tourers are so common here, none of us stop to talk with our own kind, and most locals are unphased by our mode of transportation that draws stares and questions elsewhere. Plus, I imagine it’s not just me who has a reluctance to start conversations when there is no good way to guess what common languages (if any) you have (here, the husband spoke some English, but had to translate for his wife). So even if I need my mirror less here than in any other country, I’ll keep wearing it just so it can be a conversation-starter!

We remained close to the coast for the rest of the day, sometimes riding right alongside the water. I frequently was struck by the feeling that we were riding down the California coast, not so much because anything looked particularly “California”, but because my subconscious still remembers from five years ago what an October sun-angle feels like as we head south with the light bouncing off blue water to our right.

I shouldn’t have even brought up the possibility of camping in Rochefort, because Rett’s willingness to compromise caused her to foolishly accept the idea. She knows that I genuinely enjoy camping, and sleeping in “our own house”, but in the case of this urban campground I was somewhat less-excited about it than she assumed. I was drawn mostly by the fact that it was perhaps the only remaining campground in the region that hadn’t yet closed for the season, and at US$11.65, it was a genuinely good value (unlike when a campground might be $30, vs. a nearby AirBNB at $50). But there was no great natural setting, we of course had no picnic table, and while there was a kitchen, it was too far away and too warm in the afternoon to make it worth cooking over there vs. just heating up our frozen paella on our own stove.

At least we were given the largest and most-private tent-only sites in the campground (maybe because we had reserved in advance?) And the bathrooms were fine, and with our chairs, and the Tyvek “tablecloth” I’ve started carrying, cooking on the ground is no problem for me. But Rett hasn’t had an easy day in a while, and as practiced as she is at camping, all the little difficulties of living under our own roof means that the night was less-restorative than it could have been.