French Revolutions

had a nightmare that the Jolly Green Giant chased
us all the way home.
    And though cycling might be the
national sport of France, from what I saw that day strimming runs it a close
second. Every garden and field buzzed with Canutean attempts to hold back the
green tide, to keep the undergrowth from overgrowing. I even saw a couple of
leather-faced fellers with scythes, which was pleasingly traditional. Death
must be dreading the day when they upgrade him with a strimmer.
    I finally rejoined the route at
Mauvezin, a hilltop town with a huge panorama of wooded hills. Descending the
first of these, swishing through troughs of hot air and layers of tree-shaded
chilled mist, I hit trouble at 55 k.p.h. — a huge cloud of fat midges. It was
like the USS Enterprise going through an asteroid belt. With my face,
neck and helmet being painfully paintballed I could only concentrate on keeping
my mouth shut, having already discovered to my cost that the hawking expulsion
of throat-lodged animal matter is an unwise procedure at speed. The necessary
parting of the lips allows further objects a way in, and the ejection process
inevitably results in decorating one’s cheeks, chin and clothing with
phlegm-embalmed corpses.
    It was interesting how I had learned
to assess a settlement’s altitude from its name alone. Somewhere-sur-Something
and Blah-du-Blah were always good news for the slothful cyclist, both implying
a riverside location and consequently benign gradients; but well before I got
to Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges I knew it would consist of a big old monastery
surrounded by narrow alleys atop a small, brown mountain.
    A bit of creative orienteering
convinced me that the route actually skirted round this picturesque but irksome
obstacle, and in bullying sun I dined at its foot. Most establishments were
keen to process my dining requests in double-quick time and dispatch me with
evident relish; it was my misfortune that day to find myself patronising the
exception to this rule. Sitting at the most prominent outside table was
normally a winner — the staff would rush towards me with nervous, uncertain
expressions that suggested a whispered kitchen debate on whether they should
hand over a menu or offer me a small cash sum to leave — but that didn’t work,
and nor did thoughtfully peeling off my flash-fried ear-flesh. I suppose the
complete absence of rival or potential diners to nauseate didn’t help my case.
I filled my bidons from a gurgling stone hydrant across the dusty dead-end
street; I picked up a hot brochure from a neighbouring table and found it
dedicated solely to the cult of the strimmer, or débroussailleuse as I
saw it was more properly known to native defoliation enthusiasts. I’d got as
far as the hard-core end-section where men in welder’s helmets set about a rainforest
with rotary-bladed beasts harnessed round their waists before a large waitress
of disagreeable appearance reluctantly emerged.
    A craven consumerist pigmy after the
anchois incident, I didn’t dare complain, and it was two long, hot hours after
our introduction that I finally said goodbye to Saint-Bertrand. On a day when
the riders were averaging 43 k.p.h. that meant a lot of lost ‘k’s, which on
this particular day meant that I was going to be late. The town of Mane was 40 kilometres away, and I had only an hour to get there. I had an appointment,
you see. In Mane, with a man.
    I put the hammer down but it bounced
back and smacked me in the teeth; a headwind and some bastard little climbs
ensured I arrived in Mane half an hour late. There, sitting as promised outside
the Café du Pont, was a man who looked a little like a synthesis of all the
actors who have played Dr Who, with a blonde toddler on his knee.
    ‘Tim?’
    ‘Nick?’
    With ZR lashed to his Citroën and
2-year-old Jane installed perilously between the back-seat pannier mountains we
set off up a gently rising gorge, the occasional black snake swishing sinuously
across the road. I’d been put on to Nick Flanagan by Simon O’Brien, a regular
visitor to Pyrenean Pursuits, the cycling guesthouse Nick runs with his wife
Jan. I couldn’t quite get my head round the concept of a cycling guesthouse,
and nor, in a charming way, could Nick. His clientele, as I understood it, were
a blend of pros looking for a training base and cyclo-tourists looking for a
drinking base; on arriving at his establishment, a cosy three-floor chalet
outside the village of Biert, there was to be