I left Bessieres on a rainy, rainy day. I cycled over 100 kms, most of them soggy. At one point I stopped and hid myself from the weather in a bus shelter, but after a certain point, it just didn't matter. Surprisingly, it wasn't a bad day. I passed through plenty of beautiful hill-top towns filled with the usual French beauty--old stone churches, fortified medieval towns, statues, roses, things that don't register for me any more because they are everywhere. People wonder how the French can be so blasée. Because they live here!
The second day I found Notre Dame de Cyclistes!!! Unfortunately, they were closed on Mondays, and I was on my way to Les Landes and couldn't wait around. Their website has lots of pictures of things I couldn't see. And what I could see, wasn't so exciting.
I arrived in Les Landes: a place historically shamed for its ugliness. It's a plain of marsh and wind that has since been planted with pine trees, which means it's flat and treed and full of logging trucks and small logging towns. It isn't ugly, it's France, but it is dull to cycle in. When you can see the next two hours of riding laying plane in front of you, it's almost demoralising. At least the trees are pretty and they hold back the wind!
I rode all the way to Sarbris, an unremarkable town (except that I could finally stop riding because they had camping), near to a remarkable 'musée en plein aire'. Before the railway was constructed through the area, there was a tiny Landais village that was abandoned once the train and logging arrived, changing the rythm of life there. Traditionally they had been shepherds. I was surprised that the main reason for having sheep is NOT for meat, nor even wool, but for manure. 100 sheep will fertilise enough field to grow enough grain to make enough bread (does this sound like 'there was a teeny-tiny woman in a teeny-tiny house...) to feed eight people for a year. But what was really cool was that they walked around on stilts and built Baba Yaga houses for their chickens.
To get to the museum, you have to take a train--a really old train, since the line is now defunct. The cars were mostly in wood, built in the early 20th century, and the trip in was lumpy--every time a secton of iron ended, there was a bump like a step down. And the bumps were pretty regular!
Unfortunately, I missed the pre-lunch train back, so I got stuck in the museum until 2pm. It was fine, but it was a push to get to the coast that afternoon. But I got there. Mimizan!
No comments:
Post a Comment