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After the storm the supermarkets

Tuesday 4th August
It’s nearly twenty to five in the evening and the sun came out briefly for the first time today. There has been today, as people here and my weather widget predicted, a large drop in temperature, ushered in by thunder storms during the night. Something about yesterday evening worked well. It was good to be cooking for myself at at my own timing on this trip, after enjoyable meals made for me. With my chilled white wine the rest of which awaits me in the fridge sited in the huge barn here on the table and the chair provided for me, I was comfortable and I am sure I digested my meal better than those evenings I spent crouching on my low stool or boxes.

But it thundered and rained and rained in the night, in fact for most of the night in three distinct but interconnected storms. Pity, as I had settled quickly into the most comfortable nights sleep so far on this trip. I was prepared for the rain and, apart from some splashing, I and my pile of vestibule belongings stayed dry. I emerged rather blearily into a damp morning and had showered and was heating water for my tea before most people had got up. I think the dog lovers here were apprehensive about the weather for their pets. My neighbour told her her ageing twelve year old dog hyperventilated all night. Without a trusty order of breakfast croissant I was reduced to eating biscuits and some dry baguette from two days ago along with my pleasing green tea. The morning stayed cool and damp (I am seeing blue sky for the first time today) and I headed off down the road for a brisk walk to warm up meeting most of the dog owners walking for a different reason.

The great thing about this site is having access to a fridge and one that has space in it. The bad thing is it is tricky to move and park the bike here. The two work together in a way. I set off around lunchtime to ride the 7km to Nontron where there are an abundance of supermarkets, three in one small town. My GPS knew the one with the U in it so there we headed. But the mixture of deep gravel and lack of level ground on the site make parking and manoeuvring the bike, even with most of the luggage offloaded, really tricky. And I think probably my greatest fear is looking completely incompetent with my mixture of revving and stalling and heaving the bike backwards. I have a piece of stone under the side stand which I retrieved and intend to keep if I need to move it again, to get pointed in roughly the right direction for my final exit, laden with everything. I bought food hopefully for my remaining three days here which dovetails beautifully with the available fridge which is stuffed with more of my food and chilling wine (I bought two bottles of local rose – let’s see what 4 Euro wine is like) than anyone else’s it seems. If one stony space for a caravan is empty I can manoeuvre the bike round in it to get out, but if it is full then I will need to enlist an unsuspecting camper to help me with another approach, I will make a point of choosing some one young (not some heart attack candidates up there). Then off the few hours west to La Rochelle to stay with Helen for two nights before hitting the road on Sunday to Caen. In the meantime three more nights here, heading off on Friday, just to remind myself of the days.

At Manzac Ferme camping

3rd August
Now I am sitting by the little river at what will be my final campsite of this trip. In a sense it’s true that the sites are getting better and better or rather they are all good in different ways. This one Manzac-ferme has a fairly ordinary area up top for cars and caravans but tents can pitch down here in the shade by a small river that doesn’t seem to be flowing anywhere which is probably quite good because it won’t burble all night. What is best about this site is the beautiful restored farmhouse and barn that the owners live in. The barn is cool and enormous in the heat which is reaching 35 degrees today. The owners are Brits who have lived here for four years and are clearly thrilled with the place. He has an enormous white beard and reminds me of someone I used to know. This is another adult only site, so everyone seems accompanied by dogs, but not dogs as as you know them, these are almost silent non barking incessantly all night or when they see another dog. (I spoke too soon we now have a barky poodle-ish kind of hound in residence.)

The ride over here was good, though short, just 80 miles. I woke up at the last site having slept poorly (I was awoken by a rustling in my paper rubbish bag just outside my tent. I looked out with my torch and the whole thing was heaving. and with an upset stomach and headache again but after a cuppa (green tea) and Paracetamol and once up on the bike and rolling my spirits revived. As today was a short trip I had planned a nice curvy route on small D roads drawing a large circle around Limoges instead of taking the high road through or closely around it. My first direction was fine but after fifteen minutes of riding I found myself back on the same old main road I had left. I really have no idea how that happened. I looked at the trail afterwards on the GPS and can make no sense of it. Still the ride was mostly good and it was great to keep moving in the air to cool down with breeze finding the ventilation of the jacket I wear. I was spoiled with the last sites that served up food, in fact a delicious meal last night, and there is no shop though they say they can sell wine. Some one alerted me to the weather forecast which is for quite heavy rain for most of the night. Tomorrow will mercifully be a little cooler. There is also a fridge in the barn where I have stashed my food.

Last night I joined in the three course meal offered by the proprietors, one of whom is a chef. I joined three other couples, two Dutch and a younger quite quiet couple from Ayr. Our conversation was quite grown up, with some laughter but verging on the stereotypic (jokes about wives from the men), quite unlike the more witty talk at the first site where we talked about different views of the marauding migrants threatening to invade Kent and someone’s experience with a hugely powerful kit car (was it a Caversham? no Caterham) which was much more fun. The meal was delicious and much of it was courtesy in one way or another, of the chickens that stride around the whole site.

 

My friend Andrew Vass

Andrew Vass, who I’ve known since he was 18, died on Thursday evening of cancer.

I took this photograph of him just after Christmas. He is already marked.

Here we are in 1980 I think, fixing our bicycles outside a youth hostel somewhere in Germany or Austria on our way to Yugoslavia.

yugo-a&M

Tuesday 12th August

From the campsite bar. Today I rode the few miles up to Todnauburg, the strangely names mountain of death. Once there I used my cunning GPS to guide my walk to Heidegger’s hut or as close as you can get to it. He certainly had a beautiful view. There is no signpost to the hut so you’d need to know in advance where it waS though there is a large signpost about him and his attachment to the area with some photos of him looking rather creepy in his rural costume and funny hat. After that I took the lovely twisty road up to Freiburg about 18 miles away.
Ride to Todtnau and Freiburg at EveryTrail

Motoring and cities never works that well for me but I found somewhere to park and got a coffee and croissant though I didn’t see that much of the town apart from riding through it and platform 8 of the Hauptbahnhof. Back here in the cooling sun with a beer, I worked out a likely campsite to head for tomorrow only about 150 miles north and slightly west from here. So all was looking good but a chance glance at my weather app showed downpours for nearly all of tomorrow starting around ten or eleven. My spirits are rather dampened by this news so maybe I will make a hotel my lodging tomorrow night. I don’t know how accurate these weather maps are but it looks like if I can get a good start and make good progress going north I could keep ahead of the worst of it. So it’s good to be forewarned about that. But as the Dutch campsite owner has just said to me, riding a motorbike in rain is shit. As equipped as ever I have my vaguely waterproof overall and, more important, some anti fog liquid for my specs. I remember driving all day in Scotland in heavy rain with one of my lenses misted up so riding with my head at 45 degrees for about five hours. Usually my trips end up feeling like they are twenty four hours too long.

Saturday 9th August

I write from the sunny black Forrest next to my tent pitched by a stream. Today had its ups and downs literarily in this case. After sleeping well I woke to breakfast at 7.30 before the dining room opened but they were kind enough to serve me. It was raining outside so I delayed my exit for an hour until it stopped. €62 for a bed breakfast and garage seemed good to me and the place had the winning combination of being unpretentious and having English spoken. I packed up Bertha in her garage and then heaved her out onto the sloping alley and struggled to keep her upright. With my heart still pounding from exertion and the anxiety of nearly dropping her, I drove down to the hotel to return the garage key and promptly dropped her unfortunate bulk on the road while getting off without putting the sidestand down. I must say she took the fall very well. There was nothing for it but to unload everything and try to get her upright. I’ve done it before so I know it’s possible. A petite woman walking a dog asked whether she could help but I politely declined and just when I was starting to fish out my camera to record the event two beefy guys turned up and got her upright in no time without even taking the cigarettes out of their mouths. They seemed really pleased to help. It was strangely an enjoyable drama to live through the event you’ve been dreading. I remember reading, though from a different context and continent, Ted Simon saying that he didn’t fear disasters as he saw them as opportunities for people to express their humanity and provide help.

Once on the road I was heading about 190 miles to a campsite mentioned in the Cool Camping Guide, one of only a few in Germany. This one is in the black Forrest and has a car free tent area so the antidote to my caravan aversion, so some motorway miles with a parking stop populated by two coaches of football supporters and some lovely twisty roads later I found the place. It’s sweet and all the nasty caravans are tucked away completely invisible and everyone here is a cool camper under canvass (nylon) reading paperbacks and I am saying hello to people. It takes a while to wind down after arriving and organising everything in the heat to notice how beautiful the site is and how lovely it’s situation.

Miles 194 average 57.8mph max speed 92.5mph moving time 3 hrs 21 minutes

Working out the rest of the trip:
Sunday night here
Monday southern black Forrest
Teusday southern black Forrest
Wedn northern black Forrest
Thursday Northern Germany or Loreleyblick

Touratech is only 37 miles away south and Heidegger’s hut is 60 miles southwest and there seems to be a campsite quite close by where I can hide and prepare for my assault on the hut. Be warned, the guides say, it is still owned by the Heidegger family and they do not like their privacy intruded upon. The Heidegger family, Some sources say, are heavily armed and expertly trained in the techniques of close combat. I’ve worked out a good site to stay at close to Bitburg where Bitburger comes from for my last night before the ordeal of the Dutch motorway system.