by Oliver Gee
We stayed in the port town of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, where I’d go through the final hurdle of the Lyme Disease. We rented a tandem bike and set off to explore the salt fields. These fields, or pools really, are laid out like patchwork across the island and are crisscrossed by cycle paths. Locals are on hand, harvesting the salt, and selling it off with salted caramel at mobile stalls. Our tandem ride, which led to a little fishing village, had all the markings of a romantic honeymoon activity. But me, I found it hard to enjoy the romantic part of it all. I was on the front of the bike and the sea salt was so thick in the air that you could taste it. Well, I couldn’t taste it - I could feel it. My lips were so badly peeling that it felt like someone was rubbing that salt on my open wounds. Lina was squealing in delight on the back of the bike and I squealed along with her. But little did she know that I was squealing in pain as the thick salty air crucified my raw face. Back near our hotel, I popped into yet another pharmacy for some cream and wondered how many we’d visited so far.
As we watched the sun set over the harbour from our hotel room, I reflected on the honeymoon so far. Sure, there had been a lot of struggles, and it was easy to focus on them. But there’d also been moments of pure romantic bliss. Earlier that day, on the salt field ride, we’d stopped to take in the view. An older man, a local from the village, offered to take our photo as we posed with the tandem on the harbour’s edge.
“Don’t fall,” he said to me. “But then, you’ve clearly fallen once already. Into the arms of madame.”
8.5 The breakdown
I heard the helicopter before I saw it. Thwack thwack thwack thwack, the blades pounding away dangerously close to the scooter. I scoured the sky above the sunflower fields, but saw nothing. The noise continued as I slowed down, making it immediately and painfully obvious that the thwacking noise wasn’t a helicopter at all. It was the front wheel of the scooter. We were in trouble.
I pulled over to a nearby dirt road and parked across the middle of it to investigate. We were in the deep countryside of western France, and far from phone or internet reception. I laid on my back and inspected the damage. There were two loose screws on the front brake pad. It was an easy fix, all I needed was a specific Allen key, the exact kind of which I didn’t have. I reflected that several people had said we had a few screws loose when we told them our honeymoon plans, and they appeared to have been proven right. I set about trying to tighten the screws with anything I could find. Scissors, a key, a matchstick. But nothing worked. Just when all hope seemed lost, Lady Luck decided that she had other plans for us.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a truck pulled up beside us. Two tanned and wrinkled farmers stepped out and gazed at us with amused smiles.
“Vous avez un soucis?” one of them asked, in a sentence that literally translates to “Do you have a worry?”
Boy, did we have a worry, we explained. We pointed to the wheel and tried to find the French words for “brake pad”, “Allen key”, and “screw” - none of which I knew at the time (and actually, none of which I know now).
“We saw you and your scooter as we drove past, and thought it seemed a bit bizarre, so we turned back to check up on you. That’s our farm up the road,” said one, introducing himself as Fabrice.
“Can you make it up there with the scooter? We can take a look, perhaps.”
We wheeled the scooter along the road to their barn, and Farmer Fabrice was waiting for us with a perfectly fitting Allen key. He tightened the screws in mere seconds.
“You’re the first Australian I’ve met,” Farmer Patrick, his colleague, said to me. “And you’re the first Swede,” he told Lina.
As with all the other country folk we’d met, the farmers admitted that they had no time for Paris, and hadn’t been there since they were children. Too many people, too fast, too much stress. Why would you live in Paris when you could live in the countryside, they wondered. Farmer Fabrice stood up, dusted off his hands, and said the job was done.
“And I have something for you, a little gift for the road,” he said, jumping onto his pushbike and disappearing over the hill.
We were left with the other farmer, talking about our journey, Paris, and why my lips had peeled off. Farmer Fabrice returned with a glint in his eyes, concealing my apparent gift in his clenched fist.
Tenez, he said, take it.
I took the object, small, metallic, rigid, and I looked down to see the most valuable gift I’ve ever received - Farmer Fabrice’s back-up Allen key.
“It may come in handy along the way,” he said with a wink.
We thanked the farmers, noting how lucky we were that we had broken down so close to their farm.
“Lucky? Why, yes of course, you know where you are, non?” Patrick said. “You’re in the village of Saint-Félix, he was the patron saint of good luck”.
The sun was getting low in the sky and the farmers advised us to hit the road again if we were to make it to Verteuil before dark. We mounted the red beast, fastened our helmets, and prepared to take off. Farmer Fabrice had a parting message.
“I have one word for you: merde,” he said. (Which is French for shit.) “Don’t ask me why, but in France, when we want to truly wish someone good luck, we just say merde. So, merde,” he concluded.
“Yes, merde,” echoed Farmer Patrick. “Now, get back on the road and don’t lose that key.”
With that, we pulled out of the farm and onto the road again, the scooter purring like a happy kitten. We had endless cornfields ahead of us and there wasn’t a helicopter in sight.
8.6 The Brits
Did you know that a lot of Brits retire in the south of France? Many of them feel like they’re maybe too old to get 100 percent into the “integrating” side of things and end up creating little English communities. As I understand it, a couple typically buys a place in a quaint little village, then lets their British friends use it as a holiday house when they’re away. Those British friends become equally charmed by the lifestyle, then end up buying their own plot of land somewhere in the village too. Eventually, another Brit sees an opportunity and buys the local pub (or opens one) and sometimes even gives it an English name. Tourists from the U.K. will end up hearing talk of these little havens where the bartender speaks English and they pass through on a vacation and sometimes end up staying for life.
Now, I think it’s wonderful what they’re doing. Often they bring some much needed money, and I’ve read reports of some local communities crediting these Brits for the survival of their villages. But I’d never experienced this British phenomenon until we got to a place called Verteuil-sur-Charente, somewhere roughly east of La Rochelle. It was 150 kilometres inland and it put an unsightly dent in the side our lovely heart-shaped journey, but the village sounded just too enticing to miss. It was here that Jim, the Australian podcast listener, had his home and it was here we’d stay for a week. I’d always been curious about village life and had long wanted to experience it for more than just a day or two. This would be our chance.
Over the course of the week, we got to know everyone in the village. It turned out that Jim was something of a local celebrity, or at least that’s how it seemed. Whenever we talked to a shopkeeper or cafe owner, they’d inevitably ask where we were staying and when we said “Jim’s place” they’d beam and ask us how he was doing. We’d say that we’d never met him, and they were bamboozled by the story of his wedding gift. Then we’d get into talking about the podcast and the honeymoon and by the end of the conversation we’d feel like we’d made another friend in the village.
A British couple on the far side of town looked after Jim’s home when he was away, and they’d greeted us with a bottle of wine. A few days later, they invited us to dinner at their house, where it felt like the whole Anglophone community had gathered. Over the coming days, we’d bump into them all at the local hangouts, and they’d introduce us to new people. The slower pace of life,
the trust between the locals, it was all too good to be true - and such a far cry from the big city life we were used to in Paris. At one point, I got a haircut at the local barber and when it came time to pay I realized he didn’t accept card payments. I had no cash, but said I could go and find an ATM.
“Ah, there’s no cash machine in the village. Pay me when you can, no rush,” he said.
By the end of the week, we had become locals. On our last night, one of the Brits in the village was having a blowout party for his 70th birthday and we’d been invited. It was surreal. We knew everyone, or at least that was how it seemed. There at the bar were Kev and his wife, our dinner hosts. Out in the beer garden was the Scottish couple. A British plumber we’d met at the local cafe offered us a glass of wine. And look, my hairdresser was talking to our favourite waitress at a table in the distance. It was all such fun, but it started to remind me of a movie ending where all the characters meet up in a dream after the main character dies. By the end of the night, just about all of the villagers had invited us back to Verteuil to stay with them at some point in the future. And we said we’d come.
As we packed up and hit the road again the next morning, I thought about how a week in a French village would suffice at this point in my life. Give me another thirty years, however, and I might just come back for good.
8.7 The accent
The first time I heard someone from southwestern France speak French, I got the giggles. I didn’t mean to be rude, I really didn’t, but it was just too funny. We were staying at a little bed and breakfast owned by a friendly lady with warm, kind eyes. She was so kind, in fact, that when she learned we hadn’t eaten dinner, she brought us bread, eggs, and tomatoes from her garden. But what I’ll remember most was her accent. She was pointing out a good path to wander along in her enormous garden. The word for path in French is chemin, which is pronounced in Paris like “sh-MAH”. The sh should be short and the mah should be long and gentle. But that’s not what the woman said. She said “sh-MENG”. I’m not exaggerating, she literally said sh-MENG. But it wasn’t just that. Her full sentence was that the path wasn’t far (loin) away. The way I’d learned, the sentence should be “The sh-MAH isn’t lwah”. But she said “the sh-MENG wasn’t LWENG”. And when she said it, I’m ashamed to admit it I laughed. I thought she was joking.
“What did you say?” I asked.
And she repeated it. “The sh-meng isn’t lweng”. What the hell was going on?
“Why are you saying lweng and not lwah?” I asked, baffled at whatever game she was playing.
She took one look at me and laughed too.
“Ah, jeune homme, you’ve never met a Toulousain before?” she asked. “That’s just how we speak down here.”
And she was right. That’s how they talked. Any of the words that have a gentle ah sound instead get a strange eng instead. And you hear it a lot. See you tomorrow, à demain, goes from ah-de-mah to ah-de-meng, bread (pain) goes from puh to peng, and the word for good, bien, goes from bee-uh to bee-eng. My favourite was when they put several together, like saying “tomorrow morning” (or “de-MENG ma-TENG”), which I thought had a fantastic ring to it. It doesn’t even sound French; to me it sounded more Indonesian.
I later learned that this southern accent was often ranked as the most charming in France, even the sexiest. It’s sometimes called provençal, or the language of Occitan, and is apparently a remnant from the old regional dialect. I found it fascinating and definitely charming, but I also found it very hard to see the sexiness in it, or to take it seriously.
I asked a policewoman in Carcassonne about it and she just raised an eyebrow. There’s nothing strange about it, she said, which makes sense - no one finds their own accent unusual. I asked her if she would mind speaking into my microphone so I could give the podcast listeners a taste of this phenomenon. She agreed, and I scripted the following sentence: “Demain matin, je vais acheter un pain au chocolat” (Tomorrow morning, I’m going to buy a pain au chocolat pastry). My idea was with the demain, matin, and the pain, the accent would shine through. But she had the last laugh.
“Ah mais non, down here we don’t call them peng au chocolats, we call them chocolatines,” she said with a wink.
Ah, rumbled again. I noticed from that point on that no pâtisserie in the southwest made any mention of pain au chocolat. In fact, it’s the only place in France where the famed chocolate-filled pastry is known by another name. But would a pain au chocolat by any other name taste as sweet? Yes, is the answer. The chocolatines were delicious.
By the time we left the southwest, I had fully embraced the eng and was using it with carefree abandon. If someone thanked me along the way, you could bet I didn’t say de rien as I would in Paris. No way, I said de rieng, and I said it proudly. And nothing was going to stop me. Rieng du tout.
8.8 The Alps
We spent a few more breezy weeks driving through the south of France, which was every bit as wonderful as it probably sounds. We explored the small villages of Provence, the seaside towns of the Mediterranean, and the student cities like Bordeaux, Montpellier, and Toulouse. I learned that Carcassonne was the pearl of France for anyone with even a remote interest in history. All the while we were booking our accommodation one day ahead, sometimes even on the same day. It was a mix of AirBnB, hotel websites, and simply showing up at places and asking if there were any rooms available. And of course, we took up the occasional offers from lovely listeners who welcomed us into their homes. We even stayed in an old castle in Cognac and splashed out on my birthday at a fancy hotel with a Michelin-star restaurant downstairs. But for the most part, it was budget travelling. I was filming live videos along the way for the podcast members, and without them, we’d have had no income to continue the trip. I’d filmed live streams from the ramparts of Carcassonne and Saint Malo; while making galettes in Brittany; from a vintage car show in Angoulême; along the D-Day beaches of Normandy; and through the heart of Bordeaux. As we moved through the south we filmed from Montpellier, Roman arenas, and from the top of the famed Pont d’Avignon bridge. And we were blessed with good weather at every step of the journey. Lina and I were also doing weekly podcast episodes, discussing what we’d seen and giving recommendations along the way.
By the time we reached the northern part of Provence, we realized the warm weather wouldn’t last. We only had one day of rain in two months - and we were well aware that if it got too cold or wet then it would be too dangerous to carry on. A farmer we stayed with in Normandy who collected motorbikes had taken one look at the tyres on our little scooter and had forbidden us to ever drive in the rain - or even when the roads were wet - and his warning had stuck with us. We set our sights on Annecy, a mythically idyllic Alpine town just beyond Grenoble, where we planned to have one last hurrah before tackling what would be the biggest challenge of the journey - crossing the mountains.
Annecy, for its part, lived up to the hype. It’s the most beautiful town in France and I tell anyone who’ll listen that you shouldn’t leave France without visiting it. We were there in October, yet the skies were blue, the sun was out, and it was warm enough to take a dip in the transparent waters of Lake Annecy, which I did. It feels like you could point a camera at any angle and strike gold with that town. With its clear-watered canals, its Alpine backdrop, and the fairytale charm of its old town – it took us just five minutes to realize it was worth staying an extra night. But that may also have been because we knew the next day would be the hardest both physically and mentally. We were in the most mountainous part of France and couldn’t get out without going up and over.
When it came time to leave Annecy, we filled the fuel tank for just five euros, as usual, but also filled up an empty plastic juice bottle with some extra gas, just in case we got stranded. We scrutinized the maps much more strategically than ever before, trying to find the roads with the least traffic, but crucially, the ones that had the gentlest inclines. T
he Red Beast had made it over 3,000 kilometres so far and we didn’t want to push it any more. Worse, we didn’t want it to die halfway up a mountain. The phone reception was terrible out there and we couldn’t take too many chances.
It had also gotten cold. We’d been on the road for 55 days. The summer had ended, we were in October, and autumn had grabbed the countryside by both shoulders and given it a good shaking. The temperatures had dropped considerably, gone were the T-shirts and shorts, we rode with jackets, several layers of sweaters, and scarves.
And in tackling the mountains we had made up our minds up about one thing. If we didn’t make it, we’d leave the scooter to rust on the side of the road as a warning to other scooterists foolish enough to take the same trip. Like Green Boots, the mountaineer who died on Mount Everest and whose body has marked the way for countless other climbers, Little Red could maybe be useful for years to come.
The journey was intense. The scooter struggled. When the mountains got to their steepest our top speed was around 10 km an hour (six miles). We sometimes drove in zigzags so the engine wouldn’t stop. But while the ride was excruciatingly slow, it meant we could appreciate the stunning autumnal views. The wooded slopes blazed red and orange, the golden pastures stretched out below steep roadside cliffs. We stopped to drink from Alpine streams. But my favourite was the Peregrine Falcons that soared majestically above and kept us company through the deserted Jura Massif. Well, I like to think they were keeping us company. They were probably hoping for an engine failure and the rare chance to feast on Australian and Swedish meat.
In the afternoon we reached the summit right as the scooter sounded like it was about to breathe its last. We did it! We parked the bike on the side of the road, took off our helmets, and hugged one another. Even though we had been sitting all day, we were hit by such incredible fatigue - which had probably been accumulating over the past eight weeks. The downhill ride that followed was the sweetest of the entire trip.
