Once I’ve hoofed down a quick croissant from Maison Pradier’s Gare du Nord branch, crouched over a bin (8/10: ends as dry as my hair after months sticking out of a cycle helmet; excellent, rich, almost dulce-de-leche-like flavour), the bike lanes of Paris, with their idling lorries and idle strollers, feel like coming home. And it’s good to be back, not least because cycling is a lot more fun than actual work; for all the weaving and dodging and holding my breath to squeeze through traffic, I slip gratefully back into the rhythm of the bike like a hot body into a cool pool.
My new peloton is waiting for me on the bench outside the Ten Belles coffee shop just off the Canal Saint-Martin: the two girls, Harry and Caroline, looking somewhat jaded, Harry’s boyfriend Jay somewhere beyond that, in his own private pit of despair. Harry, a fellow food writer, is based in Paris; Caroline lives in Provence, where she’s been writing a book of her family’s recipes, and poor Jay – nothing to do with food – only arrived from Birmingham the night before, and explains, without opening his eyes, that he found the other two in a state of some inebriation. In lieu of further details, Harry hands me a jerky video of the pair of them riding around Paris on the front of a cargo bike pedalled by her sister Georgie, whooping and drinking claret (Harry and Caroline, not Georgie, who was apparently on the way to a parents’ evening at her children’s new school). If Jay’s face this morning is anything to go by, he quickly made up for lost time, and they make a sorry sight, even to someone who got up at 3.45 a.m. to catch a train.
More pertinently, though they’d planned to pick them up as soon as the rental shop opened at 10 a.m., I see no likely-looking bikes. My weary gaze slides along the railings that shield the pavement from traffic before pausing at three heavy city shoppers with generous baskets on the front. Triathlete Jay and I exchange grim glances, and silently I thank God I’ve planned a relatively gentle route based on Harry’s protests that, despite her boyfriend’s prowess on two wheels, she rarely cycles further than the market, which is exactly what these beasts are designed for.
The Sunday-driver tone of the expedition is confirmed when Harry sees the brand-new shorts I’ve selflessly donated to the cause of her posterior comfort and dissolves into helpless giggles, gasping for breath as I waggle them around by their bright pink straps. I have to say, once she’s got over their ridiculousness, she does them justice by putting on a neon pink bra and declaring it too warm for further clothing. We may be going slowly, I think, but we’ll certainly turn some heads.
This quickly proves to be the case, but sadly for all the wrong reasons: as Harry fearlessly leads the way through her home city, a shiny black Mercedes swings suddenly into the bike lane, forcing her to brake so suddenly she falls off. A bearded hipster smoking outside a vintage vinyl shop runs to her aid as the Merc, unconcerned, speeds through the lights and disappears. Fortunately, she’s fine; the Yann Couvreur croissant she’s carrying for me has taken the brunt of her fall. After wiggling her wrist experimentally, Jay declares us fit to proceed in the direction of the Gare d’Austerlitz, where we’re taking a train to the winningly named small town of Lardy, about 40km from the capital.
We get there eventually, after forcibly charging a ticket gate like a Lycra-clad battering ram (a ram with valid tickets, I might point out), and then spending 37 minutes sitting on a dirty subterranean platform waiting for a train and sharing the squashed croissant (a 7.5/10, sweet, ultra-crisp and so well cooked it looks like it’s had a spray tan) as stylish Parisians step over us in disgust.
After the drama of Paris, Lardy proves a sleepy place, where the only thing open is a station bar, which looks perfect for lunch. No, Madame behind the bar explains, they’re not serving food, but there’s a bakery and an épicerie just down the road. She’s right, there are … and they’re both firmly shut up against the mid-afternoon sun – after all, who would want to do any shopping at 3 p.m.?
Just as I’m beginning to foresee disaster ahead, I spot a roadside poster for a hypermarket, three minutes’ drive away. My heart fairly leaps with joy at this golden opportunity for reacquaintance with my beloved French supermarkets with their obscure regional specialities and endless boxes of toast, though as poor Jay – waiting outside with the bikes with his eyes closed again – discovers, it’s actually impossible for three food writers to get in and out of any supermarket within half an hour, even if they’re ostensibly only buying enough for a quick snack.
I bump into Harry at the checkout clutching a pot of pickled garlic and a large sheep cheese, both of which are destined to travel with us all day before being invaded by ants overnight and chucked, while my greengages turn to compôte in Caroline’s basket, though we do manage to finish the ‘amazing’ own-brand biscuits she’s desperate for us to try – ‘so much nicer than Choco Leibniz!’ Blissfully ignorant of these facts, we sit cross-legged on the warm concrete of the car park and shove ham and cornichon baguettes into our faces until I suddenly realise, with a start, that it’s already 4 p.m. and we have 50km to do – a total that seemed leisurely back in London with a whole day to play with, but now feels formidable, though I keep quiet about this in order to maintain team morale for as long as possible.
The first half of the journey is glorious; it’s hard to suppress irritating sighs of profound contentment at being back on the road as we pedal through the reassuringly flat, lightly forested countryside, passing the odd modest chateau, raptors of some sort wheeling overhead. On the long, straight B-road that will take us to Pithiviers, however, I sense morale is beginning to flag; even the glorious sight of a hare leaping across the fields beside us, effortless at full tilt, can barely distract them from the muted screams of their undercarriages. Even the smallest rises in the distance look like mountains, and I’m forced to play the underhand game of knocking 5km off every progress report I make, figuring that by the time we’re a mere 5km away, things won’t seem too bad.
Nevertheless, it’s a slightly glum group that picks its way through the backstreets and allotments of Pithiviers to the campsite where a bored woman slouches on a white plastic chair, smoking and pointedly ignoring our arrival. ‘Bonsoir!’ a man whom we take to be in charge shouts from a distant pitch where he appears to be supervising some Dutch people driving into a tree: ‘J’arrive!’ I’m not saying we look exhausted, but as we’re negotiating the unfamiliar tangle of lines and poles, he reappears with four bottles of cold beer. I’m surprised Harry doesn’t kiss him, but also a bit relieved, given the mood of his wife.
He also makes it clear time is of the essence in the dinner department, and as we waddle into town, still in our kit, it’s clear he’s right, because everything is shut. A woman Harry corners in a car park claims there’s a pizzeria nearby, which turns out to be a kebab shop, and eventually I reluctantly concede that the strip-lit Japanese restaurant might be our only option. As we trudge back along the dark, shuttered streets towards it, there’s a quiet burble of life from somewhere nearby, and then, round a corner, the glad sight of the Relais de la Poste, a solid coaching inn with a terrace so full they can’t accommodate us, and a painfully bright dining room with an enormous Rotary Club insignia over the massive fireplace.
If conversation pauses as we troop in wearing our unusual garb, we’re too tired to notice – I blush to recount the scenes when the young waiter brings a plate of warm puff-pastry pieces with our drinks. The Relais isn’t anything fancy, but the €19 menu, once I’ve allowed myself to dodge the terrifying-sounding chicken carpaccio, is a straightforward choice: a melon salad, a bavette steak with gloopy mustard sauce and a big pile of chips fresh from the freezer and, of course, a pithiviers, the sweet pastry that drew me to this town in the first place. Rather than the circle of stuffed puff usually sold under the name in the UK, however, this is a dense little almond cake topped with white icing, which the waitress confirms is something called a ‘pithiviers fondant’, a new one on all of us. Washed down with an absurdly generous measure of raspberry eau de
vie, it does the job in the sugar department though, and we return to our wonky tents in rather better spirits than we left them.
The town looks more welcoming in the warm light of morning – things are at least open, including a bakery whose windows proudly display a long list of awards, from ‘Best Baguette Tradition in the Ile de Loire 2009’ to more recent accolades, including several from the 2018 Concours Confrérie de Pithiviers, in which they seem to have scooped the gold medal for their pithiviers fondant and various other gongs too. The trophies themselves are inside the shop, next to framed certificates solemnly declaring the owners to be knights of the Brotherhood of Pithiviers and big tempting jars full of boozy rum baba.
Talking to Madame behind the counter, I learn that the more familiar puff-pastry pithiviers is a johnny-come-lately, created in the 18th century, while the almond kind we had last night is said to have Gaulish origins, reflecting the town’s former importance on various ancient trading routes, carrying things like almonds from the balmy South. She apologises that the puff version isn’t out of the oven yet, so I take another fondant pithiviers for the road – much moister than the last and full of tiny air bubbles, rather like a crumpet – plus the inevitable croissant (sweet and yeasty, let down by a slightly too doughy centre, 7.5/10).
After a café crème in the bar opposite, run by a very jolly lady who positively insists we spread crumbs all over her clean tables – ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, messieurs-dames!’ – we balance the remainder of our purchases on our panniers and ride out of town, with only the briefest of detours to the little supermarket, outside which several men drinking cans see fit to pass comment on our Lycra-clad bottoms. Whereas in Britain I’d give them short shrift, in France they seem almost charming, though I’m still pleased to be able to pedal off at speed with a merry bonne journée before Harry hears and is less charmed.
The morning is a cloudy one and, powered by pastry, we make good progress – after about 13km, just as we’re about to enter the forest, I pull in by a roadside inn to remove some layers, and before I know it the others are inside, ordering beers: ‘Just small ones, to keep us hydrated.’ Monsieur behind the bar, accompanied by a single gloomy customer watching the television, and himself observed by various taxidermied pieces of game, is delighted to see us, and in deference to our achievement, brings us out a plate of cured ham, which we quickly devour, for all the world like we haven’t just put away half a bakery.
An hour and a half of trees later, after passing a centre for the care of wild fauns, which would seem to have its work cut out given the number of ‘private hunting’ signs in the vicinity, I spy a riverside picnic site, deserted apart from a hatchback, which has disregarded the designated car park to position itself right on the water’s edge, doors open, music blaring. We lay out our feast on the grass: a cheese-laden fougasse, more ham sandwiches and some slightly furry squashed tomatoes from yesterday, plus a tot of whisky apiece from Jay’s handy hipflask, and I am profoundly happy.
It’s very tempting to stretch out for a post-prandial nap to the relaxing sounds of French hip-hop, but time marches on and we still have some way to go if we’re to make Orléans tonight. After rallying the troops by threatening a repeat of yesterday evening’s route march, I generously allow a detour via the canal, whose tree-lined, gravelled towpaths encourage a leisurely pace in the others, and send my wrists, which absorb every vibration from my narrow tyres, completely numb. When this waterway suddenly meets the Loire, the great river I left three months previously, still there, still flowing lazily towards the sea, I forgive it everything. The scale is stunning.
We stop by a geranium-covered lock and take a moment to sit with our legs dangling over the edge, watching a huge fish loiter in the shallows, arguing about how best to cook him (Jay retreats to the loo at this point, possibly to scream silently at the wall), before continuing westwards along the river’s spacious banks into the city, where we chase an ever-elusive campsite sign through subways and across retail estates.
By the time we get there and get in line behind a group of elderly and impressively whiskered Ukrainian cyclists who meet every language the receptionist tries with blank incomprehension, it’s 7 p.m., and even I can’t muster the enthusiasm to suggest we cycle back into Orléans for dinner. Instead, we sit and drink acidic local wine from the campsite shop with doughy but delicious pizzas topped with merguez or tartiflette, according to taste, from the ‘Indian Pizza Van’ parked by the ping-pong tables (Indian, in this sense, appears to mean Native American judging by the fellow in the feathered headdress on the back) before retiring to an early bed. I sleep better in a tent than my own room these days, but the others are kept awake by the Ukrainians having an argument – and then, according to a furious Caroline, getting up in the night to wee in the hedge just by her head.
I wake up quite excited by the prospect of finally getting my tarte Tatin on to find a grumpy little group of campers waiting outside – the ground was like bedrock, Caroline’s venerable air bed has developed a leak and Harry has spent much of the last 10 hours awake and watching Seinfeld – so thank God we’ve pre-ordered our croissants (savoury and very bready, with a good crisp base, 7/10), and there’s a proper coffee machine behind the bar. We bump down the unmade and barely maintained road that leads to every self-respecting French campsite feeling very slightly chirpier.
Following a brief detour to a sports superstore to purchase Caroline a new bed, we’re on our way in the sunshine – good roads running arrow straight through fields and forests, quiet enough to cycle two abreast, shooting the breeze, and it almost feels like cheating to stop after 20km in the handsome village of Marcilly-en-Villette for a coffee. There’s a little café on the Place de l’Église with tables outside in such a sunny spot that it seems a shame not to have a beer, too (after all, they come in such very modest measures in France), and suddenly it’s lunchtime and Madame is warning us we’ll have to hurry if we want to catch the bakery before it closes for the afternoon.
Though the flaccid cheesy pastries and cloying rum babas we manage to scavenge aren’t much cop, the setting for our picnic is so lovely that the only fly in the ointment is the loss of a bottle of wine we’ve purchased for later on the cobbles as we stagger back to our bikes, sleepy with the sun. It runs down towards the war memorial like blood between the stones, and suddenly awake and full of remorse, we hastily deploy all our newly filled bidons to slosh away our shame and get on the road.
It’s not far to our dinner destination, Lamotte-Beuvron, which proves to be a surprisingly busy little place with the air of a home-counties market town, full of chic clothes shops and expensive stationers – and, on the outskirts, where the restaurants have turned to shuttered bars, I suddenly spy a familiar name, painted in faded lettering on the side of a fin-de-siècle mansion facing the railway. ‘TATIN!’ I shout. ‘We’re here!’ I swerve dangerously across the carriageway and haul Eddy up to meet his destiny.
Like many great dishes, the tarte Tatin is claimed to have been born out of culinary clumsiness. At the end of the 19th century, this place was in the hands of the two Tatin sisters, the older of whom, Stéphanie, was in charge of the food. Perhaps a little flustered by the orders flying in from the mob of braying Parisian hunters who still frequent the forests of the Sologne in autumn, she shoved a tart into the oven upside down, or possibly without its pastry base, depending on which account you believe. Neither, to be honest, sound very likely to me, but nevertheless it’s claimed that she decided to make the best of a bad job and serve it anyway. Maybe she reasoned that, by the time the tweed brigade got to dessert, they’d be too merry to notice the difference – but someone did, approved and a classic was born.
In dull truth, fruit tarts are an ancient speciality of the Sologne region, and the gâteau renversé (upside-down cake) existed long before the Tatin sisters themselves, yet, by 1903, their tarts were well known enough to merit a mention in the journals of the loc
al geological society, which describe them, in an account of a field trip in the area, as ‘a speciality of the house’ and ‘famous all over Sologne’ – suggesting that, even in the homeland of apple tarts, Stéphanie’s version was in some way special.
By the 1920s, word had spread far enough for the celebrated French critic Curnonsky, ‘Prince of Gastronomes’ (goals), to recommend ‘The Famous Apple or Pear Tarte from the Demoiselles Tatin of La Motte-Beuvron’ in his travel guide, and by the late 1930s, it was a fixture on the menu at Maxim’s, the Parisian institution that has played host to everyone from Marcel Proust to Lady Gaga. The owner at the time claimed to have stolen the secret recipe from Stéphanie herself after posing as a gardener at the hotel in his youth – the fact that he was only four when the sisters retired in 1906 makes this about as likely as anyone in their right mind putting a tart in the oven upside down, but to be honest, I’m not here for the history, I’m here for dessert.
It must be said that the hotel looks firmly closed to me, but, I reflect, as I pose for a victory photo (having waited three whole months, and an entire lifetime, for this moment), we’re in France, where no doubt it’s perfectly normal for a hotel to be shut mid-afternoon on a Friday, so instead, we push on to the nearest campsite. It’s only 7.5km away, but the idea of cycling back to Lamotte for dinner is not a popular one; indeed, the peloton has already decided among themselves that they’re not doing it, they tell me firmly as we stop to pick up some vital provisions at the village shop. Harry even goes so far as to ask the girl on the till for taxi numbers, which, as we’re the only customers, she happily googles and writes down for us on a length of receipt.
One More Croissant for the Road Page 10
