One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  All rational thought goes out of the window. In the UK, I wouldn’t have even dared contemplate the thought, but this is France, and I want my lunch, so I shut my eyes and shove straight into someone’s legs. Amazingly, no one so much as grumbles. In fact, people actually help, pushing and pulling us onto the carriage. Eddy spends the first 25 minutes balanced on a stranger’s shoulder, and then, when even more people attempt to board at Bram, he ends up stacked on top of another bike in a strange, circus-like pyramid – yet the only note of complaint I hear during the entire ordeal is from a tall ginger man in Lycra who gets on at Carcassonne and mutters, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ in broad Glaswegian. I contemplate telling him to cheer up, but decide to channel the general vibe instead, and just smile happily as if this is indeed the best Saturday morning ever. The whole experience is like a sweaty but genial game of Twister: people even hoist my panniers over their heads to get them to me when I finally come up for air at Lézignan-Corbières, leaving a trail of apologies and pedal-shaped bruises in my wake.

  The ride from the station is enough to know I’m properly in the South at last – there’s a hot wind blowing from the scrubby trees (olives, I realise, with a surge of joy) and, thrillingly, vineyards, too, and the place I’m staying, run by Irene and Roger, a charming young Norwegian couple, not only has a window, but a window looking out onto pink terracotta roofs and sunflower fields! I could lie in this clean, airy room, with its white sheets and squashy cushions, forever but instead I have to go and meet Bob at the Café de la Poste. I’m sent on my way by a green chia smoothie they kindly make for me when I ask if I might steal an apple from the bowl by the door on my way out. ‘Yes, they do not eat a lot of fruit and vegetables here,’ Irene agrees. ‘Have this.’

  The only green thing at the café are people’s faces – it was a late night, apparently, and hair of the dog is being taken in injudicious measures, along with short, brutal coffees. Still picking chia seeds from my teeth, I feel like a wholesome puppy unleashed on a nightclub at closing time. The crowd is a mix of wine writers, buyers, merchants and importers, and the odd artist, chef and journalist, and I quickly lose track of names and titles once we arrive at the party in the wonderfully named village of Homps, where chef Fergus Henderson is poking at a fire made of vine cuttings, while a crowd of burly local winemakers, St John friends and staff and assorted hangers-on like me are already getting stuck into the booze.

  Jim Budd, an extravagantly moustachioed wine writer based in the Loire, has arrived on an electric bike with his wife, there’s a German-Italian linguistics professor married to a wine merchant in Leeds who speaks seven languages and tells me it gets much easier after you’ve mastered four and someone who owns a gallery in Amsterdam – conversation flows as freely as the wine in the hot sun, and when we’re told to sit down at the long trestle table that runs along the length of a vast barn and into the courtyard beyond, I make a beeline for the cool darkness of the very back.

  The menu contains no cassoulet, to my slight relief. Instead, we kick off with bowls of long pink radishes and olives, and buttery calves’ brains cut with generous quantities of capers and parsley on fire-licked toast (which, to my annoyance, the sculptor next to me, who has been busy telling me he’s ‘mostly vegan these days’, takes two of before passing on). A big tomato and shallot salad is plonked down in the middle of the table, and a platter of gloriously garlicky barbecued quail comes round, followed, finally, by cherries on ice, rounds of local ewe’s milk cheese and piles of sugary oreillette (little ear) pastries freshly fried by the mayor’s wife, who I talk to in some detail about yoga, which I know absolutely nothing about. The sculptor looks at the electronic record of my day of hell, which I’m proudly showing off on my flickering phone, those 157.5km of utter brutality, peaks like witch’s hats, and scoffs: ‘We’ll make a climber out of you yet.’ In response, I finish his wine.

  Everyone gets increasingly drunk. I’d love to tell you about the different St John wines we try – the brambly Boulevard Napoléon carignan (named after the winery’s address, as Trevor Gulliver, Fergus’s co-conspirator in the St John empire, takes me outside to show me on a street sign at some hazy point in the proceedings), the unknown red still foamy from the barrel and something interesting Jim has brought from the Loire – but unfortunately I don’t make any notes, or if I do, I then give them to someone to mop up a spillage with. My most vivid memory (apart from one of the winemakers explaining that the secret to great wine is to poo on your vines every morning) is a trip to the public loo with Bob’s partner Jac, who wisely warns me that I should go sooner rather than later. As we trek through winding streets, I spot a barn door painted a faded turquoise, with eight wild boar hooves nailed to it. Suddenly, this all feels a bit Wicker Man On Tour – but luckily I’m too pissed to find it anything but utterly hilarious.

  Eventually we all get cabs back to Olonzac and a pizza place run by a woman who appears even more strung out than most of us, except Bob, who is now sporting a gold lamé jacket several sizes too small. I then somehow find myself at a bar, where two Italian wine importers attempt to persuade me to come back and drink rosé with them at their hotel. It strikes me suddenly and powerfully that I’ve done enough socialising for a bit and, making my excuses, I weave my way back to the blessed snowy embrace of an Ikea duvet.

  Theatrically flinging open the shutters helps the next morning, as does a large bowl of homemade muesli (‘Cyclists always order muesli,’ Irene says), some Norwegian black bread, copious amounts of fresh fruit – and discovering from Victoria, the St John head of wine who’s drinking coffee in the courtyard, that everyone is off to visit their winery today.

  I, however, am free – once Roger has kindly pumped up my tyres for me, I’m off like a hungover rocket. Once safely out of range, I send Bob a thank-you text. Ten minutes later, as I’m bowling down the Route de Minervois, vines to the left of me, olives to the right, I get a reply: ‘Get to Bar de la Poste for Fernet NOW.’ This, needless to say, only makes me pedal all the harder.

  The countryside is lovely: wild flowers in lilac, yellow and poppy red fringe the vines, and a great table-like hill on the horizon keeps me company almost all the way to Carcassonne. It’s muggy, but not wet, and the roads are a joy with fully inflated tyres – I arrive with enough time to pitch my tent before lunch. Hotel prices being what they are in this tourist mecca, I’m staying at the same vast campsite where we stopped at last August. In fact, they give me exactly the same pitch, though this time there’s a bit more grass available under the conifers for a bed. Not much, despite all the rain, though there’s more to come by the look of the clouds lowering over the old city in the distance.

  Body bag assembled, tightly pegged down in case of a storm, I head into town for my third and final cassoulet – much as I’d love to leave it until dinner time, it’s Sunday, and I’m not taking any chances in that department. Thankfully, I have the ravenous hunger of the newly sober on my side.

  Last year, I insisted on putting away a cassoulet in the sweltering heat at the rather fancy restaurant Comte Roger in the citadel while everyone else toyed with salad. This time around, I’ve chosen a brasserie run by local two-star chef Franck Putelat in the (slightly more) modern bit of Carcassonne where people actually live and work. À 4 Temps is set into the city walls, with a terrace facing out onto a largely deserted, windswept park; I pick a table outside, and it immediately begins to spit with rain. Fortunately, the umbrellas are generous and, with a hot cassoulet on order (and, to the waiter’s evident puzzlement – ‘But you do not need anything with it, Madame!’ – yet another green salad), it’s not unpleasant sitting there, fuzzy-headed, watching people dash for cover.

  Whatever Robuchon might claim, this particular Carcassonne cassoulet contains a generous slab of sheep as well as a piece of duck confit, and some sort of slightly tough, lean pork (possibly the cutlet he mentions), which I don’t very much care for. The beans are perfect, though: cr
eamy and plump, without being sticky or mealy, and the broth satisfyingly plain, and I manage, to the waiter’s apparent astonishment, to polish off the lot. An old man who has been slowly working his way through a glass of brandy at a table nearby even tips his hat to me as he leaves, which makes me feel quite proud of my gluttony. Three in three days, and I enjoyed every single mouthful.

  Cassoulet

  This version is closest in consistency to the one I ate in Castelnaudary, loose and soupy, but with the Toulouse sausage and confit duck that are surely everyone’s favourite bits, as well as slow-cooked pork – belly, rather than loin, which has a tendency to become rather dry with such long cooking. Call it a Greatest Hits album.

  Serves 8

  1kg haricot beans, soaked in cold water overnight

  1 onion, peeled and halved

  1 large carrot, cut into chunks

  1 head of garlic, unpeeled, plus 4 cloves

  2 sprigs of thyme

  2 sprigs of parsley

  1 bay leaf

  1kg slab of pork belly, bone in

  4 confit duck legs and their fat (reserve any jelly you find in the tin)

  6 Toulouse sausages

  300ml white wine

  Drain the beans well and put them into a very large, ovenproof casserole dish. Pour in water until it comes about 3cm above the top of the beans, then add the onion, carrot, whole head of garlic, herbs and pork belly (if you need to spoon out some water at this point, it’s okay, you can top the dish up during cooking). Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for about 2 hours, until just tender, but not falling apart.

  Meanwhile, fry the duck and sausages separately in plenty of the duck fat until crisp and golden.

  Once the beans are ready, remove the onion and herbs and discard. Scoop out the pork belly and, once cool enough to handle, cut into chunks, discarding the bones.

  Squeeze the garlic cloves from their skins and mash to a paste with 4 tablespoons of duck fat and the fresh garlic cloves. Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/gas 2.

  Drain the beans, reserving the liquid and seasoning it well, as this will be your sauce. Grease the bottom of the casserole with a little of the duck fat mix, then tip in the beans, the rest of the duck fat and all the meat, plus any jelly from the duck confit. Mix well, then top with the wine and the bean cooking liquid to cover.

  Bake for about 2 hours, keeping an eye on it – once a crust has formed, stir this back into the cassoulet. By the end of the cooking time, you should have a thick, golden crust.

  Allow to cool slightly before serving with a simply dressed green salad.

  Hoping to ride off at least a few mouthfuls of beans before I hit the glamorous Med, I slog up to the medieval Cité (in fact, largely rebuilt in the late 19th century after it fell into such spectacular disrepair that the French State ordered its demolition), and then immediately undo this small piece of hard work with a large ice cream.

  In my defence, an ice cream was never part of the plan, but wandering the tourist-thronged alleyways, I spot the word bulgare, a plain but deliciously sour flavour tried once and never forgotten, and find myself powerless to resist – the name, the teenager serving tells me, is short for Bulgarian yoghurt. As I slowly lick my prize, glad to find it’s as good as I remember, I watch a couple in jerkins and tights very slowly saddle up a packhorse to pull a tourist wagon. They certainly seem to have an appropriately pre-industrial mindset, methodically arranging the tack as people come, pose for selfies with them and leave, calling to each other in Spanish, Mandarin, Dutch and what sounds like Russian.

  I duck onto the ramparts to get a closer look at the bright-yellow wrap that covers some of the towers in concentric circles, like neon ripples on a stone lake. A sign explains that it’s an installation by the Swiss artist Felice Varini in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Cité’s inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and, though I discover later that it isn’t universally popular with locals, I love it – as with the giant slide on the chateau at Nantes, it’s hard to imagine, say, Warwick or Edinburgh Castle daring to be so bold with their historic treasure.

  Suddenly clocking the lowering clouds, I speed back downhill to the campsite, where I spend the evening holed up in the bar as the rain pours down outside, drinking red wine, stealing electricity and writing up my notes while gloomy campers watch the final of the Roland-Garros tennis tournament on the big screen, and Eddy naps in the shelter of an empty holiday lodge.

  Above us, the yellow circles on the Cité have faded into the cloudy darkness. It’s my final night in the Languedoc, and every time the rain wakes me up in the night, hammering onto the nylon just above my head, I thank God it’s time to head east.

  Km: 309.7

  Croissants: 3 (average 6/10); muesli: 1

  High: Getting really drunk on good wine

  Low: Cycling 157km and being too low on water even to cry

  STAGE 11

  Marseille

  Provençal Fish Soup

  Not to be confused with bouillabaisse, which is really a fish stew, the traditional fish soups of the Mediterranean coast tend to be made with fish too small or bony to be bothered with otherwise. Most are commonly flavoured with saffron, orange peel and aniseed liqueur, giving them a terracotta colour and a sweet, aromatic flavour, and are often served with rouille, a spicy mayonnaise that’s hot with garlic as well as chilli.

  It’s so wet at dawn as I attempt to stuff my sopping tent back into its reluctant sack that I find two snails sheltering in my handlebar bag. I briefly think about binning the last of the Bayonne chocolate they’re clinging to, having snobbily shunned the Milka, but then remember the old adage about beggars and choosers, and put the soggy packet back in there for whatever emergency is waiting in the wings.

  After a madly splashy dash to the station, which, still in a panic after finding the campsite gates locked for the night, somehow sees me travelling for 2km along the river in the wrong direction, I arrive to discover the Marseille train is running 40 minutes late. Frankly, at this stage, this is fine by me. Gushing water onto the polished concrete floor, I grab an execrable but scalding hot coffee from a vending machine, fail to find a single croissant and, by the time the ancient intercité finally creaks in, am merely wet rather than sopping, though I’m beginning to come to terms with the fact that my increasingly aromatic espadrilles are fated to never be dry again.

  Such is my joy on arriving at Marseille to see the sun if not streaming, then at least trickling through the vast doors of the station that I break into a funny little jog, water squelching out of my shoes at every step, desperate to feel the South on my face. Outside is a mass of cigarette smoke and African prints and glorious warmth. Saint-Charles is set high on a hill, with the effect that the city unrolls in front of the arriving visitor like a promotional poster, a mass of tightly packed terracotta roofs as far as the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde sprouting out of the Vieux Port in the distance. The cloud hangs low, but it’s not actually raining, which is good enough for me as I jauntily thread my way through the tangle of alleyways below the station feeling like I’ve travelled a lot further than 300km this morning (that’s the same distance as London to Leeds in one little hop along the south coast).

  I love Marseille: the narrow streets with their soundtrack of blaring horns and revving scooters, the air perfumed with a mixture of exhaust fumes and spices, the people sitting on plastic chairs outside their front doors, staring – they get a good eyeful today, as I battle the gradient with wholly inadequate brakes, terrified of coming smack-bang up against a speeding Vespa. My hotel, hastily booked online with cost the main factor in my decision-making, is in the hustle-bustle of Noailles, an area known (according to Wikipedia) as the stomach of Marseille, thanks to its daily market and, according to locals whom I ask for directions, as the Arab quarter.

  Both suit me fine: those complaining in onlin
e reviews about not feeling safe in this ‘squalid district’ are also unreasonably distressed at the lack of tea-making facilities in the rooms, which makes discounting their opinions fairly easy, especially given the hotel’s proximity to an excellent shop selling over 20 sizes and shapes of nail scissors alongside pocket knives, air rifles and what’s advertised as the ‘#1 brand of dog gilet in Europe’, modelled by a handsome spaniel.

  While I’m here, I’m hoping, if the volley of mad emails from my failing phone hasn’t put him off, to meet Jonathan Meades, The Times’s long-time restaurant critic before ‘falling out of sympathy’, as he put it, with the British scene, chucking it all in and moving to the South of France. Meades, a polymath-type figure who also writes on the built environment, has published a couple of novels and exhibited his photography, as well as winning the first episode of Celebrity Mastermind and the praise of Marco Pierre White (who has described him as ‘the best amateur chef in the world’). He was also a regular and beloved fixture on BBC Two during my impressionable teenage years, and I’ve been slightly in love with him ever since – so I was most put out, after discovering they were related in some complicated way, not to meet him at my friend Anna’s wedding. Needless to say, when she offered to put us in touch on this trip, I almost bit her hand off.