One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  Colette points out a wealth of clever detail on our post-prandial tour. The letterboxes outside each front door are actually rudimentary fridges – ‘It works: we keep coffee beans in ours’ – and the sun terrace on top of the building, where the heat bounces off the concrete, includes a shady paddling pool for the residents’ nursery school. There’s a boulangerie, a little supermarket and an extremely expensive hotel on site, though the silence suggests it’s not quite the democratic family housing it was built as after the war. One original fixture remains: a very elderly lady slowly feeling her way along the corridor to the patisserie.

  While we’ve been gone, Jonathan, who plainly thinks my endeavour quite potty but is kind enough not to say so, has looked up some recommendations for me in the various cities on my itinerary, and presents me with a restaurant guide to photograph, covers modestly folded back. ‘Whose is this?’ I ask, snapping away. ‘Oh,’ he says, and coughs. ‘Mine; out of date now, of course, but it might be useful.’ And suddenly I remember this narrow little paperback, which was, for some years after it ceased to be current, a beloved fixture on my parents’ coffee table, and feel about 17 again.

  In less of a hurry on the way out, I have more time to admire La Maison du Fada (‘the house of the madman’, as locals quickly, and apparently affectionately, christened it) – the kind of unembellished concrete Brutalism that looks starkly sexy on a sunny day in the South, but, I think, would be dreary and rotten at home in rainy Britain. Today, though, I can see why Jonathan and Colette fell for it.

  Annoyingly, I now realise, looking at the map in the cool gloom of the bike park, I’m already halfway out of Marseille, but my stuff is still in the centre. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and if I’m going back to the Noailles I may as well pick up some pastries to fortify me for the road ahead. Though it’s still several hours until sunset and the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the Rose of Tunis patisserie is jam-packed with shoppers picking out huge boxes of sweetmeats – ‘10 of those, and 10 of those … and 10 of the white’ – and I have to be bodily pulled inside the automatic doors by some large ladies squashed in at the back, though the queue itself never seems to move. After 25 minutes goggling at syrup-drenched filo, during which I gain new appreciation for the plight of those who perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta, I give up and go round the corner, where I’m rewarded within minutes with a more modest order of a sticky semolina and date roll known as makroudh, and something with pistachios I eat immediately without troubling to identify.

  As I load up Eddy outside the hotel, I feel a pang of regret for the couscous I haven’t eaten, despite staying a merguez’s throw from the famous Fémina, where six generations have prepared the barley couscous of the Berbers of the Kabylie Mountains – but I’ve had fish soup and fried thymus glands, and eaten strawberries in Le Corbusier’s kitchen, so maybe I’ve done right by Marseille after all. And there’s always next time.

  Km: 36.8

  Croissants: 0; North African flatbreads: 1

  High: Lunch Chez Meades

  Low: Losing Eddy in Le Panier

  *J. M. now recommends Chez Sauveur in the Noailles.

  STAGE 12

  Marseille to Nice

  Ratatouille

  Ratatouille is not an ancient speciality of Provence (in fact, the first mention of this Mediterranean vegetable stew dates from the 1930s, in the Côte d’Azur’s first flush of fashionability), but it’s certainly got its feet under the table as one of the icons of local cuisine. Now famous around the world, as Jacques Médecin, the notoriously corrupt former mayor of Nice, wrote in Cuisine Niçoise, the book that forms the untarnished portion of his legacy, ‘This does not mean that the version commonly encountered outside the Comté de Nice bears any relation to the genuine traditional product.’

  The ride from Marseille to Cassis has been warmly recommended to me by my friend and official cycling tsar Max, though Jonathan and Colette are distinctly more tepid in their opinion of it – a terrifying drive, they say, all sheer cliffs and endless hairpin bends. This gives me pause for thought: Max works part-time as a cycle guide and, among his many other achievements, has published a book on cycling up mountains. He’s blessed with the classic cyclist’s build, and his brief packing list for such expeditions, which he kindly shared with me before my trip, includes twice as much gear for the bike as for his own wiry frame. It strikes me, as I gaze from their balcony at the hills in the distance, that me and Eddy may have more in common with the Meadesmobile than Max and his sleek steed.

  Nevertheless, the very name Cassis exerts a powerful pull, conjuring up images of the Riviera at its most glamorous – as the Provençal poet and 1904 Nobel Laureate Frédéric Mistral (no connection to the famous wind of the same name) observed, ‘Qui a vu Paris et pas Cassis, n’a rien’ – he who’s seen Paris but not Cassis, has seen nothing. I’m hoping to make it to Paris at some point, so it seems wise to at least call in to Cassis first.

  Up the Avenue Prado I go for the second time that day, giving me another joyous opportunity to curse the pastis-addled designers of the cycle lane and the little old ladies that keep wandering into it, with only a brief glance at Le Corbusier’s masterpiece as I head past and out of the city. The road beyond turns surprisingly quickly from a wide boulevard to a minor tributary flanked by garden-ornament yards, and then pine trees and the increasingly occasional villa as the gradient gets steeper, until suddenly the land falls away to the right-hand side and it begins to ascend in earnest.

  For the first kilometre or so of the climb, I hang behind two men on fancy bikes who look an awful lot fitter and more lightly laden than me, so when they pull over I’m faced with a dilemma. Having cut my cycling teeth on the mean and aggressively competitive streets of London, I only overtake people I can leave for dust – the humiliation of being re-passed 30 seconds later is too much to bear, and as men are, in my experience, considerably more likely to up their pace once overtaken by a woman, I don’t want to die up here just to prove a point. So, a mere bend behind, I also pause, have a drink, assess the sky and prod my tyres a bit. Take a photo. They’re still there. In the end, I have no choice: for once, it’s me issuing a cheery and ever-so-slightly patronising ‘Bon courage!’ as I pedal past.

  The fear of being caught propels me all the way to the top – a spectacular route through a national park created to protect the region’s famous Calanques, narrow limestone bays of azure water that look spectacular on Google, though are sadly invisible from the road. Not that it’s too shabby up here either, with views back to Marseille and her shining harbour, and a kind of rocky moonscape ahead, cut with sheep tracks and decorated with only the occasional charred tree, the legacy of last summer’s forest fires. The road rises, but never too steeply, and some way past the high point, the Col de la Gineste (327 metres), having stopped for the obligatory photo by the sign, I see it begin to descend and pause again, feet dangling over a stone wall into the rocky abyss, to deploy the Tunisian semolina and date cake, which proves so absurdly sticky that my hands are all but glued onto the brakes for the final 10km. No bad thing, perhaps, given how quickly I descend into Cassis.

  My old cycling buddy Lu has tipped me off about a campsite she reckons is one of the best places on earth. I’m not so sure – not only do I pay €15 for a third of a cramped pitch, but said pitch is strewn with razor-sharp pebbles, the showers are freezing and, worst of all, the beer in the shop is warm and dusty. Her restaurant recommendation works out rather better. As the clouds billow ominously above the little harbour, I sit down to a huge plate of macaronade, a dish of huge al dente pasta tubes in a spicy, slightly sour tomato sauce, served with a fennel seed sausage and what appears to be a beef faggot studded with golden raisins. A speciality of Sète, just down the coast – a place, incidentally, also famed for its cuttlefish pies – it’s not what I expected to be eating in Cassis (grilled sardines, a carafe of limpid rosé, a modernist novel tossed carele
ssly to one side), but it seems that, as with the pizzas in Marseille, an influx of Italian fishermen at the start of the 20th century can take the credit for some of the best food in town.

  A few bites in, my waitress rushes over to warn me that the dish is very spicy – ‘I forgot to tell you!’ she says, apparently panic stricken. I have to stop myself laughing, not only because that risks spraying her with pieces of half-chewed pasta, but because the sauce is about as hot as a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch. I ponder the recipe all the way home, but shortly after midnight, the weather gives me something else to think about. It begins to rain heavily just after midnight, and continues, in a tag team with strong winds, all night, wrenching half my pegs from the gravel in the process. So much for the sunny South, I think, lying awake looking at photos of the dog hiding from the heat in baking Buckinghamshire.

  PAUSE-CAFÉ – Piment d’Espelette

  Though the French aren’t traditionally big fans of the chilli, they do make an exception for the Espelette pepper, a variety of Capsicum annuum, from the area of the same name abutting the Spanish border. Though it’s sometimes used fresh, you’ll generally find it in the form of a vivid orange powder, which gives as much colour as heat (it only registers 2,000–4,500 on the Scoville scale, about the same as medium jalapeño), has a lovely fruity sweetness and a rich creaminess reminiscent of roasted red pepper.

  Espelette the village, which is less famous as the birthplace of the first Miss France, Agnès Souret, holds an annual Fête du Piment d’Espelette at the end of the harvest season in late autumn, featuring lots of pepper-themed merchandise, Basque music, dancing and pelote, an energetically violent Basque ball game much like fives or squash, and culminating in a piment d’Espelette feast cooked up by local restaurants – and the ceremonial procession of the Brotherhood of the Piment Pepper in their flaming red robes and Basque berets.

  My plan for the next day is to let the train take the strain as far as Toulon, a vast commercial port with, as far as I can tell, little to detain the hungry cyclist, and start my much-anticipated tour of the south coast at the resort of Hyères, but, of course, it turns out to be another strike day in which nothing at all is running out of Cassis, and so I’m forced to cycle the whole way instead. There’s a potential plus side to this, in that the route takes in the highest sea cliffs in France, which sound exciting … but that’s also a potential downside, both literally and figuratively. I decide, somewhat rashly, to get them over with before breakfast, so I can use a croissant as a carrot.

  Whichever way round I look at the map, however, it seems I’m going to have to go down before I go up. Having made a reluctant peace with this idea, I whizz into Cassis and crawl back out again on the Route des Crêtes, which takes no prisoners – it’s almost absurdly steep from the moment I turn off the main road, culminating in a 30 per cent gradient that, together with the weight behind me trying to pull me back to sea level, makes it almost impossible to get going again after stopping for breath. The views are incredible, but it’s bloody hard work – thank God for once it’s neither raining, nor particularly warm, but simply sullen and grey, like my mood.

  Eventually, the route resolves itself into a series of rather less strenuous hairpins, and it becomes clear why the turn-off was festooned with signs warning of danger in high winds – as I climb higher, it becomes harder to stay on the road, and one particularly angry gust blows me into the path of oncoming traffic … at which point a Dutch campervan behind blares its horn as if I might be skidding around the tarmac for a lark. It’s probably the scariest moment of the trip so far, and I’m forced to dismount, more for show than anything else, given the wind is so strong that it’s equally hard to stay upright on foot. On the plus side, I can see right back down the coast to Marseille, though I don’t dare venture too close to the cliff edge for a closer look at the waves crashing 300 metres below. Fortunately, the descent into the port of La Ciotat proves more sheltered, but never have a croissant and a café crème felt more deserved – though before I can even order the latter, the man at the bar says, delightedly, ‘You’re thirsty, right?’ and pours me a pint of water. When I go into the loo, I realise I have mascara tear stains all the way down my cheeks, though whether caused by wind or sheer terror is hard to say. The croissant is a mere 7.5/10, a bit dry and puffy, with ends that could double as firelighters, but with an enjoyably buttery flavour and a good firm base. To be honest, it’s hard to be too critical when you’re just grateful to be alive.

  This is to prove the scenic high point of the day. The road to Bandol, a place famed for its wines and thus its literary connections (Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield and Thomas Mann holidayed here in the interwar years, though not, as far as I can tell, together), is sadly banal, running inland past building supplies stores and shuttered waterparks awaiting the start of the season. The best thing I see all afternoon is a greengrocer’s hut on a roundabout with such a magnificent display of tomatoes outside that I cycle back up the hill to get to it, after realising belatedly this might be my best opportunity for lunch. The dark interior of the shed is an unexpected treasure trove of local cheeses and cured meats as well as more exotic fruit and veg, including Scottish raspberries and what looks like a basket of finger limes on the counter. With a baguette from the bakery next door, I picnic on the sun-warmed rocks of Bandol beach – bread, tomatoes, fresh goat’s cheese and an entire jar of Colette’s green olive tapenade, and feel almost at peace with the world at last.

  Unfortunately, (you guessed it!) that feeling is not to last. Even the excitement of passing into the Var, my favourite département in all France, home to so many happy rosé-tinted holidays of the past, is fleeting, as all too soon I’m heading into the ugly underbelly of its biggest city, Toulon, in the torrential rain, cold fat drops as big as blueberries bouncing off the end of my nose. This, while trying to navigate through a strange traffic system, is poor timing indeed: no chance of using my still-ailing phone, water streaming so fast from my helmet it’s hard to see signs, let alone the lane markings that shimmer underneath the puddles, and in the end I pull over and join a group of other waifs and strays huddled outside a supermarket. A large dog has taken the opportunity to stretch out and go to sleep in the middle of this tiny, dry patch of concrete. I like its style.

  Once the rain finally slows, and I’ve had time to memorise the basics of the route, I tuck my sad phone away in three layers of waterproof material and set off again in the direction of Hyères – I’m hoping to push through as far as Le Lavandou, an understated beach resort with fond memories attached, but though the skies eventually smile upon me, fortune does not. First the cycle route is abruptly barred, and then, having finally found the road, and shortly after thinking bitterly that this would be just the day to get a puncture, I feel my back tyre resign from duty. There then follows two and a half humiliating hours by the roadside, first trying to find the offending item, wedged into the inside rim (the usual tiny piece of mysterious metal wire), and then attempting to stuff the new, partially inflated inner tube into the tyre and get the wheel back on. To be fair, this is a bit of an ignominious record even for me, but for some reason, possibly because I’m so angry with Dame Fate that my hands are shaking, the task is a lot harder than on my old and, at this moment, much-missed bike.

  Eventually, an old man out walking his dog takes pity on me. ‘Do you know bikes?’ I ask, too eagerly, oil smeared all over my face like some sort of Pictish tribal marking.

  He holds up his (sparkly clean) hands: ‘A little.’ His wife gives me a small, conspiratorial shrug. In 30 seconds Eddy is as good as new and I reward my hero in a neatly pressed polo shirt with a wet wipe and slightly too much teary gratitude if his wife’s face is anything to go by. As they potter off, I suddenly notice it has started to drizzle. It’s 6.15 p.m., I’m as filthy as a chimney sweep and Le Lavandou is still 25km away. I make an executive decision.

  Ten minutes later, I pull up at the most
expensive hotel I could find in Hyères, the Casino des Palmiers, a gloriously grand Edwardian wedding cake of a thing with a sweep of steps crying out for a red carpet. I abandon Eddy behind a cream pillar and step through the revolving doors … into Las Vegas. Off-strip Las Vegas at that. The glass atrium is a riot of red and plastic, the neon buzz of slot machines flickers from what once might have been a baccarat lounge or a roulette salon, and the woman behind the desk, who bears a strong resemblance to Barbara Windsor, appears to have put her lipstick on in the dark.

  She’s lovely, though, and if she’s surprised that the high roller who’s booked their junior suite is a dirty, sweaty woman in Lycra rather than a millionaire with a sudden fancy for an evening of one-armed bandit, she doesn’t show it. A security guard helps me roll Eddy into a sadly neglected ballroom, full of cans of paint and old furniture, and I go up and spend 25 minutes in my huge fawn marble bathroom, scrubbing myself, and then my kit, cleanish, and then hanging it up around my palace to dry while I paint the town red.

  From my vast, if rather cracked, balcony, I can see the sea in the distance, beyond a weedy terrace with a bandstand in the middle, which presumably once hosted candlelit dances in some distant and glamorous past. It’s too far to walk now, though, so I duck into the first restaurant I pass, a Moroccan place, where I tuck into vegetable couscous with dollops of fiery harissa and delicious oily merguez sausages in the company of a begging cat, and several couples who don’t appear to be talking to each other. Needless to say, me and my book and my carafe of rosé enjoy ourselves immensely. Still, what a bloody day, I think, as I collapse into my vast bed, taking comfort from the slow drip of laundry from next door.