22 sept

Biking in France. It has been some years since I really tried. I remember going around the Morvan, but that was with a real racing bike, although my speed had nothing to do with racing. Biking today towards Auxerre I had two memories. The first was of biking with my father. We were staying in the campground of Saulieu. My father and I were biking to the Abbey de la Pierre qui Vire, an old abbey in the area with the added point of interest that from there a lot of interesting cultural atlases were being published. The hills were gentle, but my father wasn’t able to tackle them. He must have been 56/57 not that much older than I am now (okay 8/9 years). It was the first time I realized there was something seriously wrong with my father’s legs. My mother drove the car up to the abbey and biked back with me, without any trouble. My father would die about ten years later because of blood circulation problems in his legs. I should have been more conscientious. I do remember, now writing this, that we were going up a hill through woods, me being quite a bit ahead of my dad. I would wait to see him turning the last corner in my sight. All the time there was an owl (or something – they are all birds to me) following my dad, almost like making a statement.
The other memory is biking back from the Vosges with my uncle Fried. This was 1984, as I am almost sure. We were writing down a kind of pre-blog blog, Fried’s in his lovely handwriting. One of the things he wrote down, I remember still, is how much he liked to be lifted above the landscape while, or mainly after, he had climbed a hill.
You get that feeling by foot or bike, but not really with a car, they go too fast. Not even with our campervan, our Merlin, who has enough troubles with the slightest hill itself. One of the lovely things of travelling with Merlin over the Routes Nationales is that we, although struggling on the hills, are able to beat the estimated arrival time by TomTom (our sat nav) almost every time. That is possible by going about 87 km/hour on the straight and downward sloping areas. And by only starting to brake when we’ve entered one of the common towns we are going through.
Back to the bike. Auxerre was 20 kilometres (13 miles) away, but felt farther. I dreaded every moment I was going down on a hill, because I realized I would have to go back up again. Not only on the return way, but on the way there it meant that the more downward the valley, the relatively higher the following hill. I am from Holland you know. We dealt with all that kind of nonsense by creating a basically flat country.
Auxerre was a treasure. Not only one splendid cathedral, but also an even older abbey. The city on the border of the Yonne river was splendid, biking up and down curvy narrow cobbled roads, with countless medieval wood framed houses to the side. Had kind of fun in the cathedral with all the crazy sculptures and was awed by the fresco’s in the crypt. Realized that in the old days most of churches, the arches and vaults, were painted. Isn’t it about time for a great Sistine Chapel kind of reconstruction of the original colours in old churches.
Then I had to get back. On the way to Auxerre, the hills seemed harder and harder and I dreaded the long stretch of descent because I couldn’t stop thinking how horrible the first ascent on my way back would be. And it was bad. On my decent 7-geared Dutch bike I tried not to get lower than the fifth gear on the way to Auxerre. I couldn’t deal with it. The last stretch of hills had me going down to gear three. On the way back, I regularly had to go back to gear one, but the fun thing I realized was that I was able to ease myself in a comfortable rhythm in that gear. No one needs to remind me that these are some of the kindest hills of France.
Sour enough, tired enough I was happy to indulge myself in a nice meal, readily made by lovely Julie, of ravioli freshly made of figs and ham, bought at the market of Chablis. This together with a nice salad of tomato, onion and avocado and perhaps a few other secrets. This digestive information is mainly given to satisfy the interests of my dear dear mother in law.