Renowned for its wines, but not necessarily its’ cycling routes, Bordeaux was
one of those places that left an indelible impression on me when I was cycled
around France back in 2009; but not necessarily for the right reasons.
The following extract
is from my first book (published in 2011), Lycra,
Lattes and the Long way Round.
The abundance of vineyards and accompanying signs were also a constant reminder that I was now in the midst of the famous Bordeaux wine region. A giant red wine bottle, the height of an Aussie Rules goalpost, was also a dead giveaway. Breathing barely any noxious car fumes the whole day, I thought to myself, How could my current cycling life get any better than this?
It was a stifling hot
afternoon, and the only thing I needed more than eagle’s wings was a cool
drink. My water bottles were as exhausted as I was. After passing the same
fruit shop for the third time, I finally had to get off my bike and fill up my
bottles. Surely, I thought, someone in the shop will be able to help me
find my way.
|
...I was looking
forward to riding through wine country, the city of Bordeaux being less than 140
kilometres to the south. Along with Burgundy, it is France’s most important
winemaking region, producing on average over 700 million bottles of wine each
year.
I got off to an early
start, a little before 9.00 am, managing to get onto a quiet rural road more
quickly than anticipated. The map provided by the local Office du Tourisme was like following a recipe for boiling an egg.
It was so easy. Most of the roads ran fairly parallel with the main motorways, the
A10 and the D137, so there wasn’t too much meandering away from my direction of
due south. I even began seeing signs to Bayonne, and my thoughts temporarily
turned to the Spanish border and the challenging mountains beyond.
The abundance of vineyards and accompanying signs were also a constant reminder that I was now in the midst of the famous Bordeaux wine region. A giant red wine bottle, the height of an Aussie Rules goalpost, was also a dead giveaway. Breathing barely any noxious car fumes the whole day, I thought to myself, How could my current cycling life get any better than this?
It was then that I
reached Bouliac. Until then, things were so good it didn’t even register that
Bouliac ended with the letters “ac”. If I’d noticed I would have given it a
wide berth.
I didn’t pay much
attention to it at the time, but Bordeaux happens to be an important road and
motorway junction. It’s connected to Paris via the A10 motorway, to Lyon by the
A89, to Toulouse by the A62 and to Spain along the A63. What’s more, it’s
absolutely surrounded by a ring road called a rocade, which for a cyclist forms a virtually impenetrable barrier.
Like Rouen, if you’re attacking it from the east, as I was, you’ve got to
negotiate a rather broad river, the Garonne. All very easy if you are a local
in a car, but for an out-of-towner on a vélo,
it was damn nigh impossible.
Benoit Huet and his son. |
It was around 5.00 pm
when I reached the outskirts of Bordeaux. As the crow flies, our night’s
accommodation in Bordeaux-Sud was a little more than a paltry 5 kilometres away.
All I needed to do was find a way to get over a main road, then the river, then
the rocade, then a train line, before
crossing the rocade again. It even
looked unlikely on my map.
One hundred and twenty
long and frustrating minutes later, after continually passing signs that read
“Floirac”, “Latresne”, “Cénac” and “Tresses”, I ended up back at, you guessed
it, Bouliac. Even a girl at a bus stop who I sought directions from didn’t have
a clue. God, how I hated Bouliac.
Next Day in Bordeaux. |
As far as a drink was
concerned, the best I could do was get some warm freshly squeezed orange juice.
Not exactly thirst quenching, but at least it was liquid. As for the
directions, I could make no sense of the constant banter between the three
over-enthusiastic locals in the shop. None of them being bike riders, they
seemed to have no idea themselves.
Then in strode Benoit
Huet—a sprightly gentleman in his late forties— and his son Nicolas, who’d come
in to buy some strawberries. Being a cyclist, who had not yet found a cycling
route across the river himself, he kindly offered to drive me, bike and all, to
the motel where we were staying. He thought nothing of giving up his time to
help me. “That’s the way in France,” he said, “particularly when it comes to
people on vélos and being a cyclist
myself.”
What
a guy, I thought. What
a guy. If only the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills had have been met at
Coopers Creek by someone like Benoit Huet, they would’ve survived.
It seemed Benoit drove
around for hours. It was still the longest eight or so kilometres I’d ever
travelled, even in a car. In better spirits, as we pulled into the hotel
carpark, I felt slightly bemused at the thought of Benoit’s poor son, sitting
in the passenger seat, steadfastly gripping the tray of strawberries the entire
time.
Later in the evening,
when I checked my odometer, it suggested that I’d spent more than 30 kilometres
on the Bordeaux-East merry-go-round, which led nowhere but back to Bouliac. But
I will never forget Bouliac, or Benoit for his kindness...
More photos from the book:
Where to purchase a copy of Lycra, Lattes and the Long Way Round...
* Amazon or other online bookshops
* Ebay (free postage in Australia)
* La Brocante, Shop 1/137 Shoreham Road, Red Hill South, 3937 Ph: (03) 5931 0293
* Contact Mark thebackgarden@mailworks.org (free postage in Australia)
More photos from the book:
Where to purchase a copy of Lycra, Lattes and the Long Way Round...
* Amazon or other online bookshops
* Ebay (free postage in Australia)
* La Brocante, Shop 1/137 Shoreham Road, Red Hill South, 3937 Ph: (03) 5931 0293
* Contact Mark thebackgarden@mailworks.org (free postage in Australia)
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