The Valley Of Heaven And Hell_Cycling In The Shadow Of Marie Antoinette by Susie Kelly

Author:Susie Kelly [Kelly, Susie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: marie antoinette, France travel, humor, cycling in France, France, cycling, humour, long distance cycling, Champagne
Publisher: Blackbird Digital Books
Published: 2011-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

No More Champagne

“Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” Otto von Bismarck

“There’s no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.” Alfred M Gray

WE pedalled hard in the direction we thought the moustache had given us. After we’d been cycling for 20 minutes up an incline, and covered three miles, we had still seen no sign to Dormans. I pulled up and said to Terry: “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“Not really,” he answered. “I thought you had understood the route.”

“So did I, but I’m beginning to wonder.”

We went in to a filling station and asked the cashier if Dormans lay ahead of us.

No, we were going in the opposite direction, he said. We were several miles north-east of Reims, when we should be heading south-west. What we needed to do was to follow the road for about two and a half miles back the way we had come, and turn left at the junction signposted to Soissons. Then we’d see the signs to Dormans. “But,” he added cheerfully, “it’s a very hard ride. I’m a cyclist myself, and I can tell you it’s hard. It’s uphill all the way!” I had noticed that people always showed a gentle schadenfreude if they were able to advise that the road ahead was going to be particularly arduous. There was no malice in it, though; in fact we accepted it as a sign of camaraderie.

We backtracked until we found the Dormans sign, and started the most gruelling ride we had so far experienced. Maybe “proper” cyclists will scorn our efforts. Frequently, as we pushed and puffed up hills, scrawny people sped past effortlessly, on racing bikes with no appurtenances, yodelling or whirling their arms in the air. But as amateurs we thought we were making a fairly doughty stab at the challenge of cycling in this demanding part of the world with our heavy loads and in the intense heat.

I had imagined the Montagne de Reims as no more than a slight bump on an otherwise flat plain. But no, when you cycle upon and around it, it is worthy of its title. Like a stack of pancakes, the mountain is made up of layers of chalk, clay, silt and fossilised marine skeletons, formed 90 million years ago and left behind when the Paris basin subsided 70 million years later, when the seas that covered the area retreated. Beneath the plateau’s dense forests of pine and broad-leafed trees, the sides of the mountain are home to vineyards that benefit from sunshine and the porous soil that retains moisture and aids drainage.

Terry has muscles of steel and sufficient energy to fuel an aircraft carrier; I have muscles of dough and the energy level of a sloth. Once again we were facing a killing slog. I could see Terry’s legs moving fast, and his bicycle moving slowly, and pedal as I might, and

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