T de T: held together by vines

We are led by Stephan, who is a 50 something in insurance, and is accompanied by his significant other, Karine, who is a 50 something in HR for a company who produce seals for the motor trade (Ed: shurley shome mishtake.)

 Stephan and Karine live, separately, near Les Mans in northern France where, for their sins,  they have six boys between 15 and 30 between them!




Next in the convoy is Georg the Bavarian giant, who has just retired from Aeon Insurance and lives somewhere near Munich with his partner, Nery, who is a small bundle of Peruvian polyglot energy.

Then comes Nick, from whom much more shortly, followed by his tail gunner, moi.

Although there is much more to be said about each of these two-wheeled pilgrims , it might be worth touching on how this unlikely group is tied together. 

Way back in the early 1900s, Rachel moved out from Paris to find somewhere to spend her summers/escape from the crush of life in 1920s Paris. She chanced upon a little seaside resort on the south of the Loire, where this majestic river rolls out into the sea at St Nazaire on the bottom of Brittany. She built/bought a small place in the Alleé des Vignes and here she brought up her children, including Jeanette who was another bundle of energy and who started walking out with a Yank, called Park Honan - a child of the 60s who had left his native America in order to find a new career

Amor vincit omnia and Park and Jeanette eventually married and set up home in Leeds where they had three happily bilingual children of their own. For holidays they brought these children back to France because they loved it there and because they had lots of friends living in the same little vine-clad Alleé who had children of their own. Nick's wife, Corinna, was one of those children. And so was Stephan, whose son, Marin, cooked us an excellent tartiflette the other evening in their grandparents' house, just a couple down from the 'chateau' - as the neighbours have dubbed the house that Nick and Corinna have converted in the Allée.

Neighbours came out to wish us well and take pictures of the biking convoy. Whether their history stretches back to Rachel's time or whether they are  relatively new arrivals, whether they are full -time residents like Joceline or summer expats like the champagne communist Christian, all are bound in to the local community that seems to be held together with frequent coffees, glasses of something, little impromptu dinners - and much chat!

Mon Dieu, do they talk! To be honest, after a day's tiring biking, interspersed with a stop over to meet Henri, Stephan's uncle  His aunt at their flat in La Rocelle, my limited reserves of French conversation (like my stomach and petrol tanks)  were pretty much exhausted. I would have happily curled up with a good book and a glass of something. But that's not how things are here: Nick in particular is on a lifelong mission to find the perfect pun and pursues this object with a determined passion. Old stories, new stories - all is relentlessly plumbed for new material as he entertains all and sundry in his immaculate, deliberately awful french. Surely, I can see them thinking, this man is not going to embark on that tale? But he does and, inevitably, they are drawn in and beguiled by his charm and bonhomie. 

In addition to the search for the perfect pun (chapeau de nuit anyone?) we have another reason to persist: we both feel awful about the result of the referendum and are on something of a charm offensive to explain to our European colleagues, who are bemused and appalled at the British vote in equal measure, that we are not all exiters. So our  little multi-ethnic pilgrimage/convoy, battling through the language barriers, winds its way through the lovely countryside...