Friday 24 June
Today followed two days stages of the TdF, 5 & 6, taking me from the Marne Valley to the Burgundy district, a fair step in distance and made the mistake of a late departure from hanging around captured by the breakfast table conversation, couples from England, Germany, and Australia, plus the now France domiciled American hosts, a representation of interests covering Airbus assembly plant, Du Pont sales, motorcycling, photography, hiking, to name a few. Hostess Meredith has done the Camino pilgrimage 7 times, you can follow her exploits on the internet, google "all.my.caminos"
Not quite sure I've got my process right in tracking the tour either, by inputting to the GPS enough towns on the route to maintain fidelity with it. The GPS takes you to each towns centre, I'd rather intervene and circle round the town to resume the course outside the built up area.
Off the freeway, progress is pretty slow as it is, you hardly get up to open speed limit, and you're slowing for the next village, and lets face it, after 4 days theyre all starting to look the same. One guide I read says to allow averaging only 60kph, and I'd say that's a fair comment.
Getting further south, by late morning, the still green grain crops colour of the countryside turned to fully ripe golden brown and most fields had harvesters at work.
France has a great determination it will never go hungry again, farmers get plenty of subsidy support to buy tractors and machinery, looks like every farms got its own huge 4wd tractors, huge trailers for carting hay and straw, headers, crop-spray machinery, etc. Often I pass what look like district grain silo depots where farmers run their tractor towed grain-filled bath-tub trailers for trans-shipment.
Our Fed farmers once estimated EU farmers support was the equivalent of 6 new Toyota Corollas each a year. In NZ, farmers support the urban community to the tune of only one new Toyota each head of population, so the reason why the 30% of Kiwis on some sort of govt assistance are feeling a bit poorly on it is that us 12,000 farmers arent working hard enough.
Despite the antiquity of the villages, France really is a modern country compared to what I saw years ago. The place is riddled with roads, all paved and I've yet to strike a bad one, the cars are all pretty modern but of a smaller genre than us or USA..., Peugeot, VW, Mini, Toyota, and in the country a lot of Nissan Pathfinder and Jeep.
Havent seen many cops on the road either, did have one pull out to follow me a couple of days back, tacking on behind a couple of cars that caught me up as I slowed down. We stayed that way with me in front for 5km odd, so I pulled into a layby, let them all pass, and tacked back in behind the cop. At the next village he pulled into an alley and stopped, so I'm pretty sure he was on my derriere.
Other than that, I get the strong impression the focus is on road safety rather than policing, there are heaps of road signage, theyre clear in cautionary intent, and warn at the merest of peril, easy corners and mild down-gradients. The open road speed limit is 90kph, I've been on a couple of 110kmph freeways, but frankly round here, fast isnt an imperative. I think a nations psyche is evident in its road manners, and here, that's pretty sweet, you get smiles in response to courtesy, or in foregiveness of having made a stuff-up.
Only done one so far, in a street so narrow, cars parked facing the way I was going, but on my left, so I thought it was a one way, but when I got to the intersection at the end I tried to turn left into oncoming traffic. The lady beside me backed up, and let me roll back in, no drama.
France on the road isnt the helter skelter place you might have imagined.
By and large people dont know where New Zealand or Nouvelle Zealande is, people are quite insular and stick to their little family group, so I'm told.
At my patisserie/bakery lunchstop in Provins, the baker came out to talk to me, first they asked if I was allemande (German), which is happening all the time, but he knew enough english for us to have a yarn, he'd tried unsuccessfully to get into NZ a few years ago, but couldnt find a job for a baker. A bit of an entertaining character too, telling me with great glee the yarn about the goat and the gumboots, only here in France, Arabs are the butt of goat jokes, or any sort of ethnically demeaning quip. Was able to give him a couple of kiwi/aussie sheep jokes he could re-flavour a la Francais.
In a couple of places I've seen posters stuck up on road signs saying NON to burkhas, chadors etc and a supporting one saying something like this is a racially select area.
I didnt get in till after 8pm, Villa des Roches, http://www.bedandbreakfastinburgundy.co.uk/ where after a big welcoming gin and chat from host Richard, I didnt take long to get to dreamland, slept well but woke sometime in the night from a disturbing dream at battle with Nazis, all that death and war so evident here, moreso in the north, I'm finding pretty haunting.
Richard has a married son in Auckland.
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