When talking to people about my ability to speak French I often mention my cycling trip to France in 1972. I was 17 at the time and had just left school with three failed French GCE exam results under my belt. Certainly I enjoyed learning French - I was just hopeless at it, and even more hopeless at passing exams. I had a teacher who did his best, but I was a basket case!
I enjoyed cycling. I had been out on day rides with my local CTC section on many occasions and had undertaken a number of Youth Hostelling trips by bicycle on my own, I had a bike, I had bags, I had YHA membership - what more did I need?
This trip turned out to be something of a revelation. It was certainly 'speak French or starve'. I had never been outside of England or Wales other than on a school day trip to Calais. Family holidays were to Warners Holiday Camps. I don't know if my parents thought I was deranged - maybe I was.
My documentation of the trip is now - after 53 years - rather limited. I have my Youth Hostel cards with stamps with the daily log of destinations but that is all. I also have a few vague memories. There are no photos and I don't know if I took a camera, but I doubt it.
My bike was a second-hand Hetchins from 1946. For those in the know the Hetchins make is very well regarded, but for me - living in Tottenham - Hetchins was just another bike shop. The bike had a three speed coaster hub brake. The original owner - the bloke who sold it to me for £5 - only had one hand, hence the braking system.
The trip was months in the planning. I know I pre-booked all my Youth Hostel nights by post - which must have taken weeks to send and get replies using International Reply Coupons (remember those?). I know I pre-booked the ferries and arranged to get myself a passport and some French Francs - but the important currency of the day was a book of Travellers Cheques!
I also bought all the necessary Michelin yellow maps and marked out my route. I had also arranged to meet the fantasy love of my life - my French pen freind - I had one photo of her, and the address of her family's holiday home on the Atlantic coast - what could go wrong?
One of the anticipated challenges on this holiday was that I had always relied on the meals served up by Youth Hostel wardens, and I have never catered for myself. French Youth Hostels did not provide luxuries like this, so I was going to have to cook for myself - how hard could it be? I knew how to prepare baked beans, how to grill fish fingers and make a boil-in-the-bag Vesta instant curry (this was 1972, remember!).
So - on the last day of July 1972 I set off to cycle from Tottenham to the YHA at Alfriston. The internet tells me that there had been thunderstorms in East London overnight, but I don't recall any wet weather on this ride. Google maps indicates that this would have been a ride of about 65-73 miles - which for me, as a daft youth, would have been about the distance I would have aimed for in a day (which is, curiously, about 100km - for an Audax event in 6-7 hours).
I took the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe - which must have been exciting - but so exciting I have no memory whatsoever of the trip. I do have a note that the crossing cost £4.40 for me and £1.20 for my bike.
I spent the night at the Auberge de Jeunesse in Dieppe. I do have a memory where I called into a small shop to buy food for my evening meal and being horrified at the lack of anything recocgnisable! I seem to remember that I discovered tinned rattatotuile which I cooked with some more recognisablle fish fingers.
The next day I was booked in to Louviers. This seems to have been another 100km ride straight south through Rouen.My Michelin map 52 shows that I at least considred a route through minor roads slightly to the east of the N27, although map 55 seems to indicate that I did take the main road both into Rouen and then to Louviers.
The next day was probably when I started to establish a routine of buying a baguette early on in the day and having it sticking out of my saddle bag so that I could grab bites to eat as I rode along. I also discovered french cheese wasn't all processed cheddar. At some point in the ride I know I bought a tub of Camembert - the likes of a which a working class lad from London had never encountered before - did I eat the rind or scoop out the gloop inside somehow?
My ride on the 3rd of August was to Chartres - again almost due south and almost exactly 100km when I retrace the route on Google Maps. I have a note that it rained that day. It's funny how the names of Evereux and Dreux are still familiar to me. I don't remember Chartres particularly well, but I do know I marvelled at the cathedral front.
The next day - and sadly there don't seem to be any weather records available on-line - I was headed for Blois. The AdJ stamp states it was at Des Grouets just outside the main town. This was a ride that the map indicates was convoluted being on very minor roads - not even yellow D roads (or the day) - and must have topped 120km. My recollection is that the warden at Blois - and I may have mixed it up with another place - wouldn't allow any bags into the dormitory and was extremely aggressive in enforcing his rule. I was adamant that my handlebar bag was staying with me (as it had all my valuables in it) so I sneaked it into my bed and wasn't discovered.
From Blois it was a dayheading slightly south-west out of the Loire valley for about 120km to Châtellerault - by a route that Google thinks is bonkers on todays roads! By the 7th August I was starting to run out of space on my card and the stamp for my next stop - Ruffec is in the middle of all the others - which is symolic because about 450km later I was now pretty much at the centre of France and where I turned right and started heading for the coast - and my pen freind (you'll note that I don't use her name - that's because I've forgotten it! That's how much I was besotted by her.) . Châtellerault to Ruffec was another forgotted ride of about 120km.
I think Ruffec may have been the stangest hostel (or Auberge de Jeunesse) I ever stayed in. It was a school - closed for the holidays, and I was the only guest. There were many, many classrooms with bunk beds and just me. I only saw the warden once and that was when I arrived. I did discover several cupboards absolutely full of empty wine bottles - I suspect the warden was sleeping off a perpetual monumental hangover. This was almost certainly where I had a nasty scare and learned about Priorite a la droite in a hard way. I had taken the luggage off my bike and it was lighter and faster for my ride into the town to get food. I was belting along a main road when a car suddenly came out of side road in front of me. I wasn't hurt, but it taught me a couple of lessons!
After thankfully leaving Ruffec I was bound for La Rochelle. Map 71 shows that I opted for a main road route rather than a slightly shorter 'yellow road' route - goodness knows why because the ride appears now to be topping 125km. The strange thing for me today is that I have no recollection of exhaustion or hunger, nor do I recall extremes of weather (although see the next day), I must have slept well and eat and drunk enough to survive somehow. I seem to remember having a routine of a mid-morning break, a lunchtime stop, and then carrying on to the destination in the afternoons.
La Rochelle hostel was a different kind of place, one that I would encounter a couple of times later. It was on the 'traveller' route - that is to say that in 1972 there were still remnants of the community we would today lump together as 'hippies' travelling from place to place mostly hitchhiking or Interrailing. I certainly wasn't aware of any drug use, but I don't doubt it was happening but France was, I believe, pretty intolerant of drug use.
I have a strong memory of heading out of La Rochelle on the 8th August in pouring rain in the company of a Dutch cyclist. I also remember sitting on a fountain where I was introduced to the delight of chocolate flavoured milk for the first time before he went his own way and my way my own. I think it rained all day until I got to the seaside resort of Les Sables d'Olonne. The pencil route on the map indicates that I hugged the coast as much as possible making this a slightly shorter day of about 95km along minor roads.
Ah! Teenage bliss! I left Les Sables d'Olonne to get the 50km to St Jean de Monts to meet my penfreind. And what a disaster it was. I barely spoke French, her and her family barely spoke any English. They were clearly from a different strata of the population from this filthy English lad. She smoked, I didn't. I was bedded down for a nights in their holiday flat - although what we all did during that afternoon I don't know - except for one incident. I was taken by car - it seemed a big, luxurious car (possibly brown?) - to a very posh restaurant. Goodness knows what I was wearing, I'd been on the road for nearly a fortnight and I expect my personal hygeine wasn't great. It was a fish food restaurant - I didn't know my huitres from my moroue and I seem to recall not eating very much to the embarassment of one and all. I guess they were glad to see the end of their English guest, I never wrote to her again, and she never wrote to me. Ah! Young love - how fragile.
From here on the Hostel card is clearly incomplete and my route on the maps isn't helpful either, so bear with me.
I don't know where I rode next to get it out of my system but I have a note of the cost of the ferry across the Loire at Le Pellerin of 60 centimes for me and 20 centimes for the machine. I have a note that I stayed at Langon which would have been a day of around 130km - I also have a note that I had a problem with my rear brake - I think this was the incident when my baguette fell out of my saddlebag and I jammed the brake on, but had to resort to violence with a rock to release it! I have a stamp at Rennes dated 12th August but that doesn't help me a lot. The stamp at Vire is indistinct but I think it's wrong - as it says the 18th-19th but as it's only (!) 150km between Rennes & Vire I either split it over two day or made a mad dash north into Normandy. My map isn't very helpful but it seems to indicate that I went by way of Fougeres, so maybe I had two easier days.
I distinctly remember my 130km dash up through Normandy from Vire to Cherbourg. It was a public holiday - probably Assumption Day - and everything was closed. I had run out of money and was relying on cashing a Travellers Cheque but couldn't. I spent the last of my Francs at a wayside shop where madame insisted that little Pierre practice his English - which of course he was useless and completely embarrassed! But madame was so impressed she forced some calvados on me, twice. On an empty stomach calvados isn't the best fuel for another hard ride north. Arriving at the hostel in Cherbourg I was at a loss for food as I had no money, but the kindness of strangers won out. I hooked up with a group of Irish lads who had just arrived on their first trip away from home. They were cooking a meal of instant potato and pasta! They had no idea how much they needed but there was plenty for me - and plenty left over.
The next day I got the ferry to Southampton (£4.80 for me and £1.20 for the bike) arriving late into England. I had made contingencies for the late night ride from Southampton home but I had over-estimated myself and once again learned a valuable lesson. I had lights with me - which in 1972 were dreadful things - but I was heading up the main road which is now the A33. And it scared the pants off me. In the end I gave up and bedded down on a bench outside a pub in Micheldever near Wichester after covering about 40km. I got the first train to London from the local station - a bargain at £1,73 - and rode home from Waterloo station.
I think I'd lost a lot, a lot, of weight when I got home because I distinctly remember my clothes being very loose. I also recall a long hot bath. And a few days later I started my 40 year career in the NHS.
It can't have been all bad because the following year I cycled round the coast of Brittany.