Sailing home....

I’m in my cabin, on the boat home, with a bald patch ! There’s a mirror on the bathroom door behind me and mirror in front of me.. They’re set off at such an angle to each other that I can quite clearly see a bald patch on the crown of my head ! Just as I was in the mood for celebrating the completion of my epic cycle ride, so I find myself staring right at my own mortality … And with such thoughts return the tick tick ticking of my Carbon Aortic valve … Bloody thing drives me nuts sometimes. However, full credit to my surgeon, he certainly made a good job of it, if pedalling over a thousand miles across France is any measure of his fine craftsmanship ?
Morlaix was a real treat this morning, a hearty hand shake from the L’Hotel du port manager and I was off. I took a spin around the town centre, taking in the atmosphere, architecture and that thumping great viaduct ! I found a café for a final Grand Café creme, pulling up a chair outside in the warm October sunshine and filling my lungs with fresh French air I noticed the couple at the next table opening pouches of Golden Virginia, taking pinches of hand rolling tobacco in unison and laying it out expertly along cigarette papers, rolling, creasing, rolling, licking and completing… Any time served rolly smoker can do this with such precision and skill, probably and unwittingly better than anything else they routinely do. A perfectly relaxing little ritual to tease the emotions and wet the whistle prior to sparking up the fatal weed … Sadly, it does of course lead to an untimely death and many other nasty complications far worse than dying … Though still strangely evocative to observe in such situations. Exhaled smoke against low morning sunlight with fresh ground coffee and a busy waiter tinkering with tables, taking orders and money.
The smokers are British, he’s a biker, motor biker that is, not an athletic type biker like me. but your more traditional, middle aged, hairy arse type. The girlfriend was younger, bit of a Goth sort, fake black hair, too much black make up, tight black Jeans and overweight. She didn’t have the right gear, so was obviously a brand new girlfriend. Cheap pointy heel Goth boots with badly cast metal skulls and too many buckles, a warm coat and dated crash helmet. She asked if she’d been leaning properly on the corners and how fast they’d been going into them ? He replied in a broad Bristolian accent “I’ve bin holding the horses this morning, keeping down to about 95, normally I’d be going about 135 plus, yeah, course me arms is hurting a bit, always the same for a day or two, Ewan Mc Gregor gets it too.” I was trying not to laugh out loud as I chortled into my coffee and she seemed remarkably unimpressed, adding, “oh, it seemed much slower than that to me?” Looking across at his ropey old 1980’s GPZ I recon she could have been right too…
I pedalled out of town, under the viaduct and along the west side of the estuary, past all the moored up yachts and boats, and on towards Roscoff along the D73 which hugs the water line, it’s a delight to cycle along being that it’s slightly down hill and what’s more there was by now a pretty stiff Sou’westerly breeze nudging me along. Better late than never I thought to myself. It was lovely, I barely had to pedal as it pushed gently on my back easing me towards the north coast. Taking in the view, I wondered when the sea would come into view and watched leaves tumbling down the road and overtaking me, wishing I’d had this wind for all those hundreds of miles across the lowlands of France ! Oh well… I felt motorised and enjoyed the moment being swept along by mother nature… I sailed past Locquenole and on towards Carantec. Past fast boats, slow boats, new boats and dead boats… In fact there were several dead boats strewn along the shoreline. The wooden ones being reclaimed rather picturesquely with some degree of grace by nature whilst the plastic ones were reduced to sorry looking mouldy green hulks, warping, slumping, filling with water and refusing to decompose !
Then I spotted the end of the estuary where it opened out to the English Channel. I couldn’t help but smile to myself, with a huge sense of achievement that I’d actually done it, coast to coast across a massive country on a push bike !
My thoughts soon returned to Pirates as I looked across at the heavily fortified and rocky entrance to the Morlaix estuary to the open sea. Once those greedy Privateers had ducked in through there with holds full of plundered booty it would have been absolutely impossible to give chase without being blown out of the water !
I cycled on through Carantec and on to St. Pol de Leon, where I took some photographs of the Church with the pigeons flying high around it, then on towards Roscoff, stopping to take a picture of the old London double decker bus. This to me was my goal, I’d been looking forward to it coming into view ever since I’d left the Mediterranean coast. It’s the entrance to a huge wine and beer shop, a place I always stop off to buy my booze en route to Cornwall whenever I’m over there, and it always signals the journeys end to the ferry… Naturally I had to have a picture of my faithful Diamondback parked up with it !?
So… I’ve done it … And all I can think now is … What next ?