Mieux vaut tard que jamais...

Better late than never. Well, finally I'm on my way. For exceptionally boring reasons that you all probably know (and if you don't, I'm not going to go into them now), my departure from Jersey was delayed for a couple of weeks. Nothing to do with the two week hangover from my leaving party, honest. So where am I? Here is currently a little campsite in a place called Angles in the Vendee region of France. I started out on Sunday, and headed over to some French friends of my family (the Hery's) in Saint Servan. Their hospitality was, as ever, fantastic and it was great to see Jean, their eldest son (a midshipman/lawyer in the French navy) back to vote in the Presidential elections. I stayed over at theirs on Sunday night, after being fed and watered (disclaimer: might not have technically been water) for almost every waking meeting of my somewhat fleeting visit. I jumped on the train from St. Malo at some ridiculous hour in the morning, exacerbated by the fact that France is an hour ahead, meaning it was EVEN EARLIER. A couple of weeks of nice long lie-in's cruelly faded into history. The train down to La Rochelle (where I started) was fairly uneventful, aside from the woman in Rennes without a soul (she walked straight into an automatic which only opened when a dog wandered past which promptly started growling at her (ref: The Simpsons - Bart sells his soul)). That was good. The other thing that I managed was not to time-stamp my ticket correctly. I spoke to the conductor before heading down who told me not to worry and that he'd remember my face (must've been something to do with the shorts that I was wearing in the midst of a torrential downpour of rain). I didn't see him, and when I enquired if this would cause a problem at Rennes, was promptly offered a refund on my ticket which was nice. As an aside to anyone that cycles, French trains are great for cyclists. There's a really simple system for hanging the bikes on the wall above a load of fold-away seats, and nobody bats an eyelid. They're clean, friendly and (certainly compared to trains in the UK), cheap. They're also on-time. The trains that I got, LOR (possibly - they weren't TGV at any rate) cost €50 down to La Rochelle. A great advantage for anyone planning a cycling holiday. My first night abroad was interesting to say the least. Bearing in mind that (a) I arrived in La Rochelle at about half four in the afternoon; (b) it was still raining; and (c) the wind was close to being a hurricane, I decided to check into a hostel for the night. An interesting experience, especially bearing in mind that I was sharing said hostel with an entire school full of French schoolchildren. At least the bar was empty. So on to today, my first day on the road. It was an interesting start - just outside La Rochelle I managed to mis-read my GPS and almost tried to join an Auto-Route. Interesting. Almost immediately thereafter, as soon as I found the correct (non-multi lane) road, the heavens opened and soaked me to the skin. But it didn't last long - within half an hour I was dry again, and blasting down the open roads in beautiful French sunshine, admiring the beautiful French scenery. Breakfast consisted of a pain au chocolate and a coffee on a bench outside the boulangerie of a pretty little town that I have entirely forgotten the name of, and lunch was a baguette on a wall in Champagne La Marais (only remembered purely by the fact that it had Champagne in the name). The ride that I had thought would be about 30-35km for a nice gentle start to the trip clocked out at being 58km, due to the fact that my GPS measures distance as the crow flies, and that my bike doesn't handle water particularly well which resulted me avoiding the large tract of sea that travelling as the crow flies would have entailed. My GPS also decided that I wanted to cycle down an unpaved road to shave about 4 metres off the distance that the road right next to it would have been. I have since had words with my GPS, mentioning that unpaved roads are not fun when you don't have any suspension and are sitting on a leather seat. It has promised not to do it again. We'll see. I arrived at Camping le Clouture in Angles at about 3.30 this afternoon, set up my tent and had a nice little read (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Trilogy of Five (I thought that I'd start off with another travelling book)) in the glorious sun. It's beautiful here, and typically French. They have a bouncy castle. And two Emu (Emi?). I had an ice-cream. It's only my first day out on the road, and there's so much to say, though I know that it would bore the pants off the vast majority of you. Suffice to say, thus far I'm having an amazing time, and can't wait for tomorrow. As for tonight, I'm resting my sore arse (fnarr-fnarr), am about to order my first pression of the afternoon and settle down to watch Barcelona vs. Chelsea. Bring on tomorrow.