THE FRENCH ARE GOOD PEOPLE

Posted on by wildbikeride.com

As we left the boat, we went straight to a boulangerie and a fromagerie, as you would do in France. John was quite defensive of the French lady behind the counter when she compared John’s legs to a frog. “No frog legs for you tonight baby!”.
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Pierre sporting our first baguette on French soil.

We did some admin in Calais and headed as far out of town as possible.

We had a few attempts at asking some local farmers if we could sleep on their front lawn and got told on more that one occasion “itz not possible”. Obviously there was a big language barrier here, because pitching a tent on some pedicured, lush green grass was very possible. It could also be that people around Calais are quite wary of foreigners with the large groups of emigrants loathing around and waiting for a ticket to England. We eventually asked our French mate from London, Brice to help translate and give us a crash course French lesson on e-mail to make sure it was not the latter.

The lush green grass was not to be and we wild camped in a road next to a forest just beyond a market town Guines, twenty kilometres from Calais.

The weather has just not worked for us so far and once again it was like sleeping under a waterfall, with a night of torrential rain.

We woke up to our first friendly Frenchman, whom we had blocked from driving toward his forest maintenance job. He was quite happy to sharpen his tools for ten minutes whilst we were packing up the wet camp.

After one of the best baguettes that we’ve had in France, for breakfast, we made tracks.

Whilst riding up a steep mountain pass, we noticed an elderly couple struggling to move some roof beams. We jumped off our bikes ready to help them, only relived to give the steep incline a break.

After moving some beams, they invited us inside for some French beer. They were so amazed that we would be travelling all the way to Cape Town, that they needed to send us off with a beautiful bottle of 2006 Bordeaux wine and some home made apéritif. The French are good people!
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John with Obelix and his wife ‘Getmeabeer’ folk

23 thoughts on “THE FRENCH ARE GOOD PEOPLE”

  2. Hope that your weather fortunes turn, headwinds and rain are not cool. Sure I will be seeing report of tailwind and sunny skies and 200km covered! Infact I am going to check the weather now! Keep the updates coming, it is my daily escape to a story of adventure.

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  5. Hi boys , remember us we interrupted you whilst you were drying out in Licques, . We have ended our travels and arrived home 2 days ago. We wish you all the best and hope the weather is treating you kindly xxx

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  11. Keep enjoying yourselves lads and drink the wine earlier rather than later. Having it bounce around on the back of a bike isn’t good for it 🙂 xx

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  13. Cool – brings back many happy times of biking around France……………… but on a Ducati motorbike!!
    Cheese and baguette is nice – but wine cheese and baguette is heavenly….
    Have fun and hit the sun
    Cheers
    Tony

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