George's Grand Tour. Caroline Vermalle

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       Thursday 25 September

      Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)–Notre-Damede-Monts (Vendée)

      Their epic journey in the Renault Scenic was to follow the itinerary of the 2008 Tour de France to the letter. This was made up of twenty-one stages (except that George and Charles’s Tour would leave out stage 4, as they had decided not to count the individual time trial in Cholet). They had given themselves two or three days to complete each stage, so that they could explore the surrounding area a little. But they were to change hotel almost every night. Their route was planned out as follows:

      Stage 1: Brest–Plumelec

      Stage 2: Auray–Saint-Brieuc

      Stage 3: Saint-Malo–Nantes

      Stage 5: Cholet–Châteauroux

      Stage 6: Aigurande–Super-Besse

      Stage 7: Brioude–Aurillac

      Stage 8: Figeac–Toulouse

      Stage 9: Toulouse–Bagnères-de-Bigorre

      Stage 10: Pau–Hautacam

      Stage 11: Lannemezan–Foix

      Stage 12: Lavelanet–Narbonne

      Stage 13: Narbonne–Nîmes

      Stage 14: Nîmes–Digne-les-Bains

      Stage 15: Embrun–Prato Nevoso

      Stage 16: Cuneo–Jausiers

      Stage 17: Embrun–L’Alpe-d’Huez

      Stage 18: Le Bourg-d’Oisans–Saint-Étienne

      Stage 19: Roanne–Montluçon

      Stage 20: Cérilly–Saint-Amand-Montrond

      Stage 21: Étampes–Paris Champs-Élysées

      Three extra stages had been added to take them from Chanteloup to the official starting point at Brest – which, as Charles pointed out, was ‘a heck of a way away’. He had called them stage 0 (Chanteloup–Notre-Dame-de-Monts, staying with Charles’s sister, Ginette Bruneau), stage 0a (Notre-Dame-de-Monts–Gâvres, overnighting with Charles’s cousin Odette Fonteneau), and finally stage 0b (Gâvres–Brest).

      They started by taking the first turn out of Chanteloup. As they went, the little roads with dandelions growing in the cracks were replaced by roads whose surface had been fixed so often it resembled a tarmac patchwork. They passed many familiar names on the rusty signposts: La Timarière, La Châtaigneraie, Le Bout du Monde. Then white strips started to appear on the road and all of a sudden they were driving alongside lorries and trucks. That’s when they knew they were really on their way.

      The car was not full: the only things in the boot were George’s little suitcase and Charles’s large one – twice as big as his companion’s, in fact, and much more modern, with wheels (when Charles went travelling, he did so in style) – as well as a whole box of tourist guides. The one for Southern Brittany had been put in the glove compartment, along with the GPS user manual and Charles’s Vichy pastilles. Thérèse had also provided them with a picnic set – they couldn’t go eating in restaurants every day, after all. She had even managed to sneak in a little crate of tomatoes from the garden and some ham won in a round of belote without them noticing.

      George and Charles did not talk much in the car, which still smelled of new leather. Apart from the silky and monotonous tones of the GPS, it was a rather silent journey. There was an atmosphere of reflection, and contemplation. Autumn had barely arrived, the leaves were just starting to change colour, but it was still a beautiful sight. George, who had not left his small corner of the world for years, sat back and took it in.

      On the route from Deux-Sèvres to the Vendée they passed through sleepy villages with geraniums in the windows, smart houses covered in Virginia creeper, and church steeples breaking through the clouds. Bit by bit, the landscape changed as they drove on. The green palette was flecked with a hint of yellow here, a touch of black there. The undulating forests flattened out into windswept plains. Now and then a windmill would come into view, or a thatched cottage hidden amongst the pine trees, or a sign towards a campsite or the salt flats. They were approaching the sea.

      Notre-Dame-de-Monts was a clean, discreet seaside town. What was particularly charming about it was the lack of high-rise buildings. This part of the Vendée had suffered from a wave of construction in the 1970s that had left a number of towns in the area permanently scarred. The beautiful beach ten kilometres down the coast in Saint-Jean-de-Monts had been blighted by concrete monstrosities, fast-food chains and noisy arcades. Notre-Dame-de-Monts, on the other hand, had been miraculously spared, its houses set well back from the lovely seafront, screened by the long grass on the dunes. All of this was familiar to Charles, as he had often come to visit his sister, who lived here all year round. But this was George’s first time in the town, and he was enchanted by what he saw.

      They arrived at 11.30 a.m. As they were not expected at their hostess’s until lunchtime and didn’t wish to impose, the travelling companions decided to go and admire the sea, which sparkled beyond the flags lining the esplanade. The sun, which had barely made an appearance all summer, was warming the sand on the beach and encouraging the last of the summer holidaymakers to linger. With their feet in the sand and their eyes gazing out over the Atlantic, George and Charles were happy, even if they didn’t yet dare express it to each other.

      It was almost as if the two neighbours had become shy of one another. The fact was their friendship had played out against the same background СКАЧАТЬ