Over the Top

There are 100 ski resorts in the Val Cenis – which is west of Chambéry and heading for the Alps and Italy. In Mondane there are posters: it is the regions 40th birthday. Happy birthday piste n’ pissed. Mondane is commemorating another birthday: it is 50 years since it was flooded, the high-street 15 feet under water, deaths. There is a small exhibition with testimonies in the local museum – to “mechanical pianos”, a speciality here, it seems.

“The worst wayes that ever I travelled in all my life in the Sommer were those betwixt Chamberie and Aiguebelle, which were as bad as the worst I ever rode in England in the midst of Winter: insomuch that the wayes of Savoy may be proverbially spoken of as the Owles of Athens, the peares of Calabria and the Quailes of Delos.

…I commended Savoy a pretty while for the best place that ever I saw in my life, for abundance of pleasant springs, descending from the mountains, till the last I considered the cause of those springs. For they are not fresh springs, as I conjectured at the first, but onely little torrents of snow water, which distilleth from the toppe of those mountains, when the snow by the heate of the sunne is dissolved into water. Of those torrents I think I saw at the least a thousand betwixt the foote of the ascent of the Mountaine Aiguebelle and Novalaise in Piemont, at the descent of the Mountaine Senis; which places are sixty two miles asunder.”

Bikers and HGV drivers are the staple of Mondane; in La Chambre, a stop-off post for the former, and cyclists, I met four Australians. They were in their 60s, wiry-fit. On three month trips: one couple will cycle the rest of France and catch a boat for Cherbourg, then fly home from England, the others are off to ride the Danube.




La Chambre is where Jane Fonda, Rousseau, Hell’s Angels and Lance Armstrong come together in my mind – there being not many things to do, other than interview bikers, cyclists, and Serbian jailbirds. For, surrounded by the first vision of “proper” mountains with their five weather in an hour peaks, and without wi-fi (“lost”, and anyway it’s not the season, yet…a few more weeks,” says Julie returning from holiday and about to start her summer lodge-work up in “Two Alps.”) I think about us as travellers in search of fitness and health.

“The swiftest and violentest lake that ever I saw, is that which runneth through Savoy, called Lezere, which is much swifter than the Rhodanus at Lyons, that by the poets is called Rapidissimus amnis. For this is so extreme swift, that no fish can possible live in it, by reason that it will be carried away by the most violent fource of the torrent, and dashed against huge stones which are in most places of the lake. Yea there are many thousand stones in that lake much bigger then the stones of Stoneage by the towne of Amesbury in Wilt-shire, or the exceeding great stone upon Hamdon hil in Somerset-shire, so famous for the quarre, which is within a mile of the Parish of Odcombe my dear natalitiall place. ..The cause of the extraordinary swiftness of this lake is, the continuall fluxe of the snow water descending from those mountains, which doth augment and multiplie the lake in a thousand places. There is another thing also to be observed in this lake, the horrible and hideous noyse thereof. For I thinke it keepeth almost as terrible a noyse as the river Cocytus in Hell, which the poets doe extol for the murmuring thereof, as having his name Cocytus from the olde Greeke word…which signifieth to keepe a noyse.




I travelled many miles in Savoy before I could see any snow upon the mountaines, but when I came something near Aiguebelle I saw great abundance almost upon every mountaine.

The Alpes after I had once descended from the mountaine Aiguebelle, towards Chambery inclosed me on every side like two walles till I was past mount Senis, even for the space of sixty miles.”

Expensive spas, fitness hotels and spiritual retreats are flecked around these valleys: they are fly-drive territory, off the “trade route” I and Tom (and Tim) follow. Appearance, not in the Parisian, nor the Lyonaise, sense is important here. The “look” is sportif, leather or lycra. Though my McQueen doesn’t count, the bikers tell me. Tant pis.


The Floods of Modane, 1957

In a spotless marble-floored café on the via Vittore Immanuel in Turin I realize something is missing, standing at the bar. What it is, is smoke. “Impossible in Italy now, illegal,” a Slovene waitress tells me in Susa, just over the border.” And in this new era of smoke-free eating and drinking there is just a little more of a return to the “natural”.

“…The countrey of Savoy is very cold, and much subject to raine, by reason of these cloudes, that are continually hovering above the Alpes, which being the receptacles of raine do there more distill their moisture, then in other countries.

I observed an admirable abundance of Butter-flies in many places of Savoy, by the hundreth part more than ever I saw in any countrey before, whereof many great swarmes, which were (according to my estimation and conjecture) at the least two thousand, lay dead upon the high waies as we travelled.

When I came to Aiguebelle I saw the effect of the common drinking of snow water in Savoy. For there I saw many men and women have exceeding great bunches or swellings in their throates, such as we call in latin strumas, as bigge as the fistes of a man, through the drinking of the snow water, yea some of their bunches are almost as great as an ordinary foote-ball with us in England. These swellings are much to be seene amongst these Savoyards, neyther are all the Pedemontanes free from them.

I rode from Aiguebelle about two of the clocke in the afternoon, and came to a place called la Chambre, which is eight miles beyond it, about nine of the clocke in the evening: this was the ninth day of June being Thursday. Betwixt Aiguebelle and la Chambre, I observed no extraordinary matter, but such as before in Savoy.

…At a towne called St. Jean de Morienne, which is about six miles beyond la Chambre, I saw a goodly schoole and a great multitude of schollers in it. The Parish Church is a pretty thing, having a faire steeple.”

Even my “bikers” are following their own, carbon-heavy, form of mind, body fine-tuning. The “Rocketman” tells me: “It’s about calculating what you can and can’t do, about knowing.” Knowing, that is, at 240 kilometers an hour on curvaceous mountain roads with “Sherlock Holmes is dead” drops.

Exceeding is the abundance of woodden crosses in Savoy, and a marvailous multitude of little Chappels, with the picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and many other religious persons, wherein I did oftentimes see some at their devotion.

“I observed a great multitude of poore woodden-bridges over al Savoy, which were only made of beech trees, that were cut down from the sides of the Alpes. Some few stony bridges I saw also prettily vaulted with an arch or two. These bridges are the necessariest things of all Savoy. For without them they that are on one side of the river, cannot possibly get over to the other side, by reason that the violence of the lake is so great, that it will carry away both man and beast that commeth within it.




I noted one thing about sixe or seven miles before I came to Lasnebourg that is not to be omitted. The waies on the sides of the mountains whereon I rode were so exceeding high, that if my horse had happened to stumble, he had fallen downe with me foure or five times as deepe in some places as Paules tower in London is high. Therefore I very providently preventing the worst dismounted from my horse and lead him in my hand for the space of a mile and halfe at the least, though my company too adventurously rod on, fearing nothing. In Lasnebourg which was the last towne of Savoy that I lodged in, situate under the foot of that exceeding high mountaine Senis, I observed these three things. First the shortnesse of the women’s wastes not naturally but artificially. For all women both of that towne and all other places besides betwixt that and Novalaise a towne of Piemont, at the descent of the mountaine Senys on the other side, some twelve miles off, did gird themselves so high that the distance betwixt their shoulders and their girdle seemed to be but a little handfull. Secondly, the height of their beds: for they were so high that a man could hardly get into his bedde without some kinde of climbing, so that a man needed a ladder to get up as we say here in England. Thirdly, the strangenesse and quaintnesse of the womens head attire. For they wrappe and fold together after a very unseemly fashion, almost as much linen upon their heads as the Turkes doe in those linen caps they weare, which are called Turbents.”

If La Chambre is a staging post, then Lansleburg is a resort proper: even the cows ski. It is betwixt seasons, but the sportswear stores are open and ready. “It’s nice at this time of year, not too many people, says Hugo, who with two mates is cycling, camping and hiking for a few weeks, post college.

As I walk a way up the valley Mont Cenis, in Tom’s footsteps – and the horse-tracks of a thousand Grand Tourists afterwards – I am aware of thinking how good this is for me, healthy, gently tanning, aerobic. There are few cars on these roads, just vans small enough to pass muster (HGVs are banned, must go by the Fréjus, via Mondane), the occasional cyclists pumping for the tops, and schoals of bikers. This is “eden” for bikers. Alois, my Slovene white van man says. He’s almost my age, but seems far older. Communism, even the “soft” Slovene kind under Tito, hasn’t given him the taste for fitness, self-improvement – youth. He seems happy enough. In fact, watching him hop across the meadows in search of Marmot holes, I’d say he’d got the balance pretty good. Tonight he’ll sleep in Verona. The next day: home in Slovenia. He lets me off at Susa. I walk to the piazza, sit down and order a coffee. Opposite me two stick thin Germans in top-to-toe leather. “A good morning,” one says, sliding off his boots. “Time for a water, I think.”

[Sees “Roch Melow”, “…said to be the highest mountaine of all the Alpes, save one those that part Italy and Germany. Some told me it was fourteene miles high: it is covered with a very Microcosme of clowdes. Of this mountaine ther is no more then a little peece of the toppe to be seene, which seemeth a farre off to be three or foure little turrets or steeples in the aire. I heard a prety history concerning this mountaine which was this. A certain fellow that beene a notorious robber and a very enormous liver, being touched with some remorse of conscience for his licentious and ungodly life, got him two religious pictures, one of Christ, and another of the Virgin Mary, which he carryed a long time about with him, vowing to spend the remainder of his life in fasting and prayer, for expiation of his offences to God, upon the highest mountaine of all the Alpes. Whereupon he went up to a certaine mountaine that in his opinion was the highest of all the Alpine hills, carrying those two pictures with him, and resolving there to end his life. After he had spent some little time there, two pictures more of Christ and our Lady appeared to him, whereby he gathered (but by what reason induced I know not) that he had not chosen that mountaine which was the highest at all; so that he wandered a great while about til he found a higher which was this, unto the toppe whereof he went with his pictures, where he spent the rest of his life in contemplation, and never came down more. My author of this tale or figment (for indeede so I account it and no otherwise) is our Maron [guide or conductor] of Turin, and told us this upon the way.

The descent of the mountaine I found more wearisome and tedious than the ascent. For I rode all the way up being assisted with my guide of Lasnebourg, but downe I was constrained to walke a foote for the space of seven miles. For so much it is betwixt the top and the foote of the mountaine: in all which space I continually descended headlong. The waies were exceedingly uneasie. For they were wonderfull hard, all stony and full of windings and intricate turnings, whereof I thinke there were at the least two hundred before I came to the foot. Stil I met many people ascending, and mules laden with carriage, and a great company of dunne kine driven up the hill with collars about their neckes: in those waies I found many stones wherein I plainly perceived the mettall of tinne, whereof I saw a great multitude. One of them I tooke up in my hand, intending to carry it home into England, but one of my company to whim I delivered it to keepe for me, lost it.

We’re all healthy now. Next stop: why? Does it make us better? I should email Jane Fonda. In Lanleburg I watch BBC World. Kirtsy Lang is interviewing Robert Service, an Oxford academic, about the “end” of communism, not as practiced in Sloenia, Russia or Bulgaria, but as an idea. As another mind-body-control biker zooms past it all makes a curious healthy sense.

Val Cenis has 100 resorts.

Crossings

There are a lot like this: when my internet calm returns, I will post the better ones


Alois is 52, he lives in the south of Slovenia, a village that has been Italian and Yugoslav; now it is Slovenia again. “My father is an ‘Italian’, I am a Slovene.”
Last night Alois was in Lyon with his van, last week it was Budapest. He’s driving back to Slovenia the cheap way – not through the Fréjus tunnel but over the Mont Cenis pass.


There is always one

Which is good news for me. “I was in Ipswich last year, I go all over Europe, delivering things, picking things up. After Sanji’s adventures with the police at La Chambre I am reticent.

After he left school Alois worked for ten years in a factory making car components in Estragom, Hungary. “We were close to Slovakia. That’s the thing about Slovenian communism [when it was part of Yugoslavia under Tito] it wasn’t bad. Doctors, teachers, lawyers – they got no pay, but if you were a worker there was money, there weren’t borders. I’ve been a driver now for 25 years, but the first few years I did it, going to hardline communist places, Romania, Bulgaria, that was really bad. Slovenia: no problem.




She is looking for a job as a model

Now this kind of business, taking furniture to collectors, moving families’ possessions, this is the new Europe. Alois takes the Mont Cenis pass often, it’s free – unlike the Fréjus. “And it’s much more beautiful, it is an Eden for the motorbikers.” Some more roar past.

At the lake – artificial, made for energy generation, Alois goes in search of Marmots. “For the women’s coats…” He finds two dens, sees Marmots everywhere.



For everything else: National Geographic

There is no family at home, it’s ok he says. He likes travel. But he hates borders. “Whenever there is a border there is trouble. Look at us, 200,000 dead in a civil war, for what?” He speaks, German, French, Italian a little English, gets by in Hungarian.

“Last night, in Lyon, first time in many years I slept in my van,” he says. “There’s too much tourism these days.”

It happens at borders

On her way to Naples and another world

Sanji is 34, but looks younger. “How come you stayed so calm when the one girl took one hour to buy a ticket?” she says. “It wasn’t a purchase it was an act of therapy.” I say. I had an hour and a bit to make the train – and made it by a “bit”.

“Calm is good,” Sanji says. She’s a muslim Serb, born in Novi Sad, now married to an Italian living in Naples. So why is she at La Chambre railway station taking a train to Mondane high in the French Alps? “I’ve been in jail for four days – it’s just a film.”

Sanji makes mosaics in Naples, has a busy work life. Her husband was away in Japan for a while, so she took a trip to Dusseldorf to see her friend. They drove back in a borrowed car. At La Chambre the French police found 63kg of marawana in the boot. “Eight or nine bags.”

“My friend, she told me in jail, she met a nice boy on the train in Germany…I didn’t know anything; I was asleep when they stopped us, they saw that I was surprised. They wrote it down; it was part of the Avacatto’s defence of me.”

The pair went before the Judge in La Chambre, after four nights in windowless cells; they were there with two Dutch men who’d been caught with a much smaller amount. “They thought the Dutch boys were the leaders, they only had a little to disguise us. We’d never seen them before.”

At the trial Sanji was asked couldn’t she smell the drugs? Her defence: “we both wear powerful perfume, she Chanel, me Dolce & Gabanna. The judge laughed. He said: ‘well at least you will know the smell now.’”

Sanji said her defence lawyer was very good, had seen a lot of this kind of thing over the past 20 years. “It’s my job, and I knew they did not have enough evidence on you.” The same was not true for her friend, who today begins four years in jail at Chambery. “During the trial she told the judge she was so sorry to have hurt me. I will come to see her.”

Sanji wears a necklace from the RAEL movement; in Serbia, Montengro and Macedonia she organises conferences and lectures about the movement’s beliefs. Which are: that millions of years ago extra-terrestrials made an experiment of the earth, used a bomb to create the continents…embedded its sophisticated technology for us to discover. The virgin birth was a Raelian (Joseph) and Mary (Earthling). The immaculate conception was done with lasers.

Sanji’s mother is a Bosnian muslim. She lost five brothers in the Yugoslav wars. “One of my uncles was killed by his own side because he was a pacifist, he wouldn’t fight.” The family moved to Serbia, though they no longer practice the muslim faith. In fact her mother is attracted to the Raelian beliefs, is coming to a conference about it near Naples. “She sees that I am happy, that I am calm, and she says: ‘then it is good.’”

One of Sanji’s other jobs is for a non-profit organisation in Naples, it has raised ten thousand euros for a clinic in Burkino Fasso. “You know how in some African countries they have the operation for women, they remove the clitoris? Well we are establishing the first clinic, using stem-cell techniques, so that the women who have been operated on can grow a new clitoris. We call the project clitorate.”

Raelians believe in freedom and no jealousy, though I am pleased when Sanji’s husband gets through here in Mondane and organizes a flight for her from Turin tonight. There is freedom and freedom.

I’m reminded of stories Olen tells about Serbs who believed The Matrix to be true. Sanji tells me that a woman called Brigitte Bonsoleil is doing much stem cell and cloning research. “You know the first baby that was cloned? “’Eva’? Well in Serbia there are ten cloned babies now, for parents that can’t have children. It is good. The founder of RAEL, he was a Formula One driver, he predicted all this 30 years ago.”

How did she stay calm in the jail cell? “I meditated. My beliefs are anti all drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, because it ruins the DNA. So I meditated. In fact I sleep better in the jail than in the hotel last night. I couldn’t get angry, Rael says it is just a loss of our conscience when we are angry, or get jealous.

“Serbian are good people, but the politics is bad, the sides at each other like cats and dogs. Even now. That is why I found such peace with Rael,” she says. The phone rings: Sanji and her Italian husband speak and SMS in English, the new Language of pan-European Love. “Sweetie, I’ll ask,” she says. The couple met in Slovenia, in the countryside between Celle and Maribor. “When we first slept together I couldn’t sleep at all, I just looked at him. I thought he was an angel.”

Sanji has to go: she wants to get her hair washed, cut and blow-dried before she takes the bus to Turin. “Mama mia, I was so lucky,” she says. “But now I have freedom again. What does money mean if you don’t have that? You should come to my conference, Brigitte Beausoleil will be there: check it out on the internet. You are the archer, Sagittarius, I think.” We exchange ciaos.

Cut and blown she is with a Frenchman when I see her get onto her bus for Italy 90 minutes later. She has the white Cavalli bag, the small suitcase, the mini-back-pack and the necklace from outer-space. And most of all she has her freedom, and her
way of seeing the world.

Meanwhile another world lives on.

Tryptich

More when I recover from the uplifting moment not of crossing the Alps, but finding the internet again...

And now for something a little different

This is what they are frightened of: from Modane, betwixt La Chambre and the Cenis Valley

“Everyday it happens, habitually at four. The rain, the lightning.” It has been true for almost my journey, since Paris definitely. Everyday in the later afternoon: thunder, storms, café terraces packing up at speed. This conversation took place in Chambéry on Sunday; on Monday I moved higher into the mountains.

“I want to go to La Chambre.”
“To sleep? Or something more?”
Cue mass laughter in the ticket office at Chambéry station.

In La Chambre there are only two hotels; one of everything else. It is a transit town with a railway station, a smoke stack factory nearby, and up the hill a high street. Tourist office closed on Mondays. It is not quite the season for the dedicated hikers. In my café, advertising wi-fi but it is “lost today” Julie arrives by scooter from the next village to check her email. She has just returned from Thailand, “holidays”. Tomorrow she travels up to the “Two Alps” to begin her summer job working as a hiking guide. “It’s families, enjoying nature, taking walks, seeing the lakes,” she says. “They are mostly French, once the school holidays have begun. Sometimes strangers, English even.” If it goes well for Julie she’ll stay on for the ski season. “Now that,” she says, “is the rock and roll.”




La Chambre is surrounded by the big mountains. In five hours it and they see at least that number of weather changes, sun, clouds, wind – a pink sunset – and, just about four, the lightning. “It is predictable these days,” Valerie, the hotel manager says. “Every day.”

“Everyday since Paris,” I say. But Paris isn’t a conversation point high in the mountains, just – I suspect – a Babel of Bureaucracy and Tax Inspectors. One thing I’ve already noticed: strangers wear either Leather or Lycra. Thank goodness, then, for the McQueen…

The worst wayes that ever I travelled in all my life in the Sommer were those betwixt Chamberie and Aiguebelle, which were as bad as the worst I ever rode in England in the midst of Winter: insomuch that the wayes of Savoy may be proverbially spoken of as the Owles of Athens, the peares of Calabria and the Quailes of Delos.

“…I commended Savoy a pretty while for the best place that ever I saw in my life, for abundance of pleasant springs, descending from the mountains, till the last I considered the cause of those springs. For they are not fresh springs, as I conjectured at the first, but onely little torrents of snow water, which distilleth from the toppe of those mountains, when the snow by the heate of the sunne is dissolved into water. Of those torrents I think I saw at the least a thousand betwixt the foote of the ascent of the Mountaine Aiguebelle and Novalaise in Piemont, at the descent of the Mountaine Senis; which places are sixty two miles asunder.

The swiftest and violentest lake that ever I saw, is that which runneth through Savoy, called Lezere, which is much swifter than the Rhodanus at Lyons, that by the poets is called Rapidissimus amnis. For this is so extreme swift, that no fish can possible live in it, by reason that it will be carried away by the most violent fource of the torrent, and dashed against huge stones which are in most places of the lake. Yea there are many thousand stones in that lake much bigger then the stones of Stoneage by the towne of Amesbury in Wilt-shire, or the exceeding great stone upon Hamdon hil in Somerset-shire, so famous for the quarre, which is within a mile of the Parish of Odcombe my dear natalitiall place. ..The cause of the extraordinary swiftness of this lake is, the continuall fluxe of the snow water descending from those mountains, which doth augment and multiplie the lake in a thousand places. There is another thing also to be observed in this lake, the horrible and hideous noyse thereof. For I thinke it keepeth almost as terrible a noyse as the river Cocytus in Hell, which the poets doe extol for the murmuring thereof, as having his name Cocytus from the olde Greeke word…which signifieth to keepe a noyse.

The “King”, “JSB” (John Sliding Bike), The “Eagle”, “One Wheel”, “Mr. Mille” and the “Rocketman” make up a biker road trip. At six they are relaxing after another long day: they’re away a week, from the middle of Holland. They drive a selection of big machines: Ducatti, Honda, Aprillia, Suzuki; and they drive them fast.

600 kilometres is an “average” day, the “Eagle” says. When I ask where they’ve stopped in the evenings it takes a long time to remember the names, in an hour and a half nobody remembers the third night’s name. They don’t take the motorways, because “that’s boring,”; they search for good roads – and speed. “We like good corners,” JSB says. “Twistys” adds Rocketman, the only non-Dutchman: he’s English but lived all over the world, crewing on boats in the Med and the Caribbean, living in Antibes, Canada, and now – finally – Holland, where is wife and family are.

What has he learnt about life after such a nomadic time. “You learn who your friends are, the true ones. If I was in deep shit there’s people who I can phone from anywhere who’d help me.”

“You don’t see much ‘culture’ on these trips,” Rocketman says, “it’s about being with the boys – no women allowed. About pushing it to the limits, knowing how fast you can get it to go.” Over their time as bikers the machines have got faster; everything is about knowing it intimately enough to keep control. They’ve ended up here, “because it was time, we were getting tired, and the weather looked as if it was going bad.”

“Weather is so important, you can’t take chances,” The Eagle says.

Chance or not, both hotels have large signs welcoming motorbikes; the bikers’ has a bike stuck to the wall, just to make sure. A poster advertises a biker convention in July. Half my hotel, and most of theirs is full of strangers passing through on motorbikes; mine has four older Australians from Adellaid who are cycling about 40k a day on a three-month tour of Europe. But they, and I, are the exceptions.




“I hate the English abroad, they’ve become twats,” says the English Rocketman. He grew up in the New Forest, bought his first bike, a BSA 125, when he was “nine.”
When he occasionally goes home, “I don’t like what I see. I think it’s about divorce, about families falling apart.”

The Dutch, I venture, are a sociable lot; anywhere in the world they’ll talk. “We’ll talk to anyone, even Germans if they are bikers.”

“We met the Hells Angels on a previous trip to Spain,” says the “King” who has been watching a video of himself riding that day: on the Sony video camera that belongs to “One Wheel” an image of the back of a bike travelling along a “road” plays and plays. “One Wheel” tapes the camera to the gas tank.

“They were fine: Hells Angels have this strange view that “normal” means riding bikes real fast, preferably Harleys, and “odd” means not doing this. There was this guy who wanted to ask them some questions, but he didn’t have a bike. Don’t have a bike, don’t get to talk with the Hells Angels.”

“But they’re bad people, no?”
“You know the answer, we saw them as guys who like bikes. So do we.”

They can go fast, these guys. In English terms the fastest so far on this trip was around 185 miles per hour. There are accidents, sometimes. “Like nasty.” says The King. In a way their ambitions are not unlike Davide in Chambery: control of the mind and body – in this case at over 200 kilometres an hour. “You calculate the risk, without calculating: we calculate, but are no good at maths,” Rocketman says.

Amongst the men is the back and forth banter of a tight-knit group. “We show the videos to friends when we get home but nobody really gets it: the jokes, the things that we get obsessed with. It’s just for us.”



“We bought a helmet yesterday; German bike helmets are the best – not the bikes though. And we’ve been laughing about it ever since. German bikers are good guys though. They’re the most common nationality we see on our trips,” the King says. There’s another story, in discrete loud Dutch, that seems to involve urination, a Belgian, and his wife…

They’ve been doing this for most of this century, it’s a week of release from family life at home. “In two months I could be back here with the caravan, the wife, the kids. We wouldn’t speak to you, we’d say: who the hell is that?” the King says. It’s not cheap: two tanks of fuel a day at fifteen Euros a go, new tires at 700 Euros, “for the Ducatti maintenance, that’s about 50 per cent of any Ducatti’s expense.”

“But they are the cool bikes, no?”
“That’s what all non-bikers think.”
“Keep them in the garage, put them in the living room as art,” The Eagle says.

Then there are the hotels, the beers, the food. “It’s expensive but money isn’t about how much you have, but what you do with it,” the King says. “This is our ‘Second Life, you know: that computer game. Except with us it is real.”

Tomorrow, 20k of highway, then a 17k tunnel. “We put the bikes in first gear and rev as hard as we can. The noise is intense in the tunnels. Like a Jumbo Jet taking off. It’s just part of the fun.”

“We sell the bikes after these trips,” the King says.
“One careful driver, woman – trips to the supermarket only,” says the Rocketman.
“Once a week,” adds JSB.

At dusk a tall thin man in sportswear walks past us with a tiny dog on a lead. “You ask us why we do this,” says the King. “It’s so we don’t become him.” We all turn to look. “Yeah,” says Rocketman, “that’s what we’re all scared of, ending up like that. Like I said, biking is just a long struggle against maturity.”

Race

“…I never saw so many roguish Egyptians together in one place in all my life as in Nevers, where there was a multitude of men, women and children of them, that disguise their faces, a our counterfet western Egyptians in England. For both their haire and their faces looked so black, as if they were raked out of hel, and sent into the world by great Beelzebub, to terrifie and astonish mortall men: their men are very Ruffians & Swashbucklers, having exceeding long black haire curled, and swords or other weapons by their sides. Their women also suffer their haire to hang loosely about their shoulders, whereof some I saw dancing in the streets, and singing lascivious vaine songs; whereby they draw many flocks of foolish citizens about them.

In Nevers, and elsewhere, Tom commits the sin we’d now call racism; it is more accurate, I suspect, given where he eventually travelled, to call this the fear of the “other”. In Lyon over dinner “Elvis”, one of those traveling wheeler-dealer whatever you want, businessmen talked a little about the troubles in St. Dennis, the northern suburb of Paris where I stayed, and where Turkish, African, Tunisian and Moroccan “banlieu” youth has rioted, over the years. “Those places, there’s a lot of trouble there, people are lazy,” he says. I liked my time there: it was a healthy antidote to the judgments of Paris. Elvis hadn’t been there for a while, he’d been in Indonesia, India, Thailand…but it was bad there.

There are so many assumptions we make about race; the elections here brought in a President whose position is – or has been – hard-line about immigration. In Lyon I watch a policeman (with a van of policemen parked outside) ask for papers before buying his kebab. “Sarkozy has a quota system. Numbers. People are going to suffer more now,” John says. At Lyon station I watch two young Tunisians try and buy a ticket without their passports, in the 30 minutes I queued they made little progress, and met several officials.

Somewhere out there is a heavily-trafficked website called “FuckFrance”. It’s American, I think. Political in its way; but not the way we like it: thoughtful, nuanced, balanced. It represents “freedom of speech”; there are plenty of counter-balances, of course, but because views, about race, politics or national identity, are genuinely under threat from the good side of globalization, the economic and social nomadism of so many people, as well as the bad side (the racism, the targeting of specific groups, the fear of “terror”) then perhaps the “centre” breaks. And with this breakage, the balancing toleration that should be a by-product of the digital modern. It hasn’t shaped that way yet: just read the news blogs.

Watching the Champions’ League Final in Abbeville it is obvious that the men at the bar were firstly Pro-Anything-Not-English (that’s to say, Liverpool). Secondly that each time an African (or home-grown player that wasn’t clearly white) touched the ball they shouted: “The Black, The Black.”

A few days ago the Lithuanian Football Association was fined thirty thousand Euros because it its match against France the home crowd waved a flag of Africa painted in the French colours, because to the great black players who have graced the blue shirt over the past 30 years.

Behind my attempt to understand Tom Coryat, and his journey, is a desire to “see” as he did; not what he saw, but “how” he saw. For, in Abbeville, whilst kids are SMS-ing whoever, wherever; whilst in Amiens boys are battling in online worlds with players from Iceland, Nigeria and Peru; whilst Zinedine Zidane, despite the “head-butt” is close to God here in France, it’s still an unsettling sight to see how little we’ve moved towards being “betwixt” when it comes to race.

In La Chambre, high in the Alps, I sit down to lunch. A local with a medicine-ball head, and an “Ethnique: Francaise" logo, says to his wife: “Thank goodness the tourist is white. And this one is all white.”

And there I was thinking I had a healthy tan.