I have gone north to Port de By, and south to Fort Médoc to the south, so it is time to go west. Looking at the map I see the small town of Hourtain, and I can also see there is a lake there, and if I feel like pushing it I could even reach the beach of Hourtain, in the Atlantic. OK, that is my plan for today. But my beach house is so nice that it was easy to linger over breakfast, thinking, that my departure from my gracious hosts was delayed to 9h00.
I have mentioned that I have seen some pretty sights by following Google Maps “best route” as opposed to “fastest route”, which normally follows a highway, so once again I let myself be duped by Google’s AI. Ay, ay, ay. Yes, the algorithm takes you away from the fast streets, but has no brains! So, it talks you through hunting or logging trails that only see human passage whenever a lost tourist happens by. My father use to say “núnca dejes camino real por vereda”, and I wish I had remembered this admonition before I started.
Yes, the forest of Médoc is beautiful, and I biked past enormous expanses of grapes, separated by vast stretches of young forest. Turns out forestry is an important activity here, and some forests are taken when the trees are less that 10 inches in diameter. Why? Ah, …, vineyards, which consume enormous amounts of wood stakes to prop up the grapevines. Taking the trees while they are young also allows the foresters to keep planting new young forests, and the beauty of the land is thus preserved.
But then again, geology comes and plays a dirty trick on the unsuspecting bicycling tourists, because as you get down of the old uplifted alluvium you get down into older beach sands. These sands are no good for vineyards, but they are great for corn and sorghum, and terrible for the cross-country biker, who now has to plow through loose sand (until he gets tipped out of his bike and has to walk, cussing the day he was born. Now, so far I have been using the many trails used by grape growers, which are open to all because no one was to interfere with the grapes. This is not the case of the cereals, which are a delicacy for the sangliers and the cerfs (wild pigs and deer), so the %$#@ corn growers have enclosed their fields in electrified wire fences, cutting not the bicyclist his God-given right to go wherever he pleases. After being zapped a couple of times I reflected on my vast knowledge of electricity and bypassed the current long enough to jump the fence (not an easy task with a loaded bike). But of course once you are inside the fenced enclosure you have to get out, so I had to do it again, all the time fearing a load of buckshot from an angry farmer. To add to my torture, twice I had to go under the deluge of pivots, because of course corn growers are not under the strict law that forbids grapevines to be irrigated.
All these shenanigans took time, of course, and I kept looking to my watch knowing that I had to catch the 15h06 train from Pauillac to Bergerac. Noon, and I have not even reached Hourtain. I had another half hour of biking ahead of me, on flat ground, but it was one of those ribbons of dirt road, straight as an arrow and flat, that extends to the horizon. I was moving my trusty Moulin á Sang as fast as my tired legs could, but the road extended to infinity and with no end. Finally, at 12h30 I reached Hourtain. “And how was your visit to Hourtain?”, you might ask. “Was the lake pretty? Was the Atlantic beach nice”. I would have to answer “I don’t know”, because no sooner had I reached the outskirts of town I had to shoot past it and start biking feverishly back to Pauillac (22 km), along the very straight highway that joined the two cities, to make it back at the nick of time to jump on the train!
Overall it was a great three days visiting the Médoc, but I have to engrave on my mind the wise words of my father “núnca dejes camino real por vereda”.
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