One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
else’s suffering instead of my own. I’d planned to have a symbolic full English, but in the end, thinking of what’s to come, I wimp out and go for avocado on toast with a feral-tasting kombucha on the side as a final taste of Islington.
Back home, while Hen changes Gabriel on the sitting-room floor (there’s about as much dignity in being a baby as a long-distance cyclist, it seems), I change my own clothes from those appropriate for breakfast with a friend to those needed to ride a Grand Tour – or at least the 4.73km I’ll be covering on the way to Waterloo. To their credit, neither of them laugh when I emerge.
Sweetly, Hen obligingly takes several photos of me standing proudly with my unwieldy steed outside the house as passers-by gawp, trying her hardest to find a good angle for a food writer clad entirely in Lycra, and then I can delay no longer – it’s time to leave. Eddy and I wobble unsteadily out of the gate and down the kerb, I manage a half-wave and smile for the camera, and ride straight into the back of a stationary double-decker bus – thankfully at very low speed, denting nothing but what little is left of my pride.
After peeling myself off an advert for an evangelical concert in Leytonstone, I discover, within two turns of the pedals, that my shiny new yellow panniers are on wrong. As I said, I didn’t have much time to prepare, what with asking the dog if he was going to miss me 63 times and spending 13 minutes staring vacantly at socks in the wee small hours. Luggage situation sorted and finally over-taking Hen and the pram, I race across town – a familiar journey fraught with new significance. I become obsessed by the idea that I’m going to have an accident of some sort before I even leave London (it’s not beyond the realms of possibility dressed like this; at least two vans make an attempt on my life on the Farringdon Road), so it’s with some relief that I finally unclip my feet in SE1 and click-click my way into the scrum within to pick up the train tickets.
Here I encounter a new problem. I haven’t had the chance or indeed inclination to ride Eddy fully laden before, and the vastly uneven distribution of weight means I’m destined to spend the next five weeks battling his desperate desire to plunge to the floor at every given opportunity. Waterloo station on a Friday afternoon is not, I discover, the ideal location to kick off this particular fight.
Tickets safely stuck in my back pouch, I locate Matt, a university friend and a veteran of that fateful first Brussels trip. He’s recently been working so hard doing something mysterious for the Civil Service that he hasn’t had much of a chance to get on a bike full stop, though I have in my possession a text claiming he’s been to a spinning class that ‘nearly killed me’. In the circumstances, it’s kind of him to offer to accompany me on the Grande Départ, and cheering to find someone who looks more nervous than me. I perk up immediately.
We’d both talked the talk about bringing a proper British picnic for the train, but clearly this hasn’t happened thanks to a mutual lack of organisation, so, once the bikes are installed by the inevitable foul-smelling lavatory, and we’ve found seats a safe distance away, we make do with wistful chat about Fortnum’s Scotch eggs and how to make a perfect cheese and pickle sandwich instead (mature Cheddar, sliced rather than grated, Branston, no salad). Once I’ve exhausted him on chutneys, Matt is keen to know my plans and I’m equally keen to divert attention away from the glaring lack of them, so the journey proves a polite clash of wills, broken only by the first sight of the sea.
Pushing through the Bank Holiday crowds at Portsmouth Harbour, we climb gingerly onto our bikes for the last leg on home soil, pedalling past the defeated-looking Victory Shopping Centre on a classic British cycle lane that terminates abruptly in the middle of a junction. How I’ll miss these soon, I think nostalgically as an ancient Toyota Yaris lurches across my path without indicating.
I soon get my revenge as we sail past it at the ferry terminal, and straight into the usual lines of idling cars, the occupants sitting on the tarmac in their folding chairs, gawping at each new arrival like paparazzi at the world’s worst film premiere. We attract particular attention; I’d like to think it’s because we look so dashing, but they might well just be rubbernecking at my Lycra (Matt, meanwhile, is dressed like a normal person).
Having breezed through the ticket gates with the kind of cheer that a pair of rogue cyclists in a queue of cars often seem to be met with, my heart sinks as we approach the customs post. I have never managed to make it past one of these on two wheels without being pulled in for checking, less (I think) because of my shifty demeanour and more because it’s considerably quicker and easier to search a pushbike than a four-by-four with an Alsatian in the back. As the finger of suspicion inevitably beckons us over, I remember the trusty salami slicer stashed somewhere behind me – though it’s a modest blade of the sort you’ll find in the window of newsagents all over France, often along with child-sized versions labelled ‘my first knife’, I have a nasty feeling these chaps won’t appreciate how essential it is to a decent picnic.
‘I’ll take the gentleman’s right pannier, and your left one,’ the officer says, once we’ve finally managed to prop the ungainly bikes upright against their corrugated lair. I frantically try to remember which pannier contains the offending item, but they both look identical until I hoist the left one onto the conveyor belt for scanning and hear the clink of tent poles within. Of course it’s in this one – I try to look nonchalant, but it’s with a sinking sense of inevitability that I obediently pull out the catering bag containing Marmite, Tabasco and my lovely Opinel for inspection.
The man in charge goes from bored to outraged in under 10 seconds, even as I point out – quite calmly, I think – that it’s a steak knife. ‘There’s no way that’s for cutting meat,’ he counters, staring at the tiny blade as if examining it for incriminating marks. Before I can testily reply that in that case it’s probably quite safe, I’m saved from myself by Matt, a man never known to lose his temper, who gently points out the name of an Alpine restaurant carved onto the wooden handle. The guard, perhaps a vegetarian, is unimpressed (though, as I decide not to point out, it’s in the Michelin Guide and everything). Just as my bottom lip begins to tremble embarrassingly, he calls his supervisor. ‘Oi, mate, over here a second.’
The boss appraises the situation with a cursory glance.
‘Look behind you,’ he tells me. ‘What’s in there?’
I turn to see a Perspex box a little over half full of vicious-looking flick knives and something that appears to be a large cutlass.
‘Offensive weapons?’ I suggest tentatively.
‘THEY’RE THE SAME,’ he says firmly. (They’re totally not.)
It seems because my little knife has a locking function (useful with a crag of Alpine cheese, or a well-matured saucisson), it’s illegal under UK law – but possibly because I’m at serious risk of Making a Scene, and seem unlikely to stab anyone but customs officials, I’m eventually allowed to keep it on the strict basis that I never attempt to travel with it again. As the homeward leg seems laughably far off, I make the promise in good faith and we’re allowed to pedal off with picnic kit intact. Matt swears blind he hears one of them mutter that it was more trouble than it was worth to fill in the confiscation paperwork, but I prefer to believe that I just don’t look like the kind of girl to go on the rampage with a steak knife. (In Paris, five weeks later, this same knife is waved through by security guards at the Musée d’Orsay, who presumably realise any civilised person likes picnics too much to want to slash Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.)
After this drama, I accept the official prohibition on cycling onto the ferry itself without a murmur, so my final, anticlimactic contact with British soil comes while battling to keep Eddy upright as I wheel him onto the ramp, his generous rear end trying desperately to remain in Hampshire as I steer him onwards to adventure. Lashed to a large pipe on the back of the ship, perfectly positioned to catch the salty swell over the stern, I quietly forget Condor’s advice about never letting him get wet in favour of skipping up the stairs to find the restaurant.
In the absence of any pork pies, I’ve been distracting Matt with titbits about Brittany Ferries catering, lovingly detailing the glorious buffet