Back to Eden

If you visit the Eden Project your ticket remains valid for a year enabling you to return as many times as you wish in the following twelve months. Our visit last September was curtailed unexpectedly. I became increasingly unwell, ending up unable to walk more than about 100m without taking a rest. Luckily the place is well endowed with conveniently placed benches. I felt like an octogenarian.

I am much perkier now, slowly getting back to being fully fit, but it's been a slow and at times demoralising process. Some days I am fine, others less energetic and a bit down. The medical profession, despite sending me off for some unpleasantly invasive diagnostic tests, have been unable to identify an underlying cause. I am convinced that I am suffering from some kind of long term post viral problem - perhaps COVID related. The nurse practitioners I have seen agree that it's a likely explanation, but the doctors are very reluctant to confirm this as a diagnosis because there is no definitive test or recognised treatment. In the end it comes down to self care, pushing yourself enough to keep improving, but not so much as to trigger a flare-up and ending up completely fatigued. However, I am much better than I was, work in progress!

We decided to stay at the same campsite as last year near Lanivery, it is quite close to the Eden Project. So far as I am concerned that's the only thing going for it. It's up a classic Cornish high banked single track road, a few hundred yards from the main road. If you are lucky you get a straight run at it, we weren't and met a series of school taxis transporting kids home from the nearby special school. It involved some intricate reversing into farm driveways. I am not that confident manoeuvring the van in tight spaces despite the tens of thousands of miles I have driven it, including some fairly hairy roads in Greece and southern Italy.

So I was in a less than positive state of mind when we arrived. The place itself did nothing to lift my spirits. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with it, indeed it is tended to the point of being manicured like a garden - lovely but feels prissy. The owner fancies himself as a bit of a comedian, constantly wandering about spreading what he takes to be bonhomie. I can't be doing with it. So inevitably the place is full of Mr and Mrs Bucket type caravanners, I just know they are all Tories and they just know we are not. Inevitably the shower block broadcasts Cornwall's commercial talk station, ablutions with the Carpenters, Abba and Coldplay interspersed with idiotic chat. The showers were good though, bordering on the luxurious, but given the choice I'd choose Spartan peace and quiet to spa style luxury serenading ne Karen Carpenter with 'Yesterday has Gone', of course it has, that's what yesterdays do!

However I'm pleased we made the effort to return to the Eden Project, it's a unique, life affirming place. It gives you hope in a world that feels somewhat bleak at times. The place's positvity became obvious even before we reached the entrance gates. It's a few hundred metres between the car parks and the big building housing  ticket booths and a gift shop. Half way down we came across a member of staff attempting to weed a serious infestation of evening nightshade from underneath a steep bank of azaleas. Gill paused to sympathise, observing that the rear of our garden was similarly blighted by the weed which was creeping in from the woods at the back of it. The guy had no particular tip for keeping the invader at bay - just hard work and perseverance. It turned out he was not some highly motivated volunteer with an eco conscience, he was the boss, or at least one of them, part way through our chat he mentioned he was the Eden Project's Director of Horticulture. A challenging and wide ranging job, I would imagine, given that the place has two biomes featuring flora from the Tropics and Mediterranean as well as acres of native planting. What he said about managing visitor expectations was interesting - striking a balance between the re-wilding aspect of the place and its function as a botanical garden. Too many weed incursions and the place looked unkempt and scruff, too pristine and it lost its 'eco' vibe and becomes just another park. 

We had a plan. Visit the Mediterranean biome first then have lunch at the cafe there. Then explore the Tropical biome.

We felt quite at home in the Mediterranean biome, after all for the past decade we've spent a third of our time there, olive trees and garrigue are as familiar as mixed woodland and peat bogs. 

The cafe did manage a Mediterranean vibe, though since the place prided itself on sourcing ingredients locally the salad dressing had a base of Cornish organically grown rape seed. It was delicious and just as 'layered' as something produced with one of the first press extra virgin olive oils that we assiduously cart back with us from Italy and Spain. The future really does lie in localism, flying avocados from Peru makes no sense at all.

Opposite the cafe entrance a section of the Mediterranean garden housed a sculpture exhibition. The figures were wild and Dionysian, a bit scary as befits nature spirits. I liked them.

We headed for the rainforest Biome, it's probably the most spectacular part of the Eden Project. Visiting it is 'what did for me' last year. It's a steep, a snaking 50m climb to the top of the enormous geodesic bubble. 

It feels steeper and higher than it actually is because the interior replicates the different climatic 'layers' of a rainforest. The humidity is stifling by the time you get to the top, the thermometer showed 43°, but felt somewhat hotter. This time I coped ok, I need to keep pushing myself, psychology plays a big part in feeling healthy, if you get into the habit of always staying within your comfort zone then you are never going to improve. 

In particular the tropical flowering shrubs are stunning. My new phone camera  has an improved macro function. An ideal opportunity to test it out. I think it's impressive.

It felt good to return to the Eden Project, it is an inspirational place. I am sure we will return. 

We headed home next day. At a stretch I guess you could drive from Cornwall to Buxton but we decided to break the journey at a canal marina that caters for motorhomes near Droitwich Spa. It was fortuitous that we did because a major accident on the M5 near Taunton closed the motorway for a few hours creating traffic chaos across most of Somerset. We were delayed for about three hours. 

 

The parking area at the marina proved to be lovely, well designed like a French aire de camping car. If there were more places like it we might use the motorhome more in the UK. I would be less likely to go off on a diatribe about the bungaloid culture of many British caravan sites.

It helped that it was a beautiful evening in late June, the view from the back of the site was nothing special, just open fields and a big sky, very English. Though Worcestershire is a long way from Suffolk the photo I took reminded me of a Constable landscape. 

We  wander around southern Europe for months at a time, abroad for more than a third of the year, but I love the English countryside too. Sometimes it's just nice to be home.

 

South and north

Over the past week, since we left Poitou Charente, the weather forecast for northwest France has gone from bad to worse. The western tip of Finisterre does seem to be benefiting slightly from the sunny spell covering southern England so we are going to head for Brittany, but not before spending a night in an aire near the western tip of the Ile de Ré. We want to visit the lighthouse.

I wrote that yesterday. Sadly the rainy weather arrived sooner than forecast. We managed a wet walk to a nearby beach, but balked at getting a thorough soaking cycling to the lighthouse.

As we headed north through the Vendée it became ever gloomier. By the time we reached the Nantes peripherique storm clouds were gathering. The cloud base was so low we could actually see over the hi cumulus as we topped high the arch of the viaduct over the Loire. A couple of kilometres ahead the dark sky crackled with lightning. It seemed we were headed into some horrible weather, then suddenly the storm cell dissipated as quickly as it arrived.

Our arrival in Nantes coincided with the post lunchtime dash back to work. The French penchant for aggressive ill tempered driving notches up at this moment. Tailgating becomes more intimate, not that I would know, I can only see what is in my wing mirrors, and unless I check them every few seconds I have no idea if some invisible Renault Twingo is bombing along a couple of meters behind me. What I can see is the suicidal lane switching and nerve jangling overtaking moves happening in front of us. We passed a momentary miscalculation on the opposite carriageway, two cars crumpled from a rear end shunt, police, ambulances, paramedics surrounding them, traffic backed up for about five kilometres behind the incident. It must happen all the time, French drivers seem to take delight in opportunist risky manoeuvres and still equate driving fast with driving skillfully. It is a recipe for disaster. France is the worst place I have come across to drive in, much worse than Italy apart from around Naples and Palermo.

We found a campsite on the Vendée Brittany border. It was a bit run down, but the persistent rain didn't improve our perception of it. It poured all night. When we woke big puddles surrounded the van.

Things calmed down somewhat by the time we reached Brittany. Our plan - to spend a few days in the south of the region at Raguenez Plage, then explore some of the north coast near Roscoff. We haven't been there for decades. Though our avowed aim is to try to explore unfamiliar places, it is nice to revisit old haunts once in a while, rediscover our former selves perhaps. Though whenever we do it feels we have not changed so very much at all  despite what the mirror tells us every morning.

We ended up at our usual campsite and did all the usual things.

Pedalled along the coast to the Port de Trévignon to visit a great creperie we know there....

Took a stroll along the coast from the campsite because it's simply gorgeous...

Even in familiar places you can see things anew. Brittany was our go-to summer holiday location for years. Before we had kids we explored Brittany as cycle tourists, after les enfants arrived it became a great place for a bucket and spade style family holidays, but always in late July or the first half of August.

What is different on this trip is it's a month earlier. The tussocky grass above the rocky foreshore is covered in wild flowers. Delightful!

By now we were counting down the days to our ferry from Roscoff. We decided to spend the last few days on the north coast, somewhere we had not visited since our cycle touring days in the early eighties.

However, though it's not really very far we decided to break the journey halfway stopping at a pretty riverside Camping Car Park on the banks of the river Faou on the outskirts of the town named after it - Le Faou.

The river is more of an extended estuary - a ria. At low tide acres of glistening mud, then in a matter of minutes the sea rushes in, filling the steep banked estuary. It's curiously mesmerising to watch.

Like most Breton towns Le Faou is built in granite. It can look quite severe, but here the buildings are embellished with fancy looking gables decorated with hanging baskets and window boxes. It gave the place a slightly Alsatian look.

The church is more typically Breton topped by an over elaborate belfry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Breton towns and villages competed to express their religious devotion by building ridiculously ornate belfries. They are all quite ghastly looking. Le Faou's is less twiddly than many.

One of the creperies in the town is reckoned to be one of the best in Brittany. Sadly it was closed so we went to another one nearby. It was pretty good too.

Our visit coincided with a music festival - not traditional Breton music, it seemed to feature local rock and jazz bands. They were just setting up when we headed out to the creperies. We might have stayed to watch after we'd eaten, but by the time we had finished it was raining steadily. 

Locals were being very stalwart listening to the band while sheltering in shop doorways or huddled under gazebos beside the beer tent and food stalls. We weren't up for a soaking and headed back to the van.

Brittany's northern coast has  many campsites; it proved  difficult to decide where to stay - on the far west overlooking Oueshant, next to one of the 'abers' - Brittany's equivalent to the West Country's rias or settle down amidst the chaotic rock formations near Roscoff.

Geology won the day, so here we are camped a couple of kilometres from Brignogan Plages. Thankfully the weather has improved, a bit showery, but good enough to mooch about on our bikes exploring the wild rocky coast. There are some spectacular granite rock formations which pleased Gill immensely.

Equally pleasing are the wild flowers. Early spotted purple orchids which are a rare find in Derbyshire are ten-a-penny here. Scores of them secreted in the rock fissures above the shoreline.

We decided to use the Roscoff to Plymouth crossing. It used to be the case that it always involves an overnight journey. These days the eight o'clock morning sailing from Brittany arrives in Plymouth by mid afternoon, early enough for us to settle into the site we have booked near Lostwithiel so we can revisit the Eden Project.

Roscoff port has certainly developed since last used it over three decades ago. The place has plenty of places to park a motorhome overnight to catch the morning ferry. 

In fact we arrived in the early afternoon so we were able to walk into the town - it's a couple of kilometres but once you get out of the port itself there are pavements the whole way.

Though we have been here before that was decades ago and I barely recognised the place. Despite the tourist tat the town's severe looking granite buildings speak of it's history as a gritty old port with a reputation as being the French end of the lively trade in contraband brandy that united the communities of Cornouaille and Cornwall. 

They are the same people, it's obvious just looking at the place names. A few days ago we stayed at Le Faou, pronounced 'Foy', exactly the same as it's Cornish twin.

So it's Cornwall here we come. I know in the past I have mocked Brittany Ferries ridiculous styling, but their ferries are considerably more comfortable and pleasant than most. Reflecting the metrological inversion of the entire trip - dodging showers in France while England basked in sunshine- we spent a lot of the crossing relaxing on the rear deck next to the helipad. 

Sunny Cornwall here we come!

Not far from the madding crowd

Over the past couple of months the media has carried a clutch of stories featuring enraged locals mounting protests against over-tourism. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Majorca and Venice have all seen residents taking to the streets to say enough is enough. To be fair the protests have been good humoured and not aimed directly at visitors themselves, apart from in Barcelona where a few tourists were squirted by water-pistol toting locals.

Their major concern is the socio-economic impact of tourism rather than simply visitor numbers. Apart from in places like Venice, which has become a theme park rather than a living city, popular destinations tend to be dotted with tourist hotspots rather than completely inundated by visitors. Where we live is a case in point. There are places in the Peak District which are heaving in the summer - Edale, Castleton, Bakewell and Dovedale for example. However even on a sunny weekend in July most of the National Park remains unfrequented, and even in more popular places you can often find peace and quiet a mere ten minute stroll from a packed car park.

So after becoming mildly outraged yesterday by the overcrowded cycle trails and the boorish behaviour of fellow tourists we figured there were probably still some less frenetic places on the island where we could find a bit of peace and quiet. It's easy enough to figure out where these are. Open Google maps, click on the hotel, campsite, hotel taps and voila! You can see where the tourist hotspots are clustered immediately.

On the Ile de Ré the popular spots tend to be strung along the island's southern coast, the most beautiful beaches are here and the landscape is pleasantly wooded. The north of the island is bleaker, a mix of salt marshes and acres of oyster beds.

The oyster industry is centred around the village of Loix and that's where we headed. As we predicted the cycle trails were almost empty and though the day was overcast and drizzly the big sky reflected in the pellucid oyster beds was beautiful, soulful and quietly understated.

Loix itself, though not particularly big was quite confusing, a grid of identical looking streets of single storied whitewashed cottages. Oddly it reminded me of Porto Covo, a fishing village on Portugal's Alentejo coast, another small place that we ended up cycling around trying to find a way out.

It was good to escape the 'madding crowd' for an hour or two. However touristy places bring benefits as well as frustrations. Living in Buxton we are well versed in both. Our house is a few hundred metres from Pavillion Gardens, the town's famous Victorian park and winter gardens. At weekends in summer the town is crowded with day trippers from Manchester and when events happen, tourists from further afield arrive particularly for the celebrated opera, literary and fringe festival in July. The streets around us become packed with parked cars lining both sides of the road. Simply going to the supermarket becomes a tad hazardous.

However, there are positives too, the town is more vibrant than nearby less frequented towns. The street to rear of Buxton's regency crescent has developed in recent years into a bit of a gastronomic hub, so there are upsides as well as frustrations for locals who live in tourist towns.

The same is true here on the Ile de Ré. Courtard en Ré has an excellent produce market, it's probably the tourist footfall that keeps it going.

There are many excellent restaurants on the island too, most offering in huitres and fruit de mer. Shellfish is not our thing. We headed to 'Method' recommended by our daughter Sarah who came across it last year on an app showcasing places that specialise in serving natural wines. She reckoned that even if you are not a natural wine aficionado places that serve them are worth seeking out as often as not they  serve up excellent food using locally sourced ingredients.

If 'Method' is typical then Sarah is certainly onto something. The place resembles a traditional French bistro but reinvented to appeal to millennials' taste. The approach to cooking is French, but Method has ditched the rules around starter, main, desert accompanied with wine and serve instead a choice of small plates which you can order as and when you like and drink whatever takes your fancy. Au revoir 'menu formule', allo 'menu liberté' - much more our thing.

As the board shows there are dishes that are recognisably French combined with ingredients associated with other cultures, particularly Japanese -  fusion Francais, it's not that common.

We opted for ...

homemade White asparagus, willow Ravigote, apple and noisettes.

Flamed mackerel , spinach coulis, beetroot-hibiscus condiment and  Chawan mushi (Japanese salty flan), buckwheat...

Tempura of courgettes from the island and labreh with sesame...

We finished with Chou pastry cream with miso which didn't last long enough to get photographed.

Yum!

So our thoughts about Ile de Ré in general, a bit of tourist trap, but lovely in its own way if you can escape the crowds. Maybe Normoutier would be quieter and more our thing. We toyed with heading there next but decided to head directly to Brittany. It's a special place for us.

Close encounters of the absurd kind

The fact that we both take a keen interest in the weather is not exactly unusual. It's a British predilection, one of those things we tend to chat about, a safe subject like traffic jams, Strictly, soaps, offspring, ailments and the state of the NHS - all inane topics we can share without giving too much of ourselves away.

However, I suspect we are now long past the chit-chat stage concerning the weather. We both have multiple weather apps on our phones and over recent months have become avid followers of the Met office's YouTube channel. 

On Mondays they post a piece called 'the Deep Dive' where they explore meteorological phenomena in depth, report on interesting weather events happening elsewhere in the world and make a determined effort to educate the public about the science behind weather forecasting. It's complicated, geeky and packed full of arcane jargon. In other words - right up our street! The presenters have a name for their avid followers - 'Met Heads'. We both have been Met Heads for years, without realising it.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned from watching the Deep Dive is the extent to which the UK's unsettled weather is controlled by the position of the jetstream, the blast fast moving westerlies high up in the stratosphere. It is these that drive Atlantic lows across the British Isles gifting us our changeable rainy climate. However, not always, sometimes the jetstream loops southwards driving unsettled weather across Western France and Iberia while the UK basks in heat drawn in from the continent. For the tabloids it's a 'Cor Wot a Scorcha' moment as they gleefully report that Manchester is five degrees warmer than Majorca. Something like this seems to be happening right now. We have had some sunny days on France's western coast, but quite a few dull and drizzly ones too, whereas our kids in London are quietly simmering in near tropical heat.

Today however dawned bright and sunny though not especially warm. We headed to a nearby beach. The light was fabulous and the sky deep blue, almost cloudless apart from one small fluffy cumulus afloat above the sea.

Immediately I regretted not bringing trunks and a towel. However, on closer inspection despite looking very inviting very few people had taken the plunge. There were a couple of people on the sea paddle boarding, but only one brave woman actually swimming in it. I concluded that the water was probably much colder than it looked. If you are used to swimming in the Med then a dip in the Atlantic even in summer can feel bone chilling.

I noticed someone had left one of those collapsible buckets you can get for camping on the beach. I wondered if some kid was planning to build an enormous sand castle. Then I noticed a towel and some clothes had been folded next to it. The bucket belonged to the lone swimmer, a somewhat eccentric alternative to a beach bag I thought.

We took a stroll a few hundred metres along the shore then decided to head back for lunch. We were unlocking our bikes by the dunes when beach bucket swimming lady wandered by. She must have overheard us because she exclaimed, "You're English! I love English, I am English, but I have never lived there."

From her accent that seemed to be the case, she spoke English perfectly but with a noticeable continental intonation as if habitually she used a different language. So we were instantly befriended by Marina. We learned soon enough that using a collapsible washing up bucket as a beach bag was the least eccentric thing about her.

"I am a Hollywood baby," she explained. "I was born there, my mother was English but moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer when I was two and I grew up there". She simply assumed we would know that Cagnes-sur-Mer was on the Cote d'Azur.

In the space of twenty minutes or so Marina recounted her life story, but in dribs and drabs interspersed with random opinions about this and that - the French were banal and uninteresting,  English people were more creative and Irish people very funny...

"In my twenties I lived with an Irishman in Colliure, his friends would visit and we would get very drunk and laugh and laugh, but I am very old now, I was born in 1954..."

"I was born in 1954 too," Gill interjected."

"Then we are sisters!" Marina asserted, then turning her attention to me enquired, "And you?"

"1955," I mumbled.

"You are just a baby!" our new best buddy observed, somewhat dismissively.

From what she told us I would seem that Marina was the offspring of Hollywood minor royalty. "When I was a girl I spent most summers in Rome at my father's place. He married '#@*€ √π§{', but they were never happy." We didn't quite catch the Italian name of Marina's stepmother, but quite clearly she assumed we would have heard of her, so she must have been famous, an actress or a model perhaps. 

However, if Marina had been a nepobaby when she was a girl, more recently she clearly had fallen on hard times. After we explained we were staying in a nearby campsite in our motorhome Marina explained she was sleeping in her car. "I used to have a little caravan, but the campsites are too expensive now, you must be very rich to have a motorhome and stay in campsites all the time," she mused.

As the conversation went on the more familiar Marina became, blithely ignoring our polite attempts to extricate ourselves and head back to the van for lunch. How did we end up talking about star signs? Maybe Marina had asked when our birthdays were. Gill, as a Scorpio was pronounced to be passionate and loyal. As for me, Marina seemed to be delighted to learn that I was born in May, "Ah! a Taurean, so earthly and attentive!" She gave me a long look and touched me gently on the chest, "You are both so well matched, you must have a great time in bed..."

There is a thin line between the flirtatious and the creepy, more often the person doing the flirting is blissfully unaware quite how 'creeped out' the recipient is feeling. Perhaps Marina sensed my discomfort and enquired if I minded her touching me. Though before I had a chance to respond she was recounting yet another anecdote, how recently she had been told to leave a public swimming pool "just because I touched the upper arm of the lifeguard..." "We live in sad times," she lamented, 'no longer can we be natural with one another."

Finally, somehow we managed to extricate ourselves from Marina's clutches - it felt as if we had just reenacted the final stanza of the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. We pedalled back to the campsite in stunned silence. Then part way through our cheese and biscottes Gill mused "how much of what Marina said do you think was true?"

An interesting question, but in the end I don't think she was a fantasist, just a little lonely and a somewhat bewildered by mores of the 21st century. It was the detail of what she recounted that convinced me that she telling the truth. 'Cagnes sur Mer' and Colliure are not places that would immediately spring to mind if you just spinning a yarn.

Also, I did push back a little at one point. Marina was recounting why she disliked her name because she had been teased about it as a girl when a 'horrible marina was built next to the town where I lived.' I decided to dig a bit, "I quite like the Marina de Baia des Anges," I ventured, "I think it's very striking. "Well, I suppose the way its outline mirrors the shape of the mountains is striking," she conceded. Would she have been a girl during its construction? When we first visited the Cote d'Azur in 1992 it was newly built - but the controversial project had taken over two decades from being first proposed in the late sixties to  completion in the early nineties. So I guess Marina might have been a girl when the plans were first laid out. Marina was an eccentric undoubtedly, peculiar even, but I don't think she was a fantasist.

In that sense she was quite different to other odd bods we have come across on our travels. More usually we are assailed by individuals who have a much more tenuous  grip on reality. In Castletown Beare, a pony-tailed Dutch guy asserted that the quayside parking lot we were overnighting in exuded positive energy from the layline emanating from a nearby prehistoric stone circle. We encountered an Austrian conspiracy theorist just after lockdown on the Via Verde de la Sierra in Andalusia who attempted to persuade us that the pandemic wasn't real but a plot by the luminati to assert global control. A the Swiss German chap talked at us for three hours solid on the ferry from Brindisi to Corfu - he was heading there to spend a couple hundred thousand euros on a sixty foot trimaran which he had only ever seen on-line, then learn how to sail it, first to Majorca to compete in an ironman competition, voyaging onwards single handed via the Panama canal to Hawaii, to compete in the 2024 ironman event. I am still left pondering if he ever made it out of the boatyard in Gouvia.

So by these standards Marina seems positively grounded, relatively sane. It led me to reflect that eccentricity, like beauty resides in the eye of the beholder. Quite possibly given my complete ineptitude at small talk I probably come over at times as a bit of an odd bod. I cringe slightly thinking of all the times I have inadvertently put the kibosh on chit chat with fellow travellers simply by thinking aloud. For example, maybe I get embroiled in an innocent exchange about the weather, the common assertion that winters are less snowy than used to be...what you are supposed to do is agree, what I do, before I can stop myself, is share my view that it is very difficult to know if our perception of past weather is simply a random collection of odd memories or if we really can remember past winters accurately. Dead cat on the table, people make their excuses and beat a hasty retreat. Oh dear I think - put my my foot in it again.. oh well... I'll be seventy next year, I am probably not going to change, it's probably too late to discover a more agreeable version of me.

'Instagrammable'- the new picturesque?

Today began with an age-related grammatical failure It's part of a more general diminution in my capacity to string a sentence together that I've noticed over recent months. I've never been that good at remembering people's names, now all kinds of things can suddenly draw a blank - names of capital cities, flowers, kitchen utensils, what day it is, where we were this time last week, the name of the American poet who wrote 'A jar in Tennessee', whether analytical cubism predated synthetic cubism or if it was the other way around, what 9x8 is, how to re-order a list in excel alphabetically - all things over the last few days that I have struggled with  where not so long ago I would have managed in a flash. There is no up-side to ageing, but since it is inevitable I guess fretting about it is pointless.

Anyway, right now we are on the Ile de Ré, moments ago I wrote we were 'in the Ile de Ré', but then realised you can no more be in an island than you can be on a town. Maybe brain fog is beginning to spread from things and facts to grammatical conventions and by this time next year my blog posts will read like a Lewis Carroll travelogue written in the style of  'Jabbawocky'.

So, right now we are ON the Ile de Ré. We came here for a couple of days on a previous trip but only I know when (September 2017) because the blog says so (more brain fog). Perhaps I should simply regard Google as my personal external hard drive and not worry becoming forgetful.

I seem to recall writing a rambling post about how the cutesy was taken far more seriously in France than in Britain and consequently the French are much better at than we are,  embracing it without awkwardness or embarrassment. Since then things have moved on so far as being cute is concerned. The Ile de Ré is uber-cute, or perhaps more accurately cringingly picturesque. This should appeal to British tastes as we invented the idea. The whole concept rests on a double take, admiring a view because it's 'pretty as a picture ' while pretending we are appreciating the beauties of nature or indigenous culture

As we pedalled through the 'pretty as a picture' neat and tidy streets of Courade-en-Re, dotted with carefully placed, pastel spray painted bicycles, each with posies of dried flowers beautifying a wicker baskets hooked on their handlebars, it struck me that social media has weaponised the cute. Unsurprisingly the campsite we stayed on duly reinforced the stereotype by featuring the stock image on their web-site.

Whereas the knowingly picturesque has always been the slightly effete province of the self consciously cultured,  the Instagrammable is mainstream, a kind of pictorial Lingua Franca blissfully unaware of received cultural niceties and immune to such old fashioned notions as good taste and authenticity.

In places that are inundated by tourists the ubiquity of social media predominates to such an extent that the actual place becomes partially virtualised, what is there physically pimped-up as click bait. I first noticed this about five years ago in Portugal and Spain when I first came across street installations spelling out the name of  places in giant letters next to some iconic monument or winsome view. Why pay for posters to promote a place when you can get visitors to do it for free via Instagram. Here's one I took earlier...

The Ile de Ré is so popular it doesn't need to resort to such an overt marketing ploy. Instead, like In Talmont where we where a few days ago much of the Ile de Ré Re is soullessly spick and span, cottages gleamingly whitewashed with pastel green window blinds, eaves festooned with hanging baskets, cobbled streets dotted with florid planters. 

Its very pretty and even mid-week, outside of school holidays crowded with tourists. So far as motorhomers go - lots of French retirees in gleaming, newish C class vans, almost as many Germans and a fair few British caravanners. Even on a Tuesday on mid-June, when we turned up at Camping La Tour de Prises there were only a few pitches remaining, all of them awkward to access.

Undoubtedly The Ile de Re is an attractive place, a mix of market gardens, vineyards and oysterbeds ringed by pristine beaches. It's quite densely populated consisting of half a dozen rambling, whitewashed villages. What attracts us particularly is the network of cycle tracks that crisscross the island, over 140kms of them in total. It should be fun, it was the last time we were here seven years ago. This time though at times the experience was quite alarming. The routes between the more popular villages were packed with retirees on ebikes. forget any notions of a relaxing of a gentle, it was dog eat dog out there, like the Milan tangientale on two wheels. If you whack up the power setting to max then you can wind-up most ebikes.

The hazards came in in different shapes and sizes. I guess when you have groups of younger adolescents on bikes - school trips we guessed, you might expect them to do stupid things like attempt wheelies on an ebike, perform skids to raise a dust storm, race towards you three abreast. More unexpectedly our fellow retirees were just as bad. It made what should have have been a quiet, soulful experience somewhat nerve-shredding.

I am not surprised that anti-tourist protests are breaking out all over Europe as residents become frustrated at seeing the place they call home reduced to an instagrammable parody of itself. Many visitors probably sympathise with their sentiments, but not enough to change their behavior. I guess we are no different.