It's a jungle out there!

I am referring not to cycling in France, but rather to the delights of a trip to a French supermarket - of which more later. As reported yesterday today was a 'rest' day - which inevitably seems to end up being more tiring than a day on the road.  The best bit is the night before when you don't have to pack your panniers ready for an early start, then being able to turn over and go back to sleep when, by force of habit, you wake up early. It is very quiet here, at least until mid-morning so we slept late and then had a very leisurely breakfast before getting started on the 'chores'. First up was a trip to the supermarket to top up food supplies and get some cloths for cleaning the bikes. We had a choice of small, medium and large establishments, so chose the small one as it was nearest and we didn't need much.

We cycled down as it was a 3 mile round trip and found it really easy to ride without the loads - good news for the mountains to come at least. Anyway, if this was a small supermarket may I never have to visit a large one! The car park was jammed with a marshal out to stop people coming to blows over spaces. The Mechanic sensibly stayed withe bikes while I ventured into the maelstrom. Think a cross between the first day of the Harrod's sale and Tesco on Christmas Eve when there are rumours of food shortages  It was HIDEOUS!!!!  I queued for as long to weigh 2 bananas, 4 tomatoes and 2 nectarines as I did at the checkout. Things were not improved when the woman in front of me at the fruit and veg (British I'm afraid to say) decided this was a good time to let her small son weigh and price her fruit and veg. I was at screaming point, so much so that I was afraid I had actually called him a moron out loud - honestly how can you not identify a banana from a picture! For most of the items it turned out that he didn't even know what they were in English, never mind French, and couldn't identify the pictures.

At last I got to the front of the queue and all went well with the bananas and nectarines - then came the tomatoes. I hit 'Veg' and nothing came up for toms, so remembering from some pub quiz that toms are actually fruit, I decided to try that - again nothing. I was starting to get a bit flustered as the queue got restive behind me, so I mustered sufficient French to appeal for help. All hell broke loose - none of the French customers could locate tomatoes either (and they nearly all had some) - this led to much voluble discussion at high speed until help was summoned and tomatoes were manually typed in. I skulked off and forgot to buy the batteries - but survived to tell the tale. I simply can't believe how bust it was at 11.30 on Monday morning. We aren't in Kansas any more Toto!

After all this the laundry and bike maintenance seemed like a rest cure and all got done in time for a late lunch.

This afternoon we finally got to go exploring, nearly got queue jumped by a 6 ft plastic alligator and witnessed the amusing sight of hundreds of sun worshippers on the beach having to pack closer and loser together as the tide came in. There are bicycles everywhere in France and I was pleased to see that the road along the seafront had one lane for cars (one way system of course) and a wider lane for bikes to travel in both directions. The traffic is so clogged that people use them to get everywhere - the supermarket even had 2 bike parks.  

So we are now clean, the sun is shining again and we have had our day off - time to get back on the road. Pictures do not include my experience in the supermarket, but other parts of the day off