Cloake - One More Croissant for the Road

Mudlark

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First published by Mudlark 2019

FIRST EDITION

Text Felicity Cloake 2019

Illustrations and cover illustration Sara Mulvanny/Agency Rush 2019

Cover layout design HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Felicity Cloake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008304935

Ebook Edition: June 2019 ISBN: 9780008304942

Version: 2019-04-30

For my sausage-scoffing, plonk-sinking peloton with whom the glass was always half full

A green bike drunkenly weaves its way up a cratered hill in the late-morning sun, the gears grinding painfully, like a pepper mill running on empty. The rider crouched on top in a rictus of pain has slowed to a gravity-defying crawl when, from somewhere nearby, the whine of a nasal engine breaks through her ragged breathing.

A battered van appears behind her, the customary cigarette dangling from its drivers-side window, and shakily she rears out of the saddle, grubby legs pumping in a surprising turn of speed. As he passes, she casually reaches down for some water, smiling broadly in the manner of someone having almost too much fun. No sweat, she says jauntily to his retreating exhaust pipe. Pas de problme,monsieur.

The van disappears round the next hairpin. Abruptly our heroine dismounts, allowing the heavily laden bike to crash into a pile of brambles, describing an arc of chain grease across her bruised shins en route. Grumpily slapping away a thirsty horsefly, she reaches into the handlebar bag and pulls out a half-eaten croissant.

After peeling off a baby slug and flicking it expertly onto her own shoes, she sinks her teeth into the desiccated pastry, and squints at the map on her phone. Only another 40km to go before lunch.

In the distance, theres a rumble of thunder.

Its not like I wasnt warned. Id witnessed the danger of turning a hobby into a job first-hand at a magazine publisher Id once worked for, who regularly offered a bonus for anyone willing to give up their weekend to help with photoshoots for some of their more niche titles. No one ever did it twice.

As the new IT manager wearily switched my computer off and then on again one Monday morning, I asked him how his first gig for Mega Boobs had gone hed been so excited about it on Friday. He shook his head: Believe me, Felicity, he said in a small, sad voice, you really can have too much of a good thing.

Poor Hamid. Almost a decade later, I can still see the betrayal in his eyes but those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and, hard as I tried, I just couldnt shake the urge to eat my way around France. (Ill be honest, I didnt try that hard.)

The absurd notion of doing it on two wheels came later, in the summer of 2017, when I rode from the Channel coast to the Mediterranean with a friend whod recently quit her job in London to move to Provence. In the interests of wringing maximum drama from her departure, Caroline decided to make the journey by bike. I went along on a whim and realised, somewhere around La Rochelle, that Id never had so much fun in my life.

France, I found, is a place built for cycling and, happily, for eating, too a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. Here, it seemed to me as I rode through shady forests and sun-baked vineyards, you could go from beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polder to Pyrenees, and taste the difference every time you stopped for lunch.

Three weeks away from a computer gives you a lot of time to think, and as our little peloton pedalled south, a book began to take shape, a Grand Tour of French gastronomy, visiting dishes in their terroir, picking up tips, putting on wisdom as well as weight. The idea marinated for the next 697km, becoming increasingly less ludicrous with every pichet of local wine we swallowed.

When I got home, I told everyone I was going to do a Tour de France.

The indefinite article is important. Im no Geraint Thomas, but Ive always ridden a bike, pootling round town on a beautiful but big-boned Pashley, often with a similarly built dog ensconced in its capacious wicker basket. To my own surprise, in recent years Ive fallen in love with cycling for its own sake too, mostly, but certainly not only, because of the amount you can get away with eating under the flimsy pretext of refuelling.

It all started when I joined a group of friends on a trip from Calais to Brussels in 2014, simply because Id just been dumped, and it seemed like a good time to do stupid things. Until then, with the exception of the odd flash of elation while careering down Highgate Hill after a glass of wine, I had never really realised that cycling could be fun. Efficient, yes; cheap, certainly! but enjoyable? In London, a city of mad bus drivers and careless cabbies, where every second pedestrian is FaceTiming their mum in Melbourne rather than looking at the road, and the Boris Bikers are the worst of the lot? No.

That trip, however, was quite different. No one had told me of the quiet satisfaction of pumping your way up a hill, weaving over the saddle like Lance Armstrong on a blood bender, knowing you have just enough left in the tank to make it over the brow, or the eye-watering thrill of the open road on a fast bike with the wind behind you. No one mentioned how sometimes it feels like the bike is part of you, an extension of your limbs, and sometimes, when the sodding chain pops off for the fourth time it feels like youre locked in noble mortal combat. And most of all, no one told me about the giddy camaraderie of the peloton even when your only goal is getting somewhere in time for lunch.

From the frankly dreadful fry-up on the ferry, feeling like bold adventurers among the dull hordes of motorists, to the commemorative cream cakes we ate on the steps of a bakery after our first, modest ascent (who knew they had hills in Flanders?), it was a joy from start to greedy finish, and not just because of the ready supply of hot crispy frites.

Two-wheeled travel offered other pleasures, too. Coming up close and personal with big-eyed cows, and stopping to gaze at hot-air balloons as they drifted across the vast Belgian skies. Rounding a corner to find an immaculately tended Great War graveyard, the endless rows of neat white gravestones causing us to fall silent for the next few kilometres and feel glad to discover, mooching around a market the next morning, that life in Ypres hadnt stopped in 1918. Scoffing cider and cake in an orchard outside Bruges, and making friends with an enormous slavering Bernese mountain dog as the owner lectured us on the folly of the British attitude to Europe (yes, even in 2014, that pot was already coming to the boil). Racing each other through the flat, gravelled trails of the Ardennes forest, and wandering, slightly bow-legged, through a misty Ghent at dusk, high on life after getting my tyres trapped in some tram tracks. Posing for photos by the sign to Asse, pointing saucily at our padded bottoms like Benny Hills backing band, as a couple of bemused locals clicked the shutter. And falling asleep in full gear on the Eurostar home with a tiny bottle of wine and a lingering sadness that it was over and suddenly, I was a Cyclist.