I took the SNCF TGV (Pronounced Tay-ZzzJay-Vay) bullet train from the Paris airport to Nantes, and connected from there on a local train to St. Nazaire.
I had half a mind to just get off at Nantes and NOT take the connecting train to St. Nazaire. Usually what you can see from the train is the worst part of town- and if that was the worst, I was ready to see what else they had. The free baggage trolley waiting right outside my coach on the platform made me think that the rest of my day would continue to be easy. It was like St. Nazaire was beckoning me.
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| Le TGV in Nantes |
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| The local train to St. Nazaire was empty. I had a cabin to myself |
About 10 minuets out of St. Nazaire the train began to slow. To my horror, I saw a massive cruise ship at port. I braced myself for tourist hell. As the train got closer to the station the behemoth revealed itself as a cruise ship being built. It looked eerie like some kind of plastic surgery nightmare- it’s face (bridge) and fore decks were bare steel with large sections missing. St. Nazaire is far from a beachfront wonderland on the Atlantic ocean. No finished cruise ship would willingly take a boatload of vacationers there. It’s a pretty rough place.
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| Welcome to beautiful St. Nazaire |
Arriving in St. Nazaire was brutal. No more baggage trolleys. No escalators, elevators… just concrete stairs. Worst comes to worst, I figured I could drop my bags with the porters desk and go find a hotel, come back and figure how to assemble the bike.
Lugging the bike in the box up the flight of stairs with the duffel and the panniers was unmanageable. I was already exhausted and still hadn’t made it to the front door of the train station.
“No, we don’t speak English.”
“No, we don’t have a tourism office in the train station.”
“No, we don’t have baggage storage service.”
“No, we don’t have lockers”
“No, we don’t know where you can get a map“
“No, we don’t sell them”
and once and for all, “NO! we don’t know where a bike shop is”
I was in the land of “NO!” but only “No, en Francaise”
Iit’s the kind of town where you can watch homeless salty old dudes beat the crap out of each other in the middle of a public plaza at 3pm. I witnessed this dragging my boxed bike, very heavy duffel, and panniers, at once, exiting the train station looking for options to an increasingly dimming situation.
Welcome to St. Nazaire where vacation dreams come true! Not exactly the French countryside I was desperate to leave Paris for.
So long as the bike was in the box, it was more trouble than it was worth. Hind sight being what it is, I should have assembled it in Paris and rode on the train like everyone else was with fully assembled bikes. Time to build it and ride away instead of lugging it around like dead weight.
The build was actually easier than I expected. I found a great place on the side of the train station that had bike racks I was able to use as a work bench. Okay, occasionally some homeless guy would come by, give me a dirty look and go pee against the wall… apparently I was in their bathroom- but I was mostly upwind.
The last thing to go on was the front tire. And I realized the little assistant dude who boxed my bike in Dubai didn’t remember to pack the quick release front axel! I watched him pack the bike up but didn’t notice this very important piece. It would have been easier to manage being in the box!
Oh I was so close to making this happen, I couldn’t take it. I needed to get away from the swarming homeless train station dudes who were taking an active interest in me(sensing weakness like circling vultures no doubt) and figure out how to manage this new problem of mine
I wheeled the bike to the hotel café next to the station sat down and tried to think of what to do next. It took me 15 minuets to go 300’ because the slightest bump and the front wheel would pop out of the forks… and I was still carrying the panniers too.
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| My workbench |
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| Right out of the box |
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| The finished product, sans quick release |
There was an old man drinking a beer a few tables over… he was the only other person at the café. But he almost looked like someone I once new (now deceased) in Miami.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“NO.” He replied. Great, I thought, prepare yourself for bad French with lots of hand gesturing….
My French came easy. I showed him my axel- or where it should be. He was mortified!
“How is this possible?? You cannot ride like this! Where are you headed? Dijon!?! No! You cannot go like this! It is not possible! I have a big car, I will take you and the bike and everything you have here to a good bike store about 3km away. Lets go right now.”
He had an empty VW van (full of kid seats) about 50 feet from where we were sitting and before I knew it, he had thrown my bags and the bike in the back. Whoosh! and we were at the bike shop in no time.
10 minuets later, I had air in the tires, a new axel and I was ready to go. He was very nice, refused money and left me on my way. It was about 4:30pm at this point and my prospects of leaving St. Nazaire today were looking dim.
Unexpected camping is when you’re too tired to continue but can’t find a hotel because you’re in the middle of nowhere. I have found myself in this position a few times on cross country drives in the Western half of the US. You sleep in the car on a highway on-ramp and hope the cops chase you off before the serial killers who just escaped from the local federal prison find you. And I didn’t want to possibly start my trip with unexpected camping.
So I got a hotel. 50 Euros a night and it’s nice, clean and modern. Since when did 2 star hotels have flat screens? They had a courtyard they locked at night I could lock up the bike in too.
I biked around the city a little. And I fell. Twice. Bad. Both times were because I was “clipped in” to the pedals and couldn’t get out of them when I needed to… I’m not sold on these clippie shoes. Falling over with your feet clipped to the pedals is not an easy or graceful fall.
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| View from a WWII Submarine Shipbuilder with the St. Nazaire bridge in background |
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| Tough looking boat in drydock |
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| Clippie bike shoes |
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| The clips |
After dinner in the hotel, I was asleep by 9:30pm.
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