George's Grand Tour by Caroline Vermalle

especially in the absence of their wives, and piled their plates high with bread andcheese – which admittedly looked a little plastic, but would do the job fine.
    Once they had devoured their breakfast, Charles said:
    â€˜You know, I thought for a moment there we weren’t going to do it, George. But here we are: stage one of the Tour de France. And with a stinking hangover to boot! I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming.’
    â€˜Maybe it would be a good idea to wait until after lunch before we get back on the road,’ George suggested tentatively.
    â€˜Out of the question! I’ve been waiting until after lunch for forty years to do this bloody Tour. Come on, let’s go!’
    Â 
    The first morning of the Tour was chilly but stunning. The sun was shining over Brittany, and if the photographs in Charles’s guidebooks were anything to go by, the landscape promised to be wild and full of mystery.
    George and Charles allowed themselves a few detours, to see the countryside and give them some stories to tell in the postcards.
    The rhythm of the epic journey had been set: it was to be a stroll, rather than a sprint. So they spent the first day discovering the lovely Plougastel peninsula, with its grey stone chapels, impressive calvary and L’Auberlac’h, the tiny shellfish port lined with little blue boats, which was so charming that George felt a surge of poetic inspiration. It was perhaps a little early for the evening text, given that they hadn’t even eaten lunch yet, but there was nothing wrong with reassuring Adèle in the morning as well. Just in case she had had a sudden worry overnight. George got out his mobile and wrote:
    We r in L’Auberlac’h, Fnstr, nice port w blu boats.
    (We are in L’Auberlac’h, Finistère, nice port with blue boats.)
    He tried to think of a shorthand for ‘boats’ but didn’t want to confuse Adèle, so he left it as it was. The response came almost immediately.
    OK, hv fun.
    (OK, have fun.)
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    George really did find the little port rather charming.
    They did not talk much about the Tour during this stage. George tried to start a game where the aim was to name the years in which Breton cyclists had stood out from the pack. A good half-hour had gone by before George realised that he was winning by miles and that Charles’s only contribution was the occasional ‘Ah’, ‘Ah yes, you’re right.’ George, on the other hand, surpassed himself: he had remembered Jean-Marie Goasmat, known as ‘The Elf’; Alfred Le Bars and his journey from Morlaix to Paris; the ‘Bulldog of Morbihan’, Le Guilly; Malléjac, the factory worker from Brest who took the yellow jersey in ’53; George Gilles, of course (the ‘Breton Van Steenbergen’); ‘La Pipe’ and his Mercier bike; the Groussard brothers; ‘Jo Talbot’; Ronan Pensec with his mane of hair (with a name like his, he could only be from around these parts), and so on and so forth. George reproached Charles for his lack of enthusiasm, but he replied that he wasconcentrating on the road, and couldn’t do two things at once. So that was the end of that.
    The countryside they were driving through was magnificent. The lanes wound through a sea of green, passing grey chapels and little fishing villages tucked away in deserted bays, and every so often at a bend in the narrow, bracken-lined roads, they caught breathtaking views over the Bay of Brest. Signs along the way reminded them that they were crossing Armorica Regional Park, and pointed to rows of standing stones. Armorica, and the menhirs … This brought back memories for George, who had read the Asterix stories to Adèle when she was a little girl.
    When the road took them through thick forest, they had the strange feeling of being caught somewhere between day and night. And that if they ventured to look further beyond the trees, they might