I love roaming the night. Always have. As a teenager, I would often quietly go for a nightly walk in the neighborhood when everyone else was asleep.
I’d listen to music on my Walkman, or just to the sounds coming out of dark corners, overgrown gardens and from cars passing by on the main street. But this was in a place I knew well, were the most I could expect to encounter probably were straying cats and occasionally their prey. It was a place where I knew my way, blindly, sleepwalking.
Now, on the TPR, I didn’t know the route, except maybe from a bit of time spent on Google StreetView and of course countless hours over satellite pictures and terrain maps. But that’s not really “knowing” anything.
Riding a fully packed bike, in the dark, alone and after already most of a day in the saddle is different from a stroll around your block. It means to be alert and with heightened senses, because you rather feel or hear the slippery gravel, precariously navigating your journey over chip-sealed, narrow roads, tightly winding through canyons, small villages and suddenly turning sharp corners over old stone bridges — mostly without road markings or crash barriers.
In moments of peace, either because the road decides to go straight and rather flat (or at least with less steep of a gradient) for a while — or because I decide to stop and put on some warmer clothes — it’s then that the magic of the night gets to me. It’s the owl hooting, while I look down from close to the Col de Palomère over the countless lights in the valleys below, imagining the Mediterranean beneath the cloud cover on the horizon. It’s the fox crossing in safe distance but still faintly illuminated by my combination of headlamps. It’s also the dog, on the opposite roadside, happily ignoring me, casually striding towards the huddle of houses I just left behind.
But still, riding well into the late night, like every night so far during the TPR, is taxing on the mind, it’s stress of a different kind, and yet I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
When I arrived at the spa town of Amélie-les-Bains, it was likely the one spot I knew best, even if only “virtually”. I’d singled it out as perfect for the last night before making it to CP3 and then back into the Pyrenees. I had explored the maze of one way streets on the maps and identified the central Avenue de Vallespir as a good area to look for a place to stay.
But cycling through the Avenue, every single hotel, restaurant and bar appeared closed already. In the brightly lit Pizzeria they were cleaning the kitchen, and I only saw one or two people out on some side streets. Until I got to the “Grand Café de Paris”.
In the spacious, glittering Brasserie, an employee was scrubbing the floor while “Le Patron” was doing the books. They let me in through a side entrance, after I knocked on the closed glass doors. I wasn’t aware that this was the night of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of Judaism, the Day of Atonement, or “the big pardon” as the owner of the place put it.
Monsieur “Jean” Glazer and his staff of the Grand Café not only let me stay, he allowed me to take my bike with me up to my room, number 27, on the second floor (narrow staircase, mind you!), and even offered to make me a sandwich this late at night. When I sat down in the otherwise empty Brasserie, with just Jean and his staff, to enjoy that sandwich, I was treated to a full glass of red wine, regional and with a rich and very pleasant taste. And just before leaving her shift, the cook Christine suggested I try the Tiramisú she’d prepared herself.
Our conversation continued well towards midnight, it span decades and we spoke of Antisemitism (its been everywhere for ages, yet we should not judge the present by the past), friendships, and of how language and culture overcome boundaries of mind and religion.
This friendly welcome was the most unexpected.
I fell asleep on my bed in room 27, fully dressed, lights on, in the middle of unpacking.
This morning feels great.
