I am up early and start the day with coffee and pasta. I haven't paid the camping fee so I do the honest thing and visit the campsite office though it doesn't open until 10am. There is someone in so I enter and offer to pay but am told the office is closed; how very French. I say I am leaving the campsite now and suddenly the office is open and able to take my 8.35 euros for the pitch. I feel noble for making the effort to pay and quite pleased that my French came to me quickly; let's ignore my verb endings and pronunciation for now.
It is misty so lights go on the bike though I only brought them for the black tunnels later on. The mist quickly burns off and I am warmed by the sun just in time for a stop at a typical Breton village with a small cluster of shops around the imposing church. I say Breton though I am in Le Pertre just before the border with Mayenne the next of the 19 French departments I'll pass through. If Mayenne doesn't mean anything then I am heading to the Pays de la Loire and tomorrow I will be on the Loire between Nantes and Angers.
I can't resist loading the bike up with food but this does include bananas. My strategy is plenty of camp cooking to use up some of the three canisters of gas I brought before I get fed up with pasta. Due to (a lack of) connection compatibility it is hard to find gas in France to fit stoves from the UK. I am frequently stopped by people and today it was an ex professional cyclist who wanted to tell me that he was, well, an ex professional cyclist. As he was limping to the local health centre I resolve to maintain my amateur status. I didn't have much of a response for this ex cyclist and will no doubt spend the rest of the day coming up with ideas about what I should have said. Resisting the temptation to linger outside the medical centre with my autograph book I head off. I am not usually given to glance at men's legs but the cyclist did have the build of a climber; more stringy and lithe than your Chris Hoy types. Yes, more like Marco Pantani who we could talk about later if time and energy allow.
The 9 euro campsite at Craon is excellent and typical of France's municipal campsites. I have noticed evidence of horse racing and this is indeed an area where they take horses seriously and there are plenty of signs to the local hippodrome (horse racing track). They also do harness racing which you might know as sulky racing or trotting where a horse pulls a small two wheeled chariot; if you are picturing Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur in the 1959 classic then don't.
It is the end of day 3, I am lounging in the shade, life is good and I am full of hope for the rest of the 30-day tour. I don't like definitions as they are restrictive and only provide the narrowest glimpse into our usage of words. When we resort to definitions in our day to day conversations it usually signals that we haven't been clear enough in our speech or in making our argument, or that we are re-defining the world of words to fit our own poorly constructed argument. That said, if we are to talk about hope in a meaningful way, looking at definitions could give us a place to start. As a noun, hope is that feeling of expectation someone has. That desire, expectation or wish that sits inside us even if we know the outcome we desire is unachievable. We hold on to a hope for world peace and an end to global hunger. As well as a feeling it can be a thing, after all, my only hope of reaching Nice is that my training was sufficient. As a verb we use it to signify that we want something to happen or that we intend to do something if it is achievable. We make use of hope in standard phrases such as the common 'hoping for the best' or 'hoping against hope'. I wont dissect this last phrase though you could take it away as homework and I will conclude by hoping against hope that I don't puncture before I get to Nice.
So there we have it. Hope as a feeling, a thing, a want or an intention. Going back to Pandora's box which contained death, disease and other evils we can ask which of these meanings of hope was in the box. Though it could be said you can only place a physical thing in a box I am going to allow one, more than one, or all of the above as Pandora did live in the time of Greek Mythology ruled by Zeus and his thunderbolts.
