While we were investigating La Tranche-sur-Mer yesterday, Carol found a post card depicting a large cargo vessel parked on the beach at Les Sables d’Olonne, embarrassingly close to the promenade. It had apparently been driven ashore during a bad storm, we thought in early May. Largely in the hope that it would still be stranded, but also because we wanted to see Les Sables anyway, we loaded the bikes onto the car so that we could park outside the town and cycle in, and set off.

Managing with difficulty to avoid car parks with height restriction barriers that would have creamed our bikes, we got parked, picked up the cycle track and pedalled into Les Sables. Serious disappointment – no stranded large cargo vessel. What you-know-who had read as "May" had, in fact, been "March" and the recovery operation had been completed. Mon Dieu! We can’t have a large cargo vessel taking up valuable sun-worshipping beach space now, can we?

Undaunted, we poodled around Les Sables looking at the various remaining sites, none of which were as interesting as a beached large cargo vessel. Then it was back to the car, bikes back on the roof, and off to search for the Les Sables McDonalds. Not only did we find it, complete with McWiFi, but, since it was getting well into lunch time, I broke the habit of a lifetime and bought McDonalds version of food, a "Chicken Mythic" with Yankee McSauce, as well as the usual two espressos and ice cream (sundae de la saison) for you-know-who. I won’t bother again; the "Chicken Mythic" was predictably McTasteless. I won’t try again.

My late afternoon/early evening was spent on a jay hunt. We had a local jay which seemed to be doing a relatively predictable round of the campsite. Part of its routine was to look for insects on a wood pile and fence opposite our pitch. I bolted on the long lens and tried to wait patiently. (Patiently, for me, means not fidgeting more than once per minute. This is why I could never be a fisherman.) My version of patience paid off in the end and the jay, relatively undaunted by my approach, posed for a photo shoot. The jay wasn’t a pristine example, having a few ruffled feathers, but the resulting bird filling the viewfinder constituted something of a victory.

Our plan, such as it was, was to pop in to see the town of Les Sables-d’Olonne, today. The sky above Billy was bright blue (my favourite colour) so we set off. Once we got beyond all the trees of our campsite and onto the roads into the exceedingly flat countryside, it became clear that fairly thick cloud cover existed almost everywhere but where we were. Our clear patch extended south towards La Rochelle; Les Sables-d’Olonne lies a little way north of us. Having found some sun we were not anxious to drive deliberately out of it so we changed tack to head south and check out La Tranche-sur-Mer instead.

La Tranche-sur-Mer turned out to be a typical French seaside resort town. We parked a little way out ‘cos I hate paying to park and walked in. We were really on the look out for some wi-fi ‘cos the blog postings are building up into a something of a backlog. One bar/crêperie claimed to have it but it didn’t open until midday. In the end, two extra trips back to the car to collect the laptop proved less appealing than a wi-fi-equipped crêperie so, rather than wait a little while, we skipped it and went on a necessary shopping trip instead.

After lunch, the sky had cleared up nicely and we had a lot more of that wonderful blue. So, we hopped on the ol’ bicycles again to try some more of the pistes cyclables (cycle tracks) and to investigate an interesting-looking estuary area called Pointe du Payré about 10 miles west of us. It looked as though it might be a good place for wildlife. (Aside: it strikes me that there is something decidedly perverse about an area that looks ironing-board flat – a mole hill would constitute a mountain around here – but that has the hilliest cycle tracks we’ve ever encountered.)

On the way we stopped to watch more people lying on a beach, yawned then continued. Another brief diversion up a side track found and impressive old abbey … which was "closed for work until 200-"! (Clearly somebody was having trouble with their project plan.)  The headwind made some of the journey there a tad more difficult but we eventually reached our goal. A wooded area at the end of the road looked promising so we headed through it to … yet another beach with more people sunning themselves. We’ve seen black kites and the like cruising over some of the fields on the landward side of the main roads where there is some marsh habitat but this area’s focus is quite clearly sun-worshipping on the beach.

Cycling to nothing but beaches is good exercise though.

It was finally time to get on the road again. The weather still isn’t very settled further south so you-know-who convinced us that we should explore the west coast some more. Carol had found a peaceful-sounding campsite near the coast at Longeville-sur-Mer and it would give us the opportunity to see the western end of the Marais Poitevin en route.

The journey was all of 45 miles and we soon realised how good the area around Damvix and Arçais is, as the further west we got, the duller it looked. A flat, grey sky and the back-end of several seaside resorts didn’t help much mind you!

The weather had brightened by the time we approached the campsite. It certainly is very peaceful and there are hardly any other campers, which is surprising given the proximity to the beach- a pleasant 1km walk through woods. We found Billy a nicely shaded pitch and got him set up before settling down to the remains of our previously-barbecued pintade (guinea fowl). After Damvix, the wildlife here proved a little disappointing – not much other than the odd jay, blackbird and chaffinch (of course).

After lunch it was time to start exploring par bicyclette and put mon nouveau rayon (my new spoke) to the test. (Aside: To add to our second punctured car tyre, this is my third broken spoke in France – €17.50 this time. In future, I’m going to have to start budgeting for broken spokes and punctures.) The cycle route here runs just outside our campsite and it took us through the woods towards Longeville-sur-Mer. It had hills! We must have forgotten how to do those as they hurt. The signing was interesting around Longeville-sur-Mer and we seemed to go round in circles several times trying to get out. We did find a sign to cycle route 23 but, since our map only went up to 19, we decided to go off piste.

The local marais looked promising but the birds seem to have decided that the weather wasn’t good enough to get airborne. We were cycling along through not very much, getting some strange looks from locals that seemed to say, "what on Earth are you doing here", when we happened upon a Union Flag fluttering in our head wind. It turned out to be a memorial to a Halifax bomber crew, shot down in July 1941. I’m ashamed to say that I have forgotten all my scout training about getting a Union Flag the right way up. I’m not certain about this one.

Carol did of course have to look at the sea at several places Even the coast looked relatively dull – long sandy beaches backed with sand dunes and little else. There were a few dedicated people braving a slight sand-blasting but it seemed that most people had decided the weather wasn’t good enough either.

The weather cleared for the evening and Billy’s shaded pitch provided a very pleasant environment for an outdoor sausage-fest (sausages grilled on good ol’ George, once again, because charcoal barbecues aren’t permitted).

Having discovered a broken spoke in my bike’s rear wheel, I was reticent to use it in case further spokes, now under increased stress, failed. Cycling 25 miles is fine but I really didn’t want to be 12 miles from base having to walk back with a completely disabled bike. Having explained my predicament to our friendly campsite owner, he pointed me at a suitable repair shop in Benet, about 10 miles/15 kilometres distant.

Just before leaving, Linda sent a text message confirming a promenade en barque (boat trip) at 4:00 PM. Perfect timing; we now knew the shape of our last day in Damvix – we are definitely moving off tomorrow. Putting the bicycle wheel in the car, off we went to Benet.

The local market was in full swing when we arrived in Benet. We dropped off the wheel, to be collected after our marais boat trip in the afternoon, and then hit the market. Some small, sweet sardines on the market fish stall looked irresistible. Together with some local bread, a barbecued lunch beckoned. (Why is it that the French can manage the supply of perfectly fresh fish throughout a larger country than we can? We’re lucky if the fish at our fishing ports is as fresh as theirs in the centre of the country.) Back to "play some more harmonicas"!

We met Linda at the appointed hour for our guided promenade en barque. Having a guide was great. Apart from our not having to do any work, we learned quite a bit about the marais. There are apparently four different words for canal: bief, rigole, conche  and fossé (in descending order, from largest to smallest). All these words for canal reminded me of the Masai (sp?) in Africa, who are said to have more than 30 different words for "brown" enabling them to describe precisely their precious cattle.

Our marais guide’s pièce de résistance was to pull in to a side conche, grab an oar and stir up the sediment thus releasing methane gas which bubbled to the surface whereupon he set it aflame with a lighter. Having flames dancing on the surface of the water and licking around the side of the barque was great fun.

For our evening meal (another salade Niçoise topped with the remains of our barbecued tuna), we were entertained by a rally of camping cars (motor homes) in an adjacent field. After some rather bizarre sounds which, in retrospect, were probably warming up exercises, we heard what we thought were French hunting horns (like orchestral French horns but without the valves). Curiosity got the better of us and we abandoned our pastis to go and investigate. Sure enough, the massed French hunting horns of the camping car club du sud were tootling away, very tunefully, in the field next door. We were sorry when they stopped.

Once again, we thought we might move on tomorrow so we pedalled into Arçais to say au revoir to Linda and her folks (Mike having returned to England already). We had only just left the campsite when Carol spotted a fluffy moorhen chick swimming around in a lot of green pond weed so we dismounted to watch. With uncharacteristically perfect timing, a much larger bird chose this moment to swoop in and land on the same piece of water. It was a handsome bird with a fearsome-looking bill, an eye-stripe and a piercing, bright orange eye. This was only our second sighting of a night heron, which do not occur in Britain, and it had the good grace to pose perfectly facing the camera. Another non-British heron, the purple heron, also lives here in the marais but, on this trip, we haven’t had a good view of one.

We had another delay less than a mile upstream as a tourist boat negotiated a lock causing a small road bridge to be raised, but we eventually made it to Linda embarrassingly close to lunch time. Payment was necessary, however. One of their bicycles had a flat rear tyre. All local hands claimed incompetence or inability so yours truly managed to effect a repair for the price of two beers and the offer of some lunch, which Carol accepted. We may all get to go for a promenade en bateau (excursion in a barque) together tomorrow if the weather is kind. We’ve never seen the marsh from a boat before.

During our traditional afternoon bike ride Carol, following me, spotted that my bike’s rear wheel was not running true. It could have been the tyre mounted slightly askew on the rim but it looked horribly as if something more was amiss. As the barbie was firing up, I investigated further and found a broken spoke, as I feared. This is the third time I’ve suffered un rayon cassé (a broken spoke) in France. I must be using the bike too much. The more likely explanation is, of course, that the bread and cheese is having an adverse effect on my weight and is putting undue stress on the spokes.

Now bicycle repair man needs a bicycle repair man of his own.

21st June: for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the day with the longest interval between sunrise and sunset. Following yesterday’s very cloudy sky, the weather chose to celebrate the longest day by beginning summer and actually supplying a sunrise into a blissfully blue, cloud-free sky which lasted uninterrupted until sunset. The French chose to celebrate the longest day with their nationwide 27th fête de la musique (music festival). Stages were being set up everywhere for the evening’s entertainment. It looked like being a hopefully pleasantly noisy night.

We were thinking of moving on tomorrow so we needed a run into Niort and Magné for fuel, McWiFi and provisions. We had to screech to a halt on the way through Arçais to watch boatloads of tourists causing a traffic jam marais-style. It looked as if four coach-loads had just discharged and commandeered every barque in the district.

Photographic diversion over, we continued on our joint missions of blogging and shopping. Since the day promised to be sunny and warm (about 28°C/82°F), we treated the portable Weber to a good-looking slice of tuna for the evening to top another salade Niçoise. The poor Weber wasn’t going to know what had hit it since we also chose to fire it up to grill the remaining chicory heads for lunch. About two barbecues in almost four weeks and then, suddenly, two in one day! Was this summer?

The first time we experienced hot, Mediterranean temperatures, we were a bit nervous about clambering on our bikes and generating more heat through muscular effort. However, once tried, we discovered that the cooling effect of moving through the air made it considerably more comfortable than simply sitting still. So, after lunch we hopped on the trusty steeds and popped out for a quick 24 miles round a couple of new cycle routes hoping perhaps to see some more ragondins (coypus). The ride was great but the coypus were absent; perhaps they had all be made into rillettes or pâté. We’ve managed 400 miles in four weeks, as near as makes no difference.

The evening fête de la musique fired up as we were tucking into our tuna-topped Niçoise, so we went to investigate afterwards. Damvix offered two venues so we picked one where we had seen our campsite owner. Here, the locals were sitting at tables being entertained by a solo performer with his guitar. Our French was not up to understanding the songs but there did seem to be a somewhat bizarre rendition of "roll out the barrel" in French. Odd! A couple of glasses of vin rouge helped us both converse with and dance with some of the locals. Our campsite owner was even gracious enough to buy us another glass of red wine each. What a pleasant evening.

There is another form of entertainment that is quite prevalent in France called son et lumière (sound and light). Having retired with clear skies, our brief summer came to a crashing end during the night when mother nature put on a spectacular son et lumière of her own in the form of a storm to the accompaniment of thunder and lightening.

Never mind, summer was nice while it lasted.

It is a mark of this year’s weather that we have come to regard a day without rain, no matter how much cloud, as a good day. Such a day was today; ten tenths cloud until about about 5:00 PM but it didn’t rain, so we were winning.

The early morning was very promising with mist on the river and over the town – quite picturesque. The promise was broken, though. Rather than the mist burning off, as one might expect, the misty sun was shortly covered and white and grey cloud cover persisted all day. Damvix was attractive in the morning, though.

Since yesterday had been continuously wet, we chose bike routes that were largely on roads to avoid any muddy residue. One trouble with weather such as this is that the effects persist for days, spoiling otherwise enjoyable routes. We did 14 miles in the AM, had a casual lunch of ludicrously cheap pate (less than 40p for a slab that would last two days – we really know how to live!) and bread, followed by a 16 mile trip in the PM to ride off the doubtless excessively fatty calories. The euphoria of the new saddle is beginning to wear off – my backside is beginning to feel it.

Some sun broke through for more than five seconds at precisely 5:00 PM.  To mark the occasion,Carol heard and found some kingfishers circling around one of the smaller canals nearby.

The evening was clear and the sun shone. While we were enjoying a barbecued duck breast, we were honoured to be visited by an adult hoopoe and its fledged chick flapping to be fed. Naturally, when a camera was to hand, the hoopoe wasn’t, and vice-versa. Still, it was a thrill to see these somewhat comical birds at relatively close quarters.

(Aside: Duck breast, especially French duck breast which is about an inch thick, makes a better steak than most steaks. Strip the fat off and cook it just as you would a good steak.)

Tomorrow is supposed to be good but Sunday and the early part of next week are expected to be nasty. We need to get a newspaper and decide what to do and where to go next. Another decision time approacheth.

… with a slight modification …

Incey wincey spider climbed up the spout,
Down came the rain and washed the spider out,
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
Incey wincey spider climbed the spout again.

Today, regrettably, we seemed to be missing out on the "out came the sun" bit. The rain was a little unscheduled too, really, since we hadn’t moved on yesterday. Pattern broken.

We didn’t need much shopping but we did need a working wi-fi so, rather than sit in the caravan with faces as long as a poplar tree, we drove back into Niort to visit the unadvertised McDonalds again. Neither was it "sundae de saison" weather so we opted for two espressos. While I was playing "big spender" and buying these, Carol found a suitable table and tried connecting to McWiFi. Wonderful! The previously McBroken McWiFi had been McSorted and was McWorking. Several quick clackety-clacks on the keyboard and our outstanding four blog posts were published and we’d tidied up our email inboxes.

For some reason we could also access Météo France unfettered and it looks as though, after today’s grizzly weather, we may have a couple of reasonable days. Sunday looks pants, though. In fact, it looks as though a nasty depression is heading for northern Europe for the beginning of next week. We’ll have to keep an eye on where we should be.

Since it’s a naff day and there isn’t much else to write about, let’s turn to food. It isn’t just making food out of unusual ingredients, specialities like anguilles (eel) and rigondin (coypu), that distinguishes individual areas of France, it is also the way an area treats or presents regular, day-to-day food items. Here in the Marais Poitevin, they have a loaf of bread called a maraichine which resembles a baguette but has strangely forked ends. ("White man bake with forked bread".) The flour is different, too – it has some small seeds in it, so it isn’t simply a presentation affectation.

Keeping the foodie theme going, for lunch, we tried cheering ourselves up with some grilled chicory (a.k.a. Belgian endive), goat cheese and jambon cru (raw ham). While we’re at it, let’s have a little grumble about rip-off Britain prices. Over here, six or seven good sized heads of chicory prepackaged in a bag: about €2.50. In England, two or three small heads of chicory in a bag: about £1.70 (if you can find it). Roughly the same price for less than half the goods.

The evening meal will be (yes, I’m writing this early), come hell or high water (probably the latter), a Weber-roasted joint of pepper-encrusted fillet of veal accompanied by céleri rémoulade (celeriac with a mustard mayonnaise) and taboulé. The veal will be roasted under the rain-shade if necessary, where we may well be glad of the heat thrown out by good ol’ portable Weber.

For the insatiably curious, the yellow creation backing the bread photograph is our outside, plasticized, washable table cloth depicting olives and sunflowers; very Provençale. The dark red creation under the grilled chicory is one of our two inside real material table cloths, both the same material, depicting olives and cicadas; also very Provençale. There are some very pleasing, sunny table cloth materials available over here.

(I had to write this early before the vino plonko rosé took effect.)

Myocastor coypus – the coypu. Britain’s largest rodent reaching up to a metre in length. It was imported from South America for the fur trade and, with the expected human incompetence, was allowed to escape. It established itself firmly in East Anglia, especially the Norfolk Broads, where it was regarded as a pest due to its habits of damaging river banks and over-grazing marsh plants. It has now been controlled.

It would appear that the French had similar designs on the coypu, which they call le rigondin. Since the Marais Poitevin is a marshy wetland with many drainage channels and canals, it is another attractive habitat for good ol’ myocastor coypus where it seems particularly numerous.

After a leg-loosening casual morning pedal followed by yet more leg-loosening over a vinous lunch, we leapt onto our bikes yet again to go and investigate Coulon, about ten miles away. Coulon is a slightly more touristy town and the excuse for our bike ride was a search for a Marais Poitevin sticker for Billy (he likes to have souvenirs of where he’s been). On the way into Coulon, we saw about half a dozen rigondins calmly grazing away in some drainage channels just a little way outside of Coulon.

Demonstrating a typically Gallic approach to pest-control, not only did Carol find Billy a suitable sticker in one of the gift shops, she also found them selling pots of a couple of unusual appetizing local delicacies: rillettes de rigondin (potted coypu) and pâté de rigondin (coypu pate). Let’s not waste them, let’s eat them.

We cycled back along a rigole, one of the larger canals, and saw many floating cages that were obviously traps for the unsuspecting rigondins. Fortunately, we didn’t see any containing captives. Maybe the critters aren’t quite so unsuspecting. We saw none anywhere near the traps, only in waterways where there were no traps.

No, we haven’t tasted any.

The sun returned accompanied by a few clouds that didn’t appear too threatening. Time to go shopping, refill the tank (still over half full following our short hop up to Damvix) with precious diesel, and to look for some wi-fi capability. Since Mike & Linda seem to shop at a "Super U" in Magné near Niort, which might just have a McDonalds, we decided to try there.

The Super U was on the way into Magné and we had arrived just in time for the lunchtime closure of la caisse so no chance of buying diesel for the next two hours. We wanted to get the shopping last so as to get  it back to refrigeration quickly, so we continued into Niort in search of wi-fi. Having driven almost all the way around Niort seeing no signs advertising McDonalds, we just happened to stumble across one. it was also within a hundred metres of an Esso Express, just about the one automated fuel station that does take UK money cards. Excellent, we filled up, went into McDonalds, bought an ice cream for you-know-who and two espressos, sat down and found the McWiFi to be McBroken – McBlast!

Another laptop man told Carol that it usually worked but wasn’t today. Then a cheery McDonalds McEmployee came and asked us if the wi-fi (apparently pronounced "wee-fee" in French) was working. "Non", we replied, and went off to do our shopping.

On the way into Super U, we bumped into a couple Carol had met at our first campsite in Huisseau-sur-Cosson. Small world! Signs were looking good for a rare barbecue and the Super U had some good looking sardines. We usually do barbecued sardines for lunch but, since time was marching on (2:30 PM), we thought we’d save them for the evening and munch cold sausages for lunch.

Back at Damvix, another English couple pitched up having been down in the Gers region, just above the Pyrenees. They related stories of storms and cold weather. They’d met people fleeing Spain, even, where it seems the weather has been similarly pathetic, except right down in the south. Considering our various conversations with people, we have done reasonably well, it seems.

We went for an 18-mile pedal to work up an appetite and to let the few clouds clear up for the evening. Finally, the travelling Weber got unpacked and fired up ready for a swift grilling of sardines. The technique with sardines is to cook them whole; head, guts, the lot. Then you pick them up with one hand holding the head while the other holds the tail, and move them from side to side teasing the flesh straight of the bones with your teeth. This side-to-side motion with the hands either side of the mouth is why the Portuguese refer to eating sardines as "playing the harmonica". How colourful!