So perhaps I am a bit sportive after all...

Happy Easter!

The last week has been a whirlwind of new people and new challenges.
It seems like chronological order would make sense...

Climbing/escalade

Tuesday night, I finally met up with Claudine. It's ridiculous that it took me so long! She's the other person that answered my couchsurfing distress call for socialising (with George in St Maurice) right at the beginning of my placement. 

She had mentioned before that she was into climbing and I'd told her that I was interested so she invited me along to an OVS* climbing event at the Boulder House in Saint Etienne. She also lives in Monistrol, just round the corner, difference is she has a car! Makes a one off soirée in Sainté a whole lot more feasible. 

*OVS = OnVaSortir.fr (we're going out), a website designed to help people with similar interests meet up for events

In the end there were 4 of us and we all got on pretty well together which was nice. All slightly older than me but that's pretty standard. Since the walls were limited to 4 metres, you can climb without ropes which makes everything move a lot quicker on the climbing wall, it's a while since I've done it so naturally it wasn't long before my arms were aching - I don't really do much upper body activity and I could definitely feel it. It's so impressive watching the more experienced guys hanging upside down from their fingertips with complete control! 

I'd been invited for dinner after with the coloc. but since we got on so well together everyone wanted to go for a meal in Sainté - double booked! The solution? Take everyone with me!! We all traipsed over to the flat and dived into preparation mode. A nice mélange of new and slightly less new friends. :)

Danse x2

Wednesday is always dance day. But being full moon, it was also danse-libre at kokotte-minute (the place I go for meditation). And I chose the music....Nice bit of Shpongle. :)
Unfortunately I couldn't stay til the end so I just had to make the most of the 1h30 that I had before zipping off to African dance.
Who knew I'd end up so into dance... Definitely not something I imagined myself doing when I was younger! But then I guess I could say that for a lot of things. 

Systema

Thursday I headed back to kokotte-minute where they were doing a trial session of "systema", a Russian martial art in which all blows are given and it's all done in slow motion (so is less violent than it sounds).

It's based on the principle that you should never directly oppose an attack, rather use the space around you and flow with the direction. So instead of tensing against a motion, you melt under or away from it. There are no "moves", just principles.  

It results in a fairly dance-like motion which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Also the fact that you can basically just play fight with a stranger was pretty cool too. :)
There's another taster sesh in a few weeks during the Easter holidays so I might take some mates along to the next one.

Vélove - Easter weekend

The more linguistic among you will notice the beautiful wordplay above between the French "vélo"(bike/cycling) and "love"....

The biggest challenge of the week is yet to come. 

Day 1

Friday was a miserable day, rainy and grey. I'd planned to cycle up to Saint Etienne after classes but the weather wasn't looking too promising. I stayed optimistic, despite all my colleagues telling me I was crazy and as luck would have it, by 3.30 the sky had cleared and the sun had come out!! Less than an hour later and I was on the road. And it was beautiful! The week was over and it was adventure time. :)

At 36km, Monistrol - Saint Etienne was the furthest I had ever cycled alone and aside from getting a little stressed at Firminy when I ended up on a road I didn't recognise, it was pretty uneventful. 

I arrived before it got dark and jumped straight in the shower before helping to get dinner ready and scrounging together a sort of costume for the party next door. I survived til just after midnight before retreating back to the coloc to try and get some sleep.

Day 2

I didn't manage to sleep as long as I wanted to... But never mind. Always the way eh! 

Had lunch with Pierre, Helder and Laura and set about looking at routes and packing up my things into bike panniers  Time for the real challenge: Saint Etienne - Lyon. 65km. And the weather wasn't looking great.... But I had a raincoat, bin bags to protect my clothes and waterproof trousers. 

I had wanted to set off to leave before 2 but that didn't happen. I was finally en route at 2.30 having swapped bikes with Helder to allow me the luxury of panniers and a better bike. He accompanied me on Dominique's bike for the first 4km to put me on the right road out and that was it. Adventure time solo! 

It was going fine until I hit the first town, and promptly lost the route. I spent faaaaar too long cycling in circles and trying to find the route to Lyon that wasn't a motorway! I was coming to the end of my patience when finally I managed to get some intelligible directions which, together with a sneaky glance at the GPS on my phone (which had decided not to work for a while before that) helped me get back on track. I'd been on the right road for about 5 minutes when the heavens opened and it really started to rain; had I still been lost at this point I think I might have cried. As it was, I stopped under a bridge for 5 minutes to reassess my options, coming to the conclusion that if I managed to reach Givors and it was still chucking it down, I would take the train. That was probably the low point of the journey and I hadn't even passed 20km yet!

Fortunately, the weather calmed down a bit after not too long, and I managed not to get lost again. At least til Givors, and then I don't think I even did a kilometre of detour before finding the right route. 

I'd had several choices of route but being inexperienced, I decided it was sensible to go for the shortest and least hilly. Unfortunately it's also the least enjoyable in terms of traffic and views. Even on the nicest sections the motorway isn't far away and car noise is inescapable  Givors marked 40km : over half way. I had hoped to arrive in Lyon around 6pm but leaving late and getting lost meant that wasn't going to happen. On the outskirts of Givors at 5.30 I rang the couchsurfing who was expecting me to let him know I was going to take longer than I'd thought, he sounded very nice which was at least encouraging. :)

I knew I was coming into Lyon when I recognised the tangled mass of concrete that I'd seen when driving down on the way to Monistrol in January. Some strange new fangled architecture. The only challenge left was finding the address I'd been given. By the time I reached the centre it was pretty much dark but there were street lights to find the way. Arriving at Jean-François' house was an immense relief, and all I wanted to do was lie down there and then, but I had a dinner date! I had a shower, spent just long enough over a cup of tea to be polite and traipsed out back into the rain to catch a bus into the town centre and after a few minutes walk, ended up chez Albane. Pretty much the reason I'd come to Lyon: I'd got back in touch with Albane who used to play the lute in the chateau where I worked in Blois, we used to eat together occasionally and got on pretty well and by pure chance, I noticed that she was now living in Lyon and after a few messages, invited me up. :)

I immediately tumbled into a welcoming francophone/anglophone mix where I was given veggie soup, bread and wine. Excellent cure for a hard day's cycling! It was also reassuring, not only to not be the only foreigner but also to know that there were other people around who didn't necessarily know the others that well. Albane is part of "AirB&B" which sounds to be a service a bit like couchsurfing but the guests pay, so I guess both parties feel a bit more secure, hence the 3 Americans who were also à table. I had an excellent evening and would have happily stayed longer but I had reached my wine limit (more than that and fatigue would have kicked in heavily and I would've fallen asleep) and wanted to be sure to get the last bus. So I headed back to the bus stop. Thankfully it had stopped raining.

Day 3 

Easter morning was chilled. I had breakfast with JF and we chatted music, languages, theatre and travel before heading out on the bikes for a little tour of Lyon. 

Being Sunday, only the most touristy areas were open, which meant consequentially that they were buzzing with all sorts of activity!

He also took me to a lovely little bakery which he stated as the best in the quartier where we bought an almond praline pastry and a cup of mulled wine to share in the sun on the steps of the cathedral.

We sneaked through some of the traboules - small passageways between buildings that used to be used by workers to transport silk between workshops to have a peek too, not particularly bike friendly but we managed. We stopped in at Albane's to say goodbye to everyone on the way back to the flat and had a snack of pickled gherkins, olives, bread and cheese whilst looking for train times (I'd decided that considering that the route wasn't particularly pretty and I would have had to leave fairly early if I'd wanted to cycle, that it made a lot more sense to take the train back to Saint Etienne). 

Whilst doing the washing up, I'd managed to snap a wooden spoon but all was not lost....

Modern art

Not only is it arty, but the wooden spoon now fits in the gherkin jar (you're not supposed to put metal in pickled things) and the snapped sliver provides a pose-cuillère for all those moments that you're stirring sauce and don't want to dirty the counter by putting the spoon down! 

Perfect. 

Getting back to Sainte, I ran into Laura who looked as tired as I felt! But having not done a massive amount of cycling I didn't actually feel too bad. I scraped together some leftovers and made a few phonecalls back at the coloc. after which Ben and Camilo appeared. With the suggestion of heading to the pub. And why not. :)

The 3 of us nursed our half-pints over a couple of hours of interesting conversation and headed back. Camilo went off to try and do some work whilst I watched a film with Ben. By this point I probably should have gone to bed... It wasn't the kind of film you watch before bed either... But oh well. 

Day 4

Once again I woke up earlier than planned and still felt tired. I tried and failed to go back to sleep so in the end, got up to go on a hunt for some vegetables for our Easter Monday lunch. I've got to say I was pleasantly surprised to find that the greengrocer just downstairs was open, as was the bakery round the corner! I wasn't holding out much hope for a bank holiday Monday in France but what do you know. :)

When I got back, Magda (a polish girl) had arrived and she and Laura were making special Polish savoury Easter eggs in the kitchen. Camilo and Ben were up too and the atmosphere was almost festive! We spent the rest of the morning preparing food, chatting and cleaning and eventually sat down for lunch with an enormous amount of food in front of us and 3 bottles of wine. :)

I ate far too much. But it was good! Not long after, Helder arrived back from visiting family for the weekend just in time to mop up the leftovers and join us for desert. He'd planned to cycle back to Monistrol with my on the final leg of my weekend trip. Just for shits and giggles. :)

We finally managed to leave at 4pm. Only an hour after our planned departure and left the rest of the coloc prepping for Laura's Easter Olympics... Whatever that consisted of! 

The departure from Saint Etienne was far easier than it had been the first time. A lot of that was probably to do with the fact that the bike I was using was a lot better and was more or less to my size and height. I'm probably a bit fitter and more used to cycling too but factoring in fatigue, I don't think that would have changed a whole lot. 

Just after Firminy, entering Unieux, Helder proposed a challenge: a 25% incline. Apparently it wasn't too much of a detour and he wanted to try, if I fancied it. I am far too much of a sucker for a challenge. 

I spent half of the climb angrily despairing and asking myself why I would put myself through such a pointless task, the second half silently resigned to finish what I'd started. We gained 800m of altitude and just 1.2km of latitude. The view was beautiful though.... and going back down was a laugh.

Can't refuse a challenge.... Especially when I'd already let my Lyon-and-back-by-bike one go.

Not long later, joining the road by the river, we were pleasantly surprised to run into none other than Dominique who happened to be standing in direct line of sight outside his family house examining a wall that someone had damaged. Small world. :) We spent a good 10 mins chin-wagging and he's offered to lend me the key to the garden so I can use the house as a pit stop if ever I fancy it en route to Sainté.
Lovely man Dominique. :)

During the last few kilometres I could tell that I was tired. But will power and the knowledge that home wasn't far away kept me pedalling. After a while it becomes habit. I reached the point of wanting to stop and rest a moment but the weather was on the point of turning and we were only 4 km from arriving so I stuck at it.

Home sweet home. I was so glad to have had the foresight to leave food in the house. Showers and straight onto dinner. Cooked up an enormous batch of pasta with veg. Perfect sport food. Had the minor annoyance of having to run round to the neighbours' to borrow a tin opener but it did provide a pretext to go and introduce myself so I wasn't particularly bothered. The neighbours happen to be the parents of one of my students so I made sure to say hello to her too.
We did dinner properly French style and spend ages over it, chatting with Katy and unwinding. Then finally... Bedtime.