Etape 10 Ronce les Bains to Rochefort

No, not Roquefort where they make the lovely blue cheese. That is in the south of France. (I made that mistake as well!).

This is Rochefort on the Charente River in western France, more famous for oysters and giant prawns than blue cheese. However, it is also famous, it turns out, for the Corderie Royale, the 375m long royal rope factory(!!!) and home to a full sized reproduction of The Hermione, (no – not her out of Harry Potter), a three- masted 18th century frigate that sailed the Seven Seas and transported Lafayette to Boston to support the pesky Americans who were seeking independence from the British. I guess this was a forerunner of the French ‘farting in our general direction’ (to quote our Python friends). You can do a tour of the repro frigate with all the ropes, cannons, poop decks and all that Jolly Jack Tar stuff (which we did), but more frighteningly we pursuaded ourselves to climb up the rigging in a ‘Go-Ape’ style adventure. This involves getting all harnessed up with carabenas , helmets and all that safety stuff and climbing up masts, rigging, cargo nets and walking across wobbly high wire ladders at giddying heights above a fake frigate deck. Having cycled 30 miles, had no food since breakfast time (this now being 4pm) and having just quaffed a half pint of Leffe beer, I reluctantly agreed to go jigging in the rigging with Mrs N who thought this would be a great hoot. So you pay yer money, have a lackadaisical briefing from the fake French pirates and are given a choice – white, blue or orange helmets. White is for kids and restricted to lower level masts and bowsprits, blue is for the more adventurous and they get to go up beyond poop deck height and orange is for the daredevils and loonies who should no better at 62 years of age. Orange helmets go all the way to the top and have to navigate their way around masts, up the cargo nets, along mast arms and finally throwing themselves off the crows nest 30m from deck level. We got orange helmets!

Well if my bowels hadn’t been so solidified after 2 weeks of baguettes and French cheese I think they would have emptied down my quivering legs and landed on some unsuspecting white helmets 30m below. (Thinking about it, however, my skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts may have stemmed the flow for a while but only for a limited amount of time. It was seriously scary for a vertigo-wimp like me but even more scary was that once you had started there was no going back. There was no escape route and no unclipping to allow any backtracking. To make it worse, I was being followed around this aerial nightmare by two bravado-fuelled French youths who were pushing me on and smirking scornfully into their stripey matelot teeshirts. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. My legs were like jelly, looking down was a disaster and going back wasn’t an option. The last task was to launch yourself into space 30m back down onto the Poop (luckily where none of mine had landed) and return safely to Earth.

What had happened earlier in the day in getting to Rochefort I can no longer remember. It’s all a blur. Had two pitchers of wine since the Great Rigging Nightmare so have just about recovered now.

Check out the orange helmets and they still have one more level to go up!

I’m hoping for a quieter day tomorrow!