Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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The D155 is one of those glorious roads that spools out in front of your wheel, allowing you to see exactly where you’re heading for miles before you get there, lined on one side with squat granite houses staring out across the marshes and clusters of corrugated sheds advertising ‘creuses de Cancale: vente au detail’ (creuses, or hollow oysters, being the French name for what we call rock oysters).

The air is heavy with the iodine reek of shellfish, whetting my appetite for what I hope lies ahead of us in Cancale, known across France as the oyster capital of Brittany – though first we have to contend with one of Google Maps’ helpful cycle routes, which takes us up a road at first stony, and then muddy, and finally all but impassable on a delicate beast like Eddy, whose mudguards quickly fill up with the stuff. Eventually I have to get off and push before I’m thrown off like a questing knight who has finally pushed his patient steed too far.

Though I haven’t got round to mentioning it to Matt, I’ve plotted a course that just happens to pass right by La Ferme Marine de Cancale, which, its website promises, offers ‘a fantastic one-hour-and-a-half tour!’ Fortunately, it’s well signposted from the road, allowing me to discover it with delighted surprise, a surprise that becomes all too real when I learn that it’s closed, so instead of prying into ‘the secrets of the oysters’, we pedal on to the town of Cancale proper, and the not-so-secret oyster market at the end of the harbour (‘#1 of 11 things to do in Cancale!’). The wide road along the bay is fringed with seafood restaurants gearing up for the Tuesday lunchtime trickle, culminating in the market, a clutch of striped tents above the concrete slipway, facing inwards against the wind.