Fatigue (fa-ti-gay)

Michel Thomas, celebrated language teacher, tells us often in his French audio course, that so many words in English come fron the French. (In direct contrast to the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who insists that everything comes from the Greek.)

Fatigue is one of these words. Spelt the same in both languages, it obtains some cachet with the French pronunciation. We’ve adopted the French pronunciation, as best we can, and given it our own special meaning. Fa-ti-gay is that feeling in your legs when you have cycled too many days in a row and you try to walk up some stairs. For the first few steps all is OK, and you think you are invincible, and then the fa-ti-gay drags down through your calves and a feeling of dull pain and weariness spreads through your legs and creeps up through your entire body. It’s a fine line, trying to design a trip to avoid fa-ti-gay. Four days at the start of the trip, distances a little further than planned, hills a little more fearsome than expected, and there you have it … fa-ti-gay.

We cycle gently away from St Gabriel. The town is not as bad as we feared last night; in fact it seems a perfectly respectable place, with shops and hairdressers and restaurants and perfectly normal people. We decide that we just landed in the local equivalent of bogan corner. It happens.

We have only 55km to do today, but with a similar amount of climbing as yesterday, so we take it easy. We are riding along a normal paved road, but our route keeps us turning off the road and onto seriously undulating country roads, named rangs. While the cycle routing is kind, trying to keep us off main roads, we eventually abandon the route, and head straight along route 348, our most direct route to Rawdon. This also helps keep us away from the awful battery-hen sheds that are all over the place here. I am so disgusted I keep going as fast as possible to get away from them. I should have stopped and taken a photo so that you have something to think about over your breakfast eggs in Quebec.

Quebec is a French-speaking province in Canada. (Though you can even get into trouble for calling it a province, as we found out recently … some of the Quebecois like to think of their part of the world as a country.)

Quebec has a history of French settlement, peaceful relations with the Iriquois (the original inhabitants of the land), and of fighting off the English. The French they speak here has diverged from the French spoken in France. The accent is different, and some words are used differently. (Think of the differences between English English and American English.) In some cases, the language has stayed the same here, and changed back in the mother land.

My schoolgirl French serves me well in reading menus and signs, not so well in speaking or listening, but I definitely notice some differences. For example, meals. In France, breakfast is le petite déjeneur, while in Quebec, breakfast is simply déjeneur. Following on, lunch in France  is déjeneur, while in Quebec it is, confusingly, dîner, and dinner in France is dîner, while in Quebec it is souper.

This morning I was gently corrected in pronunciation for the word vingt (twenty). Maybe Mrs Fraser taught me incorrectly all those years ago, or maybe that word is just pronounced differently here.

See what a diversion does! We are now in Rawdon, and you have not had to share the spirit-breaking climb into that town. Instead, you can rejoin us as we sit and enjoy an ice cream in town. Ice cream is becoming nearly as much of an end-of-ride tradition here as a beer. The Quebecois certainly enjoy their ice cream. Think about it, they only have a few months of summer and warmth before winter descends. Why not make the most of it and sit out on a terrace enjoying frozen delights?

Sadly, after the ice-cream we still have 9km to get to our home for the next two nights. Accommodation was difficult to find here, and Neil has booked us into a horse ranch some way out of town. We arrive there late afternoon, hot, sweaty and more than a bit thirsty. Our place is cool and serene, certainly living up to its name of Resort le Domain Sam-Calm. The shower is great, but we are dismayed to be a little isolated with no ready access to beer or food.

The owners tell us we can order food in, or take a cab into Rawdon. We opt to take a cab and visit the town, enjoying a beer at a bogan-ish hotel, and dinner at the best restaurant in town (according to Norman, the cab driver) La Lanterne. We enjoy a meal on the terrace chatting occasionally with the hearing-impaired couple sitting next to us. It’s amazing how much you can say when not using your voice, when you only have awkward sign language and miming at your disposal – it certainly helps break down language barriers.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 55.3km
• Climb: 469m
• Average speed: 16.2km/h
• Average temperature: 30C
• Moving time: 3:24:58
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture Is a very poor composite, using a picture of a horse from the horse farm, and superimposed with the beers we enjoyed in the town hotel.

Along the way today:

A tough day, through mostly farm land. The camera stayed in its bag most of the day.