The real problem was the bum, the posterior,
the sacrum. What the Germans call the Kreuzbein, the cross bone and the
Italians (but also the Dutch) call, more poetically, the sacred bone, l’osso sacro. Like most things, the term
comes from the Greek: ieros osteon. Osteo
is, of course, bone and ieros means
strong but it can also mean sacred and so we ended up with a rather religious
term for the bone upon which we sit. Of course, most of the time academics like
me sit on it rather comfortably. Having spent most of my life sitting down I
had assumed I would spend my retirement doing more of the same. Even when I was
a revolutionary I was an ‘armchair’ revolutionary. To find it agonising to sit
on my posterior, at least for a while is very perturbing, as if I had adopted a
new calling.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that I was
enticed into an ‘adventure’. Nothing grand, on the epic scale of the
aristocratic and upper class adventurers of the nineteenth century, or those
brave souls who conquered the South Pole or Everest, which has since become commonplace.
But more modestly cycling from Paris to London using the new Avenue Verte (almost, and almost is the
crucial word, free from motorized traffic). When you cycle for six hours a day
for five days the sacred bone, as well as the knees and the thighs suffer far
more than one would have ever expected, and one’s mind, instead of admiring the beauty
of the landscape, reflecting on the meaning of life or wondering how to resolve
the Middle East problem, is concentrating far too much on one’s muscles, bones
and bum.
The distance from
Paris to Dieppe, using the shortest way, is 240 km, and fairly flat. Then one
crosses the Channel (on a ferry, not swimming or paddling a canoe, we know our
limits). And then there are a further 160 km of beautiful rolling English
countryside. Rolling means that when you go up the hill you often have to push
the bike, and when you go down you descend for thirty seconds before facing yet
another climb. OK, it is not the Col du Tourmalet, the most famous climb of the Tour de France,
almost 20 km of grueling ascent. But nor are we professional cyclists, or even
particularly athletic, and we did not benefit from drugs and blood transfusions
à la Lance Armstrong.
I had taken the Eurostar from London, with my
bike and, on the steps of Notre Dame, met, as agreed, my oldest friend and
comrade, Ivo G., who had flown in from Milan, and hired a bike in Paris. We are
not young, both born in 1946, both born in Egypt, and both went to school
together in Milan (yes, we went to school together by bike, but we were young
then and it only took 15 minutes). But he is fit and I am not. He is a
biochemist who knows a bit of history and I am a historian who knows absolutely
nothing of biochemistry, neither discipline being of much help in our
enterprise, though Ivo gave me the scientific theory behind muscular cramps
when I was briefly struck by them (not that I understood a word).
So off
we went.
Getting out of Paris was the most daunting part
of the enterprise, because of the intimidating traffic, because it is so easy
to get lost, and because we had to find the elusive beginning of the famous Avenue Verte. Once past Nanterre (a name
which sends us back to the glorious days of 1968 and which shows our age) it
gets very beautiful: first along the Seine and later along the Oise, along the
l’île des Impressionnistes,
where Auguste Renoir painted Les
Canotiers à Chatou and Le Déjeuner des Canotiers
depicting lazy people eating in restaurants or about to embark on a gentle boat
ride. We, of course, have no time for such niceties. We are not tourists. We
are not here to enjoy ourselves. We are adventurers determined to get to the
next stage of our own epic journey - and to find a decent hotel.
This is not so simple. It may seem incredible
but it is not that easy to find accommodation once one is off the main tourist
routes. Nor is it true that every French village has a café usually with a wonderful name such as Le Café des Amis. Eventually, of
course, we did find places, but this added further kilometres at the end of an
already tiring day. Once, after a very long slog, we find a wonderful chateau,
but with only one room left (Le Chateau de la Rapée, near Gisors) with a double
bed and a child’s bed in the corner. I would like to say that I generously
offered the comfortable bed to my dear friend, but muscles, bones and bum
overcame generosity. So I didn’t. But he was generous and slept like a baby
while I was tormented by guilt.
In Forges des Eaux, a pretty little town less
than 60 km from Dieppe, we came across the charming Chambres du Lac run by the
delightful Annie whose breakfasts are unforgettable. And, after crossing, the
Channel, having embarked at 5 in the morning we arrived in Mayfield, in Sussex,
and found the Rose and Crown, a pub with wonderful rooms and bathrooms, a real oasis
when it was getting dark and we were exhausted, and the next place was ten
miles of rolling countryside away.
The weather was wonderful. Miraculously it
never rained. However, most of the time we could not appreciate the panorama.
When you cycle you have your head down, eyes planted on the road immediately before
you. The Avenue Verte, even when it
is really verte and not shared with
the hated cars, crosses beautiful parks and woods. In Sussex the Cuckoo Way is
a great cycling road. But this was not
the object of our trip.
In fact, what was the object? That was not clear even to ourselves. It would be
easy to say that we did it to prove that we could. But what would have happened
if we had failed? Absolutely nothing. We would not have ‘lost face’, our
friends would not have made fun of us. Our pride would not have been damaged in
the slightest. My life has never been predicated on being successful at
physical efforts. In fact, like many intellectuals, I have always reserved a
little contempt for those obsessed with ‘proving’ anything physical, and though
one admires the courage required to walk all the way to the North Pole or to
cross the Atlantic in a rowing boat, it is difficult to avoid thinking that
such efforts are an exercise in narcissism.
In days of old, proving one’s endurance was an
aristocratic pastime, maybe in order to demonstrate one’s potential for heroism
in war. To cross the Sahara desert to trade goods is simply a job, but to cross
it in the spirit of adventure, just because it’s there, is the mark of the
uncommon man, the explorer, the path-breaker. In our democratic age, anyone can
pretend to be a nineteenth century aristocrat, and there are plenty of
commercial firms ready to take you on an organized trip to the Amazon, or across
the Sahara by camel, or sailing in the South China Sea. But you can also get on
your bike and go from Paris to London, all on your own, and soon you will be
able to do the same from Turin all the way to Venice. One word of advice, though. Don’t forget to
wear padded shorts. Although your heroism and spirit of adventure may be
strong, you still have to consider the effect on your sacred bone.
© Donald Sassoon 2013. Pubblicato in traduzione italiana sul Sole-24 ore, 20 ottobre 2013, p. 30
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