‘In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.’
Yun-men, 9th century Chinese Chan master
 
There is no doubt any longer.
As I ride, the smell of smoke is quite distinct in the air, the result of the recent fires, particularly around Hostens, an area only fifty kilometres east of where I am today, en route for Biscarrosse Plage.
I thought maybe I could see the fires on the solemn faces of those people shopping in Mimizan this morning, but it was probably my imagination.
I stopped in the town soon after setting off from my campsite on the coast, after spending the night lying on the hard ground, and having firmly decided that I could not do another night without a mattress of some kind, not if I want to survive this trip. Ironically enough, as I arrived, it began to rain, giving the atmosphere a wet smokiness like the day after a bonfire. There was a shower the other day, gone almost as soon as it had arrived, but today is proper rain, mizzle some call it, a sea fret that has come inland to make its presence felt, and for me at least, it is welcome to stay all day.
The town has plenty of shops of all kinds, from supermarkets to tourist outlets, but not a camping store per se. Which means my choice is limited. I can buy an inflatable ‘lilo’ – the kind one sees in swimming pools, playthings for children and adults alike that double up under any weight and would not last a night on the forest floor unless I was to buy a yoga mat, or something similar, to go beneath.
The alternative is a single mattress of the kind one might keep about the house and use as a spare bed when visitors come to stay. I found it in a hardware store after looking up the word in French – matalas d’air. I was fortunate that the assistant in the hardware store only needed the French words I’d rehearsed on the way in to lead me straight to a boxed, deep blue mattress for thirty euros and automatically assumes I will need a pump to go with it. I took both, and made my way back to the bike to try and figure how I would fit this bulky new item in the fancy trailer. After much rearranging, I managed, and felt an enormous sense of relief that when I reach my destination this evening, I can look forward to my first good night’s sleep in forty-eight hours.
 
The challenge today is ambitious, for me at least; around forty-five kilometres, and the cooler air under overcast skies with the ground and vegetation wet only helps. Any regular cyclist worth their salt would scoff at my rate of progress. But I am not a regular cyclist, and as I keep reminding myself, this is not a race and even if it were, I am competing only with myself.
Besides the copy of Montaigne’s selected Essais, I have a ring bound guidebook that can be folded back on itself to reveal the route of La Velodysée in handy stages, just the right size to slide beneath the plastic map holder atop my handlebar bag, and so easily visible as I ride. Yesterday evening, I took it with me to the campsite restaurant, where I was forced by my budget to eat the cheapest thing on the menu, yet another pizza, though I let caution go hang with a full carafe of cheap white wine, intended as a sleeping draft. As I studied the next stage of my journey, I noticed that the route no longer hugged the coast, but veered east to go around an inland lake marked on the map as Hydrobase de Biscarosse.
There was nothing in my book to explain why I would be making a substantial detour to go around the lake and not follow the coast as I have done until now. I wondered if I was mistaking a road for the cycle path, so I got out the large scale Michelin map I’d brought with me to double check. Even with more detail, to the west of the lake, where the Atlantic lies, the map showed absolutely nothing; just a large patch of green, with beaches but without roads,