Even though the drinks weren’t overflowing, as it surely does in Valhalla, there was still a round of wooden faces on the morning the caravan left the Quiberon. And it made them all a little sheepish, talking previously of drinking rivers of beer and freshly tapped bores of cognac, in this real world Del, Bodean and Hellybutt find that they can’t offord any hell sessions of moonshining physically or financially.
The ‘Crippled Puffin’, in the regular light of day, turns out she doesn’t know where ze germans keep zer blunderbusts or extra bivowaks, but she did know how to knock up a decent stonewall and build serious retreats in the wilderness. Her name was Tifen and she’d straightened her hair and sent us on our way down that sand sprayed highway.
Auray was a short distance away, maybe only 16 kilometres and every one was happy to get there and no one more than Hellybutt who wobbled and squinted through sweat and swooshing traffic. Hip, Hip-Auray, yell all the kids in this town, but why - because it appears to be yet another old stone country bumpkin sitting on the river chewin grass and watching the mallards go by, then we give it a go - we so obliging and generous of heart - and it turns out alright. More than enough hobo’s and vagabonds about for its size, they all looked too mean to approach for a story and maybe they just wanted to be left alone. Who needs a deep inquiring when you’re really hard up for a dollar? By the way, we was here on account of a stealthy train station which would, obviously (and hopefully), deliver us onto a stealthy train ride outta the north. Oui, the ol’ France turns out to be bigger than the bourgeois bicycle caravan anticipated and all the seabirds are actually further south. And so it goes - we who make the rules can unmake them like God up on those clouds - and those clouds look wet as the train pulls up to the Rochefort station. The manic exit from the tiny velo compartment to the platform, leaves some passengers out of joint, then there train click-clacks away taking those evil stares with it.
