Davide la Locomotive

Have you ever been camping?

I went camping as a kid and came back convinced France was the worst place on earth. Years later, I went back with a bike and discovered I was wrong. (Also, bread. So much bread.)

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I used to go camping every year with my parents.
We’d cram everything into a Ford Fiesta and drive 14 hours to Dover, hop across the Channel… and somehow not hate each other by the time we got there.

We’d start at a campsite, then spend days visiting tiny French villages.
They were all the same: a dusty town square, a tabac, a café, a patisserie, a boulangerie, and old men playing boules under the plane trees.

We wandered aimlessly.
I hated it.
I hated France.
All that driving—for what?
One time we drove all the way to Nice, had a coffee… and drove home.

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Years later, I got invited on a cycling trip to Mont Ventoux.
I said yes without thinking.
This time, I took the train. I stayed in Malaucène, right under the Giant of Provence.

I looked out across the valley at sunset—and realised:
I loved France.

The bread was amazing. I even bought a bread maker and French flour so I could make it at home.
Apparently, I look French too: when I nearly bump into people in shops, they chat to me in rapid-fire French.
I stare back, blankly—like a confused baguette.
One day I’ll learn. Or just dress more obviously like a tourist.

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The Alps are spectacular for cycling—but the Pyrenees? Even better.
More bucolic. More rugged.
They have these incredible natural amphitheatres called cirques, where glaciers carved enormous bowls into the mountains.

Climbing a cirque like the Tourmalet feels like riding up the inside of a cereal bowl—always looking down into the valley below.
The roads snake upward like a cooked piece of spaghetti draped across a postcard.

One time I was chatting with some French cyclists.
They were grumbling about how boring France was and asking me about Scotland.

I tried to explain how stunning their mountains are. How the skies are bluer. How the roads have a kind of quiet magic. How even the bread is better.

They thought I was nuts.
I confessed: I’m a Francophile.

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It’s easy to take something amazing for granted.
To miss what’s right in front of you—until you learn how to see it.

I didn’t hate France.
I just hated the way I was experiencing it.

France didn’t need to change.
I did.

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Bread is just flour, water, and salt.
It’s what you do with it that makes it rise.

France was always there—warm and golden.
I just had to open my eyes.

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