After reporting in Spain, the United States and West Africa, we felt the need to work in France. There were parts of the country where we had never set foot and it is a bit daft to always go abroad to explore when you only know your native country very poorly. This is how from March 2012 to October 2019, (all alone at first and later with Hélène) I made a sort of "Tour de France" by bike covering 20,500 km during a period of twenty months in multiple trips. The initial objectives were to travel the country and meet some of its inhabitants, to continue the research started in Spain on agriculture a few years earlier, and to start work on energy production by going to all the country's nuclear power plants for example, etc.
All this distance was covered in 6 "episodes" of 3 to 4 months. So to simplify: from Lyon to Lille, from Lille to Lisieux, from Lisieux to Rennes, from Rennes to Périgueux by way of Brittany, from Périgueux to Bordeaux going up through the center of France, and from Bordeaux to Lyon. The first two sections went well but in June 2013, in Flamanville, I physically broke down. A serious tendonitis in the knee complicated my progress and it was only by walking next to the loaded bike that I was able to reach Rennes in mid-July. Summary of the medical case: a tearing of the head of the ligament of the knee and bursitis on both shoulders! So it was completely impossible to get back on the road after the miss’s summer vacation and that was the start of a long quest to regain health, or at least a little free mobility.
About fifteen reports will gradually be added to the first four presented for now. The images have been scanned but there is still a lot of work to be done to organize them, remove the dust, correct the color and contrasts a little if necessary, mount the diptychs, write the captions, etc. And add a bit to this text!
The News page (blog) of this site will post, as and when they become ready, new reports from the "Tour de France". Stay tuned!
PS: Please note that when writing the introductory texts, we often used extracts from the diary written spontaneously on a daily basis in order to let you experience the making of the reports, the moods of the moment, the meetings.