We left Sées to head towards Nugent de le Trou, south of Paris and home to our friends at La Fin du Monde, the anarchist letterpress printers and musicians. We met them when they came over to our print festival in Bristol in May. Twelve of the group turned up in Bristol a day and an half early back in May, and they turned their time at the print festival into an impromptu residency at the Letterpress Collective.
Even with Robin’s expert map reading, it was a day of tricky little routes and getting a little lost. A long 80km plus day. The weather good – cool and sunny perfect cycling weather. The highlight was a 10km ride through Bellame Forest, low sun filtering through the tall trees, a lovely ride on a beautiful evening.
We arrived with our friends late and in pitch dark. Their place is a sprawling old mill, and nineteen people live and work on the site. As we arrived the group were working on a yurt, huge with its lovely wooden skeleton lit with folk silhouetted working on the structure. In all things the group pool their energy and enthusiasm and work very hard at whatever they are doing.
There was a few tricky moments when an older Romanian lady took a big shine to Robin, he decided to give the normal end of day shower a miss (no locks and with the Roma lady hovering, well). La Fin du Monde took up the challenge of making two postcard designs starting at about ten in the evening and working through to the early hours.
We went to the kitchen in the morning to find a beautiful linocut of the front of an old puncture repair kit which they thought kind of represented the repairing nature of the way they live. A lovely gift. Our friends waved us off and we headed 60kms to meet Hannah Cousins at 3.30pm in Bonneval.
Hannah is a talented illustrator who I met through our good friends at Hiut Denim and the Do Lectures. She had travelled from London in the early morning to meet us (oddly we arrived spot on time on the bikes – not a common thing that) So it was very nice to sit in the lttile town square and watch her make a beautiful lino cut of Paris from sketches that she had made earlier in the day.
We waved Hannah off and back to London via Paris and headed to the campsite up the road to print the lino. Which went really well using water based inks that our friend at La fin Du Monde gave to us. We have been having trouble drying the prints and the water based stuff drys much quicker. It was an impressive feat for Hannah to get to us and home in a day, and it was so nice to meet up with her.
We stayed at the little campsite up the road from Bonneval town centre and we headed back to the town in the morning to sit for an hour or two to put stamps on and sort the cards. We were able to send two sets, Joe McClarens brilliant ‘h’ block illustration and one of Hannah’s somehow she had managed to make two.
I had also noticed that the rural French seem to like cut flowers as the florists are always open. They also excel at stationery shops and (since Harriet introduced me to the wonder of the stationer) I like to look them out. Well, the French stationery shops do not disappoint, always well laid out, they also have some interesting and quirky little things. I had already bought three two inch flattish comb binders so that printed cards could sit edges on and dry.
The next two days riding were through a huge flat landscape with huge fields stretching as far as you can see in all directions, they have either just been cleared of its crop or in the process of being. The crops are single products like beet, onions, or more often sweetcorn. It’s how I imagine Kansas is (though just a guess really). Huge tractors loaded with product or returning for more roar along the roads and through the quiet scattered villages.
That night we had to abandon the print effort, due to a few things: bit of rain, darkness and mostly using the wrong ink on a zinc plate. Ho hum. We stayed in a very odd little place, kind of like a big campsite in a forrest that has been closed up for the winter. Just a few folk camping for free and using the hot showers (that had kindly been left for the stragglers). Autumn is really here and the last two nights have been properly cold with the mornings a bit creaky and tricky to get going.
Finally, yesterday was a kind of odd short day. We rode 30km to a little town called Malesherbes where there should be a campsite and also a train to Paris. The campsite is closed (no idea why) so we’re poshing it up and staying in a little hotel (very nice) with the bikes stashed in a storage shed out the back. So nice to wash riding stuff and dry it on a radiator. And nice for us to have a bit of space for a day. Anyhow, off I trundled off on a lightening stop to Paris to collect a lino cut left at a brilliant little bookshop called Le Monte-en-L’air at 2 Rue de la Mare. Once I got my bearings and worked out the metro, it was straightforward. The lino was from our friend Olaf Ladousse, a brilliant French artist who lives in Madrid and has helped a lot with work for the Hiut yearbook and also David (Hieatt’s) Do Purpose book this year. It was definitely worth the trip in, the lino is brilliant as some of you will see in a week or so.
The montage is a kind of mix of stuff from above, including pics of the Print Bike in action and on the road (pics courtesy of the ever excellent Robin Mather), and also some of our friends at La Fin du Monde, one of Robin riding through the forrest in the evening, a bunch of old guys from a riding club on the plains south east of Paris. And one of Hannah, who met us in Bonneval and made a linocut in the square as we drunk coffee, and a beautiful thing it is too.
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