Saturday 3 September

I cycle to Waterloo station with plenty of spare time to remove the pedals and the wheels from the cycle and to pack the lot into the soft bicycle bag that I bought for this purpose during my most recent trip to the United States (TransIt soft bike bag, $45 from Performance Bicycle). Neither the Eurostar nor the TGV takes cycles intact, but both will take them disassembled and bagged, without any special arrangements. Getting the cycle through the security inspection at Waterloo takes an extra fifteen minutes or so, but there's never any question as to whether it's permitted.

I change from the Eurostar to the TGV at Lille, so as to avoid lugging the disassembled cycle through the Paris Métro from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon. I arrive at Marseille Saint Charles on the TGV at 22.47 as planned, and immediately face my first unplanned event: the left luggage office, where I'd planned to leave my bulky bicycle bag, closes at 22.00. Resignedly I fold up the bicycle bag and stuff it on top of my overstuffed backpak in the plastic crate on the back of the cycle. It's quite a sight: even folded, it looks like wings projecting out the sides of the cycle. The second unplanned event is that somewhere amid all the jostling, my rear tube has punctured, so my first task, amid curious taxi drivers and Saturday-night revellers outside the station, is to change the tube. Of course, my tools and spare tubes are at the bottom of the backpack since I'd been reckoning on not needing them till after I'd unpacked at the hotel – so there I am at 11pm on a Saturday night in Marseille rummaging through all my junk spread out on the pavement. After about half an hour I manage to get unpacked, replace the tube, struggle with my portable air pump, assemble the cycle, and get packed again. The pressure in the rear tyre is low, but enough to get me out of the city and at this hour of the night getting out of the city is at the top of the agenda – there's a lot of drinking and carrying on, people yelling from cars words that I can't understand because they're too fast (and perhaps too slurred). My plan is to get out of the city and to find a decent spot to camp till dawn – the map suggests that such spots should be plentiful once I'm out of the city.

I set off south down the white stone steps to my left (270° from the direction of my incoming train), and follow the road south from the base of the steps till it ends at a `T' intersection. I turn right, then left at a roundabout with an obelisk in its centre. I'm now on the D559, the road to La Ciotat. A cycleway appears to my right and parallels the road out of the city. At the edge of town I begin to climb - and climb - and climb. It seems never to end; round each bend there's more. Contributing to my anxiety, of course, is that all this is happening around midnight in a city that I know only by map.

I pass the entrance to the Parc Scientifique de Luminy, the location of Inmed which I'll be visiting in a few days. About a kilometre later, I reach the city limit of Marseille and the streetlights end. I'm on a winding mountain road, in pitch blackness (except for my lights), being passed by people driving home from Saturday-night parties in Marseille – not a good situation to be in for any length of time, but acceptable for the short term.

The road is well engineered for a constant grade – perhaps the route is old enough to have once carried horse-drawn loads, and what works for horses works for humans on cycles. It's about half an hour of aerobic pedalling, always uphill, and then suddenly it's flat. I see a gate to my right, with a path that's « interdit », but there's nobody here. I unpack my sleeping bag in the dry grass behind some brush that shields me from the road, overlooking the Parc Scientifique de Luminy. Surreality #1: here in the middle of nowhere (okay, just a few kilometres up the hill from Marseille, but it feels like the middle of nowhere), in a house up the hill on the other side of the road, there is a thrash band practising. And it's a really bad thrash band. Probably some kids whose parents live out here in the hills and have enough money to buy the guitars and the drum set. At some point in the midst of their stopping and starting I fall asleep.

Sunday 4 September

When I wake, it's light, and from my campsite I see the Parc Scientifique down the hill and the Mediterranean beyond it. I set off again, through a couple of kilometres of minor ups and downs and past more of the nature preserve where I've just camped illegally. This mix of the desert and the sea, the dry earth and the dew on the brush, reminds me a great deal of San Diego, even to the scent in the air of desert plants and ocean mist.

Shortly, I pass a hotel. I prefer my campsite: as the purpose of a hotel is to keep me away from people and cops in populated places, in country as open as this, there's little reason to make use of one. This hotel seems as though it may be off the grid; I hear what seems a generator in a shed outside.

Round another bend I start down a long hill towards Cassis and catch another glimpse of the sea, and later the town. I take a detour through a bit of Cassis, then climb back to the D559 which brings me into La Ciotat at avenue du Mistral, which becomes avenue President Wilson, which becomes Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, which becomes boulevard Beau Rivage on which is found the hotel that the conference has booked for me, the Miramar. For returning my hotel preference form on time, I've been rewarded with a corner room with a balcony facing the beach. With hours to kill before the opening of the conference this evening, I head for the beach.

The conference takes place at the Théâtre du Golfe, a venue owned by the city of La Ciotat and kindly given over for the conference gratis. It's a good venue in the essentials (though placed rather unfortunately above an active fire station). The next days are spent at the conference, evenings in the ocean, and nights logged in. (For future reference, at the time of this writing there's an open wireless network named « NETGEAR » run from one of the flats atop the café « Waikiki Beach » – yes, this does in fact enable one to log in from the beach.)

Tuesday 6 September

My talk is the second on Tuesday morning. I've been obsessing over it, as I always do, but in the end it turns out that most of the slides are recycled from previous iterations and I know my spiel by heart – I even lose my place in my notes near the end and carry on extemporaneously. I did manage to drag myself away last night long enough to cycle into the hills northwest of La Ciotat to a party at the conference organiser's house (and managed also to get lost on the way). We have the afternoon off, and although there was some rain mid-morning (and also the previous morning – which has made me wonder how it'll be as I set off Thursday morning on the cycle), by lunchtime it's clear and sunny. The conference organisers have put together a trip for a swim in the nearby Calanque des Figuerolles (named for its fig trees) followed by a visit to Inmed. The calanques are calm inlets eroded in the conglomerate rock of the coastline. The water, as everywhere in the Mediterranean, is very warm.

From here we continue on (by bus, which doesn't really fit in the log of a cycling trip, but I don't know where else to put it, and besides I did cycle past these places on the way to La Ciotat Saturday night and Sunday morning) via the Route des Crêtes to the cliffs above Cassis. The Route des Crêtes is steeper and winds about even more than the D559. Our host tells a joke about a priest and a bus driver who go to heaven: the priest is upset that he's sleeping on the floor in heaven whereas the bus driver has every comfort imaginable, and Saint Peter says, "When you gave your sermons, everyone was asleep, but when that bus driver was driving past the cliffs, everyone was praying."

The tour ends at Inmed in the Parc Scientifique de Luminy, which reminds me a bit of the Salk Institute – novel architecture strikingly planted above the sea. Unlike most neuroscience laboratories, Inmed have a programme in which lycée students are brought into the laboratories, and the building actually is designed with a separate teaching wing specifically for this use. As a sometime teacher of a neuroscience course for high school students, I very much appreciate the care that's been taken to give these students experience of a working laboratory.

Thursday 8 September

Even in a desert climate it does rain, it's just that the rain is seasonal. And this season the rains seem to have come early. Everyone knows that it never rains in the south of France during August, and everyone knows that it does rain in October. I've turned up in September and hit the bad side of the boundary, because in fact, it is pouring – and with the bicycle bag hanging out the top of my pack and all the extra stuff that I was using during the conference (long trousers, computer, mobile phone charger, &c.) filling the dry bag, my sleeping bag is perched on top soaking up the downpour. Misery beckons, and before long I find myself pointed in the opposite direction, west towards the vieux port de la Ciotat, up the street past the Théâtre du Golfe and into the neighbourhood of two-star hotels. (For future reference, La Rotonde is the cheapest of these.) Demoralised and now without a margin of error in case the cycle needs repair on the road, I decide to convert the long tour to a series of shorter, circular rides from the coast. Of course the weather clears up around noon, and I spend the rest of the day planning these rides, catching up on email, and catching up on time at the beach.

Friday 9 September

For today I've planned a circular ride northeast into the hills (getting the serious climbing done early), then south to the coast and back east along the beaches. I start at about 7.30 on the D3, climbing through Ceyreste (where I stop at the grocery to buy water) into the Forêt de Font Blanche, where the D3 becomes the D2 and, like most roads here, proceeds in the least hilly route possible. To my right, clouds flow over the hill that stands between here and Saint-Cyr-sur-mer.

I pass a monument to the Resistance, then roll down into Signes, then take the right fork onto the D202, following the river Gapeau to the D554 where the river and I turn south. Escarpments stand to the left, and growing wild along the road are figs (which are slightly past), and raspberries (which are ripe to perfection).

In Belgentier, where a banner strung across the road advertises a fig festival that took place in late August, I stop for a sandwich at a café, then continue south parallelling the N97 autoroute through Sollies and into the centre of Toulon. Toulon is not nice. It's full of traffic and bisected by the autoroute. I finally find a way under the autoroute by following the D63 through an industrial park, then into Six-Fours-Les-Plages, where I turn right onto the D559 along the coast and stop at the beach. I cross Sanary-sur-mer, then take the coastal branch of the D559 through the centre of Bandol, winding through Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer before arriving back in La Ciotat at mid-afternoon, with plenty of time for the beach.

Saturday 10 September

The next unplanned event again concerns the left luggage office at Marseille. I've decided that especially given the unpredictable weather, if I want to make decent time then I'm going to have to get rid of the bicycle bag and the other encumbrances. I decide to cycle back over the two hills to Marseille and leave these things at the station. I leave at about 7.30 and am at the left luggage office at 11am. The first problem is that they X-ray my bag, find that it contains a computer, and insist that I cannot place a computer in the left luggage. (I don't see the difficulty; a notebook computer isn't going to take up any more space in a locker than a paper notebook.) The second problem is that the maximum interval during which luggage can be left is 72 hours; my train leaves at 13.52 Tuesday and I may not be back to collect the luggage till about an hour before then. So I have to sit in the station for two hours and then take my computer on a tour of Provence. When I explain that I'm on a cycle tour and haven't much room to carry the computer, the attendant doesn't believe me: « Où est votre vélo? » he asks. (I've parked it next to the station.)

I finally set off again at 1pm, under the railway and onto the N8, which climbs a long hill out of town through la Cabucelle, la Viste, and Saint-Antoine to Septèmes-les-Vallons. As I pass through Bouc Bel Air a black cloud looms on my left from the coast. Had it not been for the two hours lost in Marseille I could have outrun it inland. As it is, the thunderstorm finally catches up with me at about 3.30pm in the middle of Aix-en-Provence, where all of a sudden it's pouring buckets. I wait for about an hour at a café but it doesn't stop. I find the nearest two-star hotel with a vacancy, Le Concorde, and check in, having spent only five hours on the cycle this day. By evening the rain has stopped and I have some time to walk round town. Aix is a beautiful town, but rather too well kempt and tourist-orientated for my taste &ndash it's full of expensive boutiques and cafés that seem to displace the real people.

Sunday 11 September

I leave at dawn the next morning in a misty drizzle on the N96. After about twenty minutes on the road a hiss from my front tyre announces a puncture. I stop to change the tube. It's a weekend morning, and I'm passed by many cyclists heading out for rides, none of whom stop. I've never understood this everyone-for-themselves attitude amongst cyclists; when I see someone by the side of the road I at least stop long enough to ask whether they have all the tools that they need. But cyclists seem a solitary lot; perhaps this is why they choose a sport that doesn't (at least in amateur settings) involve a great deal of teamwork or interpersonal coordination. (A lot of computer scientists whom I know are cyclists; cycling's a very suitable sport for people who are good with maps and mechanical systems but not good with people. (Yes, I know, it takes one to know one.))

After repairing the puncture I set off again, parallelling the river Durance on the tree-lined route through Meyrargues where the sun at last begins to break through the clouds. Near le Pont dur Mirabeau there's a hydroelectric generating station fed by a canal that runs under a mountain from upriver and draining into a canal. Electricité de France maintain a network of hydroelectric dams and canals to take advantage of the potential energy in all these hills, the total generating capacity of which equals that of two nuclear power plants. At the Pont du Mirabeau I bear right onto the D952 towards Vinon-sur-Verdon, staying on the same side of the river. I refill my water bottle from a spring in Gréoux-les-Bains. A few kilometres past Gréoux-les-Bains I turn right onto the D315. (I'm tempted to continue on the D952 towards the Lac de Sainte-Croix and the Grand Cañon, but having lost so much time to rain I no longer have a margin comfortable enough to allow me to stray so far from a railway and still return to Marseille in time for my train back if the cycle were to develop a fault.) The road winds uphill next to a gorge which rather reminds me of the gorges in Ithaca – it's a testament to the variety of Provence that I can be reminded of places as different as San Diego and Ithaca within a single journey.

This region has suffered forest fires within the past few months, and I can see vividly where the fire was contained below the road and where the hillside above the road burnt. I'm now passing alongside the northeastern side of the Lac d'Esparron, created by a hydroelectric dam on the river Verdon, and surrounded by burnt forest which still smells of ash. The fire was so hot that not even the buried cable next to the road survived.

At Esparron-de-Verdon I stop at a café for lunch, where many other cyclists are already eating. « Vous êtes seul? » asks the waitress. « Oui » I respond, and she removes the extra place setting. I am in fact the only person in the entire café eating alone; everyone else is with someone or is part of a group. This has often been the case on this trip, and I find myself wishing again that my life were more settled and that these experiences could be shared instead of solitary. An old woman with a companion at the next table asks me whether I live here. « Non, » I explain, « je suis venu d'angleterre pour une réunion scientifique à La Ciotat et maintenant je fias un tour au vélo. ». "You seem," she declares, breaking into English, "I do not know the English word, triste." « Non, » I smile, « simplement pensif ». At the edge of Esparron-de-Verdon I turn right, uphill onto the C1 which leads through fields on top of a mesa, in an area where the underbrush has burnt but many of the trees remain intact. I turn right onto the D15 and speed downhill to joint the D13 at Quinson, crossing the river Verdon in the Basses Gorges du Verdon. The water in the gorge is a milky blue that isn't completely captured in the photograph. I spend about an hour exploring the GR 99 off-road trail, but it's too rocky for me to follow it into the hills with the load that I'm carrying.

Returning to the D13, I follow the river Beau Rié to Montmeyan, passing many grape vines and olive groves. I'm fascinated by the afternoon sun sparkling on the river, in a pattern changing at every instant. There is an order to it, a language of wave motion and specular reflection which would represent this chaos in a comfortable, predictable order, if only we could quantify all the variables of sun and wind and water. I stop to take a photograph of the river, and something sneezes on top of the rock face behind me. I turn round to find a mountain goat staring at me.

Past Montmeyan I bear right onto the D71 towards Tavernes, where I turn left onto the D554 through Barjols and le Val, then right onto the Brignoles bypass to join the westbound N7. It rains briefly, and the sun shining from the west near the horizon creates a rainbow behind me. I turn onto the D5 to get away from the traffic on the N7, climb a long hill, and in the dusk make camp for the night in the woods north of la Roquebrussanne.

Monday 12 September

I turn right onto the D2 at Méounes-les-Montrieux, just north of Belgentier where I ate lunch this past Friday. East of Signes I join the route that I cycled in the opposite direction this past Friday, then turn right onto the N8 through Cuges-les-Pins and left onto the D1 to Roquefort, then up and down a long, winding hill to Cassis, where I stop for lunch at a café and then spend the afternoon at the beach. With less than 24 hours to go in my visit to Provence I manage to inflict the only injury of the trip, by diving to the bottom and turning over a rock that conceals a pissed-off sea urchin. I surface and pick the spines out of my fingers, then spend some time in the sun and head up the hill to the same spot where I camped the night I arrived in Marseille.

Tuesday 13 September

I wake in the middle of the night with a sore pinky finger. In the morning I see that it's swollen and red where the spines went in. Luckily all I have to do today is coast down the hill into Marseille, get to the station and put the cycle and myself on the train. I reverse the route that I took ten days ago, get some good things to eat in the Tunisian neighbourhood near the station, and end by circling the Arc de Triomphe (yes Marseille has one too) down the Avenue Camille Pelletan from the station. (Every tour should end with a lap round the Arc de Triomphe.)

FACTS TO REMEMBER FOR FUTURE TRIPS TO PROVENCE:

• Never go to CycleSurgery in London. They sold to someone else the new cycle on which I'd placed a £50 deposit weeks before, then bolloxed up the repair to my old cycle so that the front derailleur didn't go into first gear, and replaced my quick-release rear wheel with a bolted axle.
• Don't believe that it can't rain a lot on the Mediterranean coast during September! Bring rain gear. (At least on this trip I thought to bring a tarpaulin.)
• Don't depend on left luggage, which gives one only 72 hours. Plan to begin and to end the trip at a hotel where the bicycle bag and any other luggage not needed on the tour can be left.
• La Ciotat is a good place to stay, not rough like Marseille and Toulon but not overly touristic like Cassis. The cheapest place to stay for one person is La Rotonde. Other two-star hotels near the old city, such as Les Lavandes, a short walk from the beach, are only slightly more expensive. The hotels on the beach in the east end of town along Boulevard Beau Rivage are the most expensive.
• When stones may be concealing angry sea urchins, leave those stones unturned!