August 2024

Manufacture Berthoud Cycles
Text : Jean-Acier DANÈS

... It's the month when you're content with the most august of things: tiredness ...

Berthoud Cycles

Photo credits : © Berthoud Cycles

    August (at least, in my world) embodies something infinitely great. It's the month when you're content with the most august of things: tiredness, how far you've come, merit or a moment of happiness you wouldn't want to forget despite its apparent triviality.

    In my past, I’ve sometimes spent a sad August, and because nothing deserves an August to be sad, it was then twice as sad. It's a bit the same with a happy August: oh, you can savor it like a fresh fruit that marks the palate forever. In August, everything goes by faster and yet the impression created, the weight on the heart and nervous system, seems greater. If I were an economist, I'd say “a good return on investment.” But time isn't money. So I say: August, I love your splendor that doesn't show.

Photo credits : © Martin Heiß

    Listening out the window, unless one lives on the edge of the beach or at the foot of a major Alpine pass, August is nothing but siesta, silence and yawn. From time to time a noise wakes me up: either the clatter of a freewheel or the noise of a discreet hiker, a window that slams shut and disturb birds, a deliveryman on his strange electric scooter… August, how can we imagine this month of vacation without its lazy take-off, without the sound of water drops, as the heat-weary stroller comes to rest under the shade of a tree?

    So, I'm probably a bad observer, or a great utopian (or both) but in August I have the feeling that for one or two breaths, nobody wants to own anything anymore, that everyone wants to share a salad in the garden or roast impromptu campfire marshmallows when the night falls, and then with their head in the air say to themselves - gosh, we’ve got to discover this garden! I gotta love and be myself from morning to evening! Exploring the cards in my deck in a different way, and gently strokes the water from the canoe to slow the flow... That's what I love about August: it's a powerful springboard. It does mean there's inertia, sure. A little sadness becomes a summer tragedy. A rainy cloud becomes a Shakespearean storm, a sporting competition the beating heart of a national story with its fervor and cohesion. And for the craftsman as for the sportsman, a repeated gesture becomes, in the centripetal thrust of the days, the raw manifestation of a prowess on many levels: joy, form in execution, speed in effort, passion. A little courage on a few weeknights is transformed into a faster climb, a happy journey.

    “August. It's summer in it’s truest way. Engines and exhausts are revving through mountains, the windless sea comes alive with a soft wave beaten by the paddles of rowers. This is the month when, with your handlebar bag resting on the sand, you pull out a corkscrew or bottle opener and, as the drink is fresh, everything becomes an Eden after the road. You cherish a merit whose flavor you anticipated from the city. And who cares for the sand getting in the cogs or socks. And who cares for the ride back home. Even a car honking at a cyclist triggers howls of mockery and relative “oh come on, old chap!” It's panache month, paid for with a bonking body in the heat, but what the hell's a heat stroke when there are rivers, tan lines, honed bodies and friends. Everything goes into the bottle cages and inside our bidons, and we linger at the table, because it's better anyway to ride in the morning or nighttime cool, over hills and cypress trees. I ride without stopping on the burnt thorns that line the path. I could talk about the ice cream, evoke the taste of blackberry, lemon, honey and myrtle. But as I ride, it's the smell of anise, hot leather, lye, burnt oil that catches my throat on the climbs.”

    It’s a strange habit of mine, but I like to imagine a grid around the cities I often visit, whether they're friendly places or not. And then, as I explore, rather like a discovery where in the fog of the map we make gradual advances, I link my finds and surprises to factual reality - a millimeter of science brushes up against a yardstick of lived experience. Here, the pass has a terrifying name but in facts it’s more of a likable way up. Here, it's the other way around: you expect a jovial little bench facing the lake where you can nibble while watching the herons, and what you get is a hostile, wind-whipped plain. Little by little, I do it again, I reiterate, I confirm, I learn to retain these places that constitute us and to confront them with Foucault's pendulum, a constant mark of the passage of experience. Around Fleurville, for example, around the Manufacture Berthoud, I noted a sublime stretch of road leading to Beaune, a forest pierced by rain that you have to brave to get to Le Creusot, a pizzeria with an affable table and a practical bakery, a place to repair your bike or a bench at the exit of a station to wind it up after the train. Several passages, several variations of these landscapes, and often the same observation: the map of the heart sometimes rubs off on the neutrality of reality. So, in August, I leave the counter and the map in a drawer, and set off on my own instinctive journey through life.

paysage avec ciel nuageux sur vignoble

Photo credits : © Pxhere

    I could name ten such places around Fleurville, around the Manufacture Berthoud, where I liked to fix a point of interest in my memory: a place to sleep under the stars, a grocery store where you can stock up tasty stuff like a prince, a furtive hideaway to photograph the clouds on the lake, a mysterious cave where you can hardly see, a perfect castle you'd like to live in despite its cracked walls, an abbey where you can see yourself learning a trade, and above all roads you're so lucky to be able to take. But as in August, I invite you to go and see for yourself. To build your own architecture of the heart, with your own tastes and choices.

paysage avec ciel nuageux sur vignoble

Château de Fleurville (71) :Photo credits : © PHILDIC

    What's certain is that in Fleurville, rue des Acacias, you'll find a friendly Manufacture with craftsmen and experts who'll open their doors to you. It's likely that they'll have a solution on the shelf to your desire for craftsmanship and comfort, autonomy and roaming, customization or sustainable performance. They'll probably have a tool that you don't use, or don't use like that, and that will bear fruit. They'll probably be able to design your bike for you for years to come. Probably they can also, as they do every day, send your purchases all over the world, but they've got a lot more to tell you than what fits in a package: they'll tell you about optimal position, full-grain leather, customer-friendly materials and components. But that's not for me to tell you, they'll do that themselves. And you'll be left with the pleasure of trusting in time.

paysage avec ciel nuageux sur vignoble

Manufacture Berthoud Cycles (71) : Photo credits : © Berthoud Cycles

Written by Jean-Acier DANÈS, Author of Bicyclettres (Éditions du Seuil).

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