Pricking on Plains: Reims to Chateauvillain

My rest day in Reims was cold and rainy but I was glad that the heavens were opening when I wasn’t sleeping under them. Before noon I had already tried three different Champagnes. From the family-owned Champagne house that I had started at, I stumbled over to Taittinger’s enormous site for a tour of their cellars. I think I remember them saying they had 10km of tunnels. It’s actually quite an amazing place that had initially been used as a Roman chalk quarry and then a medieval abbey before finally being converted into cellars which were expanded further. There was a point in the tour where you could see all three layers of history piled onto each other.

In the afternoon I visited the Basilica and the Cathedral. The French churches I have been inside have had some incredibly beautiful stained glass but Reims has some of the best. The basilica is slightly smaller but perhaps more intricate and more impressive because of the surprise of its interior beauty.

In the cathedral there is a welcome desk for pilgrims. I took my credential to be stamped and met three Italians sitting at the desk. They looked tired. It turned out they were also on the Francigena but had departed a few days after after me and gone a more direct route. I said I might see them on the road but they said they might rest in Reims.

The next day the weather looked like it would hold. I left Reims along the canal from which I had entered it. After walking a few kilometres, I began to hear the repetitive  click-clack of some walking poles behind me. I was aware they were going a little faster than me and was preparing myself for an inching takeover. I turned to look at them. “Pelligrino!” It was one of the Italians. They had decided to push on.

I speak almost no Italian and my new friend spoke a little English and a little French. We communicated for about an hour or so with basic phrases and gestures. He began to teach me some Italian beginning each new reptition exercise with ‘Less Anne Wann’ etc. He took out a hand rolled cigarette and started smoking as we walked along. His friends caught up with us when we stopped by a bench. We talked a little and they asked how much my bag weighed and then began tapping their heads. Then, a cyclist who was going to Santiago stopped and talked to us. He had already gone fifty kilometres that day. We had made ten.

We continued as a group of four for a while. It was strange after walking alone for so long. It gave me a different perception of the way. It stretched out in front and behind me to the moving feet of my fellow pilgrims.

I was keeping up with the Italian who was giving me lessons. That turned out to be a mistake: his pace was a fair bit quicker than mine and I managed to pull a muscle in my leg that hampered me for the afternoon.

We left the canal and headed right into a village, then along a road and another through fields and fields of vines. They would have the name of the Champagne house next to them if it was famous.

At a turning in the road I left the Italians to take the scenic route up the hill and to regain my pride by walking a little more slowly without fear of judgement. In the next village I tried to stop for lunch. It was May Day which turns out to be a universally observed holiday in rural France: everywhere was shut. After about an hour trawling through two villages that were built on steep slopes I made do with a block of cheese and a handful of peanuts I had in my bag. In search of food I had somewhat wandered off the way so I decided to seek help from Google. It showed a direct looking route through the forest so I picked up my hiking poles and starting climbing the hill the forest was built on.

Very quickly it became clear that the maps that Google were using bore little semblance to reality. I was being told to go up paths that didn’t appear to exist at all. My pulled leg muscle was beginning to seriously hurt. I blundered through the forest, trusting the digital compass. Eventually I met a broad path and walked in the right direction for an hour or so before again diverting off onto a path that clearly hadn’t been used for some time. A tree blocked my way and made for some difficult navigation. All roads might lead to Rome but some roads lead to Rome much more quickly than others.

At the end of this treacherous path I met the edge of the forest. I saw the village I would be staying in, Trepail, and limped down to it. The path from Reims had several patches with quite limited options in terms of where to sleep and buy food so I was staying at a Gîte that took in lots of pilgrims. I knew the Italians would be there.

I was welcomed by Mme Jacqueminet who was a short lady with not a huge amount of teeth. She was very welcoming, immediately offering me a beer and showing me around. She spoke very quickly in a lispy French that I found almost impossible to understand but nodded along all the same. She had a kitten that was grey and impossibly small. It would would play with a piece of spare wiring then jump onto her lap to bed down for a snooze.

At the table sat a man. I tried to work out if it was one of the Italians without his hat on. By the way he was looking at me it became clear it was not. He was Paul. He was from Holland and he was walking to Rome as well. He thinks he is going to be there by mid-June. For reference, I’m thinking I’ll be there in mid-July. I think Paul will either have to start jogging or be a little late but I didn’t tell him this.

Mme Jacqueminet served us dinner. It seemed a bit of an occasion as there were five of us. Her son owns a vineyard and she opened a bottle of his Champagne: Blanc des Blancs, she told us, the best. I had failed to inform Mme Jacqueminet of my vegetarianism. She sort of tutted and lisped and said ‘omlette’ at which point I apologised, promised I was very happy with the vegetables on offer (which I always mean when I have been an inconvenience) and then apologised several more times. Conversation was largely dominated by the Italian who was fluent in French and Mme Jacqueminet. I tried to involve myself, explaining what I’d been doing for the past couple of years and my interest in medieval literature and pilgrimage. I heard ‘Chanson de Roland’, nodded enthusiastically and then ate some cheese. After the champagne was red wine and then, finally, bed.

The next morning I woke a little groggy and slow. I was the last to leave Mme Jacqueminet’s but she wished me well on my way. It was eight kilometres to the next village, where I caught up with the Italians. From there it was eighteen kilometres along the same canal. I walked with them for a stretch of it but then took a long lunch break and let them go on ahead. It was beautiful for a while but then I became bored by the unchanging scenery. There was little to look at and kilometres dragged.

Eventually, however, I arrived at Chalons-en-Champagne which is actually a very beautiful town. On arriving at the large church my spirits quickly changed. I felt quite full of energy. They had another welcome desk for pilgrims where they would help you find accommodation. There I found the Italians who seemed to be in trouble because everywhere was looking full. I, with my tent strapped to my back, headed off to the campsite, another three kilometres out of town.

I have come to enjoy these campsites. I’ve always been the only person at one carrying their own tent but it feels like the most authentic community of travellers I have experienced. They are like crossroads, with people driving north or south and spending one or two days stopping en route.

My tent was still wet from the rain the night before I had arrived in Reims. I hung it on a washing line and lay on the grass whilst I waited for it to dry a little. Some flies lurked at my feet. I listened to some radio and regretted that I hadn’t registered for a proxy vote in the then upcoming local elections. I pitched my tent and wandered to a supermarket to buy dinner. It was a hypermarket even more hyper than the one in Bruay. This one had its own travel agent. Perhaps it sold holidays to destinations round the mega-site. Anyway, I felt very lost, did about three laps of the place and spent too much money. I ate a whole bag of fizzy strawberry laces on the walk back.

The following day I slept in a little. Strangely, I find my tent an incredibly comfortable place to be and always sleep very well in it.

The route from Chalons diverges. You can either take the official-EU-endorsed-route which loops through a couple of larger towns or you can take the more historically accurate, shorter Roman Road. I had heard conflicting reports about this road: it stretches for around fifty kilometres and some people find it incredibly dull.

I had decided to take it. After walking on tarmac for several kilometres I turned a corner round some bushes and there it was. It stretched across the rolling plains in a straight just-off-white line. The horizon was also punctuated by an enormous number of wind turbines. The sight of the road thrilled me. I began to walk down it eagerly. To me it felt like a transhistorical runway. My trudging pace somehow enabled a kind of cognitive take-off. I imagined all the feet that had trod the gravel before me. I began to see the ghosts of pilgrims and of tradesmen. It refreshed me in a very strange way. After a couple of days of a tired mind it reset the gyroscope of imagination that had been keeping me occupied whilst walking.

The following photos show the same road at different points:

Mme Jacqueminet had given me some numbers for accommodation for the next couple of nights. There were no shops on the road for two whole sleeps. I tried the first one but the Italians had been quicker than me and Mme Songy apologised that she would struggle to fit any more pilgrims in. She gave me another number and told me it was for a lady who lived in a village seven kilometres before her’s. I tried it. Ce soir? Oui. Sorted. I was a little apprehensive as she didn’t sound overly friendly.

The result of this phone call meant I had to walk seven kilometres less than anticipated so I took a couple of hours for lunch and another in the village of Fontaine-sur-Coole which is where my host, Mme Pelouard lived. When I eventually did try to find her house, I wasn’t sure of the address and ended up calling her again. The phone was picked up but I was fumbling with my map again. I tried a ‘bonjour’ after a couple of seconds but don’t think I heard a response. I walked up and down the street for a few minutes before trying again. Mme Pelouard answered with a very suspicious tone. I said I was the pilgrim at which point she immediately brightened and rained a shower of ‘bon’. It later turned out she had thought I was a telemarketer.

She welcomed me into her home, neither a gîte nor a hostel but just where she lived with her husband and where she occasionally welcomed pilgrims who needed somewhere to sleep on the Roman Road. Just as I was arriving she was pulling a cake out of the oven. She told me her grandson was staying with her for the holidays. She had a face that was deeply wrinkled with kindness. I told her I was a vegetarian and apologised. She said it wasn’t a problem and that the person who lived behind her was a vegetarian too. “It’s common nowadays”, she said.

I took a nap and then descended for dinner. I met M Pelouard and their grandson, who I think is called Derek. Derek didn’t speak to me. They asked if I’d like an aperitif. I thought it rude to decline. They told me it was chèvrefeuille liqueur. I struggled to remember where I had heard that word before. And then I remembered: Chevrefoil is the title of a Breton Lai by Marie de France. It is the name for honeysuckle. In the medieval poem, the flower is a symbol for Iseulde’s love for Tristan. His love is represented by a hazel branch. The two plants grow into each other and we are told they would die if they were separated. The licqueur was delicious.

Mme Pelouard had made soup and omelette. Her husband had been a farmer and was keen to talk to me. The conversation seemed to be more vocabulary test than actual dialogue. We span from topic to topic: my family (small), their family (enormous), the wars between England and France in the middle ages (M Pelouard made gun noises and his fingers became pistols), the wars between England and France after the middle ages (more gun noises), the Second World War (gun noises), the First World War (no gun noises), making jam, the animals hunted in Gawain and the Green Knight, British immigrants living in the South of France, Brexit, the Channel Tunnel, coal mining in Newcastle, coal mining in the Pas-de-Calais, Mme Thatcher, the price of housing in London, the price of housing in rural France, and the possibility of me buying a place further down the road and serving jam to pilgrims. I had exhausted my vocabulary and excused myself for bed.

I dreamt that I had been elected as an MP in a special by-election. At my first PMQs Theresa May slid down some lace netting into an enormous pink chintz throne. She did this in exactly the manner you would expect Theresa May to do this. I stumbled on my question (an attack on the authoritarianism the pink chintz represented), remembered it was a dream and woke up.

An hour later I left with a bag of radishes and a quarter of Mme Pelouard’s cake in my bag. I walked with a lightness of step that I thought I might have lost in the forest before Reims or perhaps even earlier. I felt like I was flying down the road. The wind at my back probably helped.

I thought a lot about Derek and about when I had stayed at my grandparents’ houses for summer holidays. The night before, Derek had not eaten his dinner because he had had too much bread at four o’clock. Me and my brother used to be sent to different sets of grandparents because we were too much trouble together. I remembered being Derek and it filled me with a kind of regret. My grandparents are all dead now. I don’t think I had ever really understood the generosity of their love. How care was so lavishly given.

I envied Derek. I envied his afternoons that were so vast with possibility but also so inevitably boring. I envied his ability to make a room a universe. I also wished that I had never been Derek and that I could have turned to my granny and my grandma and thank them quite earnestly for their care. As I walked that gravel road I walked through my memories with them. Of beaches and dinner tables and parks. Of cooking and television and swimming. I don’t think I was ever ungrateful, I just didn’t understand what a well was; I could only see the surface. Its funny what roads can do.

Although I had just under thirty kilometres to walk that day they passed quickly. In the morning I sang back to the birds. I walked through several tiny villages. Occasionally the road would be covered with tarmac and then fade to gravel again. I began to leave the wind turbines behind me. Just after crossing a hill a hare slowly came round the corner of a field. It saw me and casually decided to turn back, moving at the same speed. It was as if the hare was at a party and trying to avoid me without wanting me to know the hare was trying to avoid me.

Travelling south doubles the speed of spring. I was starting to notice wild flowers blooming at the side of the road.

Just before entering the village of Trepail I passed a two pig farms. Low barns and the stench of slurry. The barn had small, square double glazed windows. As I was leaving I heard the muffled noises of the animals communicating. I was glad I had told Mme Pelouard I was a vegetarian.

Accommodation for the night was in an old school hall next to the Mairie. It was organised by the mayoress of the village. When I arrived I found Paul in the lobby and the three Italians snoozing. There were only four camp beds. I offered to sleep on the green outside. It had been a hot day and promised to be a warm night. The mayoress’ husband arrived with dinner (for me, a giant pan of ratatouille) and left us to it. We ate together and then all got an early night. Above me a bat flickered for about half an hour. I watched the stars brighten, tracing the outline of the Plough that Jean had showed me about a week ago.

In the morning I was woken by the birds. And then, a slightly more disturbing sound. I’m not entirely sure what it was but I think it was the pigs talking to each other. Everyone was up early. I was the last to leave again but was walking by just after seven. I have become accustomed to the sun being on my left cheek in the morning and my right cheek in the afternoon. The hour meant that my shadow was long and the  early light danced on the wheat fields.

I walked for about eight kilometres, keeping pace with Paul in the distance. Then he took a left turn when my guidebook told me a right. I followed the book and walked on. Then after a while I realised that it would take me on an additional five kilometre loop. For the second time I stupidly turned to Google Maps. For a while all was fine: I was brought past large fishing ponds and along quiet roads. Then I was instructed to walk along an extremely busy road for 6km. I thought I might die in the attempt so after a bit of regigging got Google to offer me another route. It added an extra couple of kilometres but looked a lot safer.

Soon, however, the path disintegrated again. Gravel turned to grass which turned to even thicker grass that had not been trodden for several months. The last person to travel on it had been in a tractor with at least three-inch treads. The ground was tricky and sun made it even harder. Eventually I was brought back to gravel and then tarmac before reaching Brienne-le-Chateau. It is a quaint little town that is famous for contributing to Napoleon’s education. I wanted to head further down the road another six kilometres to get to a campsite that had a pool.

Just as a was passing out of the town, my Italian friend shouted at me from the door of the bar. I went and had a beer with them. One in particular looked like he was close to drowning in his sweat. He kept saying ‘Napoleon’ with a heavy French accent and miming a tricorn hat. I left the bar and walked for another hour or so down the tarmac. I tried to imagine the sun away but it was no good. On the way down I met a man called Jean-Gabriel who rode up to me on his bike and asked me where I was going. He asked me if I needed anything and to give him a call if I did.

I arrived at the campsite and pitched my tent. The pool seemed permanently closed but Jean Gabriel had told me there was a lake very close that was perfect for swimming. After a short rest I walked over. It was coming to the end of the afternoon and the sun was just beginning to lose its heat. I waded into the water and dived in briefly. The cold shocked me and I started a quick front crawl. My legs resisted, arguing that they had done their work for today. I stood. I walked out of the lake.

I heard my name and turned to see Jean-Gabriel. He told me he was a cyclist. He had designed his own bike and had travelled all over Northern Europe. He travels much lighter than me. Basically just a sleeping bag. I asked him where he slept and he told me he would just knock on doors. After knocking on ten usually one would let him stay.

The next day was even hotter. It was a Sunday and I started later than I would have liked. It was roads for most of the day. I was stopping about every five kilometres because of the lack of shade. The Italians caught up with me in a village called Dolancourt. It’s a bit of a strange place due to a nearby themepark. You can hear the screams of the rollercoaster from the otherwise tranquil-seeming village green.

It was then another ten kilometres along a fairly straightforward tarmac road to Bar-sur-Aube. It only had hotel accommodation so I was planning to restock and sleep in the local forest. It being a Sunday afternoon, however, the shops were all shut. I found a bar and bought myself a beer and recharged my phone a little. The bar was mainly full of people playing the lottery in vinyl American-style booths. I wrinkled my nose a little thinking something smelt a bit funny but then realised it was probably me. I was told there was a bakery still open just around the corner.

I bought a baguette and made myself a late lunch. The remnants of a camembert I had in my bag had been made almost totally liquid in the heat. I was hot and tired but very unwilling to pay for a hotel so I bought another baguette, a pastry, and a litre and a half of water and headed up into the forest. Just as I was leaving I had another call from the door of the bar: my Italian friends again. I went into say goodbye to them because I knew they were going further than me the next day and I might not see them again. I hadn’t seen Paul since Brienne.

The climb into the forest was incredibly steep but I was promised a wide clearing with good views over the plains. On reaching the plateau I sat on a bench and watched about twenty parasailers. They were all hanging from enormous kites and were riding the thermal currents of the wind. I walked on a little further and saw the ledge from which they jumped from.

It was around six o’clock and the plateau was quite busy with spectators and thrill seekers. I was walking quite pointedly away from civilization. It feels like quite a contrary thing to do: head for the woods when the sun is beginning to set. People were asking where I was staying and offering me lifts down the hill. I smiled and politely declined, plodding on in the relative cool of the evening.

I arrived at the woods and their entrance, to my sun-glassed eyes, looked lovely, dark and deep. It is strange how a forest can come to look like a bed. Entering the forest I noticed on my right were pines and on my left deciduous trees, strangely divided. I walked for a while and then turned to the right, decideding to make my small camp amongst the pines. I settled with one at my head and one at my feet and ate my gruyere pastry. The heat had exhausted me and my eyes had closed before the stars came out.

The next morning I had decided that I did, in fact, need to restock for the next couple of days as again there was a scarcity of shops en route. I walked back over the plateau and down the steep hill to Bar sur Aube.

That day I was on my way to Clairvaux, once home to the largest of all the Cistercian monasteries. The site now houses a high security prison. I would be staying with some nuns who provided accommodation for prisoners’ visiting families. A note in the accommodation booklet I have suggested bringing a food gift to the nuns. I picked up a half kilo Chaource to go with my own supplies. It was only about fifteen kilometres from Bar sur Aube but my newly heavy packed weighed me down a little.

From there the day was fairly short. Up and along a wide track through a forest. The track was narrow enough to prevent the wind but wide enough to offer no shade so it was very hot, again. After my doubling back to Bar-sur-Aube I arrived just after two. Sister Blandine greeted me with grape juice and cake and showed me to my room.

In the afternoon I went for a tour of the old monastery. It has a long, complicated and quite sad history. It had its foundations in the twelfth century and then grew in wealth as it farmed much of the surrounding land. The life of the Brothers was cloistered: they were not allowed to leave the grounds of the abbey. After the first French Revolution the Abbey was confiscated and then sold off. Eventually, under Napoleon it became a prison and has remained one ever since. It is a place of willing and unwilling confinement. Even on the tour, doors were unlocked and locked in front and behind us.

The Sisters, however, were incredibly generous and hospitable. In the evening Sister Pierrette cooked me an omelette with pasta and cumin seeds. It was probably the nicest thing I have eaten on the road so far. There was also some more ratatouille. She clearly knew her way around a spice rack. They filled my plate and kept offering more. They told me of their work in the prison. How the current train strike was making it difficult for families to visit. How it is hard for school children to admit their father is in prison. How the visiting room is two metres by two metres and doesn’t have any windows. Then they offered me rice pudding and prunes with a smile.

The next morning they gave me a satsuma and a banana, we exchanged photographs and I left. I took a scenic route through the forest of Clairvaux. It was a route that doubled back on itself a couple of times but I didn’t mind as the shade made it fairly easy going. I continued down through the valley, up another ridge and then down again into a small village with a river running through it. I ate my lunch next to the river in the shade of a tree.

A rather squat man came up to me and asked me if I was walking to Rome. He was missing about half of his left ring finger. I replied that I was and he invited me for coffee. He told me he often accommodated pilgrims for the night. He told me about the 83 year old pilgrim he had had once. And about the cyclist with 40 kilograms of luggage. We spoke for a while and then I said goodbye and walked on to Chateauvillain which was another six kilometres.

My accommodation for the night was to be a pilgrim flat in the small town. Apparently you collected the keys from the bakery. It was, however, another national holiday and I was fairly confident the bakery was going to be closed. No matter: I had phoned ahead the day before and made arrangements to collect the key from a lady. Or so I thought.

I arrived at Chateauvillain and found two bakeries, both closed. I rang the number that I had got through on the day before and got no answer. I didn’t panic. I read my book. An hour passed and I tried another call. And another and another. It was getting late and I was considering leaving to make camp in a different forest but I was running low on water. The sun was starting to come down and I pulled on a fleece. I thought a little about the nature of faith and charity.

Eventually, my phone rang. I answered and flummoxed a little in French. I said I would go to the bakery. She said she would advise me from there. I went to one of the bakeries and waited and then called her again. Wires had been crossed. She hadn’t realised the bakery was shut and thought I was going to get the key and she would then explain to me where the pilgrim flat was. Oh, I said. No, the bakery is shut. “I am not in Chateauvillain but I will be in less than an hour.”

By this point a man  was helping me. He wore dungarees and a quite of thick weave hemp flat cap. He smelled of body odour and had finger nails that were black with flecks of green. At first I was a little scared of him then I liked him and then I was scared again. He told me his name was Francis, like the Pope. I wasn’t doing particularly well on the phone and every time Francis tried to offer simultaneous advice which became a little overwhelming.

Finally it seemed like things were getting sorted and then Francis took to describing, turn by turn, the route I should take the next day. He spent about thirty minutes studying the guidebook I have on my kindle. I just wanted to sit down. Then he decided I wouldn’t remember the route so insisted on writing it down. I asked him if it was on the Via Francigena. He said it was a shorter route. He said all roads lead to Rome. I have since googled his instructions. It is a considerably longer route. I bid him goodbye and he cycled off in a saddle that slipped back to an almost vertical position.

I was waiting by the roadside, having communicated where I was to the woman over the phone. She pulled up and I put my rucksack in the back of her car. She drove me less than five minutes to a site on the edge of the old village. I said I was very sorry for being an inconvenience and apologised for my French and thanked her for collecting me. She showed me into an apartment that was big enough for maybe eight people. On the draining board were three mugs: the ghosts of the Italians a day ahead of me. Sure enough, I found their message in the guest book.

It is from here I write this diary post. Tomorrow I’m pushing on to a hamlet called Mormant and then Langres.

Thanks for reading!

I really appreciate hearing any feedback from people.

 

A post-script on the title:

“Pricking on the plains” is a reference to the beginning of the first book of ‘The Faerie Queene’. It is a renaissance mediation of lots of the images of medieval chivalry and heroism.

The land I had been walking through  (these plains) were the original backdrop for the tales of knights and their quests. These originated in French romances and then got filtered through to English via various means. Ever since, the image of the knight on horseback (pricking means to use your spurs) has been a central figure in the collective imagination.

What’s interesting about Spenser and everyone else who revisits this medieval secular iconography is how they alter its expression to suit their own purpose.

The knight on the plain is an enduring figure of mythical, magical, made-up heroism.