Almost back to the beginning:

 March 29th.   I wake up early on somebody’s sofa, singing in French on the radio, children’s voices in the background, the clash of coffee percolator and cups. Yann is bustling about: “I must leave in a minute, we must go together, I will lock the door.” It’s difficult to know what he means, in English or French, and I am still in a dream with Angela recording an African song in Yann’s studio. I throw my stuff together, sling a cup of coffee down and we part company outside his front door with a hearty handshake. Yann drives away to work in La Baule at 8 o’clock while I try my luck at another footpath across the fens to Sainte Reine de Bretagne. The morning is late March misty, and when I realise I’m walking on the GR3 but in the wrong direction there is a momentary feeling of utter disorientation as I look ahead at the straight way disappearing into the unknown with a lake on one side and a canal on the other. I return over the footbridge next to an old ash tree covered from head to foot in mistletoe. The crows’ harsh call is the only sound. A heron stands sentinel on one canal bank while on another I spot a large rodent, too fat for a water-rat or vole and without a beaver’s tail. It must be a coypu, which are causing much damage to the ecosystem along with freshwater crayfish. The path is wide and spongy and seems to be floating on the water, which laps the grass gently on both sides. It feels as though it could be submerged at any point but there are a couple of footbridges at susceptible places where you cross from mud to mud over a stretch of water just too wide to jump and wide enough to moor a couple of narrow flat-bottomed punts with their tapering ends. These boats are still very much in use for transporting people (and occasionally cattle in the larger ones), as well as for fishing and hunting. Everything is wet and watery and I squelch along wondering what this is actually called in English  ̶  marsh, mere, fen, bog, lake, pond, broad? The whole area is rich in reed-beds which furnish the nearby communes with good roofing thatch.

                               The people hereabouts have a unique system of local government. La Grande Briere is the joint property of the 21 communes (previously 17 parishes) which surround it, and has been since at least the time of the Merovingians. It is not part of any local authority district and has never belonged to any lord of the manor. Any inhabitant is therefore allowed to cut peat when and where they want and to organise their own independence and responsibilities. These rights have been robustly defended at times. In the early 19^th century there was an armed insurrection to proclaim their continued adherence to the Revolutionary decrees of 1791-2 which had confirmed their continued independence.

                                The days are starting to fall into a familiar pattern:

Get up and have breakfast, including as many oats as possible; set off and walk for 2-2½ hours; stop for a break of 15-20 minutes; walk for another couple of hours; stop for lunch, usually a pack-up or something I’ve been able to buy at a boulangerie on the way; walk for another 1½-2 hours; have a break; walk for another hour and a half or so, depending on how far I have to go to get to a place to stay the night; find a place to stay if not already booked; have a shower; wash my clothes; find somewhere to eat and drink a beer (or vice versa); try to get online to find lodgings for the next few nights; read something; sleep.

Within this pattern there are other rhythms. One of them is to do with looking: I find myself alternating between short-distance vision, which is to say looking at my feet and the immediate obstacles on the path; medium-distance, or seeing the plants, houses or whatever else is beside the path and up to about fifty yards in any direction; and long-distance, which is the horizon or anything just short of it. There’s also a left/right pattern and a river/not river one. Then there’s an up/down rhythm, but I tend to be looking ahead or down most of the time and have to remind myself to look up at the clouds. The other thing with that one is you have to stop walking to appreciate the skyscape for any length of time, and I have a tendency to be wanting to press on once I’m in my stride. There are already enough reasons to stop, especially in wet or changeable weather, and not just for food and water. It’s mainly to look at a map or relieve your bladder or make a note or take a photo or (most often) to adjust your clothing because you’re too hot/cold/wet/uncomfortable. The other principal rhythm could be called inner and outer, because you’re doing such a repetitive task all day but you’re constantly moving through an ever-changing environment, so you’re always jumping between seeing and thinking, by which I mean day-dreaming, planning, anticipating, remembering, singing….

NB I’m starting to get through a lot of Compeed plasters as they tend to curl up at the ends and form little lumps of gristle to stand on or rub against.

                The countryside east of Tours changes dramatically and suddenly I was in hill country. . There were swallows nesting in every barn, it seemed, and on an island in the river thousands of terns had arrived from the Sahara to breed. Apparently some of these beaches and sandbanks reach a temperature of over 50˚C in the summer.

Leaving the river briefly to follow the signed path it took me up a steep hill past ancient and modern houses built into (or out of) the soft volcanic tufa cliffs. Many seemed to be occupied by incomers, and I passed one house for sale that was poignantly called “The Last Dream”. At the top of the hill the path crossed a little plateau covered in vineyards producing the Chenin Blanc variety of grapes which are used for the local Vouvray wine, in a couple of which men were pruning the vines. It seemed very late for that but they were not close enough for me to ask them whether this was an experiment or they had just been negligent. Going down a little lane on the other side of the hill past the chateau to Vouvray itself I was struck by the friendliness of the inhabitants of this small town. Everyone seemed to have time to stop for a chat. I came across one man who was cutting nettles by the side of the cycle path, which he said he was going to use as mulch for his tomato plants. The cycle path also runs the length of the Loire but follows a different trajectory from the GR3 and they only meet occasionally, usually in places where the newer cycle path has been laid down on top of the existing footpath. At this point near Vouvray I almost tripped over a young couple who had stopped their bikes in the middle of the path to examine a grass-snake which was curled up in the sun on the painted white line. They told me they had just set off from Tours to cycle all the way to the end of the path, and after I crossed the river and continued on the other side with the intention of pressing on to Amboise I was overtaken by dozens of cyclists on a long narrow road which crossed a wider plateau, in small groups among whom I detected scraps of conversation and greetings thrown out in English, Dutch and Australian tones. I passed a boy of about ten fishing in a very small pond next to a farmstead, and asked him if he’d caught anything. “Frogs!”, he replied proudly. “I’ve got nine or ten of them!”

                 The day after staying with Joel the weather forecast was grim despite the clear morning. Making slow progress on a footpath beside the river I was forced to stop repeatedly to adjust my rucksack. On one of these occasions in the middle of an ash plantation I fell into conversation with a cheerful old man dressed in the standard French countryman’s uniform of blue serge who was cutting back a roadside hedge. I asked him about the enormous amount of mistletoe to be seen in this area. He had no idea why there was so much and could only speculate that it was to do with the preponderance of ash and beech trees, but I was unconvinced. Having recently done some research into the use of mistletoe in cancer treatment I had discovered that it is predisposed to grow mainly on apple, maple, elm and birch trees, but upon reviewing the studies I find that a significant amount is to be found on ash. I wonder if some of these plantations are actually growing mistletoe for therapeutic purposes? If not then they could be. All along the flat lands surrounding the lower Loire are huge quantities of mistletoe which could be harvested and used in the treatment of certain cancers. It is interesting that initial research has concluded that this parasitic plant can help with the destruction of cancer cells as well as strengthening the immune system in some individuals, given that its structure is so similar to that of the parasitic cancer itself.

                 Passing through Souzay I came across an ancient subterranean village which had been hollowed out of the rock in much the same way as Joel’s house, but here there had been an entire community including a shopping street back in the Middle Ages. Walkers on the GR3 are directed to follow a little road which climbs above the levee up towards the white cliffs. The road dips in and out of tunnels and caves, sometimes emerging into the open air at spots where the tufa has been so riddled with holes that it has collapsed. Some of the caves were used for habitation while others were for storage of various items including silkworm cocoons. Although the secret of silk production was carried to Europe around the year 1200, it was not until the 15^th or 16^th century that it became a cottage industry in this part of France. The fascinating history of the silk industry was played out in this region for centuries until it was wiped out by a series of epidemics, but not before the invention of the Jacquard loom, which led indirectly to the construction of the first computers by the use of punched cards to control a sequence of operations. Nowadays the troglodyte caves are used for storing wine or cheeses when they have not been adapted or expanded into house extensions. Some have even been turned into cafés or restaurants or workshops for craftsmen.

Leaving Amboise there were troglodyte houses built into the rock beneath the castle walls and the path followed a road past the Chateau du Clos Lucé to which King Francis I invited Leonardo da Vinci to live for the last three years of his life and where he died in 1519. The chateau is connected by an underground passage to the royal castle half a kilometre away. Once again the path was taking me away from the Loire, first leading me across a huge cabbage-field next to a travellers’ encampment then through some woods to fields full of barley and rapeseed growing chest-high where I startled a hare and two young deer.

                               

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The Loire is the longest river in France and one of the longest wild rivers in Europe. One of only five which are known as fleuves as opposed to rivières – the others are le Rhône, la Seine, le Rhin and la Garonne – it is hardly navigable at all due to its shallowness and its irregular course, which has often been altered by flood over the centuries. The lack of traffic such as barges and motor-boats encourages a great deal of wildlife and the whole course of the Loire has been designated as a national park. Like the Rhine, which runs through half a dozen countries and forms part of the border between France and Germany, it is always familiarly called by its proper name - la Loire - and you are often met with blank looks if you ask directions to ‘the river’. Actually the term le fleuve sauvage is poorly translated as ‘the wild river’: that may be as close as we can get but it lacks the subtlety of the original. The word fleuve is described in hydrological terms as a ‘main stem’ or ‘trunk’, belonging only to that which flows uninterruptedly from source to sea, whereas in English there is no distinction between the ‘River’ Wharfe, for example, which is in fact a tributary, and the ‘River’ Thames, which is a fleuve. Confusingly the five fleuves are not all masculine despite being each called un fleuve; nor are the rivières all feminine, and there is no linguistic rationale behind why it should be le Rhin but la Loire. Le Rhône rises in Switzerland where it is masculine in the local patois but has become feminine in German. Again, while the word sauvage is literally translated as wild or savage and although a better term might be untamed, that does not fully do it justice either, as numerous attempts have been made to tame it, some of which have been successful. There is another definition of the word: someone can be described as ‘il est sauvage’ meaning ‘he is unsociable’, with the underlying sense of being eccentric or shy and retiring. Perhaps this is closer to the truth. The Loire is not bold like the Rhine, which bowls and rolls its way through mountain ranges and national boundaries to spill into the North Sea in a rage. Nor does she forge a deep channel and invite traffic like the Rhone or the Seine which snakes its way to the English Channel through the orchards and dairy-farms of Normandy. The changeable nature of the currents combined with the shallow depth of the water creates an ever shifting picture where sandbanks can come and go from one day to the next. The attempts to form a deeper channel in the middle of the course by means of laying stones as épis or spikes reaching out perpendicularly from the banks to force the flow into the centre has created an additional danger to boats trying to navigate the river in times of flood, which can be any time of year other than July and August when great areas of the riverbed are exposed by lack of water. In addition there is the tide to consider. Those who wish to navigate the Loire by motorised pleasure-boat or fishing-boat are advised that from the mouth to Nantes the tide is strong enough to reverse the flow of the current while from Nantes to Ancenis the current is neutralised;

at any point you will need a boat capable of a minimum speed of 10 km/h when cruising and 15 km/h to counteract particulary strong currents, e.g. at St Florent-le-Vieil;

it is not advisable to take a motorboat on the river if there is any risk of flooding: there are often small floods or flash floods in autumn and spring and occasional heavy flooding usually but not always in winter. The river is only navigable between St Nazaire in the estuary and Bouchemaine near Angers.

Graffiti seen daubed onto the wall of a cellar-cave beside the Loire:

Milagro milagro! Estoi en vida de mi lagro!

De milagro no me han matao

(Somewhat incorrectly spelt: A miracle, a miracle! I am alive by a miracle! Miraculously they have not killed me).

Who knows how long ago this was written or by whom. Maybe it is a quote from a poem or a modern Spanish pop song, or maybe it dates from the days of the Spanish Civil War or the Resistance during the German occupation, which may have had some Spanish recruits hereabouts (the romantic option as it seems very personal and poignant, being the work of someone who is not used to writing but has heard something intensely meaningful to them).

I came to a little town called Candé-sur-Beuvron which looked closed, which was not surprising given that it was still quite early on a Sunday morning, but I waited for a moment as it looked as if the congregation might be about to leave Mass then tried the café next to the bridge, whose door was closed and barricaded shut by a chair inside. The room was occupied by three large dogs but the window was wide open. When I spied an elderly woman inside I hailed her and she told me the café was open, unlocking the door. The bar soon filled up with people coming in for their Sunday paper, their tobacco or their morning glass of wine. Climbing a hill past the church I come out onto another hill-top plain with the east wind whipping into my face. Taking the decision to walk upstream rather than going with the flow as most walkers and cyclists do was originally because it seemed sensible to gradually break myself into the rhythm of walking by starting off on the flat for a good portion before tackling any serious hills rather than immediately begin with several days of steep downhill walking which attacks the knees more viciously than climbing. However another consideration was that I calculated the prevalent wind is likely to be coming from the west so it would be pushing me along for at least the first half of the journey before I started to drop down southwards. Unfortunately this was not the case and for much of the first half the wind has been blowing out of the east. This is slowing me down slightly but is also pleasantly cool since the temperature is still well up towards the high twenties. At lunchtime I come across a homemade roadside sign on the outskirts of a small village advertising drinks for thirsty travellers, and find a couple in a cavernous barn full of tractors and other farming implements giving away cold drinks for a donation.

 A serene stroll through a majestic pine forest later I was arriving back at the Loire near Blois and after hiking along the top of a high levee for a couple of miles, with allotments on one side and a noisy fairground on the other, found myself walking down a main road empty of traffic but lined with excited crowds, many holding cameras or banners and wearing brightly-coloured T-shirts and caps. I was wondering how they knew I was coming but the dream is shattered when I reach the end of the street just as the leaders swoop round the corner from the left to cross the bridge leading to the centre of town and I discover it is the closing stage of the Tour de Loire et Cher. Following the multi-coloured cyclists across the river with the magnificent cathedral and massive castle ahead of me, I climb the steps to the spacious square beside the main entrance to the royal residence, park my bags beside a café table and watch the dragons poking their heads out of the windows of the Museum of Magic opposite, above a statue of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, the great 19^th century illusionist (after whom Harry Houdini named himself), who was so famous that he was recruited by the French government in 1856 to show the tribesmen of Algeria that French magic is stronger than the magic of the marabouts. Among other tricks he astonished them with The Light and Heavy Chest and by apparently catching a marked bullet in his teeth. The art of misdirection or “my magic’s stronger than yours” was used again in World War I when a dummy Paris was built 15 km from the centre to fool German pilots in 1918. Similarly the British Army’s self-styled ‘Magic Gang’ under Jasper Maskelyne succeeded in Egypt in 1941 in deceiving the Nazis into bombing the wrong targets by a series of clever illusions involving dummies and mirrors, which makes one wonder how many ex-Hollywood technicians are now employed by various governments in the War against Terror, or whatever it is called these days. War against Extremism? (2015). But I still don’t know how he did that trick with the bullet…

I thought I'd post a few random chunks of Work in Progress on a (roughly) weekly basis as I have been telling people for months that I'm working at home writing but haven't been sharing any of the outcome. The preface will inform readers that the whole narrative is absolutely true although/and there are conversations which I have obviously not remembered word for word and thoughts which I may have attributed to other people based on real events. Some people but no places have had their names changed. This chunk begins at Savonnieres near Tours on April 14th:

Graffiti: LE BONHEUR NE VAUT QUE S’IL EST PARTAGÉ (Happiness is worth nothing unless it is shared).

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I spent a couple of days in Saumur recuperating and getting used to the rhythm of town life in France: many cafés and bars and boulangeries are open from about 7 a.m. then often close after lunch until 5 or 6 when they reopen until sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. depending on whether or not they serve food. Most shops are open from about 9 in the morning to 12 or 12.30 then again from 2 to 6, not counting bank holidays or religious festivals when everything is closed, Sundays when almost everything is closed, Mondays when most things are closed and Tuesdays when some things are closed. Most people still take at least an hour and a half off for lunch, especially outside city centres where European or American office hours are beginning to creep in along with the growth in fast food outlets, and people rarely go out to eat in the evening even if they have something to celebrate. Of course the whole country is being particularly hit by the EU austerity measures so many shops, bars and hotels are closing down. People are much more likely to have a barbecue in the garden than go out for a meal at the weekend, for example. I went to the cinema in Saumur to see a popular new film – The Second Best Marigold Hotel. It was a Friday evening and the show was starting just as darkness fell but for the first time ever I found myself to be the only member of the audience when the lights went down. In fact the projectionist came out of his box at that point and said:

“Since you’re the only one here do you mind if we skip the adverts?”

One disappointment about Saumur was that I didn’t come across a circus. A friend had told me before I left of a dream he had had in which he had found himself in Saumur on Angela’s birthday, surrounded by a troupe of circus performers. He expected that I would meet them.

“This young man came to stay last night. He was very interested in your running, you know.”

“Oh yes?”
“Yes, he said he’s on the way along the Loire, on the old St Martin’s Way.”
“Where’s that exactly?”
“Well it goes along the Loire to Candes, you know, where he’s buried. You know the story, don’t you?”

“No, I must have heard it when I was a child. You probably told it to me then, Maman.”

“St Martin was a Roman soldier in France who converted to Christianity. He saw a beggar one day shivering with cold so he took off his cape, cut it in half and gave half to the beggar to keep him warm. He ended up being abbot of Tours then when he died near the river they put his body in a boat and sent it down to Candes, and they say that as the boat passed by all the plants blossomed and the flowers bloomed although it was in November!”

“Candes. That’s not far from here, is it?”

“No, it’s just down the road from Fontevraud. Ten kilometres or so.”

“So where was he from, this guest?”

“He’s come all the way from Guerande, he’s been walking for over a fortnight already, but he says he’s only just begun. He’s going all the way to Gerbier de Jonc, he said. Where is that exactly?”

“It’s in Haute-Loire, I remember running there once in a 100km race through the mountains, Cevennes and all that.”

“Anyway I told him all about your career, how you’ve been champion of the world…well alright then, world record-holder. He was dead impressed that you’re still doing it at your age – how old are you? 48, isn’t it? “

“Yes all right Maman, there’s no need to rub it in.”

“I think he was quite humbled really you know. He turned up feeling very proud of himself, you could tell. We had a good chat before I sent him down the road for a bite to eat – it’s not bad that restaurant now since they changed hands, it’s mostly pizzas and that kind of thing you know, not proper cooking, but they have a decent oven. He told me his wife had passed away a year ago – she must have been young, I could tell he had lost something. He looked happy and sad at the same time. But I’m still here and getting on for eighty, so you must have a good chance of lasting well, especially with all the running you do and how fit you are. I don’t know how you do it, really I don’t. Running for 24 hours. That Englishman said if he ran all the way like that he’d be at the source in four days from here! What was your record again?”

“240 kilometres, Maman. Do you want me to say it again so you can be proud again?”

“Oh I am proud, my dear. I know there are lots of other people in France who are proud of you too but I’m the proudest.”

Sunday. Everything in Fontevraud was closed apart from a solitary stall which an oyster-seller had erected in the town square across from the entrance to the Abbey. I got lost walking along footpaths across grazing land next to the river then stopped for a chilly picnic and spoke to Jannah at lunch-time. I am appreciating the good will shewn to me by so many people at home who are wishing me a fair wind. Arrived at Chinon by crossing the river on a very long narrow old road bridge with the massive medieval castle and city walls silhouetted against the fading daylight. After a couple of hours I was getting fed up with Chichinon, as I was beginning to think of it, or perhaps Chichioui. It was prettified, twee, expensive. Went wandering in the old part of town where I did find some picturesque ancient dwellings and a wine-shop which had a certain medieval charm. The boss was an expert in the wines of the region and gave me a couple of tasters and I fell into conversation with his sidekick later as she was smoking outside. She was dark-skinned and racy, with much silver jewellery and a leather jacket, and we were getting on famously until her boyfriend arrived. She gave me a lift back to my hotel on the other (poor) side of the river, the only place offering a room for as little as €60, which seemed like a lot to me. I was beginning to calculate the cost to my bank balance if I continued at this rate having to stay in such places – and it wasn’t anything special, a kind of small-scale Travelodge in a back street. I was keeping a note every evening of my outgoings on that day which I stuck to pretty rigorously. There were inevitably items I forgot, but it was a good exercise to review the day like that. The following day I had little opportunity to spend any money all day as I trudged through an endless forest without seeing another soul apart from two woodcutters at about midday and a young woman at a house in a small gap between the trees – a Forestry Commission property, so her husband was probably one of the woodcutters. There was a village in the middle of the forest called St Benoit, a scattering of four hamlets with a church and a café which had no customers at midday. The patron told me there was very little passing traffic outside July and August and the villagers were too busy working to go to the café but he had some land – pasture and a small vineyard  ̶  and a tractor to collect timber to sell, so he could make ends meet. The weather has changed and become much warmer and clear which is a shock to the system after the late winter temperatures of the last fortnight and thirty km felt like a long way, although I was rewarded with some beautiful sights in the forest, including a family of deer who crossed my path, startled by my sudden arrival. At Azay-le-Rideau on the River Indre there was a fine B&B on the main street where I could tend to my blisters but once again was unable to connect to the Internet to find other places to stay. There was a ‘mediathèque’ in town but it was only open afternoons and I wasn’t ready for another day off yet. “Couldn’t connect to server” and “This webpage is not available” are becoming horribly familiar. Sometimes it works if you just move to another corner of the room but sometimes you try that, it doesn’t work and you just feel foolish, especially if you are in a public place. No doubt in ten or fifty years it will be possible to be connected immediately anywhere in the world, and I mean anywhere, at any time, but right now it feels like we are in the middle of the Digital Revolution and no one knows where we are going or how we are going to get there.

                Out of Azay a ‘farmer’ was poisoning his fields. I tried not to get too close: it’s an occupational hazard of long-distance walking as your path might lead you through anything to get from A to B, from poultry killing-fields to paint factories, and you never know what you may be breathing. On the other hand there are days and weeks of clear country air, and here in the middle of April on a fresh clear mild morning I walked on through orchards of apples and pears followed by many hours of forest, but this time not so much pinewoods as mixed beech, birch and chestnut creating an odd juxtaposition of early spring leaf and temperatures of 26˚.

                I seem to have lost my suncream so have to go to a pharmacie to buy an expensive replacement. Pharmacies are not the best places to buy such things as they assume you must be suffering from some skin condition and require a special kind of sunscreen. However they do stock homeopathic remedies as a matter of course, as well as all sorts of useful things like mushroom and toadstool guides and tick-removal implements, and every pharmacie in France seems to have a green neon sign outside which flashes to show the time and the temperature. Having also mislaid my pedometer I am rather stuck – when I set off I was determined to measure the mileage, or kilometrage, that I covered as evidence that I had completed the course. I also set up an app on my iPhone which purports to measure distance as well as showing your route on a map. My thinking was that I might be able to send updates of this map or direct people to get onto the app themselves and follow my course, but I was beginning to wonder about its efficiency: yesterday I walked at least 30 km according to my maps and the signposts en route, but the EveryTrail app told me I had covered 15. It works by satellite – could it be that it doesn’t work under cover of thick forest, or in areas of poor phone reception? No one seems to know the answer to these questions. I came down a hill back to the Loire at Savonnières, a charming place with an island in the middle of the river on which a pair of herons were nesting and several old-fashioned fishing-boats moored at a quay. I stayed at a farm a mile or two out of town with a Monsieur Lleu, who was surprised when I asked him if he was Catalan, saying that his great-grandparents had come from there looking for work in the vineyards of the Loire after the phylloxera epidemic wiped out the vines of the Languedoc in the mid- to late-19^th century. Very hospitable, he offered to run me into town to get an evening meal, and even came back and picked me up later.