On the Verge

… liminal spaces,
The half-tamed and unruly patch
Where the forest gives way

Carrie Newcomer, ‘Liminality’

I felt much more energetic today as I set off. I had dined well on tomorrow’s lunch last night and had a solid six hours’ sleep. I had stretched well last night and this morning, and I think benefited from full use of what I like to call ‘the body bag’, putting Voltarol gel on my knees, and giving my leg muscles the benefit of a massage with arnica gel. Whilst these things are added weight to carry, when you need them, you really need them.

The great grandparents of my faux Italian host had settled in France from Italy sometime in the last century, and Bruno Parodi spoke not one word of Italian — a great disappointment. Last night I was beyond French, but we had a good chat this morning as I ate the standard French breakfast of bread and jam; this morning quince jam, for the first time. Delicious! As was the coffee, which also contributed to my greater energy today. Ian will be stopping there tonight and I left strict instructions with Bruno not to tell him that I had taken a shortcut, which Bruno thought was totally cheating. ‘But it’s between us,’ he reassured me. ‘I won’t say a word.’

Truth be told, I felt not the slightest bit guilty, after having walked almost 5 km on top of the official route yesterday at the end of an already long day, with the prospect of adding it onto today’s walk as well. I simply took a direct tangent to join up with the Francigena, fast walking along quiet country roads where the main interest was the changing countryside and the verges.

If the entry into Chalindray yesterday was characterised by a long straight road, the exit on the other side was a visual series of straight lines, from the railway that I crossed over by a vertiginous bridge, to the wooded horizon, from the tree-lined avenue of the industrial estate to the long train of green wagons waiting on a siding to depart.

As soon as I left the town I started to hear the birds.  Most notably the golden orioles which seem ubiquitous and which are very definitely not green woodpeckers (although there are also some of those).  Orioles migrate from Africa and so I am just lucky that they have all just arrived back as I am walking through, and they are revisiting old territories and building the extraordinary nests that they suspend from a forked branch, wrapping plant fibres up to 40 cm long around and around the branches to hold the nest in place. Apparently they are a species of least concern, although they look and sound and behave so exotically. They used to breed in England; perhaps with improvements to habitats they will do again.

The first part of the shortcut cut across farmland: lush patchworks of meadows and woodlands with herds of cows and their calves.

Then it joined a road which cut straight through the Forêt Domainiale de Bussières, another huge expanse of deciduous forest managed for the hunt (as can be seen from the map which shows each major path crossed with hunting blinds) and for timber. The oak and beech grew thickly, creating dark spaces with little growth in the understory.

Where trees had been cut for timber, piles of cut wood had been stacked, and bigger logs of oak and beech.  The light newly let into the forest had allowed dormant wildflowers to germinate, and shrubs, like flowering broom.

And these trees were for sale: yellow signs advertised standing timber, cut to order.

Tree stumps over time had begun to be absorbed by the forest, had become covered in moss and were rotting, the boring beetle larvae themselves becoming food for nocturnal mammals.

Now the verges were starting to look decisively late May-ish, with patches of oxeye daisies turning their faces to the sun,

and scabius providing nectar for a long-horned beetle.

The early spring flowers like the cowslips had set seed and were disappearing into the long grasses that were all in flower now (and making Bruno Parodi’s blue eyes stream). I tried to recognise as many as I could, although I felt I was cheating significantly, as when my ecologist friend Carrie did her exam on grasses she had to ID them all laid out on a tray and they weren’t even in flower.

In the forest clearings were houses standing amongst yet more meadows with yet more herds — of inquisitive cows

— and self-possessed horses.

One smallholding had rows of colourful beehives; presumably the worker bees were all out industriously collecting pollen from the wildflowers in the surrounding meadows.  The  rich pickings of Peak Spring.

A tiny bee was working the flowers of a hawkbit. Its black and white fur was covered with golden dust and its pollen sacs were so full it was a miracle it could fly.

I kept thinking what a beautiful road this was, with the meadows falling down to the river on one side and rising to wooded hills on the other. Buttercups and bright green grass — it seemed that my gîte for the night, La Vallée Verte, was well named.

In under three hours of walking I arrived in Grandchamps, the village where I was to stay the night.  My gîte wouldn’t accept me until 5pm so I had four and a half hours to kill.  I did a tour of the village. Next to the bridge over the little river was the village hall, the bell atop it covered by a fancy iron weathervane with minute beasts rearing tiny heads above miniature waterspouts.

I didn’t much like the horrid old tractors and other hoarded vehicles parked or rather piled up around one home, but I took a photo for my tractor-lover back home anyway.

Lovelier to my mind were the gardens, and in one a bronze-coloured iris, its fringed interior streaked with tongues of fire.

The church — a good potential place to sit and eat — was closed, but the churchyard wall on the far side provided shade to sit in and sunlight when I started to get chilly.

I gobbled up the packed lunch I had bought yesterday and was grateful that today it was more substantial than the salami and fruit and nuts of yesterday.

After a while I became aware of a sustained and insistent complex buzzing. I peered around the side of the church and sure enough the road to one side was full of swarming bees.  Time to beat a retreat before I was engulfed.

There had been signs for something called a Plan d’Eau, which I had not investigated before because there were benches but they’d been in full sun and I’d wanted a bit of shade. I explored it now and discovered that further into the grassy area and alongside the stream there was a beautiful village pond fringed with flowering rushes, and weeping willows whose branches dipped into the water.

Two largish birds with red backs and black and white feathers lifted themselves off the mown grass and away into the trees as I approached: a pair of jays, I thought. There was a wooden picnic bench underneath an old maple tree; I installed myself there and just sat, watching the occasional fish leap out, and listening to the birds.

Clouds of tiny gnats were hatching from the water and swallows skimmed the mirrored surface for them, occasionally dipping their wings and beaks in, unerringly skilful. There were tree creepers and turtle doves and linnets and serins, as well as cuckoos away in the woods, and more oriole. And there was one strange call, a loud, monotonous ‘whoop’ that was so odd I thought it might not be a bird at all. I couldn’t get the Merlin app open in time to identify it.

After a while I was joined by a friendly old cat who firstly did a tour of the pond and later a tour of me, and finally sat intently by a couple of molehills, perhaps listening to activity underground. The hours passed peacefully — it was an enormous pleasure simply to sit and enjoy it all, rather than just walk past.

I had wondered at the church whether the swarming bees meant there was pressure building in the air.  And indeed, over the course of the afternoon grey clouds gradually built up, bringing about quite a transformation of the pond.

Although the weather app said there was only a 20% chance of rain, I judged it prudent to find some kind of shelter. I packed up my bits and pieces into the rucksack and moved myself under the covered area between the friendly-looking and functional Mairie, quite different to the grand affairs I’ve seen in other villages.

Shortly after I got myself under cover it started to spit with rain and suddenly the air was briefly full of that metallic petrichor smell of rain on dry earth.

I had time to think. My university friend Sam asked me whether I was enjoying this journey The answer, without thinking twice about it, is a resounding ‘YES’, but putting my finger on exactly what I’m enjoying is harder.

Some aspects of the days are hard. Not enough sleep, pressure of time to get the blog written (although writing the blog is also enjoyable, and I love the contact it provokes, usually in private messages). Sometimes the walking is hot and bothersome, and although I love being in woods, I have found anxiety in the forest to be something I didn’t enjoy at all. But most of these annoyances are so minor in comparison with the joy of it all. The one persistent downside is being away from home, but that’s inevitable if a journey like this is going to happen.

What do I enjoy? I love linear walks, where you don’t have to tread any step twice and each sight is new, unknown, a surprise. I love being outside all the time, and especially in the spring.

I love the meadows and the woods, and I especially enjoy walking by rivers, canals or bodies of water. I’m endlessly fascinated by the ecology of hedgerows and verges, and looking out for new species. I love the tiny interactions between insects and plants, and how the mix of plants responds to light and shade and the soils in which seeds find their opportunities to grow.

I have enjoyed feeling myself getting physically stronger, and feel especially smugly when I walk up a hill as fast as I can walk on the flat. I enjoy being physically tired at the end of an energetic day, and enjoy the feeling of recuperation and renewal when I start out in the morning.

I feel the same kind of satisfaction when my shoes are done up properly, or when my rucksack is well packed. I derive satisfaction from carrying everything that I need with me, and from map-reading myself across a landscape.

I have enjoyed making connections with many of the people I have met (and the improvement in my French which has made that possible), and especially enjoyed meeting (and walking with) Ian, Regine, Kate and Bryce, and Matt, occasional companions on a journey that is at once the same for each of us, and also very different. I’ve enjoyed the lighthearted conversations and deep and meaningfuls with my companions of fortune.

I think more than anything I enjoy the way a very long, multi-day walk becomes ‘life’ — and this happens when it’s too big to see the edges. It is at once a whole, complete thing, and a liminal space, an edge or a threshold across which I am continually moving. It is simultaneously the realest of lives, and the most artificial, since it is predicated upon having an awful lot of available money and time. More than being sensible of my luck in the weather of the last five weeks, I am sensible of being blessed to have a family (Stephen, my brother and my mother), who with their enormous generosity both practical and of spirit, have made it possible for me to build and live this life.

The horizon I walk toward
Is an orientation
Not a destination

Carrie Newcomer, ‘Liminality’

Stats for the Day

Distance: I am almost embarrassed to say. 12.88km

Pace: unsurprisingly, on the almost-flat and on the roads, 5km/h

Time: 2 hrs 35 mins

Waiting time for gîte to open: 4 hrs 39 mins. It flew by!

Today’s mysterious flower in the verge

Today’s Mysterious Agricultural Implement