Distance Walked: 182 miles
Current No. Blisters: ~9
Saturday morning was an early one, with plenty of margin built in for the ferry to France. I’d never crossed as a foot passenger before, so didn’t quite know how it all would play out. A bus onto the car deck of the ferry was not quite what I expected, but did the job nicely. Unfortunately, foot passengers are first on, and last off the ferry, so a lot of waiting around was involved. I tried to use the time wisely.
One of the first things I taught myself to say in French was: “at school I studied German”. This accurately describes the abyssmal state of my French language abilities, with the only disadvantage being that after saying this, I then have to pray the victim of my French doesn’t happen to speak German, as I’ve forgotten most of that too.
Thus, before leaving Dover and after much stiffening of sinews and summoning up of blood, I rang a campsite in Guînes (a village on the Via Francigena, outside Calais) to arrange my first night in France. I was grinning all the way across the channel, so pleased was I at mangling a few sentences of French at some poor chap over the phone.
The walk from the ferry terminal was rather uneventful, except that I met another pilgrim for the first time on the journey – Greg, who seemed to have rather much more of an idea of what he was doing than I did, not least where French was concerned. He took the detour route to Wissant, down the coast to the landing point of Archbishop Sigeric in 990. It felt fair to me to assume that, had Sigeric been walking today, he would have landed at Calais, so that would do the job just fine. So, we parted, and I headed inland along the extensive site canal network in the outskirts of Calais, making for the village of Guînes. Talking to the people running accommodation and campsites for pilgrims over the last week, I’d guess that Greg is a day behind me, and will no doubt catch up at some point.
The campsite owner who I’d spoken to on the phone rather kindly allowed me to stay for free, as a pilgrim, despite his site not even being open yet. I settled down on the grass for much bread, cheese and wine. Later, I pitched, and under the semi-clinical illumination of my phone’s LED, I carried out the usual surgical spirit routine on my blisters. I’m sure it would have been pretty harrowing for some stranger to watch my silhouette through the tent canvas at this point, but naturally, the site was deserted.
I was so energised in the morning, I set off without breakfast towards Licques (inland, and now with nothing but a bit of grass, some trees, a few mountains and couple thousand kilometers between me and Rome). The gentle slopes of Pas-de-Calais could almost have been plucked straight out of Kent and deposited in France. The weather was good, and I was happy.
It was a Sunday, and so everything (including the church!) in Licques was shut by my arrival at midday. I was really getting desparate on the food front until a petrol station appeared, on the route to the village of Tournhem-sur-la-hem (‘la hem’ being a small stream…). The shop there was also shut, and my hopes dashed, until what could very well have been a some kind of bizzare hypoglycemic mirage appeared – a pizza vending machine. Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert in the workings of villages in rural France, but that’s not quite what I would have expected to find a stone’s throw from the car-wash in the middle of absolute nowhere. But on reflection, such machines are a genius idea for small villages with not enough people to, or point in, manning all the services all hours. Maybe England should follow!
After touching it, both to make sure it was real, and indeed to order, I had a hot pizza pop out of a ‘letterbox’ only five minutes later. Not bad! I sat down and ate it in a little green space, along with a good slug of the remaining wine.
In Tournehem-Sur-la-Hem, when I arrived later that day, I encountered a rather strange coincidence. I sailed away from the usual pilgrim spot on a river of utterly incomprehensible French spilling from a high window in the house. The lady said something about going up a hill. That was all I understood, and also all I could do. After noting my wandering around the town, a kind man came to talk to me. I managed to understand from him that the place to go was ‘Café Nicole’, and more information would be available there. I couldn’t find the café (only café Maria), and after sizing up a spot with the pigeons, under the eaves of the town church, I decided to ask a few people if they wouldn’t mind a random englishman setting up a tent in their front gardens. I eventually came to a house, where a man gave me a funny look, and then said “c’est bon”, as though it were the most normal thing in the world. I thanked him profusely and got to work, finishing just before sunset.
The next morning he offered me a coffee, and I met Bertron and his wife properly, indoors. We talked a bit, and then introduced ourselves. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when his wife said her name was Nicole, and she owned the café Maria!
After the morning’s excitement, I walked down to Wisques. It’s a shorter walk, and certainly so by the milages I was walking in England, but I was set on spending the night at one of the two Benedictine Abbeys in the town (one for nuns, and one for monks – I believe the monks do everything in silence, so I rather fancied a stay with the nuns instead). So, I called in to the Abbaye Notre Dame de Wisques, an imposing neo-gothic Abbey, built at the end of the 19th century. I found it really rather bizarre, and fantastic, to see such architecture “fresh out the box” as it were. It’s not often (if ever) I’ve seen such a striking gothic building, set in stone as clean and unblemished as if it were cut yesterday. I met Soeur Lucia in the Abbey, and was directed to a little house just outside the Abbey. She said she would meet me there later. That she did, but not in the way I expected.
I decided to take a shower on arriving, given there was dinner in the Abbaye at seven. I opened the bathroom door after the shower to find Soeur Lucia waiting, which gave me quite a shock. I was simultaneously glad that I was fully decent, and embarrassed by the thought she might have heard me practicing some horrific French to myself in the shower.
Soeur Lucia was fantastically kind and patient. We talked for a good while, dipping between French and English – she even managed to pull out a British road map from somewhere.
Dinner at the Abbey was fun, and indeed it was good to meet some French students who had decided to do some studying at the Abbey, some for the last ten weeks (I said it wasn’t normal in England, and they replied that it was not normal in France either – I think they’ve got the right idea though). The nuns ate separately, before singing an evening service of latin plainsong in the Chapel at the Abbey. That was the real star of the show. It was a privilege to be there.
I left the next morning for Thérouanne, and the morning after that for Burbure. Alain, my host in Thérouanne, recommended a pilgrim host at a chateau about five kilometres off the Via Francigena. That’s a long way to go, but after I saw the building, I was hooked. Jean and Marie, the chateau owners, were absolutely lovely people and put me up in a room in the top of the building, after reviving me from the 28 km walk with a cup of Earl Grey. I showered, we talked (mostly in English, but dipping between languages) and sat down for a delicious dinner, when we switched entirely to French. This proved to be quite the acid test for my rudimentary abilities. It’s at times like those, that one is glad that a nun or two might think one a lunatic for talking to oneself in (bad) French in the shower.
I left after breakfast this morning, with the parting gift of a walking stick (cut to size there and then!). If it goes all the way to Rome, Jean said, it will be 10 cm shorter. This morning was a four hour walk to Arras, guided by Jean and Marie’s neighbour, who likes to walk, and to accompany pilgrims on their way. He walked back to Villers Châtel this afternoon and said he wanted to meet me in Arras to walk tomorrow as well. How he does it, I do not know!
I write from Arras now, just outside the Cathedral (the first since Canterbury). The next few days look like rather long stretches, but, to summarise this update: I do think I’m getting into the swing of things.
(These updates are getting rather long. I might have to do two a week, or I risk forgetting things! I will make a decision on that over the next week.)
