Celia Walks

 Forest and fields.  And the first poppies in bloom! I usually take pictures of pretty villages with older houses. To give you a truer picture, there are also: modern box-like houses, Swiss chalet houses and of course the standard newish country house (elevated main floor , rectangular , stucco). I took the advice of the  volunteer lady at last night’s gîte, also echoed by my interactive map site, and took a train for the final 12 km in to town. The reason why there is this little shuttle train is that the high speed rail runs through a new station, stuck out in the country beyond the suburbs.  The overly large practically empty station reminded me of old memories of Mirabelle airport in Montreal, a great project without enough users! In the background of the photo is a very new office building, very empty as well. After finding my apartment, I set out and happily found a new pair of hiking boots. Mine were falling apart, as I had used them in Canada a bit and then l...

 More country walking.  Not monotonous because about every five kilometres there is a village.  All villages here have a “lavoir”.  A bit of research shows that in 1851 there was a special subsidy given to villages to build a covered, salubrious place for laundry to be rinsed. Apparently it was usually scrubbed in a little warm water at home, but generous amounts of water were needed for rinsing. And given outbreaks of cholera, smallpox and typhus, providing clean water was a national priority.  The lavoirs all still have flowing water, but they are full of algae and definitely no longer ‘clean’. Architecture and building practices change from region to region. Shiny coloured tiles distinguish church towers now. Still lots of hunting blinds, called ‘miradors’.  I would not like to be walking through here in the fall. The countryside is hilly, fields are smaller, and there are more hedgerows. I loved the ‘windows’ in this one! I’m staying in a volunteer-run ...

First to finish yesterday’s tale. After listening to speeches about the Duck and his wonders, I visited the Château which is now a museum recounting the life of ordinary people before the 20th century.  Here is a striking painting, ‘Les Foins’ by Julien Baptiste Lepage, 1878. Peasant life was not easy. Now a recreation of a peddler of religious objects. They travelled with portable religious scenes (this is an actual historical one) and after telling a religious story would sell rosaries and medals to their listeners. And here is a peasant table. I love the look of the wooden bowls they used, although I doubt I would want to always eat out of wooden bowls! For the night I was in a pilgrim hostel run by the commune (a commune is more or less what we would call a township.). Very inexpensive, and quite basic. Only one other pilgrim, an Italian lady who has lived 30 years in Brussels where she worked as an interpreter (simultaneous translator, Italian/French/English/Baltic languages)....

A good breakfast and a very long talk with our host and chef who is also a physics teacher.  And then out in the warm sunshine. I’m still trying to figure out crops. I think this is barley, nicely starting to form seed heads. And so the leafy crop without seed heads I’ve been seeing so much of  may be wheat. Here is barley; a big field ripples like water in the wind. Thanks to my bird app, I’ve identified the drumming and calling sounds of the beautiful European Green woodpecker. I can’t figure out how to copy internet images into my blog, otherwise I would show her/him to you.  Almost looks like a little tropical bird! Here is a most elegant book lending library tucked into a bus shelter in a small village. Every village has its church. In this area, nearly all are locked closed and only one or two have any kind of explanatory sign. A private property beautifully restored with a working water wheel. Exceptionally, a country church that was open. Love that wood stove! Peo...

Today started out nicely with a good breakfast laid out for me at the farm. Both Monsieur and Madame joined me for a coffee and some more conversation. Monsieur goes hunting every fall and comes home with 25 or so hunters who get set up at a long table and fed supper (of game) by Madame. Today she is making boar pâté for the family. Note the four kinds of homemade jam on the table. An amazing number of benches today on my somewhat short walk, so I did a lot of sitting and thinking about nothing.  I suppose a more sophisticated way of putting it would be “living in the moment”. On this bench, kindly put out by a farmer and signed for pilgrims, I watched barn swallows, almost as small and fast as hummingbirds. A well laid-out “potager” or vegetable garden. As noted before, devilish deeds have taken place here. And these twisty, grasping trees sometimes send shivers up my spine. I think they may be black poplars. At the small but upscale chambres d’hôtes place tonight I am joined by t...

 Back in a tiny village tonight in simple lodgings on a farm. Starting out this morning I checked the route on the Via Francigena app (23.3 km) and the suggested walking route on the ING app (12 km).  The darling Via does sometimes do round-about routes! Anyway, took the Via suggestion.  Walking out of Langres through a gate in the walls brought back happy memories of the many days in Italy that started walking out of a city gate. Having come down from Langres, after a bit the path met a canal. Lots of big fish behaving as my goldfish used to in the spring, rubbing each other against the banks with a lot of splashing. I’m assuming they are spawning. Here I’m looking back at Langres from the canal. Then the path took me up and 3/4 around a large artificial lake, created in the 19th century to hold water that will feed the canal system during dry weather.  For a bit there were amenities for summer holidayers; this sign relies a bit too heavily on a foreign language, me...

A full day in Langres was planned as one of my rest-and-tourism days. This plan was greatly helped by the lovely Airbnb apartment I had;  I could cook all my meals, and I dawdled the morning away reading one of the books in the apartment  - one I had been meaning to read ever since my trip to Martinique. In fact, I just might have a copy already at home! Langres was the birthplace of Jeanne Mance, a nurse who is remembered here as the co-founder of the city of Montreal (along with Maisonneuve). Her story is interesting as she was not a nun, although she worked closely with sisters. She was absolutely dedicated to providing hospital care in the new settlement. The eighteenth century writer Diderot was also born in Langres and there is a museum in his honour. He is the principal author of an enormous work, l’Encyclopédie, an 35 volume effort with 140 collaborators to gather as much of contemporary knowledge as possible. Diderot was quite opinionated and was persecuted on and off...

 The Mormant farm where I stayed yesterday is a 200 hectare (494 acre) crop-growing farm; the usual crops for this area (barley, wheat, sugar beets, peas, colza or canola in English). This is the second farm I’ve stayed in where the parents have retired and a son has taken over. Apparently 500 acres is the usual size of farms in this area. They have one resident animal, a female eleven year old boar who got rescued as a small piglet in distress.  She isn’t very big; males grow much bigger. I followed a map from an excellent interactive site (ING, Institute National Géographique) to get more quickly to Langres than the winding Via Francigena.  This site maps everything; using it means you can get anywhere in France on foot or by car without getting lost, even if you are in the middle of a forest with unmarked paths criss crossing all over. Here, seen in the distance is a typical farm complex dating from earlier times when farms had to be defended against robbers and soldie...