Tuesday April 22. Langres. 22.2 km.

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 soldiers. Makes me think about today’s survivalists who besides aiming for total self-sufficiency should also keep in mind the need to defend their havens. I wouldn’t want to have that worry, and fervently hope that our world doesn’t come to that point.

There was a sign by this recent hedgerow planting saying it is the work of the Federation of Hunters and that hedgerows ease flooding, soil erosion and wind damage, harbour beneficial insects and help birds and animals. The concept doesn’t seem to have total traction though; the picturesque one solitary tree being more typical…

Towards the end of my walk the flat landscape gave way to rolling landscape. From now on I can expect hills. Road side crosses like this one were usually put up by well off families, with their names on the base, half-erased by time and weather.

A steep climb brought me to the walled city of Langres that I intend to enjoy at leisure tomorrow. On the way up scenes like this brought to mind stories of witches and devilry that have marked local history.

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Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place). All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train. I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London. On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum. Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...

September 5

I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds. The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford. The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors. They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.

Fri Oct 3. Lille.

I had a lovely day in Lille. In fact, all my days on this trip have been lovely! In the morning I went to the very large Palais des Beaux-Arts. This museum holds the largest collection of works of art of any French institution outside Paris. The collection started at the time of the French Revolution as the works of art of the nobility and of the church were confiscated, and continued on apace due to various enthusiastic municipal governments. By 1892 the collection was so large and important that the Palais, its current house, was constructed in the centre of town. The first fun aspect was the recent work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini who used the museum’s interior as his canvas. The oldest works of art are in the ‘basement’, beautifully displayed. Look at the marvellous three dimensionality of this (flat) marble plaque sculpted by Donatello (c 1435) showing Salomé dancing for the head of John the Baptist. And modern technology brings statues alive by giving them back t...

Celia Walks

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