Wednesday April 8. Condé-sur-Marne. 21.2 km.

A second warm and sunny day. Too hot, grumble the vignerons, especially since cold weather is predicted in a few days, and if there is frost, goodbye grape harvest.

I’m moving slowly out of champagne country. I will miss the extravagances big champagne producers can afford. Here is a windmill preserved in part to advertise une maison de champagne.

A reminder of war in the grape fields.

Bands of colour. I can see the crops growing day by day.

The path eventually led back to the canal. Yesterday when the path was about to leave the canal, a passerby said it would be much faster to follow the canal instead of the Via Francigena path. He was quite right, but I followed the meandering Via instead. As usual, the path adds kilometres to the more direct routes taken by roads for cars.

Anyway, here is one of several people fishing today. They use long long poles and sit lazily waiting for a bite. From time to time I could see equally lazy big fish in the canal - carp I was told.

I only saw one barge pass by today - hardly enough to relieve traffic congestion on the roads! One reason may be the astounding number of locks on this canal: 24 locks on 58 km of canal.

Tonight I have met my third pilgrim of this trip, a Frenchman walking to Rome. We shared a ginormous lettuce I had bought from a farm-produce vending machine and a bottle of wine I had bought from the village bakery for $4.00. Here is my mainly bakery-bought supper before sharing with Hubert.

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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 ...

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...

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.

Celia Walks

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