VIA FRANCIGENA - ARLES TO EMBRUN - MAY 2019
Prologue:
This is an account (still incomplete) of the fifth leg of the great trek from Canterbury to Rome, which I started in 2015, as a young, wet-behind-the-ears hiker, carrying a 65 liter pack that weighed almost as much as I did, with the sun in my face and the wind at my back and a bunch of foolish ideas in my head. When I get the chance, I'm gradually back-filling my blog of the entire hike, year by year, until I reach my starting point in Canterbury.
My boon companion in 2015, and for the subsequent three stages of the trek, was one Michael Slattery, who claims some affinity to me and on that basis presumes to make jokes about my appearance, clothing, mental facility, and sense of direction, but who also manages to get us out of many a tight jam, not all of his own creation. Unfortunately, Mike can’t make it this year, since he and Laura are awaiting the birth of their first child, who no doubt will join us next year on his father’s back, as we sojourn onward toward the Holy City in search of the enlightenment that lies at the bottom of a tilted glass.
Kent and I planned to join this route in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès, a village near Arles, and to hike in north-easterly direction toward the Alpine pass of Montgenevre at the Italian border, stopping short of the pass in the village of Embrun, and leaving the actual ascent until next year. Such was the audacity of the undertaking and the resources of energy and strength and manly prowess called upon to execute it, that we decided to prepare ourselves by three days of steady drinking beforehand, which we executed effortlessly from our base at the beautiful chambre d'hôtes of Le Mazet de Soleil, in a rural location a few kilometers north of Saint-Étienne, with our genial and tolerant hosts, Emma and Hervé.
The Papal Palace at Avignon
Now, dear friends, we are about to embark on the journey itself– our packs packed, straps tightened, flasks full. So wish us well for our journey, to be recounted in the instalments to come!
Addendum
Some of you may have gained the impression that Kent and I will be body-surfing on a tidal wave of booze over the French countryside toward our destination in the French Alps. Let me assure you, dear readers, that aside from being a geographical impossibility, this is not the true state of affairs. Given my Irish fondness for exaggeration and, on occasion, sheer fabrication, not every word in this account can be taken as Gospel truth. In reality, we are a sober and industrious pair – slightly dull, slightly earnest – marching in our regulation hiking boots along the regulation French hiking trail, one foot in front of the other, toward spiritual and intellectual fulfillment in the aethereal realm of the high mountain passes. Well … perhaps that’s not the entire picture either. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. Exactly where, dear readers, I leave for you to judge. Sit back and enjoy!
Kent grinning on the left, with me glowering on the right
Day 1 – Sunday, 5 May 2019: St-Etienne-du-Gres to Saint-Remy-de-Provence – 13.5 km
We had been warned. No one could say we hadn’t been warned. The Mistral was coming – the great frigid wind that sweeps down from the Alps through the Rhone Valley and uproots trees and topples cows and blows roofs from here to the Sahara and beyond. Hervé, our host at Le Mazet de Soleil, told us that there would be gusts up to 100 km per hour, along with organ-shriveling cold. But we are Canadians – hardy folk, tested by decades of Arctic winters, habituated to the most extreme conditions the weather gods have to offer. Did we listen? Did we hearken to the kind and helpful advice that came our way? Did we do what any sensible person would have done – go back to bed and pull the covers up to the chin and wait for the Mistral to blow itself out?
Well, dear reader, had we done the sensible thing, there would be very little to write about. So, fortunately for this blog, we set off notwithstanding, foolish grins on our faces, wholly innocent of what havoc the Mistral might wreak on our bodies and souls. Our route from St-Etienne led us up into the jagged range of mountains called Les Alpilles – their rocky peaks tilted crazily like the pickets of a derelict fence, their recesses crammed with the remnants of ancient fortifications like the village of Les Baux, which we saw once again across the valley.
The wind, which had been strong but bearable in the valley, now began howling like a banshee as we proceeded along a series of narrow ridges that linked the peaks, leaning forward on our hiking poles, shoulders hunched, bodies tight, like Scott traversing the ice-cap in a furious Antarctic storm. At times the gusts would sweep up the side of the mountain, thundering like an express train, and hit us from an angle, sending us staggering toward the sheer drop on the other side. Dear readers, I kid you not. It was scary.
We heard later that the gusts had reached 150 km per hour – a record for this time of year. And did I mention it was cold? Bone-marrow-piercing cold. I was shivering uncontrollably even though wearing just about every item of clothing I’d brought with me. This made my pack very light, but also easier for the Mistral to have its way with me and send me sailing out toward the Mediterranean like an untethered kite.
After several hours of struggling against the brute forces of nature, at last we descended into the valley again, where the wind was more like a normal hurricane, only to encounter, on the other side of a small lake, a sheer wall of limestone that towered into the sky like El Capitan.
The trail markers led us around the lake toward the monolith, which seemed strange, because there was no evident way of getting through. As we neared the base, we encountered a placard which informed us, deadpan fashion, that the path forward was reserved for experienced climbers and involved the use of ladders and handrails embedded in the rock. It suggested that less experienced hikers might consider taking the roundabout route, helpfully shown on the map in yellow – yellow for chicken. Cluck, cluck.
At this point, we had no issues with being feathered fowl of any description and so scuttled back to find the alternative route, which took us down through the valley to our destination in St-Remy-de-Provence, only to discover that the Mistral had preceded us and knocked the power out at the little hotel where we were staying. We went to bed by the wavering light of our cellphones and pocket flashlights, humbled and subdued. Tomorrow we will sacrifice a calf or something, so that the Mistral will go away and leave us alone. But for tonight, we are reduced to the shivering powerless bipeds that we are.
And that, dear reader, all happened in a single day, with many interesting but lesser adventures trimmed from my account. Will we make it to the end of our trip? Will we even make it to the end of Day 2? All this and more in the next instalment.
Day 2 – Monday,
6 May, Saint-Remy to Eygalieres – 16 km
The route from St-Remy-de-Provence led us by the archeological site of the ancient Roman town of Glanum (pictured above), which we had visited a couple of days ago while touring around. During our previous visit, we had struck up a friendship with the parking attendant – a charming, voluble man, small and wiry, with a lined face and a noticeable limp. We spotted him again while tramping by the site today and so went over to have another chat. He had explained to us earlier how he’d been injured in an industrial accident, which is why he now works part-time at the place. His name is Oliva Francois Joseph and his origins lie in Spain, though his family roots reach back to Corsica. He passes the hours by carving poems of his own creation in the large limestone blocks that line the parking lot – poems that he was kind enough to write out for me under the heading “Pour le sourire de Brian”. Here is a sample:
Un sourire
C’est un chanson
Un sourire
C’est une richesse
Posée aux creux de nos levres
Un sourire
Pour dire
Que nous vous aimons.
Oliva brought a smile to my lips – just as in the poem – and I thought what a marvel it was that a man could transform personal misfortune into an occasion to bring a measure of light into the world.
From Glanum, the hiking path wound by the asylum of Saint Paul, where Vincent Van Gogh was admitted voluntarily in 1889, after suffering from serious hallucinations. He lived there for a year, occupying two adjacent rooms with barred windows. Initially he was confined to the grounds of the asylum, and only let out for short supervised walks nearby. Nevertheless the grounds and the surroundings are quite beautiful, and he continued to paint furiously throughout his stay there.
The Mistral had waned in strength overnight, so we were not buffeted and blown about like scraps of paper as we were yesterday. The path wound through tranquil fields and groves at the foot of les Alpilles, over ancient bridges and alongside pastures with curious horses, bringing us to the pretty but slightly precious village of Eygalieres.
We journeyed northward into the countryside to our accommodation in a farmhouse called “La Sarriette” – named after an aromatic herb in the mint family. An older couple welcomed us warmly and treated us to drinks and a three-course meal, which we all shared at the end of a long table in a dining room with an immense fireplace, chatting amiably throughout.
At the end of the meal, I received a lesson in etiquette. A board was brought out with several different types of cheese cut into wedges from larger wheels, like pieces of pie. I eyed one that I hadn’t seen before and, having inquired, was told it was a local product and given an elaborate explanation, much of which I didn’t understand. No matter. “I’ll try it!” I said and picked up the knife to nip off a politely understated portion from the narrow end of the cheese.
Cries of horror from both hosts stopped me in my tracks.
“No, no, no,” they exclaimed. “That’s not the way to do it!”
And
thinking that this poor Irish-Canadian needed to be gently introduced to less
barbaric ways, the woman took the knife and demonstrated that one always cuts a
lengthwise slice of cheese, which includes both the soft interior and the harder
rind at the end, so that no one at the table is ever left with only the
rind.
“Ah!” I said, swallowing my pride – having learned years ago never to argue with a person holding a knife.
But actually I wasn’t convinced. Why should everyone end up with a bit of something that no one actually wants? It’s like saying that when you scoop ice cream out of cardboard container, you should tear off a piece of cardboard as well. All right, the comparison isn’t totally apt, but you get what I mean.
By this time, however, the digestifs were being poured and goodwill was washing around the table, and so I suppressed these churlish thoughts and surrendered to the warmth of the occasion. But honestly, dear reader, what gives the French the right to beguile and bewitch and bamboozle us with their refined table manners?
A voice calls “because they’re more civilized.” And I fear it's an inner voice I’m hearing.
Day 3 – Tuesday, 7 May 2019, Eygalieres to Cavaillon
– 19 km
We left our farmhouse at La Sarriette a bit late this morning, well-rested and well-fed, as attested by the smiling faces in the photo above. After retracing our steps through the village of Eygalieres, we set our faces eastward in brilliant sunshine. The jagged peaks of les Alpilles dropped away on our right and we crossed a great agricultural plain, with the worn-down hulk of the Luberon mountains looming on the horizon ahead, and irises blooming at the side of the road.
Evidence of the damage wreaked by the Mistral was everywhere, with great plane trees toppled over, their roots poking forlornly into the air. At one point, the route was blocked by a huge crane, from which dangled a stalwart emergency worker, hard at work cutting down a tree that teetered dangerously from the side of a cliff. We persuaded the foreman to let us scuttle through, and then stopped to gawk at the proceedings till we were shooed along.
Our destination today was Cavaillon, a rather nondescript town in its margins, but pleasant enough at its centre, where we checked into the plain but welcoming Hotel Toppin. On its ground floor was the intriguingly named Cinema Femina – whose exact function we never discovered but which seemed to feature live shows of some sort. Hmm ... what do you think, dear reader?
Arriving relatively early, we had time to spend in the quirky Route 66 bar around the corner, filled with motorcycle stuff and mementoes of a trip through the heart of America.
Then onward to a tiny restaurant nearby, run by an expansive man who was manager, waiter, chef, master of ceremonies, and chief entertainer wrapped up in one. He magically cooked a terrific three-course dinner for us in the tiny open kitchen behind the bar while engaging in an animated conversation with everyone in the restaurant. Vive la France!
Day 4 – Wednesday, 8 May 2019, Cavaillon to Lumieres
– 22 km
The Romans were great engineers but they were also great bores, for they insisted on building their roads in straight lines, no matter whether crossing hill or dale, river or ravine, field or forest, onward and onward and onward. Great for marching armies and speeding chariots but a bit monotonous for modern hikers.
Our route today led from Cavaillon to the village of Lumieres, near Goult. The hiking path followed sections of the original Via Domitia – the first Roman road constructed outside Italy, whose path we are generally tracing. Straight as an arrow we went, plodding gamely along, waiting for the downpour predicted by the weather folks, but which didn’t materialize beyond a few drops. More evidence of the havoc wreaked by Le Mistral could be seen on every side but otherwise the day was pleasant if uneventful.
Lumieres turned out to be a tiny collection of houses clustered around a large church, whose origins lay in a miracle-working vision experienced by a local man in the 1600s, which prompted local veneration and ultimately attracted pilgrims from afar – as it still does. Our hotel was lodged in a renovated convent dating from the same period as the church – and it was only after we were safely checked in and ensconced in the restaurant across the way that the heavens opened and a veritable deluge of water poured down, flooding the courtyard in front of the hotel. But we were having another excellent meal, accompanied by a liter of local red wine, so what did we care?
Dear reader, do not judge us for our gluttonous tendencies! We walk all day under the hot sun, with nary a crust of bread to share and a few drops of lukewarm water to pour down our dusty throats. Our evenings are devoted to replenishing the stores of energy needed to carry us forward on this arduous undertaking, otherwise we might stumble into a drainage ditch and expire, our bodies left to be discovered by other wanderers, a sad testament to the folly of holding our voracious appetites in check.
Day 5 – Thursday, 9 May 2019, Lumieres to Apt
– 18 km
I take back everything I said about the Romans. To call them bores was a mistake, a misstatement, a churlish and misanthropic thing to say. They were in fact a quite glorious and creative people – giants of architecture. I say this because today we encountered, without fanfare or much forewarning, the Pont Julien, one of the most striking remnants of the Via Domitia, along which we are trudging like a pair of Hannibal’s elephants, day in day out, marking our passage with equally elephantine deposits.
A reader shakes her head and urges me to get on with the story.
Anyway, the Pont Julien is a marvelous sight to behold – three broad arches spanning the river, with the central arch as slim and airy as a child’s hoop – still standing after years of flood, drought, rain and snow, to say nothing of the dreaded Mistral. The bridge was built in 3 BC and was still open for car traffic until 2005, marking over 2,000 years of uninterrupted usage.
Dear reader, do not mistake these photos for the reality! They are but poor, one-dimensional representations of the real thing, taken by a photographer of feeble powers, incapable of conveying the true majesty of the bridge, its gracefulness, its delicacy of line, its insouciant defiance of the laws of gravity as it springs from pier to pier. We stood there and gazed in wonder – for the bridge is as remarkable in its own way as the famous Pont du Gard, but without a million tourists crawling all over it.
A reader interrupts to point out that we are tourists every bit as much as the ones I am disparaging. A fair point. But it's not the presence of tourists to which I am objecting, just their huge number, which has the capacity to rob an ancient site of any trace of majesty and splendour. A few ants at a picnic are welcome guests, free to cart off in their jaws the crumbs dropped on the grass. A million ants are a plague.
Today our destination is the town of Apt, the bustling centre of a prosperous agricultural region. Our route to the town proceeded along a bike path that followed an old railway line, which in turn followed the old Roman road – once again, straight as a die – passing through banks of tiny spring flowers.
But as the day wore on and our sturdy bodies became increasingly less sturdy, and our tongues began flapping languorously in the breeze, and our energy reserves ebbed to dangerously low levels, we encountered like a vision at the side of the path a veritable sanctuary, a shady refuge for weary travelers, fitted out with tables and cheerful umbrellas, selling beer and coffee and ice-cream and all manner of healthy restoratives. Many a time, while hiking through the countryside of France, have I imagined a place such as this – as a desert traveler imagines an oasis glittering on the horizon, complete with palm trees, their slender leaves waving invitingly. But this, dear reader, was no product of a fevered imagination. It was real.
We careened off the path, dropped our bags, and skipped to the counter, where we were greeted by a proprietor of sympathetic aspect, who took one look at us and served up what we needed most. In conversation, he disclosed to us the recipe for Café Frappe, a specialty of the house, which he assured us was a Greek invention unavailable elsewhere in France. It involved several discrete stages of preparation and a miscellany of coloured liquids, the identity of which I am not at liberty to disclose, having been sworn to secrecy.
And that brief sojourn, dear reader, gave us a sufficient lift to sail on the prevailing winds all the way to the town of Apt and a much-needed day of rest – about which more in the next installment.
Day 6 – Friday, 10 May 2019, Apt
This day was meant to be a day of rest. But in fact it was a day of furious activity. Because, dear reader, as you no doubt know, when you hike all day in the scorching Provencal sun, springing from rock to rock like a goat, toiling up mountain paths and stumbling down parched stream-beds, you sweat. In fact, you sweat a lot. And, because we are parsimonious in the number of items we carry with us, we wear more or less the same clothes every day, and we sweat into the same clothes every day, and we stink more and more every day, until guard-dogs fall silent at our approach and whimper pitifully, their noses averted.
What I’m trying to tell you, dear reader, is that our clothes needed to be washed. But, marvel of marvels, not 100 meters from our small hotel in the town of Apt was a laundromat. And not just any old laundromat, with cracked linoleum floors and grotty machines and flickering fluorescent lights, but a shiny new laundromat, with shiny new machines – two large, two small, and two 'just right', like Goldilocks’ porridge. And presiding over the laundromat was an imposing middle-aged lady, who took one look at me as I plodded in with a backpack full of dirty clothes, and took charge of the situation. She produced from nowhere a number of plastic baskets and helped me sort the clothes into their required categories, and assured me that various items would not bleed into various other items, and that my expensive polyester hiking shirts would not shrivel up like prunes, and that my underwear would not emerge from the machine as painfully snug as a body-builder’s posing trunks. Just leave it to me, she said. Go away and stop bothering me and have a coffee somewhere – over there (she waved) across the little bridge, in one of those shady cafés around the little square – and come back in an hour and everything will be done.
And so, trained in obedience from an early age by my long-suffering mother, I slank (slunk, slinked?) out of the laundromat and crossed the footbridge that spanned the town’s little river and ordered a coffee in a sheltered café and spent a very pleasant hour thinking about absolutely nothing, as the sunshine poured down through the leafy plane trees, and people strolled about, and the proprietor spoke at length at high volume on his cell-phone to various individuals who I gathered would no longer be his friends once the conversation ended.
And when I returned to the laundromat, I found that the clothes were washed and ready to be sorted once again into various categories appropriate for the exacting drying process, according to their particular properties and susceptibilities, about which this giant of competence was once again hugely knowledgeable.
To make a long story even longer, I once again departed for an hour or so and puttered around in our snug little hotel and returned to find the mountain of clothes smelling like the lavender fields that grace the Provencal countryside – white clothes still white, dark clothes still dark, coloured clothes still their original vibrant colours. And for all this wonderous process of decontamination, the lady charged me a grand total of 12.50 euros.
I considered proposing marriage on the spot but then remembered I was already spoken for. Nonetheless, I swore to find some way of moving to this delightful little town.
Day 7 – Saturday, 11 May 2019, Apt to Cereste – 21 km
Have you ever walked for several hours toward a distant destination only to discover that you’ve ended up where you started? That, dear reader, is the story of our lives – or perhaps I should speak only for myself, because my comrade-in-arms, Kent, has marched in a straight and forthright fashion throughout life to ever greater fame and fortune. Which he will of course deny, with a shy smile. But that’s only misplaced modesty. The man is actually a beast.
How did I get here? Oh yes. Our hiking path today led us from the valley town of Apt high into the hills of the Luberon, along a forest track so ancient it was partially paved with cobbles, worn smooth by centuries of treading feet.
Up and up we went, until we reached the medieval hill-town of Saignon, perched high in its aerie like a stuffed eagle in an arts-and-crafty nest. Much quaintness and prettiness and inflated café prices – but still worth the climb, for the views were magnificent and who can really complain about prettiness?
Patience, dear reader, I’m coming to the point. Which is that, when we made our way back down into the valley along the regulation path toward our destination, the town of Cereste, we found that we’d travelled nary a stone’s throw from Apt, the place where we’d started. And yet the sun was past its height and we still had about 20 kilometers to go. Quel horreur! (note the silent “h” – French tip for the day). And so we hurried forward through truly wondrous scenery, with the mass of the Grand Luberon looming on our right and vineyards and fields of wild-flowers – yellow, blue, red, white – extending on every side.
“Is that your dog?” inquired their leader, a svelte bearded man, peering at us from behind his Bono sunglasses.
“No, no,” we said. “He’s been following us for the past hour. We’ve been trying to persuade him to go home.”
“Aha!” said the man, as if he’d discovered the secret of life.
And he explained that a woman had stopped them earlier to ask if they’d come across her lost dog. There was an animated discussion among the cyclists about the woman’s mobile number, which she’d apparently given them but they’d somehow lost. Despair reigned until, quite suddenly, up trundled a small farm truck, which also stopped, so that the road was now a regular jubilee of consternation, while the object of our concern, the dog, wandered about in an ecstasy of sniffery.
After much discussion, it was established that the man in the truck actually knew the dog’s owner. And so he unceremoniously scooped up the dog, bundled him into the back of his vehicle, executed a tricky U-turn on the narrow road, and speeded back toward the farm. Problem solved. Much jubilation in the jubilee!
We resumed our trek, anxious to reach the town of Cereste, now only a few kilometers away, only to be stopped by a magnificently mustachioed man who brought his jeep to a shuddering halt in the road beside us. After greeting us, he inquired if we were headed for Compostelle, the famed Spanish pilgrim shrine, because, if so, we were going in the wrong direction. When we explained that our destination actually lay eastward, in the holy city of Rome, he expressed both relief (that we weren’t totally lost) and astonishment (that we'd have the roupettes to attempt scaling the Alps) which I thought a bit judgmental, for in fact we’ve got the roupettes to do all sorts of things – and here I speak for both Kent and myself.
He then reached into the jumbled pile of things in his back seat and located a tiny bottle of a clear, oily substance, which he claimed was a natural secretion of some regional plant used as a base for various unguents. He unstopped the bottle and insisted we take a sniff – and indeed it had a pleasant, slightly pungent, herbal smell. What the stuff is exactly, I do not know. But he claimed it sold for at least 15 euros in a fancy boutique. I’m not sure if he was trying to palm some off on us – which seems unlikely – or was simply giving us a subtle hint that our natural fragrances were not as pleasing as the summer breeze wafting over the fields.
And so, dear reader, as the sun sank in the western sky, and shadows grew long over the fields, we finally entered Cereste and, with the help of Madame Google, located our funky, ancient, chambre d'hôtes, which we entered through a kind of lean-to resembling a cow-shed. Did we care? Not a whit. For our room, while simple, had the requisite number of beds (though the one I occupied was somewhat tippy), and the town, while simple, had a pizzeria, and the pizzeria, while simple, had shelves and shelves of a darkly appealing local wine, and the wine, while simple, went very well with the pizza, which wasn’t simple at all but bursting with a kaleidoscope of flavours.
DAY 8 – SUNDAY, 12 MAY, CERESTE TO SAINT-MICHEL-L’OBSERVATOIRE – 20 KM
What is it about the sight of distant snow-capped peaks that captures the imagination and excites the soul? It is the airy part of our nature that responds – the part we share with clouds and birds. We gaze and gaze and somehow feel sanctified, as if a mere vision in white, glittering remotely under the blue vault of the sky, might dispense a measure of purification and enlightenment.
We are peculiar hybrid beings, neither fish nor fowl, immersed in a material world that continuously assails our senses, while actually living our lives mostly in an immaterial world of ideas, memories, stories, plans, dreams. And so we value those rare things that bridge the divide between these two worlds, appealing to the senses and yet speaking intimately to the spirit. Snow-capped mountains rank high among them, sharing honors with waterfalls, gorges, stars and constellations.
That, at least, was how I felt today when we rounded a hilltop and caught sight of the crests of the Alps across a broad green valley. No photo can convey the effect of that view, for it records only its physical traces, while its essence slips away.
Among those distant peaks, dear reader, lies our destination – for our journey this year takes us to the village of Embrun, located in the Alps on the way to the pass of Montgenevre, which next year will funnel us into the fabled realm of Italia.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. For it was only later in the day that we caught a glimpse of the enchanted heights that await us. This morning we had breakfast in a busy Cereste café, in brilliant sunshine under a crystalline blue sky.
In the café, to our surprise, we encountered once again our fiercely mustachioed friend from yesterday, who came over to our table to shake our hands and wish us well on our journey. Once our morning quota of carbs was attainted and exceeded, we tramped off into the green countryside, marveling at the wild-flowers carpeting the surrounding fields.
By midday, we had the good fortune to reach the village of Reillane, where we were able to have lunch in a café overlooking the town square, with a view of the ancient church perched on the hill opposite.
Then off we trudged, eventually reaching the hilltop mentioned at the start, where we caught our first glimpse of the snowy realms that await us.
In late afternoon, all hot and sweaty, we gained the tiny hill-town of St-Michel-l’Observatoire – where our room had a view over rooftops to the verdant countryside beyond.
After unpacking, we were rewarded with a cold beer in the shady village square. We stretched out our legs, gazed at the sky, and let strength flow back into our limbs from the glasses in our hands.
DAY 9 – MONDAY, 13
MAY, SAINT-MICHEL-L’OBSERVATOIRE TO LA CAMPAGNE BERNE (NEAR PIERRERUE) – 20 KM
Pop quiz! In what place was the first planet outside the solar system discovered? Oddly enough, in the tiny village of St-Michel-l’Observatoire, where we stayed last night, and where true to its name there’s an observatory, founded in the 1930s. The village is reputed to have the purest atmosphere in Europe – the reason why it was chosen as the site for the observatory.
Our route today lay along a patchwork of paths and tracks, stitched together to approximate the course of the ancient Via Domitia, leading us by noon to the busy little town of Forcalquier, which features a curious temple-like structure at its highest point, which was visible from afar as we approached the place.
We stopped for lunch in a café – second day in a row – and had a pleasant conversation with a friendly Dutch couple at the next table, who were too polite to say out loud what they were evidently thinking about the sanity of our enterprise.
The hiking path then took us back into the open countryside, which once again was studded with wild flowers of every description.
It was late afternoon when we finally arrived at our destination, a chambre d’hotes in a charming old farmhouse situated on a grassy knoll, with flowers and vines decorating the façade and stunning views in all directions.
Before we were even shown to our room, the welcoming hosts, correctly divining our physical and psychological ailments, guided us to a table set out under a lean-to, sat us down with calm, reassuring voices, and served up an array of restorative liquids, while we contemplated the vista across the valley toward the hill-town of Lurs, where our route lies tomorrow.
DAY 10 – TUESDAY, 14 MAY, LA CAMPAGNE BERNE (NEAR PIERRERUE) TO PONT BERNARD (NEAR PEYRUIS) – 16 KM
I keep going on about the wild flowers that carpet the Provencal countryside, but truly, dear reader, they are something to behold – and this comes from someone who lacks the gene that attracts most of humanity to blossoms and petals and sepals and carpels and the other parts that make flowers what they are. But take a close look at this photo, snapped at random along the hiking path today. Consider the variety of tiny, star-like blooms and the harmonious blending of the colours with the dry Mediterranean landscape. Spring has been delayed in Provence this year, and we seem to have arrived just in time to witness the surge of renewed life in the meadows and the forests.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, because I
want to say at bit about the chambre d’hotes where we stayed last night, and
where we were served up with a veritable feast by our hosts, Bruno and
Eric. This was a favour on their part, because normally they don’t
provide evening meals. But, yesterday being a Monday, and Monday being
the day when every restaurant in France bars its doors and leaves the general
population to fend for themselves, and we being members of the general
population yet lacking even minimal means of subsistence and so liable to
starvation, and Bruno and Eric being men of generosity and sympathy, we did not
go to bed hungry – far from it.
Course followed course, with huge slabs of cheese at the end, followed by a fresh fruit cocktail, over which we were instructed to pour a home-made liqueur flavoured with thyme. But the meal was not yet at an end. For, just as we polished off the last of the wine, we were furnished with special liqueur glasses so that we might imbibe the home-made stuff, and imbibe we did. It would have been rude to do otherwise, and we are anything but rude. Bumbling perhaps, a trifle disoriented at times, not always at the top of our game, but definitely not rude.
So it was a minor miracle that we awoke fresh as daisies this morning and after a hearty breakfast, left this little paradise behind. We reached the miniscule hill-town of Lurs around noon and discovered, right beside the path, a boulangerie with tables outside, overlooking the deep valley that dropped away at our elbows. At first there wasn’t any sign of life in the bakery, but the posted hours proclaimed that it was still open, so we rattled the door and banged on the windows, until a lugubrious young man, with sad eyes and a sad bearded face – as long and sad as that of an El Greco saint – answered the door and reluctantly agreed to sell us some of his wares. He cheered up a bit in the course of our exchange and he favoured us with a smile or two as we departed – an amused smile, to tell the truth, as if he never seen a spectacle quite like the one we were presenting.
Today’s installment seems to be mostly about food. For our destination was a humble roadside inn on the highway outside of Peyruis, nothing much to look at, with cars and trucks roaring by at the normal French speed of 50 kms above the lawful limit.
But the food served in the restaurant was quite astonishing – the best perhaps we’ve had in the entire journey, and that’s saying something. Here are some shots. Gaze and weep.
DAY 11 – WEDNESDAY,
15 MAY, PONT BERNARD (NEAR PEYRUIS) TO CHABANNES – 13 KM
“No skinny-dipping in the pool.” That was what the sign said. We gazed at the hotel’s open-air pool, wondering what scenes of wild abandon, what bacchanalian festivals, what carnivals of pagan carnality had taken place around the pool before the prudish management intervened and stamped the whole thing out. It seemed to us that the rule was out of keeping with France’s longstanding commitment to liberty, equality, and especially fraternity. But it was chilly when we woke up this morning, so we swallowed our principles and abandoned the plan to test management’s willingness to clamp down and enforce the rule.
After breakfast, we walked out of the village along the side of a narrow irrigation canal, filled to the brim with rushing greenish water, then crossed an arched aqueduct across a ravine.
The path entered a forested area, then wound steeply up into the dry hills, affording broad views over the rich farmlands of the Durance River and the strange rock formations on the other side of the valley, which resembled the walls of an immense prehistoric fortress, over which many a vat of boiling oil was poured onto the hapless heads of besieging armies below.
Not every day in paradise, dear reader, is a day full of drama and passion. In fact, our hike today was as peaceable as anyone could desire. The sun shone, the sky was as blue as only a blue sky can be, the birds twittered, and we only lost our way once, when, distracted by the sight of an immense field of glittering solar panels to our left, we failed to notice the telltale red and white trail marker to our right and went gamely onwards along a farm track until it petered out and we were left with the choice of either bush-whacking into the complete unknown or else retracing our steps, proverbial tails between our legs. Tails between our legs we went, until finally discovering the correct turn-off. We proceeded along a dry, stony track, secure in the knowledge that it was leading us somewhere – perhaps even somewhere we wanted to go.
Where we wanted to go (and where we went) was to a stunning chambre d’hotes in the hills overlooking the Durance valley.
The hostess and host put at our disposal an entire private suite, and sensing our general state of weakness and debilitation, proceeded to stuff us full of baked fish in a sea of garlicky creamed cauliflower, hearty slabs of spicy country sausage, green salad, roast potatoes, bread and cheese, and vanilla cheesecake, all accompanied with a jug of red wine.
Did we sleep well that night, dear reader? You bet.
DAY 12 – THURSDAY, 16 MAY, CHABANNES TO SISTERON – 21 KM
It is far from my intent to cast aspersions on the people who have devoted their lives to diligently pioneering, blazing, maintaining, and protecting the splendid hiking trails that crisscross France – the grandes randonnées – which take you almost anywhere you want to go, and sometimes places you didn’t really want to go, and never really dreamt of going, and indeed regret ever having gone. For you see, dear reader, these diligent people, in the simplicity of their hearts and the purity of their love of nature, hate roads. All kinds of roads. Big roads, small roads, roads full of speeding cars and thundering trucks, roads frequented mainly by small children and errant sheep – but especially, dear reader, roads that lead you from A to B by the most direct route, with a minimum of fuss and the least wear and tear on your body.
These wonderful people, in their obsession with avoiding any contact with asphalt, will lead you from your safe and warm chambre d’hotes into the mountainous wilds by a track that make even goats’ knees tremble, full of stones and mud and slippery bits of broken shale until you wonder if you have passed into another age, when people wore wooden shoes and spat at everyone to whom they were not related by blood or marriage – all this, dear reader, to avoid subjecting the hiker to the indignity of walking a few kilometers along a perfectly serviceable road in the valley below.
Which is what happened this morning, when, to speak plainly, these magnificent idiots jerked us around.
At our usual
latish hour, we bade farewell to our beautiful lodgings in the valley and set
off into a landscape as green and sparkling as ever the Garden of Eden was.
But soon we soon found ourselves heading into the hills, diligently following the route marked in our hiking guide, yet strangely not proceeding in a direction which any sane person might have thought correct. In no time we were scrambling through a wild upland desert, leaping over streams, and slip-sliding into the bellies of gullies, winding this way and that, up and down and around elephantine rock formations.
Truth to tell, it was an exciting morning – one that tested our manhood and many other hoods as well. But you can’t spend all your time doing that if you want to get anywhere.
So it was well after the sun had reached its height when we finally descended from this wilderness and found ourselves on the outskirts of the town of Peipin. We limped into a bakery by the side of a busy road and ordered something to eat and drink.
There we sat, debating how we’d ever manage to reach Sisteron, our destination for the day, because once again the hiking guide directed us up into a range of mountains, which looked as formidable as those that had just measured our masculinity and found it wanting. The recommended path wandered hither and yon and did not seem likely to deliver us to our destination much before the bells of midnight rang from the tower of the cathedral.
What to do? Surely there must be a better way of passing through the broad sunny valley of the Durance – a path that avoided the busy road over which half the population of the country seemed to be racing, yet on the other hand did not involve swimming across the river to gain access to the small road on the opposite bank.
We queried the good people working in the bakery about our dilemma – which lead to a spirited if somewhat undisciplined exchange of information. Finally the young woman who had taken the lead in trying to help us threw up her hands, and smilingly confessed her entire ignorance of this “hiking thing”, proclaiming that she was a “femme de canapé”. To my mind, this summoned memories of a painting by Goya of a lady who seemed to have lost track of her clothes while reclining on a satin couch. My saner and sounder companion, Kent, brought me out my reverie, commenting that the young woman had simply said she was a “couch potato”.
But all was not lost. We consulted our alternative hiking guide (yes, dear reader, we have more than one), which sometimes takes a refreshingly practical approach to the task of negotiating through the wilds of France. It coyly revealed that there was a service road which ran beside the railroad track. And that track, as it happened, passed just behind the bakery where we were sitting. And that service road, as it happened, would take us lickety-split just where we wanted to go, straight as a Roman road to Sisteron.
On approaching the town, we left the service road, crossed a bridge over the track and trudged down a small street toward the centre.
Along the way we encountered an elderly lady, impeccably dressed in a canary-yellow jacket and black skirt, her short-cut grey hair combed fashionably back, earrings matching the yellow jacket, looking for all the world like a contessa from an elegant Italian film. The Canary Contessa stopped to greet us, inquiring where we were from and where we were going, expressing wonderment at both, looking back and forth between us with bright keen eyes as if we were voyagers from the annals of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta and Zheng He. It was a wondrously warm welcome to the wonderous town of Sisteron – of which much more tomorrow.
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