A walk on the wild side

I didn’t get the chance to post my last blog – various things got in the way, then I tried to do it in the morning before setting off and ended up doing other things instead.... that was Sunday morning. We had re-thought our route because of the problems with traffic on certain types of road and because of the lack of facilities in so many of the villages across Northern France (which we expected to be repeated in the rest of the places we walked through to Vezelay).

It was all a bit fraught but we thought we had it cracked and had built in some flexibility, too.

So, we set off from Chartre a little bit later than intended (9.30am) and headed down the D939 knowing from experience that roads of this level are pretty quiet on Sundays – no lorries and only light general traffic. We made good progress and stopped at Sours for coffee in a great Bar/Tabac which we recommend highly – it is one of a series of villages walked through and possibly stopped at by the 1946 pilgrims.

Expecting the other villages to be similar we happily treaded the Sunday road, but each place after Sours was empty of shops, bar/tabacs and any commercial life. A couple of the churches were open and we could see where the 1946 pilgrims may have stopped en route to and including their night stop at Ouarville but we had our food by the road side as there were not even seats/benches in some of the places we went through! The weather was good, the traffic very light and the going was fine but by the time we got to Ouarville we were ready to stop and there was no where to stay, no presbytere, or even a camp site.

We walked on to Gouillons where we had an address for the presbytere but the priest no longer lived there. We tried ‘phoning for a taxi to take us to Angerville where we were confident that there were hotels and none of them responded... they were all on answer machines, so we walked on, checking each new village as we entered it. At Baudreville, a well advertised hotel was now very much out of business, and there was nothing in Arnouville. The blackberry had packed in around Gouillons and we still kept walking....

Remember, our intended day had been from Chartres to Ouarville (28kms) with a fall back plan of an extra 5km to Gouillons if there was nothing in Ouarville – 33kms is really enough. We walked to Angerville, which was another 13 or so kms, so our day ended with over 46kms under our belt by the time we entered the town!

It was after 9 pm by the time we reached Angerville, the light was beginning to disappear from the sky as we approached and our hearts were lifted as we got closer and closer. It was clearly much larger than any of the places we had stopped at on the way and it was right next to a major intersection of the D2020, so that should also help. OK, so it was Sunday night in France but we have succeeded in smaller places than this.

Nothing was open apart from an empty donner kebab cafe and a pizza cafe/take away. The only hotel we could find in the centre of town was dark and locked shut. So we went to the pizza place and asked. The young woman who was standing outside confidently pointed us to the hotel we had already tried. She then shrugged her shoulders and said that was it, there were no more hotels. No, there was not a camp site either, she said then went in to ask her mother who was running the pizza place (we could hear her asking her mother if there was anything they could do and her mother saying no). The men hanging around the place all joined in to give advice. No there were no hotels, the nearest was in Etampes another 20km away, no we should not try to walk there in the dark, it would be too dangerous (we had worked that one out for ourselves....), no there were to taxis working on Sunday night and no, there were no places to put up a tent.

Then one of the men asked if we would camp in a forest and we said yes, of course. He described a complicated route to us and we set off with a couple of cans of fizzy drinks from the shop and the rough idea of where the forest might be.

After walking down several roads and being tempted by a quaint little passage way with trees and hedges dotted along it we eventually found what might pass as a forest in the town of Angerville. It was a course bit of land with trees behind the swimming pool/sports complex.

In the dark, we pitched the tent (for the first time) put all our precious items in the tent and stuffed the remaining ruck sacks in one of the bivvy bags for the night.

The land was close to the very busy road, next to a place where teenagers continued to make a heck of a scary noise (shouting, screaming, chanting and so on) until almost 1.30 in the morning.... oh and the TGV main line to the south west was about 30 feet away, too. It was a long night.

Today, we hoped for better things, got up by 6 and struck camp. We were in a crummy bar/tabac in Angerville centre by around half seven and set off at half past eight. Angerville’s saving grace (as with most places) was its Boulangerie – we bought a good baggette and for breakfast a couple of delicious pain au raisins!

Out on the D6 which turned into the D22 when we changed Departements, we walked until 3.30 when we arrived in Pithiviers where we decided we needed a proper rest so we are in the hotel there (Le Relais de la Poste) in a big room, large enough to hang the tent over the wardrobe to dry it off properly and hang all our washing and other things out, too.

We did another 27 km today. Well over 73 kms in two days is enough for anyone!!!

However, we are well, we were safe dry and OK in the tent, and we coped with it all without major incidents.... we have the stamina and determination to get through even difficult things like this and see the blessings that they can bring.

(Blessings included: we are now further on than we had expected and we had been worried about that; the taxi thing would have been very expensive and fruitless so it was good it didn’t happen – and we now know how to call French numbers using the mobile; we needed to try the tent and now know how easy to use it is, reliable and totally brill it is too; we know we can go on for much longer if we need to; we have been assured that even when it looks very bleak it seldom is anywhere near as bad as you think it is...etc etc)