Day 3: Again, a misty start, but it seemed to hold the promise of something better later on. Breakfast at 8. Madame told me of her mother who had been born in Manchester, but who had ended up being married off and veiled in Lebanon, before escaping to Morocco (having been obliged to leave her three children behind), and there meeting the man who was her second husband, rescuer, and Madame’s father. When Madame’s brother did a DNA test five years ago it linked him with a Lebanese gent who was his half-brother. The families are happily in contact.
Away by 08:45, heading down to meet the official route at Mauvrain, I met a leveret, who sat in the road and watched me approach. I expected him to go bounding off into the field when I got too near, but instead he ran off a few hundred metres down the road and then sat down and waited for me to catch up, He did this four or five times; the nearest he let me get was about twenty feet away, and then he bounded off and disappeared. It was a magical encounter.
At Murlin there was a sawmill for the huge logs I saw in the forest yesterday, and a very brightly painted house.
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| Murlin’s talented house painter! |
Then, stirring a buzzard nearby, and after taking a classic wrong turning I got back on the route, and was plunged into broadleaf forest. I find coniferous forests rather oppressive, but this was beautiful. And the path went on, dead-straight for nearly 10k.
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| The way through the forest |
At Raveau, I found a patisserie open, so bought a snack and, suitably refreshed, headed to La Charité Sur Loire which was basically my end point for today.
The town is beautiful, but a bit run down. Too many closed up shops. And almost nothing open. It’s great glory is the priory church. But I found somewhere for lunch, and was then accosted by an Englishman who stopped to chat. He was 76, and had knocked about a fair bit. He said he had had an antique shop in the King’s Road in his twenties, and that he had known Francis Bacon and Joe Orton. He lived between Ireland and France. It was all a bit Lovejoy. But, he paid for his own beer, so I didn’t think he was stringing me a line.
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| The priory church of Sant-Croix-Notre-Dame at La Charité-sur-Loire |
Then he looked disparagingly at my rather meagre portion, and said, ‘I think you better come home with me and we can get some more food in you.’ I trotted along and we went to his partner Marise’s house, where I feasted on bread and pate, salad, lamb chops and beans and cheese and coffee. Conversation and wine flowed free (not Marise), and they insisted on giving me more food for the road, and dropping me to my booked lodgings on their way to check on her mother. Great kindness – and very unexpected. I felt most grateful.
Today was the last of Burgundy for me. The Loire marks the boundary. Tomorrow I start walking through Centre Val De Loire, and, in particular, the southern part of that region, the ancient territory known as Le Berry.
From The Quire 