Norman Conquest

From Alençon to Le Mans

I left Alençon under a heavy sky, grateful to have dodged the worst of the rain, and set out along a long, straight cycle track. It was a day for settling into the rhythm of walking: the crunch of gravel under my boots, the rustle of wet leaves overhead.

At last, I’ve left Normandy and stepped into a new French region, the Pays de la Loire. It feels somewhat of a relief, and a concrete marker of progress. I’ve also been advised that I’ve crossed the Greenwich meridian, so there’s that.

Here, in the Mayenne, the landscape is beginning to change. It’s flatter, the rivers are wider and everything feels more spacious, greener, more pastoral. Bucolic, even. I’m really enjoying this part of the walk, so much so that it’s made me rethink the plan I sketched out in my last post, the one where I was ready to bail out and skip ahead to Périgueux. Instead, I’ve decided to keep going, weather-dependent.

Diverting off the cycle track, I wandered down into the village where I’d planned to spend the night wild camping. The walk down was unexpectedly enchanting. I passed a sweet fountain, a series of fishing lakes, mirror-still in the late afternoon, and an orchard so full of apples it felt like something out of a storybook. There were hundreds of varieties, each labelled, and I laughed out loud to find one called gros cul or fat bottom. I pocketed a very red, fat-bottomed variety and carried on into town.

The blank-faced secretary at the mairie was unhelpful when I asked about a place to camp. So back I went, up to the fountain, where I found a soft patch of forest floor and bedded down beneath the stars. It was one of those unexpectedly happy nights, just me, Youna and the wind in the trees.

The next day was harder. Another long trudge, the air thick with the smell of muck and damp ground. The sky hung low and grey, my legs ached, and somewhere along that stretch I hit my lowest point. I filled my water bottles at a cemetery and, late in the day, came upon another fishing lake; this one inviting, with a wide view over the water that would have made a perfect campsite. But there were fishermen on the banks and houses nearby, so I tucked myself into a small, hidden spot by the road.

When a car pulled up close by, my stomach lurched. I felt suddenly exposed, almost hunted, and I came close to packing it in altogether. But I told myself fear was a choice, and this was my adventure. So I stayed put, breathed through it, and to my surprise slept deeply.

And I’m glad I didn’t give up, because the following day began unpromisingly but turned out to be glorious. The sun broke through at last, the pine forest opened out before me, and all the scents I love about summer in France came flooding back, pine needles warming in the sun, crushed herbs underfoot, wildflowers nodding in the breeze. We dropped down to a beautiful lake and, by some stroke of luck, found a charming little campsite where I slept like a queen.

The next day was just as good. More quiet forest, more green tunnels of trees, and by evening I’d dropped down to a small village where I was meant to camp in someone’s garden. But rain and thunderstorms were forecast, so my host ushered me inside instead and gave me the run of their Harry Potter–themed bedroom. It was as whimsical as it sounds, owls and broomsticks on the wallpaper, golden snitches glinting in the lamplight, and I awoke to thunder and heavy rain.

The next morning my friend arrived, and together we had two merry days of walking towards Le Mans. This last section (Les Alpes Mancelles) has been a fitting finale. Had I simply walked due south from Argentan, I would have covered the distance in three days, but instead I meandered, adding kilometre upon kilometre, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because along the way there were moments of such simple magic: a hen and her chicks clambering sleepily out from beneath the warm flank of a goat, blinking at me in surprise. Rows of dried sunflowers bowing their dark heads in homage to the coming autumn. Tiny mushrooms tucked into the hull of a fallen tree, as if carefully secreted there by invisible hands. Red and purple berries scattered across the forest floor like beads on a necklace. One could almost imagine woodland creatures rolling them home to their burrows in the dead of night.

And so this stage ended, as all good stages should, with a sense of quiet completion. I walked into Le Mans tired but content, ready for the next chapter.

If there’s a lesson in this part of the journey, it’s that the bleak days are part of the pilgrimage too. You have to walk through the mud, the muck, the heavy air, the moments of fear and doubt, to earn the sun-drenched pine forest at the end. Each low point, each night I nearly bailed, only made the good days feel more radiant. And perhaps that’s the rhythm of long walking, a slow, patient reminder that even when the sky hangs heavy, somewhere ahead the path will open, and the light will find you again.

.When I first thought about doing this walk across France, I’d read that I’d need to do a lot of planning. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to plan, however. Obviously, I had to plan to be reasonably fit. I had to plan clothes appropriate to the kinds of weather I was likely to encounter. I had to imagine going from point A to point B. I had to plan to walk a certain number of kilometres every day. I planned to make it enjoyable. And I planned to take the scenic route. Apart from that, I was happy with no defined plan.

Having taken six weeks to complete one-third of the total distance, given that I’m taking the scenic route, walking the full 2,000 or so kilometres will take me too far into winter. The revised plan therefore is to carry on for another two weeks, travelling through the Loire Valley and its chateaux until I reach Tours. After that, I’ll need to pause the walk to head back to Normandy for some business. The next third of the trip will leave Tours and join the GR41, which winds through the Sologne, the old royal hunting grounds southwest of Paris.

The GR41 would carry me to Bourges, then along the Cher and through to the Allier before leading me down towards Puy-de-Dôme and Clermont-Ferrand, part of the Massif Central in the heart of France. The final third will take me from Clermont down to my home in the the Var.

As for the “bride price” of this journey, I’m no longer after a discount, I’m paying in instalments. That means I’ll pick up the route again in the spring from Tours through Solognes and down to the Puy-de-Dôme. I’ll then either continue to the south or pause once more, and pick up the final third of the trip next autumn.

So the plan is back on track, just not in one long, unbroken gulp. More like a slow feast, with time to savour each course.