DAY 260 - PRUNAY TO REIMS: 9.3 MILES (18,600 STEPS)

Saturday 7 January, 2012

9.3 miles (Total: 2449.5 miles) – 18,600 steps (Total: 5,243,401 steps)

Reims, like Verdun, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and Saarbrucken were not on a direct route from Switzerland to Paris, but they seemed to be important milestones in understanding the history of conflict and the idea of Europe. A direct line from Basel would have been 280 miles, but with my detours it will be close to 500 miles although I will hopefully arrive better informed if not in better shape. This has been a recurrent theme on the walk that has taken me to Athens and Sarajevo – I reflect that had I taken the direct route from Olympia to London of 2350 miles, I would have been home for Christmas – don’t get me started again as I am only just toughening up.

Reims, like the wonderful city of Durham from where I left, is dominated by her magnificent cathedral – Notre Dame. Moreover, that magnificent cathedral is adorned with an inspirational rose window. Durham pre-dates Reims by around one hundred years, but as Durham Cathedral was commissioned under French occupation and constructed to classic Norman designs, it is no surprise that similarities should exist.

There is something about cathedrals that inspires me and at the same time gives me an incredible sense of peace. I have sat in Durham Cathedral for hours although it felt like just minutes, though often when there is a service on with hymns and a preacher it has seemed like hours when it has only been minutes. When I am in London, Durham Cathedral is the place I miss the most in the North East – I would love to be able to wander into Westminster Cathedral for quiet contemplation from time to time but I can’t afford the £15 admission fee. Reims is free and the scale and light is utterly impressive. I light a candle at the Chapel of Joan of Arc and watch it flicker for an hour or so and as I did, my problems seemed to be consumed by the flames leaving only the illumination of the light.

Reims Cathedral was badly damaged during WW1 when the city was under siege by German forces. Neither did it fare well during the Hundred Years War in fighting against English forces, although they fortunately did not have access to canon. They did however manage to capture Joan of Arc and put her on trial for heresy. Joan of Arc must be one of the most remarkable figures in world history; she was put in charge of commanding all French forces in the war against England at the age of only 16-17 and succeeded in securing some incredible victories at Orleans and Reims. Following this, she chose to offer the victories to God and Charles VII rather than claim them and the power for herself, an act that stunned supporters and opponents alike. Like Jesus she shunned the trappings of earthly power, though unlike Jesus she was not averse to using the sword to do so.

If you want to see man at his worst, simply tell him he is god for he will wield with lust of power but extend none of the grace. Bishop Cauchon was in charge of the prosecution and, as a puppet of the English government who paid for the trial and expected a return on their investment, cooked up charges against her in a similar way to which the Scribes and Pharisees cooked up charges against Jesus. The penalty for challenging the religious authorities was no less severe in Roman occupied Palestine than it was in English occupied France and meant that Joan was burned at the steak for the heresy of denying that Henry VI was God’s anointed king by using her victory in Reims to crown Charles VII instead.

There was a re-trial a hundred years later where the decision of Bishop Cauchon’s ecclesiastical court was overturned, thereby clearing the way for Joan of Arc to become a saint (I am sure she would have wanted that – not!) and patron saint of France (well perhaps). Mind you, it always seemed a little off that women are allowed to be saints, interceding on our behalf directly with the Almighty in heaven, but are not permitted to do so here on earth. Our grandest cathedrals can be named Notre Dame (Our Lady) or the Blessed Virgin Mary (as in the case of Durham) but women are unable to preside in them as bishops. I am sure the clergy have a really good answer on that one, they have had two thousand years to think one up. Perhaps it is because the Bible says priests, archbishops and popes shouldn’t wear dresses – “yes!”, uh, I meant “no!”. Stick to the heresy trials lads, pious hypocrisy and the retention of power plays to our strengths. Meanwhile, I headed off in pious judgement of the priests for my 12:44pm train back to Prunay to recommence my walk into Reims.

DAY 258 - SUIPPES TO PRUNAY: 19.3 MILES (38,600 STEPS)

5 January, 2012

19.3 miles (Total: 2440.2 miles)– 38,600 steps (Total: 5,224,801 steps)

I was unable to find accommodation in Suippes so, exhausted, I took the train back to Verdun to get dried out as the next day presented a major challenge – to try and get from Suippes to Reims (28 miles) in one go and I would need a hot bath, a good night’s rest, a buffet breakfast, and an early start to stand a chance of completing the journey.

All seemed to be going well as I arrived at the station the next morning for the 6:44am from Verdun to Suippes, but as I bought my ticket I was told that the train had already gone. Impossible I responded and produced my timetable that clearly showed the train was at 6:44am; it was then gently pointed out that in the notes at the bottom of the page it said that on a Thursday the train left at 6:07am. “Prochain train?” I asked and was told that the next train wasn’t until 10:44am. My heart sank. It was already going to be a good ten hours to complete the walk from Suippes to Reims, but this would mean I wouldn’t get there until about 10pm with six hours spent walking in the dark along fairly busy roads. I had no choice. I then asked myself, “What can I do now that I couldn’t do before?” Initially I took out my Kindle and began to read a book by Philip Yancey – this took me to 9am, but what next?

I decided to visit the offices of the local newspaper in Verdun called ‘L’est Republicain’ and see if they would be interested in my story. This turned out to be a good decision as I met an English speaking journalist, Lea Boshiero, who was from Verdun but had studied in Dundee. We had a good conversation over coffee – see:http://www.estrepublicain.fr/meuse/2012/01/06/un-lord-pour-la-paix and I then set off back to the railway station.

I left Suippes and walked as far as Joncherry where I paused at yet another mass military cemetery and saw to my right black clouds heading for me with lightning flashes every couple of minutes. I did not want to get caught out in the open in a storm this strong, but there seemed to be no cafe/bar/shop in which to seek shelter. I then came across a fantastic bus shelter on Rue Jean Andre which was enclosed on all sides with a narrow doorway and even came equipped with a telephone. I waited in the dark for forty minutes as the shelter was battered but stood firm, which would have been more than I would have managed outside of the shelter.

I then set off again, but such was the torrential downpour that there were large amounts of water at the sides of the road where I was walking, and whilst most of the drives and especially truck drivers tried to avoid splashing me, there were many times when there was traffic in both directions and I got an early bath. It was interesting that although everything seemed to be going wrong this day, none of my earlier feelings of questioning the wisdom of continuing the walk returned. Having something to fight against, even if it is just the weather, seems to provide all the reason required to battle on.

The terrain between St Hilarie and Prosnes was flat and without a tree or hedgerow in sight with the road stretching out straight for about 30km. This seemed to create the perfect conditions for storms to whip up speed and intensity uninterrupted, a freedom which was taken full advantage of. I was hit three times by storms of similar intensity to that which I had sheltered from in Joncherry and this time I had nowhere to hide. When the winds were head on, I was leaning into them like a ski-jumper, albeit Eddie the Eagle, and at other times the winds would come from the north and catch my rucksack on the side causing me to almsot spin. The fact that I was walking along a fairly busy ‘A’ road facing the oncoming traffic and the cars and lorries who were battling as hard as I was to keep their vehicles on the road made for many ‘close encounters of the real kind’. Twice the gusts were so strong they blew me over, and on one occasion I landed on my slowly recovering left arm and shoulder.

As the night closed in the conditions became more dangerous and I was still five hours off Reims. I could have done with a cafe/bus shelter or similar to try and come up with a plan (b) but I just plodded on. Being an optimist, I pictured every light as a Hotel Campenile, Hotel Ibis or even better a MacDonalds, but no such luck. At about 6:30pm I saw the lights of what I presume was Reims in the distance and to my left a train passed. I connected the dots and thought that there may be a railway station soon where I could get into Reims and then return the next day to finish off the remaining 15km. At Prunay I found the station and the timetable showed that the last train to Reims was due in thirty minutes. There was a bar next to the station where I almost fell through the door causing a ‘piano stopping’ moment as the locals tried to make sense of this soaked traveller with a fluorescent jacket and a flashing red light on his head.

I smiled and gave a nice confident ‘bonsoir’ with an English accent after which people turned and continued their conversations. I ordered a hot chocolate and asked if they had anything to eat, and ‘non’ came the blunt reply. Running a little low on the old patience I looked along the bar and saw a group of big chaps tucking into a large apple pie so I walked along and pointed at the pie and looked back at the bar tender and said “mange, tart aux pommes?” The piano stopped again and the big chaps turned round as if they intended to do a bit of “pomme bashing” as the Aussies might put it. The bar tender said “non” again and continued “tarte est anniversaire” (his birthday cake). I sat in the corner and finished off my hot chocolate and then one of the men came across and offered me a slice of the pie. ‘Joyeaux anniversaire’ I declared and wolfed it down.

The train was on time and I found a reasonably priced hotel just next to the station; I was too tired to have a bath and so just fell asleep with the satisfaction that I had made the best of a bad day.

DAY 257 - ST MENEHOULD TO SUIPPES: 18.7 MILES (37,400 STEPS)

18.7 miles (Total: 2420.9 miles)– 37,400 steps (Total: 5,186,201 steps)

A special request from a friend who pointed out that all my pics were of my face on Flikr, but that he wanted to see how my feet were holding up (pic).

I rose a little later on account of the excesses of the previous day and evening, but I rose which in the present phase of the walk, was no small thing. I shuffled to the bathroom aching at every joint in my body.  I thought that if the bathroom was a struggle then prospects for walking another twenty miles were not looking to bright, but you just put one foot in front of another and if you do it long enough—eight hours in my case–then you can get to your destination.

Following the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ the previous day, I figured that the light would return with a new day, but the dark clouds of the soul were as dogged and bursting with rain as the clouds over the Marne. I needed some inspiration and had I had my Blackberry, then I would have had Gary Streeter and Rob Parsons on speed-dial, but I did have wi-fi and so I downloaded some talks by Rob and Paul Francis at Glenwood Church, Cardiff which have inspired me in the past so much.

As I set out, I went to select latest downloads on my iPod to listen to the talks, but they hadn’t synced. It seemed as if God was saying, ‘don’t think you’re going to get out of this ditch that easy.’ Out of St Menehould, I picked up a footpath which ran along the side of the railway line towards Valmy and would save me a few miles. The path was muddy on account of the incessant rain, but that seemed a price worth paying for the privilege of a short-cut.

The ground in this part of France is clayey and it makes walking off road difficult. As I passed more military cemeteries, I reflected how if it was difficult for me to walk on this terrain what must it be to have to dig in and fight in it. It had always puzzled me why soldiers would willingly participate in such a wholesale slaughter as happened in the Battle of Marne and at Verdun in the First World War. I have experienced the winter on these ‘killing fields’ for just a couple of weeks and have the advantage of returning to a warm bed and having hot food without being pounded with shells and machine gun bullets and I wondered what was in the mind of the soldier in the trench.

It hadn’t been too difficult to understand how soldiers would answer the call to serve their nation and defend their way of life. They would rightly secure instant hero status and be the source of immense pride for family and friends as they marched off to battle. Their photographs, looking bold and fearless in pristine uniforms, would adorn the mantelpieces of parents and the dressing tables of sweethearts. But when they got there and climbed into the trench for the first time, how did they feel? I sensed as I walked across those same fields that they were trapped in Hell, gripped with fear and hopelessness, with no way out other than to ‘die with dignity’ with their brothers in arms.

I recall hearing Harold Macmillan’s grandson, the Earl of Stockton talk about his grandfather’s deep admiration for the soldiers under his command from County Durham who, “lay into the bullets of German machine guns like beaters laying into the rain on a grouse moor.“ Harold Macmillan was a war hero, the story of him being shot in the hip in the Battle of the Somme and lying in a slit trench reading a classical Greek play in the original language before he was rescued, became folklore because it feeds into the kind of vision of the indefatigable British spirit captured by Hugh Laurie’s character, Lieutenant George in “Blackadder Goes Forth.” But probably more like Captain Blackadder  himself, I was left thinking “its one thing getting wet, but quite another getting shot.”

I might have this wrong, but I wonder whether the utterly appalling conditions played their part in the mass slaughter of the trenches of WW1. How many nights would I be able to live in a trench here with the constant incoming shells shaking the ground beneath my feet, not knowing whether you were in for a direct hit. How long could you live with the uncertainty, the death and destruction? The shortage of food, the cold, the mud, the rats, the disease, standing up to your knees in freezing water before you would look upon the Officer’s whistle to go over the top to face the barbed wire and machine guns of the enemy as something of a blessed relief?

Perhaps we remember our war heroes too often in neat and tidy parades, neat and tidy uniforms, in neat and tidy picture frames, or coffins draped in neat and tidy flags, buried in neat and tidy cemeteries and in doing so we inadvertently forget that war is an ugly, brutish, chaotic living hell for those caught up in it. We honour their memory and show our gratitude more, not less, when we tell the truth of how that ‘ultimate sacrifice’ was made.

It is easy to judge with the benefit of hindsight or to fall into the ‘lions led by donkeys’ class prejudice, but perhaps we should just leave it that such tactics were never used again on the battlefield – with man’s ingenuity, they were able to come up with tanks and air power which made the trenches seem like bows and arrows against machine guns. As I pondered these mysteries, my rather trivial problems seemed to return into perspective.