There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
On this walk I have been experiencing pain on the soles of my feet - a problem I have never had on Long Walks before. It's taken me 16 days to realise why! Normally, when I buy a new pair of boots, I immediately take out the insoles that come with them and replace them with Noene shock-absorbing insoles. I neglected to do this with my new boots (same variety as the previous two pairs - Scarpa Tellus). Noene insoles are quite costly and I had always wondered whether they were really worth the additional expense. Well now I can tell you they are! Over the past few days, whenever I stopped to take a break, the first few steps afterwards have been tough. As I get warmed up again the pain disappears, but it takes about ten minutes!
Once I realised that I hadn't got my special insoles in my shoes, it really started to bother me. There was a abundance of pharmacies in Péronne - three in the main square alone - so my mission for the morning was to find a pair of shock-absorbing insoles. The first pharmacy didn't have any, but the second had Dr. Scholl's. They cost only a third of the price of Noene insoles, so I'm not sure they will be as effective, but I'll give them a try!
My second mission was to mail off a small package at the post office. This was also accomplished by 9:30 - opening time of the Historial Museum of the Great War. With only 17.5 km to walk today - according to the book - I decided I had plenty of time to take in the museum before leaving town. The exhibits investigate the causes and the consequences of the war, as well as the Battle of the Somme; I was particularly impressed by a half-hour of original video footage from the time, though I only understood about a quarter of the French commentary, and by the final room showing Otto Dix's Der Krieg collection of engravings.
I returned to the Auberge des Remparts to collect my backpack and left the city of Péronne behind. Next stop - the menhir in Doingt! Having be raised on a steady diet of Asterix and Obelix, I love menhirs and am quite willing to walk a few hundred metres out of my way to see one. On the way to this menhir was another treat - a bridge over a chalk stream! Chalk streams arise from springs in areas with chalk bedrock, which makes them particularly clear, with little organic matter or sediment, and ideal for the growth of acquatic plants. Nearly all of the world's 224 chalk streams are located in the UK; the rest are in northern France. This one is called the Cologne, a tributary of the Somme, which is itself a chalk stream on a grander scale!
The Doingt menhir is a block of sandstone four metres high, with a base buried two and a half metres into the ground, and is estimated to weigh 20 tonnes. It was brought here between three and four thousand years ago from the Rocogne woods, 1.6 kilometres away. How? By sliding it, on trunks of wood, in the winter over snow and ice. Why? Nobody knows.
After this brief detour the trail plunged into the woods, heading dead straight ahead along a former railroad track and emerging into the village of Cartigny. Here I caught up with Roy and Sue, an Australian couple I had met at breakfast in the hostel. Though they were not wearing their backpacks at breakfast, I instantly recognised them as fellow walkers by the way they were dressed. They had also spent the morning at the museum, but left ahead of me, so they were just finishing their lunches as I arrived at the grassy spot in front of the mairie. Shortly after they left, another walker came along and sat down on the bench. Patrick, from Dorset, is walking to Reims, where he will take a train to Le Puy to begin walking to Santiago. He is walking with a Canadian from Alberta, Elaine. But Elaine had fallen behind and so I didn't meet her until we reached our accommodations for the evening, several fields and forest paths later. There is only one place to stay in Trefcon, so we're all here! Val Domignon has various levels of accommodations, private rooms as well as a shared apartment with basic kitchen facilities. Pilgrims from both sides gathered in the kitchen to put together something for dinner with what we had in our backpacks, as there are no shops in this little village. For me that meant soup mix, salad and a hard-boiled egg. The others were very impressed that I even had tiny little bottles of olive oil and vinegar!
Today's accommodations: Chambres d'hôtes Val Domignon . They raise cart horses, offer riding lessons and organise kayaking expeditions on the Somme here, as well as providing basic accommodations for pilgrims on the Via Francigena.
Péronne - Trefcon 22 km
(including one minor diversion to see the menhir and another made by mistake 😄)
No comments:
Post a Comment