It’s been a stuttering start. Given that trip inspired is inspired by the young TE Lawrence, I haven’t referred to him a lot, but here goes.
He made at least two crossings to Le Havre, certainly in 1907 and 1908, when he was nearly 19 and 20. In 1907 he was travelling with his father, who had brought his camera and tripod (then a bulky and expensive piece of equipment), but didn’t write anything home to describe the ferry journey. The rationale was that his father could tell the family in person, when he met them two weeks later in the Channel Islands – the rest of the family was already there on holiday. The young TE Lawrence writes a bit more in 1908:
“The passage was fairly rough, & there were many "accidents" down below. The boat was full, but as the decks were deserted that did not concern me. We got into Havre about 8, and I left at once for Rouen, by our old road along the Seine, through Lillebonne.“
Which is where I have arrived, though my gps has not taken me along the Seine River itself. And arrival in Lillebonne sees my first ‘GPS, aw bless’ moment, or more accurately in this case, ‘Ride with GPS, aw bless’. The route takes me off the main road, presumably for sensible safety reasons, onto a farm track. Then it suggests I follow a grassy verge on the edge of a ploughed field. Hmmm. Perhaps I should check this on my cell phone or just risk the highway… But fatal optimism convinces me that there is a reason behind an illogical move like this – there must be simpler section right ahead…
“My first ‘Aw bless, GPS’ moment. On the route into Lillebonne I find myself four foot deep in a storm drain. Thanks.”
Not so. I enter a wood. A path of sorts appears, well, a line of beaten earth in the grass, a single track. Not ideal on a road bike, but I take it, assuming that we’ll soon be on a forest track… No, again. The path begins to hollow out, and its sides increase, becoming banking, like some tiny earthen half-pipe. Then it steepens, heading determinedly downhill. It even cuts a couple of turns, aspiring to a miniature downhill mountain bike course, perhaps… I dismount and hold the steed on the brakes, feet and pedals tangling, as I descend on foot. I find myself four foot deep in a storm drain. Thanks.
Ah, but I pop out right on the edge of Lillebonne, which the young TE Lawrence visited with his father in 1907, then on his own in 1908. His interest, perhaps unexpectedly, was the local amphitheatre. I ride up the main street and turn into an expanding square, with its sturdy buildings and houses overlooking the car park into a huge green well, a series of stepped grassy banks that are the amphitheatre. Their curved ranges are held up by rock walls in places and the whole space is surprisingly large.
The amphitheatre was built by the Romans in the first and third centuries AD and re-discovered in 1754, since when it has been used for concerts and performances. It’s possible that it was being used a century ago, when the young TE Lawrence passed by in 1908:
“They were going to perform Britannicus [a play by French playwright Racine] in the theatre on the Sunday! I would like to have heard that.”
I wander around for a few minutes, trying to work out where he took his image from. Clearly some of the buildings have disappeared over a century and two world wars, but did he manage to suspend himself in thin air…? I do what I can to clamber up the same vantage point, despite the tutting of staff.
“An odd thing happens; on the one hand a gaggle of alarmist geese takes one look at me and runs away, while at the same moment a wave of inquisitive chickens comes running towards me.”
Photographing a Roman amphitheatre was quite unlike TE Lawrence, who really was more interested in medieval buildings (castles and churches). But perhaps this was the first chance he had to try out the camera, which he was carrying strapped to his bike. See more about the young TE Lawrence and his photography. Even odder is the fact that about two hundred yards from the amphiteatre is a castle founded by William the Conqueror. It was just his period. Perhaps he couldn’t get a good angle on it. (Unlike Turner, who made a complete gouache of it in 1832.) But like me. I circle it in the little municipal park, but can’t find a way in. Just unassailable walls.
On leaving Lillebonne I find a climb as steep as my arrival by storm-drain, and it carries me back up onto the Normandy Plain (I don’t know if anyone else calls it this). It is beautifully bucolic, patch-worked fields of straw-coloured barley interrupted occasionally by oil seed rape and punctuated by small clusters of farm buildings. There’s occasional pasture: I find a cow attending to a new calf. At another moment I stop, to readjust my handle-bar bag at the side of a farm. An odd thing happens; on the one hand a gaggle of alarmist geese takes one look at me and runs away, hooting and looking over their shoulders, while at the same moment a wave of inquisitive chickens comes running towards me.
But it is the poppies that stand out, in the open fields of ripening corn, scattered blood-red points among the gentle yellow of the stalks and wispy ears. They are everywhere. It’s a reminder of the war in which TE Lawrence served, though in a very different field and of course as he passed through here, the First World War had not yet taken place.