From Gisors castle I cycle down the empty main street to one of the few boulangeries open on a Sunday and pick up a ‘pain apero’ (not quite the whole baked loaf hedgehog that is generally shared as an aperitif, but still some carbs suppurating with once molten cheese, which is just the fodder for a long cycle trip). I ram a can of Orangina into one of the pockets of my handle-bar bag and head out of town. I notice that Paris is just 50 miles to the south-east. Instead, I am headed west.
Not for a while, though. Tech-driven cycle rides have their eccentricities, but one thing you can depend on is their love affair with cycle paths and I am about to be drawn onto one heading south. To be fair cycle paths are a dead cert: they are safe, traffic free and often quite pleasant to ride. As in Britain, disused railway lines have often been revamped, some of which are now shaded and overgrown with trees and hedges (they go by the name voie-verte, or green trail). They take you to otherwise by-passed countryside, often meandering along rivers: the River Epte in my case.
Not far out of town my GPS urges me to turn off a roundabout. I try each exit in turn and receive the message OFF COURSE! (aw, bless… perhaps it still thinks it’s on a British roundabout and is checking them off in reverse order). I end up on a track that looks as though it easily might turn into a storm drain… But no, a smooth path develops, with miniature grit that crisps and crinkles under my tyres. It strikes out among fields and then meadows.
This is the Voie Verte de la Vallee de l’Epte, which in turn is joined by the ‘Avenue Verte’, the cycle path linking London to Paris. It weaves along the valley floor, approximating the meanders of the river, drawn left and right like harmonics on a sine wave. Or perhaps it is pulled gravitationally by bodies of water – the reservoirs, ponds and the river itself. Suddenly the view opens out, to reveal the first vineyard I have noticed on my trip. And beyond it is a chateau, on the slope across the valley floor, its regular creamy limestone façade proclaiming self-importantly from among the natural mess of trees.
Eventually it’s time to head west, and via a slightly furtive-feeling passage through someone’s garden, I climb gradually out of the Epte valley and back into the farmland of the Norman plain – for the first time I see fruit trees and potatoes. It’s a lovely ride again, though the land is now cut by more serious fissures and the crossings have lost their leisurely process.
I enter a wood-line and find that the road immediately strikes left, so I assume there will be a descent to a stream. Instead I meet a man in a deckchair, next to an arrow painted on a sign-board. It takes a moment, but from his glance, confusion, realisation and then happy wave, I work out he is a marshal and that I have stumbled into a Sunday cycle race. I do not see any other cyclists, but as I progress, at junctions and village centres, the momentary confusion and encouragement repeats itself, as I meet families and other supporters. Mums and Dads look up, ready to wave and cheer, but they hold back, realising that I am way behind, or perhaps way ahead, of the field, and that anyway I am not trying nearly hard enough, and actually I am far too old. The age group for the race is closer to the age of Young Lawrence, not mine.
I am used to the plain by now, so as I move through the next wood-line I am thrown completely off my guard at the change in the landscape. The vast Seine basin opens out before me, 500 feet below and visible for tens of miles. The river itself snakes into view from the haze ahead and disappears, close by, behind a ridge-line in the foreground. ON which stands Chateau Gaillard.
It is immediately obvious that the castle is something spectacular, with its keep and curtain walls and towers stretching along the ridge. In a letter, Lawrence was beside himself with excitement, though he also lets on that he knew of and admired the castle already. A couple of days later, to his mother, he wrote:
“I have talked so much about this to you that you must know it all by heart, so I had better content myself with saying that its plan is marvellous, the execution wonderful, and the situation perfect. The whole constructions bears the unmistakable stamp of genius…”
I come to a viewpoint. Buses are disgorging passengers. After photographs, we follow a track cut into the chalk earth and grass down to the extraordinary castle.
