For a day and a half I have been tracking along the River Seine, heading east and south as the river makes its way to Paris, but now I have swung around and will cycle south-west. I descend from Chateau Gaillard, hands full on the brakes, into the town of Les Andelys, which stretches down to the river in its own tight valley. I decide on a stop before the forty kilometre ride to Evreux and retreat into the shade of a café right opposite the church – two municipal institutions that have been squaring off for centuries presumably. On a Sunday afternoon the café clearly has the upper hand. There is a mix of town folk taking it easy for the afternoon and holiday-makers, including passing traffic, like me - and a quintet of bikers…
…because the square is suddenly filled to bursting with the meaty roar of motorcycles, deafening and all-encompassing as it ricochets off the angled stone of the church wall. Leather-clad and faceless in their helmets, the riders pause, machines chuntering as they decide what to do, and then they thunder off. Bikers are no longer threatening in the way they used to be. Time was, an arrival like that could have been a bit scary. Nowadays they could be any member of society, dentist hygienists, say... or librarians... perhaps even penguin erectors (seriously…. not) Moments later, the riders return, now stripped down in the heat and reveal themselves as … slightly overweight tourists. Poles by the sound of them.
I bask just out of the direct sun. It turns out to be Father’s Day – as I discover when I receive a call from my son. He’s 20, a year older than TE Lawrence was as he cycled through this area in 1907 with his own father. Currently he is revising for his first year exams at University, at the college where TE Lawrence himself was to study, Jesus College at Oxford. At the same age I was certainly beginning to travel. I was studying French, reading the novels of Norman authors like Flaubert and the poems of Victor Hugo (his Demain de L’Aube, about the loss of his daughter, is set in Le Havre and Harfleur, where I cycled yesterday morning. I even worked as a gardener in the chateau Victor Hugo owned). My own father had already been to war by this age. Shortly after his 19th birthday, in 1948, he moved up to the front line in Korea, taking over command of several tanks that were dug in, overlooking the Chinese lines.
TE Lawrence’s father, Sir Thomas Chapman, was an interesting man. A baronet and landowner from County Westmeath, he had a family and four daughters. But his life changed when he took up with Sarah Lawrence. After moving many times over the following years, he and his second family, of five boys, ended up in Oxford, living off a pension from the estate in Ireland and some investments.
Thomas Chapman was never expected to have a job, with the result was that he was around for the family more than might normally be the case, and he passed on at least two of his interests – cycling and photography - to his rebellious second son, Ned, or TE Lawrence. Read more about TE Lawrence’s family.
And here he was, cycling with the young TE Lawrence, accompanying him through Normandy, with his large camera, before peeling off and heading for Jersey to join the rest of the family on their holiday. It is not written anywhere, but it feels as though he had been sent to watch over the young man, to make sure he was sensible and to temper his enthusiasm as the young man’s horizons opened out - as soon as they did part, the young TE Lawrence headed off for a 400 mile ride down to the Loire Valley and back.
Across the Seine River I ride south-west, Chateau Gaillard receding on the ridge behind me. It is a typical summer Sunday afternoon: I come across a field rammed with parked cars, which turns out to be a race-course; beyond it I see buggies and trotting horses. It’s a sport I have never followed and don’t imagine I ever will. I wonder what the attraction is. Surely sport is about going as fast as possible, the use of explosive muscle-power and determination; not hobbling yourself and then going fast. Perhaps I am losing my critical touch. But I conclude something else: you just have to marvel at the imagination deployed by humans in pursuit of leisure - wellie-boot throwing, stamp collecting, opera, tiddlywinks… And hey, some people are even happy to cycle hundreds of miles in pursuit of a story that’s more than a century old... Yes, possibly a little too much sun.
My route follows the river and I climb onto a high bank, from where I can see barges still plying the water, but then, as the flow whiplashes to the east, I am flung, like a slingshot, to the south: into a wood, a sharp ascent and a fast descent, only to be caught in suburban streets again.
The Norman plain is not far off though, as I discover with another ascent into farmland. The fields open out, the villages marked by distant spires and water towers. The houses and farm buildings in style normand are fewer here, so I am not looking out as I was yesterday. But then, off the plain and down into the Eure River Valley, I stop at one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen.
Occasionally the word ‘heart-stopping’, becomes appropriate to describe physical beauty. This time, I fall immediately in love, with a farm building. Across a stream and the railway line, ahead stands a walled enclosure guarded by twin turrets. It is a fortified farm, with a moat, crossed by a small bridge at the entrance. Is it perverse to decide I want to reach out and embrace it? I wish I could go in and say hello, just to tell the people living there what a lovely place it is. Then I discover the village here is called Creve-Coeur, which of course means ‘heart-splitting’…. Or more likely ‘heart-breaking’. Curiously appropriate, then. And yes, definitely too much sun.
