OK, OK, after screeds of writing in which I have barely mentioned TE Lawrence, now at least I will relate some of his experiences on his ride through Normandy with his father in 1907. On Day 2 of my trip I will reach two of the Norman castles he visited, one which sent him into paroxysms of admiration and excitement, Chateau Gaillard, pictured above, another that left him cold: that was Gisors. He did however take photographs of both. He was carrying his father’s camera and tripod with him, strapped to the back of his Morris bicycle.
A hearty, very chocolatey breakfast inisde me, I ride out of Lyons-la-Forêt into the forest of the town’s name. The area has been wooded for millennia; it was kept as a royal hunting forest by Henry II of England and later by the French kings. It’s fun to think that as far back as the Middle Ages it appeared largely the same. The forest is known for its beech trees (though current forestry is diversifying the species), which stand vast, more than hundred feet tall, and give a famous ‘Cathedral’ effect, a luminous green interior space of living columns. Well, that’s how I am told it looks on a sunny day. Today is even more blustery than yesterday: a grey overlay, threatening showers, hangs above the barrelling clouds, and only pockets of blue sky show through. Inside the forest the light is a bit flat. That said, I have always loved the combination of fresh green and grey, so the trees look magnificent against the leaden sky.
I emerge onto the high open ground and cultivation, riding alongside fields of corn, and oil seed rape, hit occasionally by a slightly rank blast of cabbage. Then I reach a crop I don’t recognise. Slender green stalks stand 18 inches high, their flowers points of bright blue, like those fibre-optic lamps from the 70s, waving beautifully in the breeze. At moments a swell rolls through them, and whole sections swirl and bow together, moving under the pressure of the wind, and dancing as it fades before gaining composure again. The crop is flax, I discover, so it will be used in linen and for linseed oil.
The open spaces give me that same feeling of escape and adventure that I experienced yesterday, of being oblivious to life’s dreary, daily concerns. My pedals are turning comfortably and the rear mech is ticking as it rolls over. Perfect. I pass a sign to Les Andelys, which is where I will find Chateau Gaillard, but that’s for this afternoon. First I am headed to Gisors.
The young TE Lawrence, then 18, had just left school and the world was opening out for him. He was cycling with his father his father, who despite neuralgia, was doing the good parental thing, overseeing his fledging progeny, before returning to the family on holiday in the Channel Islands. In his letter to his mother you can feel the young man’s urge to get going and escape his father’s attentive control.
“Father will probably reach you in Jersey About the 21st or 22nd. It would be much better if, instead of writing to Mt. St. Michel, you wrote to Poste-Restante Coutances. We will reach there about the 19th and you might give any further directions you pleased in that. Only write a little, but send something, or else father will be anxious…. Father is very well, hardly any neuralgia. He is having dejeuner at present.
I am thinking of leaving Father on the 20th or so, and going south to Fontevrault [A round trip of about 350 miles]. The trip would take me about 8 days, and I would call for letters at P.R. St. Malo. These letters would tell me whether you were continuing in Jersey, and if it was worthwhile my coming to meet you there. I could then return to England direct, if inclined or wait a week in Jersey.”
The young Lawrence has ridden his bicycle for hundreds of miles, but this ride would be further afield than ever, as far south as the Loire River.
Here, the Norman plain is so flat, that it makes for easy cycling and even when the land is broken by rivers they have come up with an elegant solution to get around it. From time to time I enter some trees that I find are actually disguising a ravine a couple of hundred metres across and thirty deep. It could be drastic, but at the lip, the road hooks a turn and runs gradually down to the foot of the cleft, where it swings another 90 degrees, over the river, and again, before heading gently back up the other side, where the bedrock is sometimes exposed. It is so leisurely that I barely exert myself.
I find I am in the middle of Gisors before I know it. And there is the castle, a huge wall with shielding a tower. I look for the position that TE Lawrence chose to take his photograph. But there is a problem…