Day 13 – Laon to Corbeny

“I’m not superstitious but I am a little stitious” The Office (US version)

Friday 13/4/2018

Distance 22.9km Total Distance from Canterbury 343.8km

One of the advantages of walking a bit further the night before can be, if you have been walking in the right direction, that you have a bit less to walk the following day. And my long slow wet slog into the far side of the new town of Laon now paid off. I had already done about 3km of the proposed route for the day. By the way, Laon is not pronounce Lay-on or Lah-on as one might imagine. No one will know what you are talking about. It is pronounced Lon, with a short ‘o’ and only the merest hint of a very nasal ‘n’. I don’t know what the ‘a’ is for.

With the help of Google maps, I turned my back, metaphorically and literally on Alison Raju and her book. By the way, lest there be any misunderstanding, I should say I don’t know Alison Raju, and that I have nothing but admiration for her and for others who take on the onerous task of writing guide books with great enthusiasm and dedication. No guidebook is perfect, and inevitably they will be out of date in places from the day after publication, and there will be the odd mistake. The authors bear the brunt at times of the users’ frustration. But we would be (even more) lost without them.

But there were two details in the section I was able to skip which I was happy to. The instruction a wide grassy track joins from the back (R). I am sorry, but I do not know what this means. How does a road join from the back? Would l not have noticed it already? And then another note to dampen the spirits: This section can be very muddy, even in summer…

But where I began I had already bypassed these places, reserved for those who started their morning at the cathedral, up the hill, in the clouds. Very soon then I was in Bruyères-et-Montbérault. Remarkably it had a little shop open and had a cafe, but I had only been walking half an hour and it seemed too early to stop. There was a large church backing on to the road, and having missed the cathedral yesterday, I thought I should make the statutory effort to get in. I walked down a lane to the side of the church until I found an unpromising looking door. There is a frisson of excitement as you try the latch and i gives and the door opens. You never know what you will find. In fact what I found was a wonderful and very old church, bigger than some cathedrals I have been in. It had a slightly crumbling feeling, which made it seem very authentic. Throughout the area, much of the building is from the twentieth century, sometimes like in Arras, on a very large scale of reproduction of older buildings, all of this due to the devastation mainly of WWI. This church obviously escaped, and had sections dating from the XIth century, the XVth century and the XIXth century. It became longer and wider over the centuries. It is dedicated to Notre Dame de la Visitation, that is the feast of Our Lady which commemorates her meeting with her kinswoman Elizabeth when each was pregnant, with Jesus and John the Baptist respectively. This is a favourite subject of Christian iconography and most churches with windows or carvings will have a representation somewhere.

What was nice to see in this church building was that it was obviously loved. There were many interpretive notices around the church and press clippings of successful fund raising efforts and stories about the recovery and restoration of various works of art. And there were leaflets giving the history in some detail in French, English and German. What for me was the most striking feature was the relatively modern stained glass which I thought was very beautiful. the work of Louis Mazetier who collaborated with Louis Delange in the 1930s. I really want to know more about them, but that will have to wait until I get home. Altogether this quite unanticipated pleasure made up for missing out on Laon cathedral yesterday.

Nothing too much to say about the journey after that. Around Bièvres I found the directions on the book hard to follow and another track was going to ‘join from the back.’ So I abandoned the book and went with Google which again revealed a considerable interest in mud. And also for the first time defeated me bringing me on a footpath between fields which peered out with growing numbers of nettles into an impenetrable track. I back tracked and took the road into Corbeny. The last few km were on a minor road but one which had very heavy traffic mainly heavy lorries. This made for an uncomfortable last half hour but finally I did reach lovely little hotel with good demi pension package for pilgrims.

Sitting outside the bar were a couple from New Zealand who had been walking from Canterbury and it was good to compare notes. They moved on early next morning.