This was written on Day 13 which was our third day of walking in France.

On day 14 we now have wifi that might work!!!

I had been looking forward to the “stepping across the water event” … into a new land, and it has been an interesting experience.

Calais is not Dover. Yes, there are poor people here and yes there are refugees… but it is a far more prosperous and positive place than Dover. Here there is very visible investment, very visible support for both the economy and the infrastructure. It is a seaside resort, it is a regional centre, it is somewhere that has been invested in, there are many shops, many restaurants and cafes, there are loads of hotels and the museums/historical centres have been recently invested in..

None of the above appears to be the case for Dover, which is a place that deserves all of the above.

So, we stayed the night in Calais then walked out across the town and onto the shore. We watched the ferries come and go as we walked along the sea front, then we moved in land to avoid both walking on loose sand (with heavy packs on) and walking over ancient dunes that are marked as the route but did not look like they were yet properly protected from erosion…

We re-joined the route on the cliffs, which was spectacular, and then finished the walk into Wissant on the beach, using the hard sand below the high tide line. Loads of people were doing exciting wind surfing, para-surfing and so on.

Then, today as yesterday, we were walking in rolling landscapes with lots of different types of walking surface. Most guides don’t tell you about this. They miss out that the path is totally crap for the next several miles. Sometimes it is because the guide does not find it a hardship. Sometimes it is because they are focussing on the actual route and don’t think that the condition is important. But, as with yesterday, there were times when the path really was rubbish, uneven, very stony, and so on.

The landscapes, as always, are the real compensation and the joy and keep us just walking on, into the new landscapes, this experience is better than any discomforts that these routes present.

In Calais, we had some great bits of art, including lots of street art, and the churches and villages are now giving us surprises and rewards as we go.

Wissant was the seaside town we walked to from Calais and then we walked on to a campsite just outside Guines. The campsite was good and it was our first night “under canvass”. The tent went up easily and everything fitted in the tent or under the flysheets and the restaurant connected with the campsite was a Logis hotel/restaurant, so the food was excellent.

We left early today and walked into the town, which is famous for being the place where Henry the eighth had the over the top meeting with the King of France at the “field of the cloth of gold”. We managed a stop at a boulangerie (escargots and a baguette – escargots are large pains aux raisins), a stop at a fruit and veg place (two tomatoes and an apple) and a tabac (two black coffees and a sit down.

Several kms later we stopped at a picnic place in the forest and ate some pastries….

After long stages in forests and a few bouts beside large cultivated fields we found ourselves on the edge of an escarpment with great views along the valley below. So good to have a broader view of the world after hours enclosed in forests. I love forests and find them peaceful and quite mysterious, but the stepping out to a wider vista was very satisfying. I suppose the fact that I had been suffering from the very course and uneven paths liberally strewn with flint nodules and sharp, broken shards, helped make the break out feel so good.

After dropping steeply down to the valley floor we had to, of course, climb up the other side to enter Lique where the huge Church of the Virgin towers over the rest of the town. It is all that is left of an ancient Abbey. After making our visit to the church and failing to find a stamp for our pilgrim passport, we went to the bar almost next door for a rest and a well-earned beer.

There were some men sitting around inside. They were all drinking heavily, all were engaged in conversations across the bar to each other and to the woman behind the bar, and they were all very loud. They had the very strong, guttural accent of Northern industrial France and they were as cheerful as they were loud (and drunk).

We corrected their assumption that we were Camino Pilgrims (they assumed we didn’t understand them and were shouting at the bar woman. We also explained where we were going instead, which raised some additional excitement, albeit briefly before returning to football and agricultural issues.

It turned out that, because the church was not attended, the powers that be had given the woman at the bar the stamp that should have been in the church. After quickly searching for the stamp, she happily stamped both of our pilgrim passports but didn’t seem interested in putting the date on the square alongside the stamp.

It turned out that her stamp had been assertively applied upside down.

We are at campsite number two and hoping that the wifi here actually works!!! (it didn’t…)

I will add some photos to give you a taste of the landscapes we have been walking through, so far. No deep thoughts (well not here and now) Alison’s arm continues to repair itself, we are easing back into French (well Alison is, I’m still getting off first base as usual) and the walking is what it is – sometimes further and harder than preferred, but always worth the effort.

We are planning the next week or two and seeing some fairly long stages will be necessary simply because the accommodation is so spread out and we are anxious that we need to get more places booked as August is a big holiday month here (and there are also lots of extra holidays to deal with, too).

So, it is “keep it simple time”. I’m keeping my poems and thoughts in my little notebook for a while. Please look at the pretty pictures instead…. Oh, and if you can, please take note of the crop that has been cut and neatly laid in rows, forming wonderful chevrons across the earth. The thin stalks are topped off with little bunches of seeds that look quite like dried coriander seeds but they are not coriander…. What is this mysterious crop we have been walking past since arriving in France?

Final note – i have given up trying to post all the selected photos – these took nearly six hours to upload. we are staying in a convent tomorrow, perhaps they will have wifi that is not steam driven….