A Canadian Gypsy and Pilgrim

Today’s post will wrap up our stay in Rouen. I had decided to delay posting and combine the days in Rouen as for readers, it likely gets too boring with so many things seemingly repeated. We ended up going into more museums and huge churches than originally planned. Much of the old city centre is filled with medieval houses which add to the character of the city. The oldest house we found was built in 1580. Yes, the house is still being used.

All of these old houses are still being used. When you see and old building, centuries old, still being used for schools, it makes you wonder. The most impressive of the schools, in my opinion was the Lycée Pierre Corneille which was built in 1593. Of course a lot of money was spent over the years to keep the school in excellent shape, including 54 million Euros spent in the past few years. Wow! Talk about investing in education.

But, the highlight was going up the 500 foot hill of Sainte Catherine on Friday morning. We walked up 524 steps [which meant walking down those same steps on our way back] to reach the lookout. We saw le Petit Quevilly on the left side of the Seine River and Rouen on the right side of the river. Quevilly was the home of Jeanne Alart who became the wife of Guillaume de Longpré before moving to live in Canada in the late 1600s.

We wandered on to find an entrance to reach the top of the hill. As we wandered the top of the hill, really a small mountain, we noticed that there had been a building of some sort, likely a fortress, dating from centuries before. A castle there would have a good view of the river in both directions. Intuition tells me that this was likely the site of the first or second Duke of Normandy’s fortress.

This morning we walked on the opposite side of the Seine River. Our destination was the Jardin des Plantes. A walk of 11 km ended up being a peaceful walk as much of it was in the Botanical Gardens of Rouen. We even managed to sit still for a while by the water in the park. These three gentlemen from Easter Island kept us company and didn’t disturb the silence.

With that, I’ve come to the end of our posts from Rouen, Normandy, France.

Travel today was much easier, one train to catch. We got into Rouen just before noon. We walked from the train station to the Cathedral as the information office was just across the square, something I had studied before we left from Canada. I have several pages of travel notes that were prepared to take care of these sort of logistics. Once in the Cathedral Plaza, we sat in the sun and enjoyed our lunch before making our way to the apartment which was allowing us an earlier check-in time.

Once our bags were settled, we went to a local supermarket to buy foodstuffs so that we can enjoy home-cooked meals for the next few days. Then, with the groceries put into the apartment, it was time to do some wandering as can be seen in the map above. Most of the area is filled with medieval style houses dating back almost four hundred years. I did see the date of one place, a residence still lived in, that was built in 1664. This was the year before the first Longpré, a man named Guillaume, came over to Canada with the Carignan Salieres military group, a man who was coincidentally born in a village just outside of Rouen.

This was part of my reasons for including Rouen in the travel itinerary. However, it wasn’t the only reason. In my book, I talk about Rollo the Viking [Rollon as he was called in Rouen] and his son, Guillaume de Longa as he was named in Rouen, or Guillaume de Longue-Épée. Next to City Hall and in the gardens of the St Ouen Abbey, a statue of Rollo stood tall. Then with photos taken, we walked to the main Cathedral, Notre Dame de Rouen and went inside. There, I found the tomb-crypt of Rollo’s son, Guillaume. I couldn’t believe my luck as I had thought that it would take much longer to find anything that would tie the two men, two vikings who in turn became the first and the second Duke of Normandy.

By the time we were done with taking photos and getting hungry, we made our way back to the apartment where supper would be prepared along with this blog post. For the record, we put in another 13.5 kilometres of walking today which now makes 93 kilometres walked in one week. Tomorrow we have a lot more planned, with Joan of Arc figuring prominently in our plans.

We caught an early bus to the Juno Beach centre in Courseulles-Sur Mer. The site is the has preserved so much of our Canadian history from the second world war. We wandered into various bunkers that had been manned with German troops who had mowed down so many Canadian soldiers on June 6, 1944. The sky was overcast as we solemnly wandered through the site – along the beach, through the grassy dunes, and heard echoes of the horror that had been lived 75 years ago.

I saw an artillery gun and a anti-aircraft gun and remembered that my father manned on of the big guns in the Korean War as he was too young to be in WWII. But more powerful than any of these war scenes was the Canadian flag flying from so many places along Juno Beach from Courseulles to Bernieres. We got to see two different Inuksuks, one in Courseulles and another in Bernieres. And, we got to see a Red River Cart and a memorial to First Nations’ soldiers. We walked the whole length of the beach between these two towns knowing that it was this same beach where thousands of Canadian young men died.

Once we arrived in Bernieres, we stopped at Canada Place and the site of the first house that was liberated from the Germans, a place now known as Canada House. Along the main streets of both Courseulles and Berniere, the Royal Canadian Legion banners depicting many of the fallen were proudly displayed. We say these same style of banners flying in our home town in Saskatchewan earlier this year. This was a message hammered home – we shall not forget.

We walked 18 kilometres today and walked on sacred ground. This was as much a pilgrimage as one to a Cathedral.

We got to Caen yesterday, late afternoon. Since it was Sunday, we decided we didn’t have to go out wandering and enjoyed an evening in a beautiful one-bedroom apartment. The lady who rented it to us thought I was Colombian and spoke to me in Spanish which wasn’t a problem. Apparently Airbnb has me as from Corozal, Colombia, a problem I quickly fixed. Now, I am Canadian again.

This morning began bright and early as we had a lot of ground to cover in hopes of seeing as much of this city made famous by William the Conqueror [Gillaume le Conquerant], the 4th duke of Normandy, who became King of England after a victory at Hastings in England. Interesting note, Guillame de Longpre of Picardy was fighting at Hastings alongside William the Conqueror in 1066. The first stop was at Abbaye aux Hommes which was built while William the Conqueror was Duke of Normandy. Much of the abbey now serves as Caen City Hall.

Then we went to the Tourism Office to find out more information about what to see and get a local map before heading to the train station to find out about getting to Juno Beach tomorrow and buying our train tickets to Rouen for Wednesday. Next it was off to the Abbaye aux Femmes which was quite impressive.

In front of the church by the Women’s Abbey, we saw a brass disk on the ground that looked to be the starting point for the pilgrimage to Mont Saint-Michel. Next stop was lunch as we had seen quite a bit in between the two featured places. Leading away from the church more brass disks pointed the way to Mont Saint-Michel. Almost next door was an old building still being used that was once a Templar house.

Once lunch was done, we visited the fortress castle that was built by William the Conqueror, also known in history as William the Bastard. The place was overwhelming to say the least. We wandered through the extensive grounds and climbed the various ramparts for more than an hour and a half.

We had basically reached our limit in terms of information overload, so we decided to head back to the apartment making sure we had a few more stops en route including La Place du Canada and then walking down la Rue du Canada. Before we got to Place du Canada, we came across the ruins of a church that was once a Templar church, Saint Julien.

Back at the apartment, I realised we had walked 18 km over the seven hours of touring through the old city core. We’re tired and excited about what tomorrow will bring.

We took a bus from Saint Malo to Mont Saint-Michel, a site we had put on our bucket list for France but had never managed to visit on our past trips to France. Between the walk to the bus stop, the walking in Saint Malo after we got off the bus, and the return walk back to our apartment gave us just over 14 kilometres. Most of that distance was up and down the cobbled streets and stairs of Mont St Michel.

We went, we saw, and we left in awe. Yes, it was well worth taking a day out of our time here in Europe just to be there. Saint Malo is in Brittany, Mont St-Michel is in Normandy, the province that was named after the Vikings, the Norsemen who became the rulers of Normandy. The island was first used by an Irish monk, as an isolated place of monastic worship, a couple of centuries before becoming an abbey. Most of the this switch was due to Rollo the Viking who was the first ruler of Normandy and his son, William Longsword [Guillaume de Longue-Epee]. Both of these men are included in my family history if the book ever gets published. The abbey has a deep history with the descendants of Rollo the Viking. Check it out at Wikipedia. As we made our way into the surrounding village we say a number of signs that told us the site was also a place to where pilgrims travelled.

Once we walked through a good portion of the lower town that was bustling with life, we climbed up the small mountain to reach the entrance to the abbey. It was amazing to see how the stones of the centuries-old monastery blended in with the granite bedrock that was exposed. Once inside, we reached the church after a long climb of several sets of stairs. Along the way, we stopped at a display that showed the abbey’s size at different points in its history, with the first part already build in the 900s.

On top of the abbey is a cloister, a green space with a covered walkway going around all four sides. It was a place for walking meditation and prayer. Then we began a descent into the actual spaces used by monks and priests over the centuries: a long hall used as a kitchen and dining rooms, huge rooms used for religious studies, the gathering place for knights, and countless chapels and work spaces. When we emerged from the abbey back into the world outside, it was time to pause and try to soak it all in. It was lunch time.

After wandering around the various levels of the site, we made the three-kilometre walk back towards the parking zone where we were to meet our bus. Along the way, we found a good place to enjoy a cool drink and just relax. It was going to take some time to have it all soak in. There was no doubt that we had chosen well to include a visit to Mont Saint-Michel in our itinerary which is as much about my researching the roots of my ancestors as it is about travelling to new places. With the tour done, we made our way back to Saint Malo. The journey moves on to a new place tomorrow.

We slept in. I guess that when you are tired enough, you can sleep. Regardless of sleeping in, we managed to get out for two walks during the day. Total distance of about 15 kilometres walked. My Garmin watch kept great track of where we were during our walks with the exception of when we were in buildings which caused the watch to lose touch with satellites. The watch also proved something I have long suspected. We definitely don’t walk in straight lines. We are talking about getting out in the early evening to see what “lights” are present to highlight the city.

The first thing was a short walk to get up onto the ramparts, the stone wall that surrounds this old city which was a corsair haven, you know, the privateers [a nice name for pirates] who were allied with the French. Outside of the walls, on small islands of rocks, a series of forts with cannons were used as a protective barrier. The rampart walls reminded me of the wall around the Chinese city of Xi’an. Though the wall is not as imposing, it is definitely a wall that would offer protection from unfriendly forces. There is only one missing gap in the wall which encircled the city.

We hadn’t walked far along the wall when we came upon one of my favourite privateers, the man who is considered to be the Father of New France, Jacques Cartier. We walked around to the opposite side of the city where we descended long enough to see City Hall before going back up to see Fort National across a shallow beach. Since the tide was out, we got to walk to the island and tour the 350 year old fortress which was open to visitors.

We returned to the wall, and walked on to the place where we began our walk. By this time the water had retreated enough so that we could walk out to Grand Be and Petit Be islands. The fortifications on Grand Be were gone with the exception of a few indications of where they had once stood. However, on Petit Be, the fortress was standing impressively. We couldn’t get into the fortress but that didn’t diminish our awe at being there.

Our second walk took us back across the causeway to the train station where we bought our tickets to Caen, which will be our next stop. On the way back, we found out where and when we meet our bus tomorrow which will take us to Mont Saint Michel. Then, we found a neat little restaurant. By the time we finished there, we were beat and we knew it. That is a good thing as it lets me write up this blog post before we head back out to finish of with an evening stroll in Saint Malo.

UPDATE: We went out again for another 3 km of walking, caught the sunset and the moonrise, and decided it was a very good day. An 18 kilometre day, without trekking poles.

We made it! We’re in Saint Malo, the small city from where, 378 years ago, a man called Guillaume de Longpré set sail with a group of other soldiers being sent off to New France to quell the pesky Iroquois that were harassing the tiny settlements along the St. Lawrence River. Saint Malo was also the same city from which Jacques Cartier sailed to establish those first settlements. But what caught our eye was the differences in Brittany or Bretagne as it is called in France. We are in an ancient Celtic country. The evidence is everywhere as signs are put up in three languages, French, English, and Breton. Its also Templar country. Enough with the history lesson for now. Here’s Maureen standing at the entrance to the Saint Malo train station.

Shifting across time zones in slightly confusing for the body. Shifting across those zones in a matter of hours is even more problematic. For some reason or other, I don’t sleep when we are en route. Though it was just after 5 pm when we got off the train, it was only 9 am back home. We had already been awake twenty-eight hours and we knew we had to stay awake until at least 9 pm local time if we were going to avoid too much jet lag. So, here I am, at three o’clock in the morning on Friday Saint Malo time, writing up this blog post for you who are still enjoying an early Thursday evening. We enjoyed the two kilometre walk from the train station to find our apartment. We stopped along the way for a few photos as the sun was creating some beautiful scenes. Once we got through the outer wall of the old city, we found ourselves walking along Rue Jacques Cartier. We walked on to find our apartment that was a block and a half from the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the story will have to wait until this evening when we return from our first full day of experiencing Saint Malo

Airports are way points, like inns of the past. Just like those inns reached at the end of a day of travel in centuries past, these modern way points are a place to get a meal and a drink, perhaps chat with another traveller and get a bit of rest. With this thought in mind, I want to paint a picture of our leaving home as if we were leaving home a century or two earlier, just as if we were medieval pilgrims . The foundational details are fact, but the telling is all about imagination:

We woke in darkness, more than an hour before sunrise. However, we knew that we wouldn’t see a sunrise as the sky was overcast and a thin rain was falling. It has been falling for the past two days. Though we had a journey of thousands of kilometres, our first stop was only a few hours distant. The bags were packed and we were soon carrying our bags to the waiting wagon where we placed them in a spot that would keep them dry. We took our seats on the bench inside the wagon and followed the well-worn trail out of the village. Our destination was a large town and the inn that was well known to all travellers who were bound for places much further away. We hadn’t quite reached our destination when we had to change wagons. Luckily, we have family who came to meet us with their wagon in order to takes the final kilometres to the inn, The Flying Maple. It’s a strange name, though perhaps appropriate given that the leaves of the maple trees were indeed blowing in the wind at this time of year.

We arrived at the airport in Saskatoon without mishap. We had a two hour wait for our plane to Toronto to arrive. The flight was the normal economy flight. Three hours later we landed in Toronto where I am writing up this post. We have a four hour wait for our next flight. Hopefully the next plan is a bit less cramped for space. I did begin reading another book by James Hollis, a Jungian analyst, called What Matters Most. If you are interested in psychology, this might be of interest. So far, the book seems very appropriate for me as we engage in yet another journey of discovery. Like all such journeys, we will learn as much about ourselves as we do of other people and places. Of course, that learning only comes with a suspension of the belief that we already know everything and are willing to be challenged and changed.

But enough of that. It’s time for a late lunch and a bit of strolling to pass the time until our next flight. Until the next time.

The past few days have been busy with both indoor and outdoor activities that are meant to have our home ready to be empty for six weeks. The likelihood of returning to snow in the last week of October is high. With that in mind, we have taken all of our lawn and garden ornaments and statuary and placed them inside our garage and garden shed. Whether we travel or stay at home, this is something we always do in preparation for winter. Winter is still a ways away and normally this chore would wait until sometime in mid to late October. Luckily for us, we got it all done just moments before the rain began to fall yesterday. It’s still raining though that isn’t evident in the photo I took moments ago.

When you go somewhere, be it a pilgrimage or to travel, you are always leaving from somewhere. And, it isn’t just a place you leave, it is also a home. For the next six weeks home will technically be our backpacks which we will use to carry bits of “home” with us to the different places we will stop along the way to sleep. Home shifts from being a place to a state of mind. We not only leave a physical place, we also leave behind people. Thankfully, technology allows us to bring these people with us in a virtual manner. We can talk to our family and friends through a number of portals, either directly or indirectly.

Even though we have technology to keep us in contact, it isn’t the same thing as walking to a neighbour’s house for coffee or tea or a meal, or having them come to our home. As well, once we board the plane, we can’t really go to visit any of our children or grandchildren or other extended family members because we just want to go visit them. Everything goes on hold until we are physically back in our home.

But what happens when one goes on a pilgrimage or journey? The world changes. Sometimes the changes are subtle, sometimes not so subtle. However, everyone does change, even what we call home changes because a home is not simply a structural building, it is a community. Part of that change will happen because of harvest and because of a national election, two factors that will resonate deeply in our community.

Not only do changes happen to others we leave behind in Canada, there will be changes in both of us. Of course, we don’t know what changes will happen, or how they will happen. We do know, through experience, that we are different people after every such journey. Knowing that, the work of getting ready to leave isn’t all that easy, yet an excitement fuels us to do the work as we look forward more than we look backward. Tomorrow, the plane takes off from Saskatoon and we will be ready to embrace life, once again, as perpetual pilgrims.

Unlike our numerous other trips, it seems as though we need less, or we have learned to pack much better. Truth be told, we are just taking less as it is only six weeks and it’s not a Camino. So what is in our backpacks? Clothing for the most part: the usual stuff for both warm and cooler weather, medical kit, our electronics and assorted cords, and our walking poles. Yes, they are packed inside my main black backpack. We have new poles which are easily taken down to travel size. Of course, also packed are copies of our agenda, flight tickets, and accommodations for the five countries through which we will be travelling.

Now that our bags are packed, a task which we both believe is the hardest part, we just have to wait until it’s time to put our house in order to leave. That began this morning when I disconnected the backyard hose, drained it, and hung it within the garage for the winter. I know talking about winter when it is still technically summer seems sacrilegious. Over the next few days we will take down and store all of our ornaments, the Buddhas, and birdhouses so they can be stored for winter as well. Since we don’t get back until near the end of October, it only makes sense as there could be snow on the ground when we return. But, all of that doesn’t take much time. We will still have time on our hands and be waiting. Perhaps packing isn’t the hardest part after all.