Restless in France: Midsummer morning

It was Midsummer. An incandescent summer’s night and day. She’d gone to sleep with a full moon spreading its light at midnight. She rose with the morning lark, which she could not hear. Six in the morning. Day had been awake for some time!

With the rising sun behind her she strode full of energy. Overjoyed she always is to see her sweetpeas there at the roadsidc where they grow every year. Stepping down ‘The American Way’ named after someone who used to live in that secret house hidden from view of the single-track footpath. There, with a full view of the sweep of the river, aloft on the cliff, his house stood without water and electricity. Owners have fought to have both installed. It is a protected heritage house.

Careful she was not to slip on the dew-laden rocks and roots forming the well-trodden descent to the river’s edge. The flowing current could be heard magically in the morning magnificence before she caught a glimpse of shining water. Step around ‘Le Moulin de Merle’, a watermill where she noted the growing sandbank. Above the dam the waterlily pads conceal frogs which ribbet and croak amongst those green plants. All this has been witnessed during the passing of time, the thousands of years since an Ice Age formed vast cliffs called the Roc of Sorciers. Majestic, they look down.

At the road bridge she decides upon an extension to her walk. All is unplanned. She is free to respond to a moment, a whim, an immediate choice for her and for no one else. It was joyful to be alone at last and able to move her legs and arms to and fro in a rhythm of a roaming rambler. Her mind is excited at this unusual event to be out and about when no one knows where she is or what she is doing for she has seen no one.

Along the banks vegetation encroaches upon the one-person track towards absolute primeval stillness, though she knows that the sun moves as it rises in the sky stretching shadows along the ground. Miniature flies float in morning sunrays as gossamer spiders float their webs preciously. Along and along, as birds sing-a-song and flutter tree-to-tree, leaf-by-leaf, woodpecker taps a different rhythm. Cuckoo calls, still singing in tune at the end of June, for July it will fly. By August it must be gone to Africa. Woodpigeon rool-rool---coo-coos reflecting the languidity of a hay-mown scent of summer.

Darker it gets. Trees reach for the light above the canopy. Moss hangs on every branch above rock and stone where ferns, bracken and other humid hugging plants thrive. In dappled morning light, She feels safe not seeing a soul in the Devil's grotto. Ah, unexpectedly, she hears a cough! A trace of humankind. Is someone wild camping? No, ‘tis a jogger!

How dangerous to be moving quickly across such rugged rocky ground, where footfall or rainfall dislodges crumbly, gravelly stones even though larger and heavier boulders dig deep. Tread carefully. She has learned by experience.

'Bonjour.. fait attention!' but she hears no reply and suspects he is not French and thinks they would be too sensible to be running in that place in such early morning warmth.

The land is rising upwards out of woodland which has been like that since probably the Magdalenian era. Rising upwards into agricultural land where the single track opens to allow tractors to travel along the grassy chemins.

Again she delights in looking at hedges and trees of walnut, holly, oak and beech. A sign says ‘Private’ but she ignores it as she has always walked by here around the Pigeonnier and indeed has seen French persons doing likewise. Out onto the road, feeling the morning heat rise from the tarmac. Let her cut across another chemin and another harvested field and wend her way back along lanes to the village where people are queuing at the boulangerie. Everyone shares happiness. Then to discuss with a fellow inhabitant what is to happen to that huge acacia tree at the end of her garden. She shares her concern about the ever-increasing number of acacias popping up in her garden. There are more than ever before. Clearly they enjoy the drought and heat. Autumn will be the time when the woodman will arrive to cut it down but how will he and she poison the roots left in the ground in her garden. They have drained the goodness from her potager and caused much extra labour. She will wait. She can wait.

With cheerful pride and self-ennoblement she breezes home for coffee and croissant at half past nine, breakfast time! What a wonderful three hour walk!