28th of July – today it was time so say goodbye to Clamecy and our friend Arnaud who spoiled us over the last days. He offered us really something like a little vacation in the middle of our challenge. Now it seemed like he would have to take the Monday off for himself to have his own holiday after we have left. He said it with a smile and I am sure he enjoyed his little realm again with his own rhythm.
We left exactly when the church tower bells were ringing high noon. We just had turned around the corner of the Rue de Chevroches when Nicolai had already the idea to stop by the next bakery to get some sandwiches before we are in the middle of nowhere getting hungry. Well we shouldn’t have done that exactly after the church bells rang because everyone was now standing in line for their lunch break. But it was fun to watch how the whole village came together and got their bread, birthday cakes, and other little things. 45 minutes later we were finally on the road again and tried to catch up on the Saint James trail.
There are two types of Pilgrimage trails: the one for the walking pilgrims and the one for the biking pilgrims. Sometimes they join and stay for a while together which leads you into the most off road trails you can imagine. But on the other hand you definitely don’t see a car on these kind of hidden paths. Our bikes can cope with all different terrains – like the French would call it VTT (=velo-toutes-terrain) but it doesn’t let you advance anymore in the speed we were used to for making a certain distance a day. Nevertheless, it brings you to the most beautiful hidden gems. And on top of it, we didn’t cross neither a walking nor a biking pilgrim during the whole day. We were completely alone for more than 70km on our bike ride.
One thing you find in many villages and towns is a public washing place from the medieval times. They are sometimes the only leftovers of a vanished village as they always had clean water and were at any century very useful until the washing machine was invented and found its way into each household.
At Varzy the doors of the church Saint-Pierre were wide open and invited us to take a bikers Pilgrimage photo with the Saint-James-Shell in the foreground. We got our stamp in a museum.
When we continued our way into a forest we discovered the Saint Lazare chapel built for the lepers of Varzy in the 12th century. The landscape changed between fields and forests and reminded us sometimes again of England. Maybe the French would not like to hear that, but there were similarities.
But one thing I still hadn’t seen before was the long tradition of planting oak trees in this region, which was due to the monasteries in the need for high temperature fire wood to be able to melt metal. The forests are the second largest source for oak trees and represent a surface of 10.000 ha with century old specimen. Once you are out of the forest you nearly reached Charite-sur-Loire, which has one of the longest histories as monastery dating back to the 7th century. Once destroyed by the Moors it was in the 12th century the second largest cathedral after Cluny in the whole Christianity. In 1559 a huge fire let parts of the cathedral collapse. That’s the reason why there is only one tower left and parts of the ruins are used as houses.
The location by the river Loire is still breathtakingly beautiful. Especially during sunset.
