Day 7. Saint-Jean-le-Blanc to Beny Bocage. August 31, 2026. 18 kms

My heart leaps up when I behold

A church spire in the sky (apologies to WW).

I set out early this morning, having awoken at five o’clock. It was another windy day, and as I left town, the sun dipped between the moving clouds and lit up the landscape, first the far row of trees, and then the next, and then the next, and the fields in between, but this lighting of the landscape could only last a moment, for soon the heavy clouds prevailed. A magical moment!

I spied a couple of deer ahead of me, and when they saw me, unlike their Victoria cousins who march slowly across the street expecting the traffic to wait for them, these timid creatures frantically bounded away in opposite directions. 

And then I came upon the Mont-Saint-Michel marker, the first I had seen since starting out yesterday. This sent me down a long and leafy lane, green above and brown below, and into a valley and along a creek. This was the most pleasant stretch of the day, but when I reached the road there was no marker to be seen.

For the rest of the day I walked along the roads, passing  fields of corn, and in the afternoon, some dairy farms as well. The cows would watch with interest as I walked by. Perhaps I was relieving their boredom, as the major item of interest between milking and feeding.

It rained intermittently in the afternoon. Sometimes I could make it stop by putting on my rain coat but then it set in, and the wind was strong and driving into my face. I trudged on, head down, for several kilometres, until I spied a church spire ahead. Faint hope, but you never know, and then some more buildings, and one with a promising sign. Yes, a bar. I staggered in. “Un cafe crème,” I spluttered.

Seventy years ago, as a teenage thing, I rode my bike from Perth to Bunbury, a distance of 116 miles. Two-thirds of the way along, I stopped for a coke — ice cold, and I always remember it as the best I had ever drunk. Now it is coffee that sustains me, and the coffee I had today at Montchamp was almost as memorable.

It was a convivial bar. Everyone was shouting.  People came and went, shaking everybody’s hand as they entered, including mine. I moved outside, for the noise had become deafening. One of the tables was dry. Clouds were racing across the sky and I would sit for a few minutes in the warmth of the sun before being spattered with a few drops of rain. It was delightfully calm until a couple of smokers moved outside, and a kid raced up the street on a dreaded two-stroke, the bane of many a French village.

Another hour’s march brought me to Beny Bocage where I am staying at an airBnB hosted by Jean who speaks French at lightning speed and keeps goats and chooks in his back yard.

Day 6. Hamars à Saint-Jean-Le-Blanc. August 30, 2026. 14 kms.

 It was a sombre morning as I set out from Hamars, the little village on the Chemin de Caen where I had ended my walk eighteen months ago, and soon the somber weather begat a very somber mood. I began on the right path, indicated by a blue balise, a symbol of the Mount Saint Michel, and followed a stony country lane down into a valley and up again to meet a road where there was no indication of the chemin to follow. Or perhaps there was: a blue smudge on a post which might once have been a marker, or it might have been a blue cross indicating the direction not to go. After a few yards along the road I ventured onto a likely looking track across a field. Rain threatened.

As we were driving to Hamars from Ouistreham this morning, we talked about the role of chance in our lives, how we were together in the car at that moment because of a chance meeting in Ouistreham 40 years ago. And we were here because all of our ancestors, generation after generation, had been the lucky ones among their siblings to survive pestilence and plague, war and famine.

And just by chance, coming towards me on the path, was a group of walkers — from Ouistreham, as it happened. “You’re going back to Hamars,” they said. So I turned back to the road and after a fruitless search for a sign, I asked Apple Maps for the quickest route to walk to Saint-Jean-le Blanc.

And so I walked along country roads through fields of corn somewhat the worse for wear after the extreme heat over the summer. The cows would receive a burnt offering indeed from the maize of these corn fields.

Every so often a church spire signalled  that I was about to pass through a village. Would there be a bar or a boulangerie? No, only a church and a mairie that opened for a few hours each week. At the little village of Le Plessis-Grimoult I sat on a bench and ate my lunch. A polite little boy walked by and said bonjour. His grandmother followed. That was the extent of the village population.

After another hour’s walking, I reached Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, a full two hours earlier than I expected, because I had taken  a more direct route along the roads. 

A word about my gîte, Le Temps de Cerises: a little appartement, very comfortable, kitchen and living room downstairs, two bedrooms upstairs. My only quibble: the wifi had the longest password I have ever seen. It took me several goes.