From a field between Fleurines and Villers-St-Frambourg to Crépy-en-Valois

I woke at 08:00 (or at any rate was awake enough to decide it was morning and that I ought to check my watch). It’s now 08:53 and I’m finally sitting up half dressed.

Last night I was woken by more of the hefty shuffling and grunting in the forest. I woke lying on my left side, with a view out over the freshly-sown field, when the unmistakeable silhouette of a pig trotting out of the forest was outlined against the sky. The pig got wind of me, grunted, and doubled back at a dash into the forest. From the animal noises and the sounds in the undergrowth it’s clear that the noisy guests in the Forest Hotel last night were also hogs. My vision of a badger was probably a hallucination.¹

I also heard foxes, two at least, perhaps more. They make a remarkable range of sounds. One sounded like the squeal I’d heard in the mountains in Wicklow last September on the shakeout walk; another made a trilling, coo-ing sound, starting on the same note and rising exactly an interval, over and over, just pausing to take a breath. Another fox made a sound like a bird singing — a high, three tone sequence. Another howled. Another made a kind of gentle bark. They’re all surprisingly quite beautiful sounds, especially the trilling.

A light shower just passed over, the third so far this morning. I’m going to dress, pack and eat my breakfast here under the basha, I think. It’s due to be a showery morning so I’m not expecting to find anywhere suitably sheltered once I get up. Oh, this shower has turned quite heavy. They tend to only last a few minutes, though.

So with the nocturnal fox chorus and the realisation that I’d been sharing a forest with wild boars the other night, I didn’t sleep very well. That’s why getting out of bed this morning has been so tough. As always though, my bladder is more insistent than any alarm clock. I think I’ll be sleeping in fields from now on and avoiding forests if I can. I also need to do some reading on wild camping in the presence of wild boar. I really didn’t expect my first forest mammal sighting larger than a squirrel to be a wild boar. Oh, and the moles under my pillow. They didn’t bother me, though.

The shower’s passed. Time to get socks and trousers on. The pad of my left foot feels normal for the first time since I developed that blister approaching the Seine some days back.

10:38: Packed up, ready to move on. Porridge, fruit, nut and honey breakfast. It turns out there’s a path running through the forest five metres from my campsite. Thre or four lads wandered along it as I was packing up!

10:49: Back on the road.

10:55: Entering Villers-St-Frambourg.

11:07: Exiting the village. It’s a promising-looking day — broken cirrus with patches of blue. The breeze is quite strong. I have my rain jacket on.

11:27: Shedding my rain jacket. The ground is mostly level.

11:43: Brasseuse.

11:48: Exit Brasseuse.

12:20: Almost at Rarey. Stopping to take my trouser legs off.

12:44: Out of Rarey and back in the breeze again. I’ve found a hut in the middle of a wind-swept stretch across a flat landcape of fields, which gives me shelter from the wind. I think lunch will be stock cube broth and yesterday’s bread with olives. The sky to windward looks very grim again.

13:29: That was successful and a lot less miserable than it ought to have been. The shed gave me shelter from a shower that blew through, made vicious by the wind. I also ate the rest of the mandarins. I’ll need to stock up in Crépy-en-Valois.

15:07 Nery town limit. On the way, I stopped on a railway bridge to be close to a TGV going by at full tilt. It’s quite an experience! The bridge shook. The dozens of steel wheels hitting the track at over 300km/h make a deafening metallic roar.

After that I watched a farmer spraying his crops and more interestingly, go through a series of slow-motion dance sequence steps with his equipment in order to fold away the crop sprayer. It’s turned into a sunny afternoon but the wind is still strong and I’m wearing my jacket and gloves and my bandana on my head.

15:12 Exited Nery.

16:41: Glaignes. Last stop before Crépy-en-Valois.

17:05: Dumped my trash. Tried to find camping in Crépy-en-Valois, but there’s none. Need to do some shopping to get water and plan tomorrow’s walk.

17:11: Left Glaignes.

18:26: At Crépy-en-Valois. Everything in the town is closed. I’ve found a bar where I can at least plan tomorrow’s route and get water so I can make breakfast. I have an hour to do that, get out of the town and find a safe spot to camp.

18:55: At the Hotel Akena City. €52. I asked around about cheap hotels in the town and before I knew it, Vincent, one of the café patrons, brought me here by car. As it happens, it’s on my route out of town and I’d have camped in the woods or a field — which I can see from here — if I’d had at least a litre of water to make breakfast. Anyway, I’ve had two wild nights so I’ll treat myself. Interesting lessons to be learned about timing my arrival in towns in the evening. Far better to come to town anytime after rising and before 17:00. After that there are no guarantees that anything will be open.

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