Seeing France by Foot
by Rose Murphy

On a recent walking tour of French Provence, in the south of France, I surprised myself by walking nine or 10 miles a day for four days, often through the rugged terrain of Alps foothills. And I learned how to see a country from the trail.

Nine women from Northern California, including five from Sonoma Valley, spent a total of 10 days together in May, hiking and touring France with Going Places!, the Sonoma-based women’s walking company.

We found ourselves on the ancient Roman Way, where travelers from 300 A. D. had beaten down the path for us. I imagined the traffic flow then: merchants with wares on their backs, Roman soldiers on their way to conquered lands, pilgrims walking toward shrines. They probably slept in hollows of caves, or stopped in primitive inns.

They moved from place to place via the oldest transportation mode – two legs. No one questioned that it took weeks and months to reach destinations.

In this late 20th century, when walking is an option, I traveled by airporter, transcontinental flight and taxi to reach the Roman Way, so I could plant my feet in the dust of history.

That’s a lot of airport music to endure – but worth it. Also along the Roman Way, just above the village of Castellane in the foothills of the Alps, lie forests where French Resistance fighters hid out during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.

No signs, no way to know the exact locales, but I could imagine resisters burrowing down in the thick brush, perhaps Nazi search parties sweeping through with dogs.

Walking definitely feeds the imagination.

According to the “Tuesday-it-must-be-Belgium” joke, bus tourists see the sights laid out for them at planned stops. Touring by car might be better, unless the driver says, “You want a picture of ANOTHER castle?” Bicyclists stay in touch with their surroundings but are still apt to whiz by some breathtaking – or simply odd – scene.

But by trekking down the capricious turns of a switchback trail toward a French village, announced from a distance by its cluster of red tile roofs, the walker views France through a special prism undistorted by steering wheels or train tracks.

Many times that far-off village was our reward for winding down steep trails over boulders and tree roots. It was hard to slow the down-hill descent, because we wanted those red tile roofs to come closer. Reaching the village, after six or seven hours on the trail, meant a beer at a sidewalk cafe and submersion in a deep French bathtub. But coming into Rougon or Riez or St. Martin de Bromes, moving from remote trails into town life, was part of the reward. Quiet French villages, far from Parisian grandeur, are just as much a national treasure as the Louvre.

Old sandstone houses sit snug against narrow lanes. Their shutters of blue, green or lavender frame windows of white lace curtains; pots of geraniums or pansies are never far away – unwritten but unwavering rules of decorating. Beyond the shuttered houses lies the town square where usually a fountain splashes and locals play “boules,” the “petanque” of Southern France.

In sidewalk cafes, townspeople indulge in the pastime of people-watching and gossiping. Often, a war memorial – of World War I or II – has a place of honor, with its list of young men who died in battle. After more than 50 years, stories of Nazi occupation still echo in the national consciousness.

But Provence is as late ’90s as any place that TV and the Internet can reach, with kids skateboarding and impossibly cool young couples roaring out of town on chrome-laden Harleys. But the rituals of small-town France – the cafe chatter, the games of boules – survive all modern innovations.

As the walking eye focused in on the small pleasures of village life, it sharpened along the trail as we encountered masses of wildflowers. This is truly a walker’s experience because one has to bend down to enjoy it. Never one to spot interesting flowers along my own California trails, I had to learn the art of pausing before yellow Scotch broom, wild roses, and an occasional purple orchid standing out among dull weeds.

But even in my wildflower-impaired state, a sweep of red poppies across a meadow always stopped me in my tracks. Southern France seems blanketed with poppies. Beyond their vivid show in meadows, they flourish between rows of lavender – those rounded bushes of purple blossoms that feed a giant French industry of soaps, fragrances, dried flowers. I saw French poppies as unexpected, carefree splashes of color, as I walked around a bend or reached a hilltop. But they were also more somber reminders of war; they brought up the lines from John McCrae’s World War I poem, “In Flander’s Field the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row … ”

Before ending the trip in Aix-en-Provence, more walkers’ adventures leapt up on the trail. We were charged by a donkey one day – hardly a ferocious beast, but one that sent us running for cover until we thought to yell in unison and scare him more than he scared us.

We walked into the grounds of a religious community, where giant statues of Pope John and Buddha shared the hillside – symbols, as it turned out, of a sect devoted to bringing all religions together. (A young disciple greeted us and plied us with brochures in English when she couldn’t convert us in French.)

We walked by oak forests where truffles, France’s prized and pricy mushrooms, are often hunted out by “truffler pigs” at the base of oak trees. On the last day we skidded down a slippery hillside in the rain.

We experienced French Provence through the soles of our feet, a mode of travel which just might catch on.

Originally published in the Sonoma Index-Tribune.

You can visit Going Places! at http://www.goingplacestours.com/

You can email Going Places! at goplaces@sonic.net