To complement our previous journey from south to north, yesterday we achieved the obvious second objective – to cross Paris from west to east, on foot. From Porte Maillot to Porte de Vincennes. It took us 6 hours, and we covered 14.2 kilometres.
We ignored the warnings of heatwave, and were surprised by lower-than-predicted temperatures. A light rainstorm in the afternoon helped keep things manageable. The City of Paris, however, were taking no chances: heatwave warnings were displayed everywhere on the public information screens.
The journey was documented in real-time via Twitter, but here are a few highlights in images:
Parc de Monceau, a welcome patch of greenery in the 8th arrondissement
Jeanne d’Arc defying the English outside Saint-Augustin (Paris 8e)
Say the words “Forest of Chantilly” and you might immediately imagine one of those cutaway gags in The Simpsons where Homer says to himself “Mmmmm….Forest of Chantilly“, and he daydreams of prancing through groves of swirly cream trees, grabbing mouthfuls of marscarpone squirrel while blizzards of cherries tumble from the sky.
However, the Forest of Chantilly is a real place: 6,000 hectares of woodland lying 40 kilometres north of Paris on the RER D line, and the trees are not made of the eponymous cream. I went for a walk through the forest on Friday, from Orry-la-Ville to the Château de Chantilly.
The Parc Astérix is situated nearby, and one could almost imagine Obélix hunting wild boar in these woods. But there is little sense of wilderness: the forest is a working source of sustainable timber and is still used as a hunting park as it was in the time of the French monarchy.
In the middle of the forest are the Etangs de Commelles – a series of large artificial lakes built by Cistercian monks in the 13th Century as fishing ponds. Chateaubriand wrote about the lakes in the 19th Century, and today they harbour a remarkable range of birdlife and a large population of water-rats, some of whom sat on the bank, watching me eat my lunch.
Chantilly is a major horse racing centre. On a nearby estate, the Aga Khan keeps half the bloodstock of France. The forest is criss-crossed by long, straight galloping tracks laid down in soft sand, dedicated to training racehorses. Walkers must take care because these tracks are restricted to horses and their jockeys from 6am to 1pm.
If you follow the GR11 path towards Chantilly, you emerge from the forest at the “service entrance” to the Château.
The Château itself, once home to the Condé and the Montmorency families, is popular with tourists and school groups. The well-groomed parkland is a startling contrast to the solitude of the forest.
From the Château, you can walk around the edge of the racecourse, past the most impressive set of stables you’ll see anywhere, back to the Chantilly-Gouvieux railway station. From there, you can be back in Paris in 40 minutes.
The excellent maps produced by the Institut Géographique National (IGN) make it very easy to put on a good pair of walking shoes and launch into the French countryside. It’s one of my favourite activities: at walking pace, you can better understand a landscape, you can avoid the crowds and make unexpected discoveries.
When I lived in Alsace, IGN maps of the southern Vosges were pinned across my apartment walls. And everywhere I’ve lived since my collection of maps (and walking experiences) has expanded.
These few weeks of rest between jobs end on Monday, so this week has been a last chance to enjoy some parts of the Paris region I hadn’t yet seen. Yesterday I caught a train from Gare Montparnasse to Rambouillet and set off on a circuit through the Forêt de Rambouillet, one of the largest forests near Paris, 200 square kilometres in size. As usual, I took some pictures.
The Château de Rambouillet was a royal hunting lodge from the 1500s onwards, today it’s a summer home for French presidents. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing reinaugurated “presidential hunts” in the 1970s, and the goddess Diana with her attendant dogs and stags still watch over the park.
Walking out of Rambouillet towards the village of Gazeran, fields of wheat bend in the wind.
Once inside the forest, Rambouillet’s oaks stretch for miles and miles…
This is a forest where Scouts and ramblers make mysterious magic circles of unknown purpose,
A forest where witches might lurk in hidden cottages,
A forest which is empty during the week, save for a few deer and the lone walker.
Geographically speaking, Paris is not a big city. Its suburbs stretch on forever and are home to 11 million people , but the city proper, (just 2.2 million inhabitants), is clearly enclosed with the boulevard périphérique. The city can be crossed, according to Graham Robb “in a few hours” by foot.
On a day-to-day basis, you never realise the true size of Paris while you zoom from place to place by métro, bus or taxi. So a friend and I decided to test the “smallness” of the city by walking across it in an afternoon. We followed roughly the route of Métro Line 4, from Porte d’Orléans in the south to Porte de Clignancourt in the north, with a little meander eastwards to take in parts of the Marais.
If we had taken a direct route, the distance would have been just 9km, however with the detours we walked about 13km. South of the river, we traced the route of Général LeClerc’s 2nd Armoured Division as it liberated Paris from German forces on 25th August, 1944. There is even a monument in the Jardin du Luxembourg to one Jean Arnould, killed while liberating the park from Nazi oppression.
Crossing the river by way of the Ile St-Louis, we dog-legged right to walk through the Hôtel de Sully and the Place des Vosges before following our nose north-west past Place de la République towards the 18th arrondissement.
Climbing over the Butte de Montmartre and down the other side, we arrived at the Porte de Clignancourt four and a half hours after we started out. Paris est à nous!
We made a video: four and a half hours walking summarised in four and a half minutes:
The places seen in the video are, in order, from south to north:
Monument LeClerc, Porte d’Orléans, 14e
Place Denfert-Rochereau, 14e
Hôpital St Vincent de Paul, 6e
Fontaine des Explorateurs, 6e
Jardin du Luxembourg
Beer stop, rue Soufflot, 5e
La Sorbonne, 5e
Cathédrale Nôtre-Dame de Paris
The Seine @ Quai de la Tournelle
Hôtel de Sully, 4e
Place des Vosges, 4e
Place de la République, 11e
Arc de Triomphe de la Porte St-Martin, 10e
Tati, boulevard Rochechouart, 18e
Sacré Coeur / Montmartre
Café La Maison Rose, rue de l’Abreuvoir, 18e
Stairs, rue des Saules, 18e
Traffic, Porte de Clignancourt
Celebrating a successful walk with another beer - Bistrot la Renaissance, rue Championnet, 18e
We imagine there are very few native Parisians who have ever walked the width of their own city, and it’s certainly not something recommended (yet) in the tourist guides.
There are plans afoot to repeat the exercise later this summer by crossing Paris along an east/west axis – a journey of at least 16 kilometres. Does anyone want to join us?
Finally I got out of town today: I caught the RER C to the end of the line at Dourdan, and then (with the help of an IGNcarte de randonnée) walked across the fields to Saint-Chéron: 14 kilometres of sunshine, snow and open space.
Yesterday and today, everything began to fall into place. Last night was a soirée à thème with my classmates. We shared food from each others’ countries. I failed to learn how to dance salsa, and we laughed. On the ride home, I realised I hadn’t thought in English all night.
Today dawned wide and blue, and I joined up with some French friends for a walk in the hills. Driving north, the low rolling garrigues of scrubby low vegetation and nude brown vineyards gave way to the more substantial décor of the Cévennes.
We arrived at Saint-Laurent-le-Minier, and discovered that nobody had brought a hiking map. So we set off into the village to ask someone where the good walking trails were. Coming across a bunch of teenagers playing football beside the war memorial, one of them (who apparently works at the Mairie) advised us that “C’est beau partout” and pointed us in the direction of the trailhead, which (as in nearly every French village) is next to the cemetery.
Knee-deep in dead leaves we climbed up from the valley through a dead winter forest. Occasional colour flashed in the brown landscape to signal the coming spring: a butterfly warmed itself on a wall; bluebells pushed through the iron-rich schist beside the path.
We arrived at Les Falguières, a corps de ferme overlooking the valley of the Vis, 500 metres above the village. Seated on logs next to the abandoned farmhouse, we ate a casse-croûte of dried apricots and thermos tea. Like all naïve city folk, we chatted idly about the impracticalities of renovating the ruin, but all agreed that it would make a great holiday home.
Silence seeped up from the valley floor. Jets traced lines in sky. Far to the east sat Mont Ventoux, discreet on the horizon, its snowcapped summit announcing Provence. Packing up our snacks and starting down the winding forest road that led downhill to the village and our car, I thought “Yes, I could get used to this.“
