Day Five, July 25: Lots More Forests.

The next morning I woke up, happy to have successfully slept through the night in a French national forest, and to have heard enormous birds hooting nearby. As I set to striking my tent and packing my bags, I heard the barking dog again. It was very close. Another one, closer. I started to mentally prepare for what I would say when a farmer (or a forestry worker) and his dog came bursting into my glen with its bicycle, pile of bags, and halfway-standing tent.

It was a deer. A barking deer, bounding through the forest, not fifty meters away. After looking it up later I learned that it was a roe deer, which bark when startled.

After a very unsatisfactory breakfast consisting of saucisson, and only saucisson, I headed off. A few stops at wild blackberry bushes provided a little bit of extra nutrition (“What would Suzanne say if she knew I was eating roadside berries because I was actually very hungry?”) until I finally made it to the small city of Alençon, found a bakery, and inhaled a wide variety of baked goods. I also checked three bicycle shops in Alençon for spokes. One did not have any in the right length, one was on vacation, and the third had a note in the window that it was closed that day, with no further explanation. With another silent “thank you” to Jean-Philippe, I continued on.

Blackberries were everywhere: delicious, but not very filling.

The rest of that day and the next it was forests, forests, and more forests. Blackberries provided roadside treats and a reason to take a rest every ten kilometers or so. In late afternoon I stopped at a campground in the town of Carrouges, which like many French towns had set up a municipal campground for tourists. Carrouges had taken the unusual step of combining it with their sports complex, since both required open fields and showers. The only other people there were a family of four from the Netherlands. A sign said someone was supposed to come by and collect an eight euro fee for the campsite, but they never did.

One of many closed shops and bakeries in many of the villages. Some villages were still quite lively.

Passing through many of the small towns, I had begun to wonder how many of the houses were occupied, since they often all seemed shuttered. Agnès had mentioned that it was a problem in their village, that all the young people left for the cities, and the houses started to all be empty; although now some of the young people were getting disillusioned and starting to move back. In Carrouges, it became evident that not everyone was gone, because of its pizza truck. The only open restaurant in Carrouges was a kebab shop, but a meat sandwich was not really what I wanted. Then I came to its small central plaza, which was a ring of shops that were all closed at that hour . . . but which had a pizza truck at one end, the only sign of life, which filled the square with the smell of rising bread. I placed my order with the two young men running it, and sat down on a nearby bench. People of all ages started showing up for pizzas: middle-aged women, old men, young parents with three children. Apparently the villages weren’t dead after all, they were just inside lurking, or away working, and waiting for the smell of pizzas to waft through their windows in the evening.

The next morning the same Carrouges square was unrecognizable, since it was market day: eggs, cheese, greens, and other trucks and carts were on display.

Man caning chairs at the Carrouges marché.

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