Once again the forecast of rain was not wrong. Why are these French meteo forecasts so depressingly accurate? Our lodgings for the night at the Auberge des Remparts was ok, but nothing special. They don’t do evening meals but we found a restaurant close by.
We set off in light but persistent rain. Our route took us across the River Cologne, which at this point is a very small river connecting several sizeable lakes.
From there our road became the course of a disused railway, lined by trees, with marshy ground and streams alongside. We saw just one other person: a man who was collecting up sheets of rusty corrugated iron which he said was to be found scattered all around. Julie’s French wasn’t good enough to gain a full understanding, but we think he was collecting up artefacts from WW1. Presumably the price of metal is high enough at present to make the effort worthwhile.
We left the old railway line at Cartigny and walked up through the village to find yet another locked church. Fortunately beside the church there was a shelter, though no seating, so we decided to have our soup and half our sandwiches in the dry even though it was too early for lunch.
Once clear of the village we were back out amongst huge arable fields, and soon left the road for a farm track. The signage around here wasn’t very good – in fact, much of it seemed to have been removed from the marker posts – so we made fairly frequent stops to make sure we were heading the right way.
We wended our way between villages, using a mix of very minor roads and tracks. By now we have become so accustomed to churches being closed we no longer detour to check them out (especially on such a wet day) and the VF rarely passes directly past a church, seemingly intent on pressing on across the countryside.
After passing through a couple more small villages we were again crossing fields by way of farm tracks, including a relatively pleasant and sheltered tree lined track with blossom still on the trees despite yesterday’s vicious wind.
In the village of Tertry we crossed a delightful little chalk stream known as L’Omignon, a tributary of the Somme. Considering the amount of rain we’d had the water was remarkably clear, but there was no sign of any fish!
A final haul uphill along a muddy track through the woods brought us to Trefcon and tonight’s chambre d’hote in a farmhouse. By this stage we were pretty soggy despite our waterproofs, and glad to sit in the kitchen with a warming cup of tea fondling the dog!
Highlights of today? Tom says the warm cup of tea and a hot shower at the end of the day! Julie identified two positives: there was no wind today, and the walk was shorter than most. We are glad to be able to get warm and dry!