Hurrah, another rest day! Our accommodation is a few hundred yards from the cathedral, which we can see out of our window, taking care not to fall over the third floor balustrade. The downside of being so central is that it was very noisy throughout the night – which provided as good an excuse as any for doing nothing much today.
We are delighted to have been joined by Julie’s cousin Rhyd who arrived by train from London via Paris yesterday evening, and will walk with us for the next couple of days before going back to work.
We spent this morning working out how to get Rhyd back north on a train over Easter weekend, and we now have a plan. Next was a visit to the cathedral, first admiring the stunning carvings on the west front which have mostly been cleaned and restored since we were last here about five years ago. Julie particularly likes the beasts which make art of roof drainage!
Reims cathedral was founded in about 407, and rebuilt and extended between 1211 and 1280. The current building is a careful restoration of the 13th century building which was largely destroyed, along with much of the city, during the First World War.
Miraculously, some the medieval stained glass survived, but at the east end there are several very attractive modern windows in abstract designs, leaving it to the viewer to interpret them as they will. Inside the cathedral is half light and airy, and half quite dark due to the stained glass windows, but overall it has a peaceful ambience.
Historically, Reims cathedral was very important as the place where many of the kings of France were crowned. Today, like Canterbury, it has a welcome desk for pilgrims arriving on the Via Francigena from Canterbury, and those arriving from further east on one of the Camino pilgrim routes to Compostella in northern Spain as the various routes converge at Reims. As well as logging where we had come from and where we were going, the welcomers checked whether we needed assistance with finding accommodation, which was reassuring. They even had a ‘tampon’ for stamping our pilgrim passports, which was just as well as the tourist office here knew nothing about them!
A leisurely lunch just across the way from the cathedral then necessitated a siesta. When in France…most places close for a couple of hours over the lunch period anyway!
Being Good Friday, just before 3pm we returned to the cathedral to attend a Chemin de Croix (Way of the Cross) service. We weren’t sure what to expect, but with service sheets and over one hundred people around us who seemed to know what to do, we got by. The service took the form of a meditation on each of the stations of the cross, with readings from Mark’s Gospel. These were interwoven with writings of a person who had been the subject of sexual abuse as a child. It was very powerful and moving.
The rest of our afternoon was spent sorting out our accommodation over the next few days; a far from straightforward exercise, with some places having gone out of business since our guide books were written, and some already booked up. Other places are simply too far off our route to be viable options. And then there are other places that don’t provide meals on a Sunday evening. By the end of a long day’s walk any extra kilometres really count, as does carrying extra weight such as our suppers.
So, for the next week we have had to adjust several of our planned days to get to somewhere that has accommodation, taking into account that we are physically unable to walk more than 28 kms in a day, no matter what the problems with accommodation. Perhaps the sleeping bags and survival bags will get some use after all….though we hope not.
Tom and Julie. Well done . I have greatly enjoyed reading your blog. We thought of you last week as we were staying near Canterbury and visited the Cathedral, St Martins Church and Barfreston Church. No exciting news from Amport! The good Friday 6pm service was excellent and the choir sang very well indeed . A good crowd today . Good luck and all good wishes from us both Charles