Sees to Alencon – He’s Coming Home!

Word is going round on the streets of Alencon, very much as it did two years ago in Rincon de la Victoria. He’s coming home, David. He’s coming home! Hooray! Where are his unpaid bar tabs from 1968?

Sees was very nice. More tourist town than working town but still nice. I packed up the tent this morning and walked back into town to Le Lion d’Or. The landlady was pleasant and I had a decent breakfast there. She charged me 5 euro for a 10 euro breakfast. And gave me an extra coffee for nowt. Good old kid!

This is the only original frontage of all the ancient houses in Sées.

Today my mission was to walk 25 kms to Alencon, through the Forest d’Ecouves, taking in Radon on the way. This is the village where my darling Maggie stayed with her penpal on school exchanges. Ending up at Alencon, where my mate Paddy would pick me up and I was to spend the night at his house.

I walked down the main road out of Sees, to the point where I had identified a track cutting across country. I was immediately accosted by a bloke in a car, with his window wound partly down. He shouted at me as if I was a straying dog. ‘This track is closed‘! He was just nasty.

This was my new route.

It took me directly into the Foret d’Ecouves. This is a huge forest, which rises to the highest point in Normandy, consisting of deciduous trees together with Scottish pine. I spotted them from their reddish orange colours, unmistakeable from here to Aviemore.

The lanes I was on were becoming narrower and less defined. Know what I mean? The same lane, which was tarmac, gradually became Mother Earth.

There is nobody here, apart from the odd trekker and, during the hunting season, the odd hunter. These are their hides, which they lurk in for days with rifles with night vision scopes. So they can cop the wild boar and deer.

The deeper I got into the Forest the quieter it was. I know it’s daft but I got myself a strong stick, just in case a potty wild boar took a run at me.

One year at our house in Tassat I was fishing in the river on the edge of a wheat-field. Suddenly a wild boar ran out of the wheat and missed me by less than a metre, plunging down into the river in front of me, running along the river bed and emerging up the far bank. All within a few seconds. They aren’t small and if it had hit me I would have been quite damaged.

I feel comfortable in forests. When I was 5 years old we moved out of inner-city Sheffield to a house that had a good sized wood 50 metres down the road.

After many miles the forest thinned out and I saw a farm.

From there on it was just a matter of lane walking for a couple of hours. Until Radon appeared!

Luckily although the local bar and shops were shut I caught a Saturday seafood stall as it was closing and got a decent bag of decent sized prawns before it closed.

And then I was off.

I legged it down south, hitting the outskirts of Alencon in fast time. Making it to the rail station to meet Paddy at 17.00.

A warm reunion, pleasant drive and a great stay at the historic family home with Paddy and his family. It was all wonderful.

Night night,