Brian had commented that we hadn’t been on a walk for a while. We often go for a ‘balade’ (stroll) around the village, but we had not taken a day to go on a proper walk for a while.

So yesterday we headed to Mesnil-Saint-Pére, near Lac d’orient, with our bottles of water and picnic, ready for our walk. We would normally have our walking boots on, but for some reason we decided our Skechers were okay. I’d originally said to Brian ‘Do you think we can do 14.5 miles, it’s all flat?’ I don’t know what I was thinking, as I really don’t like walking much more than about 10 miles in a day. However Brian thought we could manage it, and I had said we could shorten the walk towards the end if we wanted to.

So off we set. We had a real spring in our step to start with and the path was pretty good so we made good progress.

And most of all we were really enjoying being out and navigating our way around the french countryside, stopping now and again to enjoy the wildlife.

I’d pointed out a viewpoint on the map which I’d suggested we stopped at to have lunch. We knew we were soon approaching it as we crossed a dyke between two small lakes. They were really quite beautiful, covered in water lilies with silky white flowers popping up all across the lake. A very long legged stork was chattering away on the far side. Not quite sure who or what he was talking to, but he was making a lot of noise.

As we came off the dyke I spotted a ladder up a tree which I pointed out to Brian. It looked very high, poking its way up through the canopy of the trees. Before I knew what was happening Brian was off climbing up the ladder. ‘Hun, be careful’, I shouted up. ‘It looks very wobbly from down here’. He told me afterwards that he was just focused on getting up the ladder, he was not listening to me, and concentrating not to look up or down, but at the tree straight ahead. It was a long way up, and I’m really not sure he’d looked at what he’d committed to. In fact, at the top, he was nearly completely hidden by branches.

He said that at the top the platform had most of its planks missing and the frame was very rusty, so decided not to step onto it. And that then made him start thinking about ‘Is the ladder actually that safe?’ No time to dwell, he took the photo he was on a mission to take, by hanging on with one arm and sweeping around for the panorama shot, which is why it’s a bit wonky, then calmly returning step by careful step back to terra firma.

After a brief look at the pictures he had taken, we kept walking for about another 10 minutes, walking slightly uphill and coming out into some maize fields and corn fields. I said ‘I’m really not sure where this viewpoint is and what it is of! We then realised, of course, the ladder was the viewpoint! Needless to say , that was not somewhere to go back to sit and eat lunch. So we found an alternative spot.

Over lunch we realised we were getting a bit weary. We had walked about 8 miles, and asked ourselves could we do another 6.5miles? ‘No’, I said, and Brian agreed it would be a good idea to shorten the walk. So looking at the map I could see that at the next village we could cut about 3 miles off the original plan.

So off we headed. Unfortunately though we didn’t foresee that the path we were to take was extremely uneven under foot, so it took a lot of concentration and effort to walk over the ground, ensuring we were sure footed. Soon though we could see the village of Mesnil, and approached the lake.

We knew then that saucisse et frites and a chilled beer was not far away.

Where’s the viewpoint?

Stretch it

Pass sanitaire