The Beautiful South

What a day! An amazing race south through Haute Marne, following a fantasitc piste cyclable along the canal. The poor souls in their cars were ploughing up hill and down dale and I was pacing along, watching the landscape change. Champagne's low rising plains and empty stubble fields retreated and green hills began to rise from slopes of bright green pasture. The tops were clad with pocket woodland and suddenly there was bird song, and the small day to day delights/ the lonely cries of honey buzzards circling and the grate of crickets as the day waxed into full summertime. Somewhere beyond Chaunmont (I am now in Langres) the Marne began to tuirn from a thick sluggish green brown vein to a gushing brook, cascading over weirs and half hidden in thickets of willow and briar rose. It was utterly enchanting, and even better for being more or less effortless. I could enjoy the changing landscape, secure in the knowledge I was not - yet - going to have to climb those lush green hills or meandering through the winding valleys.

The landscape is definitely changing, my friends. I bought new maps today and my, they are getting scary. It is no longer very easy to find a good route: all those rivers I have been happily following are now reaching their sources and, in fact tomorrow I will cross an important watershed: the plateau of Langres if in fact the point at which the rivers no longer flow towards the Channel or the Atlantic, but towards the Mediterranean. Burgundy is just across the way and Franche Comte beckons. As do the Jura. What I find ,most worrying is that there don't appear to be any minor roads any more (at least not ones which don't look like varicose veins) and so I shall have to risk becoming roadkill at the same time as risking a coronary.

Yes, I find I am slightly dreading that first gulp-tastic view of the Alps. Not long away now, mes amies! I can almost here the yodelling from here.

a bientot

Vx