Things have changed

There has been a change. As we came through the woods south of Hénouville, the flat plains beyond Bardouville across the Seine's meander opened to us. The river was wide and south-leading; and I suddenly felt that we had left the coastal reaches behind us. The journey ahead was definitively turned towards Rouen and Paris. The metalic sky which reflected brightly in the water spoke of a more industrial heritage to come as we left the maritime heritage behind.

In other ways, too, our stop-over in Rouen was a tipping point. As we approached the city, the half-timbered, often thatched cottages within their small orchards and steep-sided paddocks started to fall away. The first brick-built house that came among them had been an oddity, used by people as a landmark. But east of the city brick is the dominant building material, topped by flat roof slates. Like the thatch and wattle-and-daub, however, these houses use local materials. The 'Pays de Bray' is a wide depression in the landscape, born of the slow erosion of rock layers dating back to the birth of the Alps. Well-watered and smooth, it is an area of clay and slate beneath the soil; of fields whose straw, allied to the clay, made the bricks for the houses.

Farming is more business-like here. There is little mistletoe and few orchards. The wide skies and open plains under arching blue skies feel like the top of the world. Small fields have long since been ploughed into large ones and the farms are more prosperous, the village houses bigger and confident-looking. But they are still only one room deep, so you can see the sky right through them.

There are hedges, too, another element that makes this area feel English, as do the paths which now take a muddy line through crops. At the approach to a fence I glanced up and for a second could have sworn there was an English stile awaiting us.

With the settling of an anticyclone over France and the lifting of spirits, Rouen also marked the moment at which spring apparently arrived. Not the half morning of warmth we'd had as we walked into Honfleur. That had been merely a promisory note for spring. This anticyclone is bestowing day after day of sunny, frosty mornings and afternoons reaching 12°C. Fleeces and hats are discarded; headscarf and sunglasses adopted. We turn our faces to the sun like the drifts of snowdrops that no longer surprise us. Like the primroses and celandines, the speedwell, the bees and a single butterfly. Like the daffodils that are only a day or two from blooming.

Today we had our first proper picnic lunch, sitting on the ground in the sun with our backs against a hedge. Pate, bread, apples. It may not have lasted long, but it was real.

9 February 2008