300 kms: Long Way to Walk for Foie Gras?

If you have been to Paris or travelled in the many tourist destinations around France, you probably would not believe that there are culinary deserts in some parts of this country, where you might be grateful at the end of a 20 km hike, for the micro-wave ready curry (which has been slowly defrosting in your ruck-sack all day); because a few nights before, dinner was boiled egg and bread kindly provided by your rural gîte host..

Some of the tiny settlements along the path we have been walking through Hauts-de-France have no shops of any description. Even in middle sized towns, like Tergnier, which you reach across vast railway yards and streets lined with blocks of flats, eateries are an unenticing string of pizzeria and friterie along a busy highway.

In smaller places you can have the strangest conversations with Google’s translation services. Here I quote the end of an sms exchange between Walking Buddy and very kind Air B&B Host at Bertaucourt (village of maybe two dozen houses, a little off the VF track):

Host: No food here. No shop.

WB: Can you perhaps leave some bread and cheese in the house?

Host: Because I already went to the races yesterday. Cannot go today. (WB can find no adequate way to respond to that)

Even in the more touristy places, like Arras, with its historic churches and city squares, the daily rhythm of the walker is often out of kilter with that of cafes and restaurants. Walkers often want their breakfast unseasonably early and dinner unfashionably so. And when they walk into town in mid-afternoon every reasonable cafe owner is having a little break between the lunch and dinner crowds.

That said, it does appear that there is a little bit of a problem with food in Pas-de-Calais, the westernmost province (department) of the Hauts-de-France region, where the first quarter of the French VF lies.

At the tourist office in Arras. I asked the lovely young woman with fluent English, what we should sample as local food. ‘Hmmm’, she said, and ‘aahhh’ after much metaphoric hand-ringing. She comes from an area further to the south and clearly does not want to say anything negative. Eventually she says ‘well, this area has a lot of chips and also some local beers.’

We have been walking between potato and canola farms for two weeks or more and some super-markets in this area stock more varieties of potatoes than pretty much all green vegetables put together. For environmental reasons one should indeed eat locally grown foods, so chips make good sense. And, way back when, this area was ruled by the English for over 200 years. And that is all I am saying about food in Pas-de-Calais Department of Haute de France.

We had walked a little over 300 kms from Canterbury when we panted up the final 100 metre ascent into the medieval walled city of Laon. The Cathedral was built to strike awe and from the top of the town the surrounding plane is astonishingly lovely. It is, however, May Day and 3 p.m – only fools and foreigners would want to eat at this hour. Fortunately, the gourmet eatery, just across the Cathedral square will open at 7 and yes they can fit us in!

Really, one should walk a long way before eating Foie Gras – there are 462 calories in every hundred grams of the stuff and then there is the burden of sin from eating food with a dubious history of animal cruelty which demands additional self-flagellation.

The chicken mousse amuse-bouche goes before I can take my camera out. Followed by Fois Gras which WB has been praying for since we landed in Calais off a stormy sea. Then the ‘local speciality’ ‘rabbit sausage’ for WB and ‘pour Madame?’ They can recommend the dish always popular with English tourists, ‘duke with o-hwr-aange’.

As April turns to May, the ground underfoot is firmer. With days so long, it is less daunting to take on longer distances.

The topography is changing too. Past Peronne on the north-east corner of Department Somme, the surroundings have mellowed, with rivers and canals criss-crossing the way, some of which runs through pretty parklands. Sunday in mid-spring has brought fishermen out in droves, and yes, they are ALL men – with fishing rods longer than I ever imagined!

Walking into Laon was an up and down affair, with hillocks rounding out the harsh flat horizon we have been chasing for the previous 250 kms since Wissant. The foie gras has soothed the hungry spirit, and no doubt given us wings to take on our first 30km day tomorrow.

WB’s French is improving by leaps and bounds: he has stopped introducing me as his Mary or Mairie or Mari in turn. But I still cannot tell the difference between ferme and a ferm, which is a bit problematic when trying to book accommodation, when the only place within a cooee (in Australian parlance) is a farm gite, firmly shut since COVID killed off the trickle of tourists passing through the village…

NB: the title of this blog is inspired by Brian Mooney’s book about the Via Francigena, A long way to walk for a Pizza