Pavant is a village on the same
side of the river as our mooring and nestles in the hills overlooking the Marne
valley and Charly-sur-Marne that we visited yesterday. There are five marked trails around Pavant
and we chose the five mile one that takes in the Hatois woods and promises
wonderful views across the Marne valley.
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| A track through the bois du Hatois |
First, we had to get to Pavant itself
and had some fun walking across a flood footway on the way. In times of flood the River Marne flows
across the fields below Pavant and pedestrians can still get to Charly using
the footway even if vehicles are unable to.
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| The flood footway |
It was a very grey day but at
least the drizzle had stopped. Walking
between fields of vines we could see Pavant ahead and the woods of Hatois on
the hills above.
Our walk would take us through the
village then in a an anti-clockwise direction around it, through the woods to the top of the hills and then back down to the village.
All the walks start by the pigeonnier which is by the mairie. The pigeonnier is a dovecote that was built
in the 1500s and is where we found out that Jean de la Fontaine (he of fable
fame) was born in the next town we are staying in, Château Thierry.
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| The 16th century dovecote |
Next to the dovecote was a notice
similar to yesterday’s, ‘Le Renard et les raisins’ by the lavoir at Saulchery. This one read, ‘Les deux pigeons’ which was
another of Jean de la Fonatine’s fables.
It was then that we noticed a metal dove attached to the side of the
dovecote and then, as we walked away, we noticed two more at the top of the
fountain.
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| The fountain and its doves |
This was clearly too much for a
coincidence and reading the notice we found that 46 towns and villages around
Jean de la Fontain’s birthplace, Château Thierry, had competed in a competition
to celebrate his fables. Each place was
given a fable and had to characterize it on their lavoir. It was just our luck that the only place not
to have a lavoir was Pavant ☹
I wonder how many more we will
find while we are in the area?
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| Hikers’ board by the mairie |
We were following the blue route
so we had to keep our eyes open for blue paint marks so we knew we were on the
right track.
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| At this point we were on the blue and the yellow paths |
When we got to an intersection of
five tracks there were no helpful paint marks but we knew we
weren’t at the top so turned right
as that was the steepest track and also felt the right direction. It wasn’t long before we found a trusty blue
mark.
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| The five-way intersection |
On our way back down, as we came
out of the trees, we could see right across the valley. With the drizzle though, the views weren’t
quite what they should have been in August 😉
We got back home just in time, as
it started raining properly and it carried on for a few hours during the
afternoon. It was quite surreal as we
sat indoors with the cricket on the radio knowing that the sun was shining at
Lords.
The weather on Sunday was forecast
to be wet and windy so we decided to stay put for another day and move on to
Château Thierry on Monday. Although the
sun didn’t appear until late afternoon, it only rained occasionally and the
predicted gusts of 70 kph never arrived.
So, in retrospect we could have safely moved but not being on a tight
schedule it didn’t matter of course 😉
Karen’s morning run took her down the
river on the far side and she was able to see the pumping stations we passed on
our way up on Friday.
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| A closer view of the vine pumps |
While Karen and Buddy were out, I
got on with the annual sweep of the chimney flue. This entails removing the chimney itself and
then hanging a mooring chain down the flue from the roof. Once the chain is in then it’s a simple
matter of swinging it around to remove all the soot that has built up. Of course, it is vital not to forget that the
stove itself will then be full of soot and will also need clearing out!
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| Karen said she took this on her return from her run just in case I fell in 😊 |
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