En route to Engelburg, St. Gallen Canton, Switzerland

Everything changed inside Switzerland really. I was joined in Schaffhausen by artists Ben Connors and Laura Wilson from London who were to travel with me for the final few days to St. Gallen. The walk in many ways ended with their arrival, it became something else, though there was one final leg of the journey that I completed on my own after their departure.

In short we took a boat down the Rhine from Schaffhausen to Konstance in Germany on the shores of the Bodensee and then took a short train ride round the lake into St. Gallen, arriving on the 6th of July. Upon our arrival to St. Gallen we instigated the first round of Performances now known as The St. Gallen School of Performance. The School is to reconvene on the streets of London in September 2009.

The St. Gallen School of Performance

We ate Fondue for lunch in St. Gallen and then Ben left for Zurich and eventually London. Laura left Zurich on the 9th of July and I then returned to St. Gallen for the final leg of my journey. Throughout the process of this walk in the past two years I have been in communication with a family I have never met, the family who currently live at the house I was born into in Engelburg on the outskirts of St. Gallen. On the afternoon of July 9th 2009, I walked out from St. Gallen to Engelburg to finally meet them, walking down the track that leads through the village from the house to the bakery.

Map of a sprawled village, stood in the red circle.

I am nervous as I type this, as I recall this family, this experience. I want to do them justice and yet not invade their life anymore than I already have. I felt so privilaged and honoured by the way they welcomed me into their home, and into their family in the subsequent days. Two years ago I wrote them a letter explaing my project, this insane venture, and they responded in an elegant and simple letter, that though they were currently doing some extensive house renovations I would be welcome to stay a week with them. In many ways it is this response that led me to feel that I had to try and walk there, that I owed it to them, to their hospitality to get there. I walked across a field talking to my mum on the phone, explaining I had found the track between the house and the bakery, which was about the only thing she could recall about how to find the house, a young couple were stood in the back garden smiling, waving, or maybe they were just stood their quite nervously, its all a bit of a blur to be honest.

I took a track between houses to get to the front of the house and a small fleet of children ran into me at the corner, giggling and following me in a little troop to the house. As I walked into the driveway Tunc (pronounced Tunch), the man of the house as it were, said “Welcome home”. I can’t remember how I reacted, I think I laughed a great deal, or smiled on the edge of laughter. I think we were all as nervous as each other. They showed me to my room, which was the room my brothers occupied when we were children. I should mention here that Erika, the family’s grandmother, bought the house off my mum, though my mum can’t remember this, Erika had me t me and my brother when we were children. She met me when I was a baby. This whole situation was the most surreal, the most amazing experience I have ever constructed for myself. The family made up of Erika, Tunc & Mirium and their two children Lara and David (a Welsh name, I rapidly noted in my mind) became the most amazing experience I think I’ve ever enjoyed as a member of the human race. We had raclette for dinner, I was relieved it wasn’t a sausage based meal and Mirium had for some reason suspected I was vegetarian, maybe its because I’m an artist, maybe its because I walked a lot, I’m not sure. Piles of melted cheese and grilled vegetables. Birthday cake for pudding. (Yes, they cooked me a birthday cake!) That evening we went through photo albums and talked in broken English translated between us by Tunc.

Engelburg church

I stayed with the family, in their home, for two days and in this time explained my plans for Switzerland. I wanted to visit the other Engelberg (note subtle spelling difference) deep in the alps and also wanted to visit a family friend in Solothurn. I had planned to do this on my own, but the family insisted, they were on holiday for the summer and I was their guest, their sister lived near engleberg so we would travel together. I walked, 650km or so, to a house full of complete strangers, who welcomed me into their family, and then took me on holiday around Switzerland. I didn’t know what to say, I’ve never said sorry and thank you so much in my life. I felt so cheeky, so grateful, and so sorry to have invaded their life, so touched by their generosity. So we drove to the alsp together. I sat in the back with their kids Lara and David and we played travel games together, lacing little jigsaw cubes together into brightly coloured masses. The kids were better at this than me, they were more tenacious, or just better, I don’t know. Whatever it all was, it was all amazing, I feel like they adopted me for a while, like I have annexed myself to their family or that they have annexed me to theirs. I look forward to seeing them again, to welcoming them to Britain one day. Or their Children, or their childrens children, there is a generational debt between us, I owe them and am forever grateful for what they showed my between the places on the map in Switzerland.

In a small room in North Wales, heavy silence. The only interruptions a solitary bluebottle fly, circling from door to window and back again, a fizz of buzzing everytime it comes up against the glass panes and the occasional play for attention from a Border Collie called Quin. I am home again, in a different place, and will begin my attempts to fill in the past with coherant descriptions and photographs that were collected across Europe over the past 6 weeks, the past 600 kilometres or more. I find myself, between moments, sat in the midst of north Wales, reading a book devoted to Hackney whilst trying to recall the fine details of what happened whilst I was walking to Switzerland. Somewhere I am trying to weave together this trio of locations that have all, somehow, come to define large parts of me.

It has taken me weeks now, to get used to being back, London is still proving exhausting, the constant barage of people. I return to the countryside often.

Self-portrait in studio, London, August 2009

From Switzerland, looking back towards Germany.

I sort of just walk over the border. I just walk in. Dissatisfied with the casualness of this I go back to the border and see if anyone wants to look at my passport. I point out the date and place of my birth but they do not need to stamp my passport anymore. The tranquility of the 21st century. I walk into Switzerland. The sky is bluer here, the water clearer, the fish in the water look happier, the farmers smile, the dogs dont bark, the shade seems cooler, the cherries more scarlet. And the hills, steeper. But for this thundery haze from this small peak I would be able to see the highest peaks in three countries. This glorious dappled light and these calm bees. I Walk down the hills under the shade of thunder clouds forks flash in my mind, too fast to see, I scuttle across the fields, aluminium strapped to my back. I walk into Schaffhausen, Switzerland. I sit down and I sit down and I sit down, And I sit.

Stuhlingen, Germnay, is literally on the border, its just the other end of town, I wake up late, casual, look round town a little, picking up pickles and trying to find a plug converter. There are little footpath signs that have in km the distance to places like Schleitheim, Hemmental, and Schaffhausen, they all have a little (CH) in brackets after them. Confederatio Helvetica. Switzerland. This is as exciting as it is surreal, and as it is normal. Im just going for a walk, just 20km or so, nothing too taxing, a hill in the way but really, I feel like a crow flying to whom borders are meaningless, a gesture that exists for maps and for language but matters little to rivers, or to trees, the air or the birds. Walking flattens nations, disempowers them. I just walk in. The border guards are busy talking to a man in a Jaguar and I just walk in. This is certainly unsatisfactory. I want someone to notice me for once, so I turn back and go and knock on the little door of the booth. They notice my place of birth and the date, I ask for a stamp in my passport but they don’t even have a stamp anymore, only airports or international trains they explain. Their English is excellent, they wish me a happy birthday and a good days walking. I make for the beginning of my route, the town of Schleitheim, then Hemmental, then Schaffhausen over the hill line. I follow the road for a couple of kilometres, breathing easliy, wave at a few farmers in a few fields, tending vineyards, it is hot, the sky is a crisp clear blue rising forever. The buildings have an air of age to them, the traditions of the place seep out of the very ground.

I had forgotten, really, that Swiss-German is an entirely seperate language. At a shop I visit in Schleitheim the people in the shop smile so warmly, they say words that are incomprehensible to me, but that feel honest and welcoming. I buy a yoghurt, a small lump of Gruyere and an apple and a banana. I walk through the village, the wealth adorning its church spire, glittering, the multicoloured tiles that pattern the roof. Past a farm on the edge of the village I sit in a small orchard no fences, in the shade of a cherry tree, rich with fruit, smothered in wasps. I eat the yoghurt, rich deep cream. I eat handfuls of cherries bursting with juice. I watch an eagle circle the sky from here across to Germany. Back and forth. The clouds build across the border. But this crisp blue holds above me. I turn to climb the hill beyond. The Randen range, a small line of steep edged mountains, just beneath the 1000m mark. Just hills here. But the steepest hill I have climbed, it rises 300m in little over 1 km, up through broadleaf, birches and beeches, oaks, the dappled light glints off my sweat drenched forearms. I have to down tools several times, using my rucksack as a seat. It gets so steep it switch backs and turns to rocky paths. Loose white stone, that shatters into jagged shapes so easily.

The peak of the hill is still crowned with trees, no breaks for a view, however, the swiss have built a high tower that reaches 20 metres to above the tree line so people can see what they can see. It is a spiral of metal stairs with viewing platforms at halfway and the peak. Etched metal maps of all the peaks you could see were it not for this thundery haze. The matterhorn, Mont Blonc, The Feldburg, The Great Ballon. The swiss alps, the french alps, the black forest and the vosges. I look into that haze. I crossed the Vosges in three days, I spent five days in the black forest, and I will visit the alps ere I leave this place. I have amazed myself. I have tortured myself too.

Just the other side of the peak is a campsite swiss style. A place for picnics and barbeques, there is a tipi, little stools carved to look like mushrooms positioned round campfires, a bus timetable, no road, picnic benches that could seat a hundred youngsters. I sat in the tipi for a moment before moving on through the forest, down a track, one white rock in my pocket. I look at places on google earth and cannot believe I walked through them, a small gathering of fields just past the forest, incongruously called Chesterfield, where forks of lightening flashed quickly through the sky, and I made for the shelter of the forests. I still burst out laughing with disbelief even now. I sat on a bench for a while there, listening to the roar of thunders, booming all around but no rain drops. All I want to do is be there again. This forest track turns into a road and this road turns into Schaffhausen, I pass through its outskirts, little kids with uniform rucksacks make their way home from school, its that time of day, it has not rained a drop. I turn for the way that I think will lead me to a youth hostel, and it does, some eccentric castle of a youth hostel, turrets on the corners, gable windows, ping pong tables, an excellent little coffee machine and the kind of staff I could have kissed.

I was exhausted, they put me in a dorm room, and they did not put anyone else in my dorm room, they did my laundry for free. I told them I had walked out from London 6 weeks ago, and that I had walked nearly 700km since then. That I had had to admit defeat in parts of France taking 2 train rides to keep me on schedule, that I had failed, but that I had succeeded in something. Their English was immaculate, I could even mumble a little. I sat down in my room in love with my arrival.

My dorm bay window, Schaffhausen YHA

Near the Feldburg 1459m asl

The weather spent the day being fairly threatening, I spent the day wondering how far I would get and where I would sleep, trying not to notice the no camping signs that could be found at the entrance to the Black Forest. The clouds rolled up and down the hills occasionally enveloping everything in a dense fug, the air was thick with bells resonating off the hills. A fancy 4 star hotel on the footpaths side hosts a car park filled with german, swiss and french vehicle, the way the countries in Europe seem to overlap at the corners, freely blending together, mixing people culture, flavours, flora and fauna. I take the wrong path at some point and doubel back after a few kilometres, the first moments of uneasiness above the rapidly moving cloudline. Still sunday walkers though, enough people for safe keeping.

Technically the peak of the Feldburg is somewhat out of the way for my route, just a few kilometres or so, and as I near it I conclude it really doesn’t look that exciting. Its one of those large bare nipples of a mountain, a rolling nobble, hard to define the actual peak. The Germans have also decorated it with heavy weather monitoring equipment, buildings painted like lighthouses, red and white stripes, satilite TV junkies, deep brick. Its getting quite late in the day and I sit down on a little well used perch, just off the path at the edge of a deep and sudden precipice. Swathes of dead trees mingle with the living down the valley and the ghost of Caspar David Freidrich is everywhere.

After Caspar.

I get to within 2km of the top of the Feldburg, at about 6pm, not knowing where I can sleep and just conlcude, sod it, I’ll just go up and over the top and see what happens. The clouds sweep in heavily, and fast, cows are being moved across the mountain by locals who also run taverns built on the side of the peak. 3 other people are still up here walking about too. I think for some reason that they are English, but I never hear them speak. We head off the peak in different directions. The run of peaks off to the south west from here, incomprehensible, atmospheric, deep with riches, no thunder today, too high for that humidity to climb. I keep to the south, the path is lined by poles three metres high, painted bright colours, I try and imagine the depths of the winter snow that necessitate them.

In a deep gorge to the south of the peak runs the mountain pass. Another of these winter sports destinations decimated by summer. Empty and silent. I look about for the hostel and find it, like some deserted hotel from a horror movie. I decipher a German note on the reception desk and dial 13, a young boy answers in German. From the guest book I decipher that there are three other guests that night, the place must be able to accomodate several hundred people at busy times, but for now, just three of us. I am a little bit alarmed and mainly exhausted but I have made tomorrows journey much shorter by getting past the Feldburg in todays 36km hike. Breakfast is served between 8 and 9, I have to be out by 9.20. As there are only three of us one would have liked to think they could relax the rules just a little.

High point.

Morning rose clear blue, and at 10 am I warmed myself on an alpine bench like a lizard. The bus from Freiburg drove over the crest of the pass and unloaded a few day trippers who vanished into the hills here and there. My path lay down hill for now, off

the south side of the black forest towards its largest lake. And as I descended the temperature rose, the clouds broke and the humidity built. I criss crossed paths through the forest whose heavy silence was augmented with the deep subtle humming of a thousand bees, busy amongst the canopy. I sat a few times on the hillside, where the forest broke to display its distant sides, and watched the weather changing, the heat building humidity, the humidity building clouds and the weather tumbling across the vast sky. A small hut in the forest provided a mildly alarming place to rest for the cheese, bread and apple lunch before moving off out of the forest and down into the valley at the head of the lake. Some cows watched me eat an apple. The lake ran off for miles. And I watched the rain come in, speeding my footsteps to avoid its droplets. In the porch of someones summer house I hid from the worst of the rain as the first rumbles of thunder boomed around the rim of the lakeside mountains. Huge roars but little affect on the downpours. The rain came back though in a bit, and this time I perched on the beach, eating the remnants of some brie with some dissappointing bread from Freiburg. On the lake little fishing boats bobbed with hoods on, hiding the men with their rods trailing off the back. The path kept on down the lake side, occasionally veering off to swing round some private boatyard. The rain never really got into it, but it never really went away either.

In Schluchsee itself I found a campsite that kept me company for two nights. As I woke up after the second I realised it was the first time I had camped for two nights in the one place. It made for a very messy tent. I got there some time just after 4oclock, that days thunderstorm was still booming around the valley and the occasional raindrop fell on me as I collapsed in a pile by my tent. The next day was officially a day off, I didn’t even have any laundry to do. I walked by the lakeside, read some books, ate a slice of cake in town, wrote a couple of postcards. It was almost like being on holiday. And as such, it went very fast. I cooked a couple of decent meals while there, the local shop in town providing a fantastic range of locally grown things and fresh produce. I ate yoghurts, which I always got really excited about, its the things you can’t carry that are the most exciting. Muesli aswell, with fresh milk. For dinner.

The only sunset I sat up for. Schluchsee

On my second night I had agreed to have a drink with a camper called Jacob who was from the Netherlands. He gave me a small glass of spirit, and I’ve completely forgotten what it was called. I got a bit tipsy after one if I’m honest, it had been several weeks since I’d had any liquor whatsoever. He was a multi-lingual – he even got as far as a spot of Hungarian – Dutch man who was a dab hand at anecdotes. The previous night he had engaged some Lithuanian campers in conversation late into the night, and this evening it was my turn. He was a whole world of stories, something sad hung about him, he loved Jeff Buckley, and we sat there in the near dark as Hallelujah blasted out from his car stereo speakers, I think we both nearly cried, we also drew some strange looks from the rest of the campsite. I told him about my fatehr dying, he told me about his wife leaving him to become a buddhist.

Every year he rescued crows that had fallen from their nests in the church in his village in Holland. He would look after them and bring them up and then release them once more into the air. He could often visit the village church tower and call down his crow, ‘Arken, Arken!’ and Arken would swoop down and settle on his shoulder once more. This was particularly poignant for me, earlier that day I had come across a baby bird in the path down by the lake, it was just crouched, all shut eyed and trembling, initially I wondered whether anyone would be able to do anything for it and I thought of Jacob, even though he had not told me about his crows yet. I put the little bird up in a crook of branches knowing it must surely die. On my way back the little bird had fallen off again and was getting attacked by wood ants. With the heel of my shoe I put it out of its misery. I could not bring myself to tell Jacob what I had done.

The next day was a long hard slog to the border town Stuhlingen. I started at a sociable hour, getting on the path for maybe 9am, I had time to wave goodbye to Jacob and left him a copy of my business card in his camping chair. I don’t know whether he ever got it. I followed the lake shore up and round past the town, and through a pass at its southern end, all the peaks around the sides of the valley pass a 1000m, but they do not look so high. The lake shore was my highest camp at 900m asl. I climbed over a pass and past what must be the highest brewery in Germany, Rothaus, is tiny wee village, seven houses, maybe a few more and a giant brewery building, emblazoned on the side is its gloriously dated logo, shiny copper towers, and a tour can be taken. I cross the road and dive off across a field heading for woodlands that weave past a tiny lake called Schluchtsee. This section is still arboretumised, little signs with information on bugs, beasts and all the trees, eccentric carvings appear on tree trunks, and the forest is full of insect freindly nesting boxes, bat boxes and bird boxes, an eagle swoops over an open field as a dog scampers off through the deep grass. I stop for a coffee near the tiny lake. Some naked german bathers below. Old wobbling flesh and a hollow instant coffee. The clockwork weather is winding up again, heavy clouds rumble darkly over the way. I get going down fire tracks, descending off the obvious routes down into sections of forest that feel primeaval, that feel like they are just mine. I am so alone, I am so happy here. The heat is gentle under the shade. I feel in control of every milimetre of my body, I leap over fallen trees I sing out scraps of songs that hang in my head. The sound track to the Wicker Man, Casiotone for the painfully alone, The mountain goats ring out amongst the trees. That bench we sat together on a thousand years ago. My spine tingles. The stream beside me increases its size, I have followed it from its source, I cross it by a stone bridge and pass a crowd of elderly walkers, barbequeing away. Its just hot heat now, open sky. The humidities rising. As I sit down on a high winding path to adjust my shoe, empty it of stones, the first rain drops fall, the first thunders crack.

Near the Schluchtsee and the nude bathers

I am stood now, on the edge of a forest and it feels like the edge of the forest, the borderline of a thousand thousand acres of solid forest, the first field for days, I cross it in trepidation, the aluminium on my back, the five dead cows, hit by lightening the other day. Five pregnant cows, struck down by lightening whilst sheltering under a tree, those bells around their necks, sucking the electricity down. I eat wild strawberries on the field edge, looking out across a skyline that must surely stretch to Switzerland. On this high plain I pass a golf course, how strangely suicidal I feel, forks of ligtening are all around, striking the nearby hills, the clouds are billowing up so quickly you can watch them bubble up thousands of feet into the air, the storm like a sky from hades. Vast ominous washes of thick grey. And little rich men holding sticks of metal in open fields. Adventure golf perhaps. Risk of death. Feeling like a long day now, only 26km but I’ve had enough.

The road to Switzerland. Corn rigs and Barley rigs.

At this final field, this final day of Germany, crossing into Switzerland the land becomes arable again and it feels like an accumulation of everything I have passed these days, the arable lands of northern France and southern England, the same crops, the fields of barley and wheat, that weird little bean plant, scare crows. A gibbet at a junction in the road and rare orchids in the eaves of a woodland. I walk down into Stuhlingen through some glorious broadleaf, trees snapped by the winds and the steepness of the gorge. I collapse in a campsite one last time. I say goodbye to my tent and Allemagne.

I arrived in Freiburg long before I found the hostel I was planning to sleep in. The city is a spread out tram friendly, cyclist filled, country city often sited as one of the greenest cities in Germany, which makes it one of the greenest cities in europe; all passive housing, healthy outdoor lifestyles and allotments. It also means that its quite wide and the Youth Hostel ‘in’ Freiburg is pretty much out the other side of the city, alongide the wide plains of the river that ploughs the city, one of those shallow fast flowing mountain jobs, clear as crystal and icy cold. But its hot today, really hot and my pack aches at my shoudlers as I walk 7km across town, from one edge to other. The river runs through the heart of the city the highway running either side of it in a quirky set up. Trendy bars have gardens full of trendy healthy Germans, stretches of the river almost feel like East London, somehow.

I stay here for three days, sleeping mainly, occasional attempts at speaking German are made but they don’t really get very far. Its hard to muster the enthusiasm and energy to do it as I’m only in the country for a few days really. On the foolish front I don’t take any photographs at all, I buy a pair of vintage shoes for 15euros, on the basis that they would cost me about £50 in London, and then I find the towns record shop, late on a Saturday afternoon. The double LP I buy (a 1959 recording of a conference hosted by Yves Klein in Paris limited to 500 copies) has to accompany me for the next 90km until I reach Switzerland and an open post office.

Camping after record shopping in Freiburg

Freiburg is one of the greenest cities in Germany, trams trace their lines through the city on grassy beds, old cobbles line the streets and new build passive housing springs up everywhere. The city itself is built on thin flat sections between sudden sharp peaks that form the black forest, and every day, fork lightening strikes the streets, the heavy rains cause the shallow river to take on swift personality changes and I soak myself in the warm storm whilst cycling to the swimming pool. In this humidity I heal my blisters and sleep in a room with 20 other people, or barely sleep. I try and make notes but by now, by here, I am very detatched from this process, very tired of documenting it, I just want to do it for a while, without having to think how I will later account for every second. And so I probably miss some things, there is no documentation of my shirt, slick and dripping, or the bike I rode around on, no evidence of my attempts at speaking German, no documentation of the sense of panic when I struggled to find somewhere to convert my final travellers cheque into cash, no documentation of a conversation I had with an elderly lady in the forest the day I walked out of town.

I left on a sunday, morning sunlight, double LP squashed into my rucksack, and walked south out of town and straight into the forest, thick black eaves, dense foliage, along an arborial path that every now and then labelled the tree with its latin and germanic name, the forest busy with people. Nordic walkers, young runners, elderly couples, dog walkers, a large bunch of people doing some sort of dance with sticks, all kinds of energetic healthy people. Only the size of my pack and my inability to speak German really picked me out. The path wove up into the woodland, signposts poking off here and there, up and down, everynow and then the path became a forest track thick with pine needles patterned like ripples on the sea floor from the recent thunderous downpours. My boots occasionally vanished under thick mud. The Germans, unlike the french, do not talk to strangers whilst walking, in fact they seem strongly to ignore you, as though you are ruining their attempts at solitude as they are ruining yours.

Freiburg, just outside Freiburg

Swiss flag flying from the first Schrebergarten I passed.

Across the Rhine, the border, no borders anymore, just McDonalds and Coca Cola. I climb through Vineyards in the heights above Oppfingen and lose myself in its veins.  Wine runs everywhere down the hils and Germany is not pushed to signposts. I find Frieburg the other side of a forest and sleep there for three days, struggling to change my mind to German.

The mind stuttered and stumbled like my feet. German sounds so aggressive, the compound adjectives that stretch on for oh so many syllables, literally compunding the problems of pronunciation. The border was easy, decorated with McDonalds, Coca Cola and grapevines, French people buying boxes of cigarettes. streams of Harley Davidsons heading fof the Vosges and the soft cheeses. I followed a cycle path that followed the main road and I passed almost immediately the first of many allotments or Schrebergartens that Germany is somewhat famed for, maybe this fame was only really highlighted to me recently by Jeremy Dellars adventrues in Muenster, but they certainly are neat and well used, little flags poking up here and there, a swiss one a german one, one of the Schwarzwald area, or Baden-Baden. A pleasure. A little pond was nearby available for fishing but not for swimming, an impressive pedestrain bridge sweeps across the mainroad and Germany’s roadsigns are yellow, France’s were blue. Kilometres still though. The autobahn takes 24km to get to Frieburg from here, I plan to cut across the hills above Oppfingen and cut this distance a bit as I’ve already walked 10k this morning. I make for a village that may have been called Gundlingen and then pass down a track into a section of forest, just cutting east for the nearby hill line. Paths trace off to the left and right, I sit down for a spot of shade and listen to woodpeckers crack their way through the forest.

At the far edge of the forest a man emerges from the deep woods, I struggle to remember to say Guttentarg rather than Bonjour but he does not seem bothered about acknowledging my existence at all, a theme that will develop throughout Germany. I pass across some fields of maize to the main road that is gracefully small and follow it for a short way before trying my luck through the vineyards that cover the steep hill that protrudes before me. I sit beneath a cherry tree for a while before making this move through the vines that is definitely off any sort of path, the track I had followed deadended at this cherry tree, it became field edges by grapelines. Stepped into the hills. I climbed from one step of vines to another, deep terraces with ladders in the corners for the vinters to utilise. The pack on my back trying to drag me off the ladders. The little baby grapes looking so eager under the sun.

I bring myself to a lane that cuts through the mess of vineyards and pass several unmarked juncitons whilst climbing the hills. Fields left and right thick with grapes. Big men sat on small narrow tractors pass me by and I finally realise they are on little narrow tractors that can fit between the vines and spray their chemicals off the back. So many lanes, so many that seem to just dead end, it becomes a maze. At the crest of the hill I sit down, the landscape is almost checkboard for miles little houses poke out here and there, a large cruxfix underneath one tree. Several little tractors puffing away like drones. A bench here in the sun, where I sit down for lunch, french bread, german soil. Apples from some far off land. Before me the whole of the black forest towers away, in the distant mug of heat I can see Frieburg nestled between the eaves of the wood, little towers. The hills climbing off to the south and east, steep and cloud topped, humid looking wet clouds.

Overlooking the Black forest, with french bread.

I move on and at a roundabout a man in a car pulls over and, I assume, asks me where I’m going. Allemagne I declare. Germany’s quite close now so walking there is almost a normal thing to be doing. He grunts and points east. I follow his finger. Neuf Brisach is the border town with Germany. It is a 17th century creation of Louis XIV’s, an eccentric exapmple of a fortified town, a many pronged star constructed out of 30foot deep trenches and 3 metre thick walls. Walking into it felt like entering another world, I felt like a pilgrim nearing Rome, amazed that men could build such things.

I slept in the campsite here, arriving after office hours and leaving before them. Exiting town via the bakery at about 8am. By 10am I was sat in Germany outside a McDonalds opposite a Vineyard, long lines of traffic crawling either way. No border guards though, barely a border at all really, just a bridge from one side of the river to the other, one side in France, the other in Germany. I just walked in. Disappointing really, I was expecting a grilling from strict suspicious German border guards. And now the language change. I had been speaking half remembered, broken French for a month of so and now, in the space of a hundred yards I had to switch to German. I struggled with this, I really really struggled. And today was a long way. Into another city on the edge of the Black Forest.

In the morning I sit in the campsite in Turkheim for a little while, today is one of my shortest days, its only 5km or so to Colmar, I sit and watch an elderly dutch campervan camper feed crisps by hand to one of the local Cranes. These birds are huge. Somewhat larger than swans with square wings like a herons. Atop the local church there is a nest built for them, a shallow dish like a giant tea light holder that they then fill with twigs and baby Cranes which are also massive and have an awful lot of trouble trying to stand up. Tourists gawk at them. So do I I guess. All the tourist shops sell little cuddly Cranes, or tea towels with Cranes on.  I set off down the river that runs through the town, the bakeries compete to sell me my breakfast and I eat bananas all along the footpath. Kids skate past on their way to school and I have to go for a piss beneath a very windy willow tree that nearly causes me some problems. The path arches round the local college and some vineyards that are sliced in half by the single train line. Kids playing truant, or perhaps high school drop outs hang about by the platform. I enjoy looking at all the tiny grapes just starting to take their forms. Pretty much at the end of these fields is the edge of Colmar. A huge dog untied lounges in a driveway and I hope to heaven its not the aggresive type due to its apparent freedom. Its placid and I scamper past onto roads looking for a route into Colmar. If I head directly East I shouldn’t miss the town centre. This sort of works. I buy thin socks and a clean t-shirt in a hypermarche on the skirt of town, one of massive places where the ceiling is miles away and you can’t really see the edges of the shop floor. Outside I eventually figure out that I can follow a small stream into the heart of town and find the tourist information after little effort. Then I find out where the hostel is and walk back the way I came only to find it doesnt open for another hour. I sit down and eat the rest of my Comte and bread, drink all my water.

The hostel front man is a bit of an oddity, I am forced to buy a memebership card and he kindly informs me that it is valid everywhere, even apparently, someone once told him, on the moon and into the depths of space. I am just relieved Im allowed my own room, I further infuriate him by not wanting to pay for the breakfast because I don’t want to get up before 9am. Then I go off and buy a box of special K which I eat for dinner and breakfast. The next day is the usual civilisation challenge, find a launderette, exchange travellers cheques and try and buy some more meths for my stove. These three things don’t quite go to plan. The launderette seems to be going well but after almost an hour of using the dryer my clothes are still decidedly wet due to the machines lack of heat, I switch to another machine which refuses to work so I try the third machine which does produce heat and does work. I am starting to feel like Goldilocks at this point, first too cold, then too hot. It then procedes to produce far too much heat and burns all my precious base layers to high heaven, or perhaps hell is more fitting. They come out scarred and tight, very very tight. I am not very happy at all.

Something odd is going on in town, nearly all the shops are in the process of changing their window displays, naked mannequins stare across the street at each other. Its a subtle but surreal little oddity. They have those big saucers for cranes to nest in here too and I join a gaggle of tourists near the cathedral to stare at some of this years brood attempting to stand on their gangly legs without falling out of the nest and down the side of the cathedral. Colmar is a beautiful place, a medieval city, all crooked buildings painted in technicolour, eccentric buskers play bizarre little instruments wearing odd little hats to people enjoying bowls of ice cream on coobled squares. Fountains here and there, a canal running through a part of town called little venice. Houses that can only be reached by the water and a vague recollection of reading about one of the kings of France that hid in this quarter for a while.

The next morning I walk out of town at midday, through its centre and out east, and ah ha! the reason for the mannequins is explained to some extent. Like some cartel the entire town has started is summer sale on the same day! All the mannequins are now happily draped in red sale t-shirts and 50% off flags. But the entire town, in one go. Im sure this doesn’t happen at home in quite the same way. Who knows. I don’t find any meths either though I do manage to change some travellers cheques. I leave town by way of the river L’ll that turns south for a while to run parrallel to the Rhine that flows north to my surprise. I remember being a child and looking at maps, thinking that all rivers must run south because thats kind of downhill, down the earth, how could rivers possibly run up the earth? On the banks I find a little spot that is for naturists though there are no naturists at the time I visit. I collapse in a field of deep grass under the midday heat, attempting to relax in the sun is a foolish idea when you have to get up and walk 20km with 20kg on your back.

Two postcards carried 50km

Downhill today.  Just a touch of up to a strange site. A german military cemetary on French soil, how strangely must the psyches of people here be formed. Cold metal crosses under Scots pine trees, ringed in stone. Camp in Turkheim where Cranes circle in the skies. A music festival, an accordian orchestra and a punk funk band called The Noseshits.. And Colmar, through a hypermarches and down backwater routes to St. Joseph.

At the end of a hard, yet amazing 36km I slept in a less than perfect stretch of pine forest, steep and rooty, with its fair share of bugs due to nearby boggy sections. A fleet of motorcyclists swept the mountain road down below my camp. I ate soup, amazing how amazing simple hot food can be at need. I had walked a long way off the path to find a place to camp so the next morning I woke early, pine cones digging into shoulder blades, roots wrapped around hips. And here, for the first time, my scheduling – or sort of scheduling – provided a slight of relief, two short days followed by two days off in the medival town of Colmar. But first the two ‘short’ days.

19km to Turkheim. I dragged myself downhill, snaking on a small lane round the nearby peaks to get back to the path and siscovered I had walked 3km out of my way just to find somewhere very crap to sleep. The days path, marked by a blue x, took us off the road between a very shy gap between gardens, stepping above their lawns and a small stream, a pile of gnomes in one garden, a pile of vegetables in the other. The steeps little gulley worked my legs and I missed my staff, straining for something to drag me up the hill. I soon sat down, atop a sort of crest that fell steeply away to the watery cause of all this hill. I found the nearest staff sized object and set about carving a handle for myself. Then I ate an apple in its entirety, casting just the little stalk into the woodland, and rose again. Music was the hardest thing, not having much music, or the time to sit and listen to it properly. The path and I kept climbing, a neat gulley between pine on the left and steep fields on the right falling up. At some point the path I needed to take had been rudely taped off with something like police tape but in yellow, I stepped over it and the path broke out into fields either side, light streaming in from the ever widening sky. A pipe poked out of a wall nearby gushing water of a slightly foul nature onto the path, causing slipping and squelching. I arched round this low wall and onto the farm drive, a house behind me defended by a private sign and a picture of a dog. I kept climbing to this next crest, two balloons deflated from a party tied to a lamp post, bright yellow flowers dancing in a wind only my face could feel, an elderly man dressed in gentlemans dress passed me by, was it sunday morning? A church day, I wasn’t sure, he was well dressed though, thats sure. An ancient tractor crept our way, a father and his two young children wrapped up in coats out to do a mornings work. I pulled faces at the kids as they went past, giggling, a stream of cows had just been unleashed on the fields below and they were gushing out mooing and braying in their freedom. I turned and set off to get over this last little uphill.

One of those sprawling villages the continent seemed by now to favour, no real heart to it just lots of space, extensive vegetable patches and me, perusing the gardens searching for a tap that might provide my first drink of the day. All attached to hoses or housed inside. Its something like 8am. It could be a monday. I press on and stop at a small field of goats and nibble precious items from a cherry tree. These are rich up here, bountiful this side of the mountains, high boughs cast in deep shades of purple, the edges depleted by people like me, and tall goats. A bunch of cyclists at a bus stop, all weeing on nearby trees, very strange.

My map confuses me here, there are a mess of paths, a nice looking hotel, and so many cherry trees. This is the flat crest, I have reached the final peak of the Vosges and they have built houses all over it. Cyclists and motorcyclists, by the time I reach a huge ants nest I realise I’ve gone the wrong way, I rest my stick too close to the nest and a hundred ants, in aggresive postures mount themselves upon it, they climb onto my boots and after watching them for a while, I shake the little buggers off and abscond, back the way I came. I am comfortable today, I know its not far, in the sunlight I sit on a bench, little statue of Jesus just over my shoulder and I listen to a few songs on my phone, sit there smiling. A house nearby is blaring out French Reggae and I really enjoy this too. I walk past a campsite where civilised people go to sleep, but they do not get to watch pine martins over breakfast. The paths multiply like rabbits under beautiful canopies of woodland, tempting pine beds and open stretches of broadleaf. I wiggle a bit there are so many options, like walking the streets of london, criss cross left then right being the same as right then left. Several cyclists, several walkers, all with enviably small looking rucksacks, a muesli bar a bottle of warter, a camera perhaps. Lightweights.

I come to a bit of a clearing and behind some hedgerows is  a large Chalet that seems to be hosting some not so secret meeting of sunday hikers. Elderly couples arrive in fancy cars and try and figure out where to park, childrens voices rise in E-number fueled screams. I sit on a bench here for a while, perpetually glad to let the floor carry my rucksack for a while. An elderly couple, fit and elegant as 17th century violins walk the path in front of me, and intrigued by the size of my rucksack they enquire as to where I am going. After explaining my intimidatingly poor French I tell them I am walking to Switzerland. I seem to have arrived at a geographical location where this is no longer a mad prospect. A long way yes, but not completely insane. I tell them I plan to do it in about 10 or 12 days from here, the man makes an impression of a buff, muscular man to suggest that by then I will be almost superhuman. I become tempted to explain I’ve walked the majority of the way from London but hold myself back, knowing my french is not particularly capable of the task of justifying this madness. They walk on, poles in hand. I head for the small town of Trois Epis where finally I can gather some water. I also stop for a coffee and cake, and a can of coke, and write the postcards I bought on the other side of the Vosges at Col Du Bonhomme.

This town is home to the German grave on French soil, a detailed list of all the soldiers is included in a hole in the wall, the pattern of the grave is different, the mood created by the setting much heavier. The whole experience is quite dark, hidden on the edge of town beneath a pile of pine trees and ringed in stone.

Alphabetically deceased

There is a visitors book aswell but it is completely empty, at this I become intimidated and can think of nothing to say though I so much want to say something.

The rest of the journey is downhill, hundreds of little electric blue beetles are here. On one pile of poo on the pathside there seem to be at least fifty all rolling over each other in glee. I eat lunch formed of Comte, Apples and hunks of bread on a neat little outcrop of rocks amongst a very open stretch of pine woodland, I treat myself to some more songs from my phone and text England to let it know I’m ok. A cyclist moving at speed is the only person I see all afternoon. I also pass several concrete bunkers built into the forest, small windows and scars of gunfire. I try and creep inside one but my rucksack doesnt fit and I use this as an excuse to avoid admitting I find it a bit too alarming.

The edge of Turkheim is covered in vineyards, these are the first I’ve seen since champagne and these are dedicated to wine, caves are built into the hills beneat them as I arrive into the old town centre. I circle the campsite, desperate for an entrance, for a shower, for a sit down, to get this thing off and not have to put it on again for at least a few hours. I lie down in the sun in my own corner near my exploded pile of things and drift in and out of sleep. Opening my eyes occasionally a giant bird circles the air above. 3pm.

For the duration of my trip across France I have passed through villages that have just had or are just about to have fetes, festivals or parties of some sort, but now, in Turkheim was my time. I arrived into town the evening of the towns Fete De La Musique! On offer were several things, an accordian orchestra, a covers act playing Doors songs amongst other things and a young punk-funk trio called, somewhat incongruously The Noseshits. Hmmm. Choices.

Turkheim by the way has an incredibly quaint 16th century town centre, all bright pastel buildings and wooden frames, eccentric clock faces and shops full of tea towels, that sort of thing. Old town gates with rickety stairwells up the sides, a pub called Le Homme Savage which was, at the moment I walked passed it blasting out Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnies Tyler. Further down the street some kids were pumping trance classics out of their bedroom window and round the corner the ubiquitous French hiphop also from some upstairs windows, somewhat reminiscent of La Haine. I enjoyed a bierre Picon in the backyard and was tricked into excitement by a Hummingbird Moth that fed on the pub flowers. I did not however, particularly enjoy the noseshits. The Accordian orchestra on the other hand were a bit fantastic.

German graves, French soil.

Above a precipice, staring at germany through the haze, a border collie befirends me wildly while her owner does an impression of a cow, illustrating her question. Descend through Orbey and alpine flowers, kill the heart of darkness and my staff – stabs me in the chin and splinters beneath my fall. In the night Pine Martins rush silently above me from branch to branch to branch, their frog like barks tracing their movements. In the morning they scamper in the light.

Interlude. (I killed a grasshopper by mistake*)

you realise you are as inconsequential as the last human, as important as the first. You realise there are so many people doing so many things, that everything comes to matter as much as everything else. Or as little.

Before I left I had a conversation with a man who said I had to be prepared for this journey to be completely inconsequential. For it not to matter at all, for it not to change anything, for it not to be noticed. And I think, and I have thought on this for all these days of farmland and villages, night and day, forest and gendarmarie, all the mornings I have woken having no idea where it is that I will sleep next. And it is a thing that makes me so sad I become happy again, when you have plumbed the depths of this thought, this possibility, when you have discovered that everything you thought mattered so much matters not at all you obtain a kind of peace usually only offered by the grave, or the open sky, the blue of distance and disappearance. The joy of presence, that the moment you are in is everything. A two bit bar with flies and the noise of French pop music. Everything. As consequential as inconsequence, as nameless as defined. As Rebecca says, so easy to recall, so impossiible to describe.

*The grasshopper to which this passage is dedicated died in the gap between the fly sheet of my tent and the inner bit as I rolled it up one morning,, the next night I lay there and stared at its buckled dried out corpse and wrote.