Postcards.
Postcards were sent from key points along the route. They were sent in duplicate, one forward to my destination, and one back to the journey’s starting point in Hackney. Below are images of all the cards sent with details of what was written on each. Also given is the place and date of sending laid out thus -
Image
Description of image as given on back of Postcard
Location if not given above
Date
Transcript of postcard
Ashford, Kent. The High Street and Church of St. Mary the Virgin.
03 / 06 / 2009
Concrete turns to chalk dust,
London fades.
And all this air the smell of summer
Dover Castle
04 / 06 / 2009
Gunshot just before sleep
In a private woodland just off a pilgrims way
Mild panic swallowed by exhaustion
and three castles down
La Cote d’Opale
Calais
06 / 06 / 2009
A last few drops of English rain
School children flood the ferry
And Calais is a grey flotilla
Laon en 1625 – Gravure de Matheiu Merian
08 / 06 /2009
Slept through trains for blisters sake
Laon cathedral croissants,
A campsite and a deep slope out
Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Reims
10 / 06 / 2009
Two days across the battlelines and wrath
Of wars.
Armies of children battle with wooden swords
After the rains came down
55000 BAR-LE-DUC
15 / 06 / 2009
You pass through landscape
Changing with the peaks of the hills
At one rise the horizon turns,
to nothing
Camille Corot 1796 – 1875
Moivre
11 / 06 / 2009
Straight roads and the plains of France
Huge skies, heavy with rain
And 29km of nothing today
Camping Caravaning “Les Iles”
Charmes
18 / 06 / 2009
After the thunderstorm comes the heat,
Where my feet shed their skins like snakes
With miscalculation
88 – Les Vosges
St. Die Des Vosges
20 / 06 /2009
The loneliness seeped in St. Die,
Like the water, gently dripping through the roof of my tent
Les Vosges Pittoresques
Col Du Bonhomme
20 / 06 / 2009
Dropped out fo the forest,
Completely alone
Fell into a bus load of old German people
Such is Surreality
68000 COLMAR
23 / 06 / 2009
Down off the mountains
And stand on flat earth,
Through the final vineyards of France
I stare at Germany beneath its clouds
Blick uber die wiehre auf die christuskirche
Freiburg
27 / 06 / 2009
They have vineyards opposite McDonalds
And I get lost in the labyrinth
Approaching their first city
Hohenluftkurort Schluchsee im hochschwarzwald
Schluchsee
30 / 06 / 2009
A days weather in the mountains,
Changes at the pace of a weeks elsewhere.
Three weeks in.
Switzerland
Schaffhausen
03 / 07 / 2009
The black forest vanished under peals of thunder
Forks struck the Swiss horizon
As the next day,
Azure blue skies welcomed me home.
St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek
St. Gallen
08 / 07 / 2009
Job done.
bramthomasarnold
