by Tony Hawks
“Well, actually that’s postponed now.”
“Aha!” said Anne, as Malcolm seemed to wince ever so slightly. “Then that means you can do the transhumance after all!”
Ah yes, now it all fell into place. The obvious upside of having failed to make the house purchase for which the trip had been expressly designed was that I would now have the chance to follow a herd of cows up a load of hills.
“Great,” I said, suspecting that Malcolm was suppressing a snigger. “Is it an early start?”
“No. Seven o’clock,” said Anne with a deadpan delivery that would have made many a comedian proud.
Malcolm charged my glass from a freshly opened bottle of red wine and the three of us got on with the task of becoming more than just neighbours, but friends. It seemed that we shared a comparable predilection for fine French wine, and an equivalent irresponsibility with regard to preparing for long walks up mountains behind cows.
§
The following morning at 6.45am I arose somewhat begrudgingly disappointed to find that I had what the French call une gueule de bois (wooden throat), and what we British call a hangover. The atmosphere was noticeably less vibrant as Malcolm drove us to the farm that was to be our starting point.
“I won’t be doing the walk myself,” he said, as his solid diesel car chugged its way up one of the locality’s many available steep hills. “I’m afraid that I’ve got business in town to attend to.”
He didn’t look very afraid. In fact, he looked ever so slightly smug.
“Good luck,” he said as he dropped us off. “You’ll need it—it’s a long way.”
“Yes,” I replied. “Actually, I never asked, but just how far is it?”
“About 37 kilometres,” he said nonchalantly, before driving off sporting a mischievous grin.
I looked across to Anne, who seemed untroubled by this stunning announcement. She was an experienced walker and I guess she could take all this, quite literally, in her stride. But 37 kilometres? Behind cows? With a wooden throat? Not good news.
I was a little anxious as Anne and I began to wander down the muddy lane to the farm that had been delegated transhumance starting point. However, if I wasn’t relishing the prospect of the long march ahead, it was made distinctly easier to bear because it was a beautiful, crisp, spring day. My anxiety stemmed from the realisation that I was about to meet many of my new neighbours. Today’s walking companions might well represent a good proportion of the select few upon whom my future happiness depended. Just how charming could I be with a wooden throat? What if they all took an active dislike to me?
We turned the corner at the bottom of the lane and there they were, standing before a crumbling farmhouse. A gathering of twenty or so, represented by all ages, most of whom were chatting and sipping coffee from small glass tumblers.
“Bonjour!” announced Anne, as we drew close to them.
I was immediately approached by a gaggle of beret-adorned young-farmer types, who shook my hand vigorously before moving off towards a big field full of cows. Two teenage girls lifted themselves up onto tiptoe and kissed me on either cheek, shuffling away immediately afterwards to rejoin their families. People smiled warmly but no one engaged me in conversation, and after a flurry of attention I was suddenly left standing on my own. I looked and felt out of place. Everyone else had a rustic feel about them, and I stank of the city. In my sweatshirt and training shoes, and without a walking stick, I felt like someone who was prepared for a sporting event at a health club, not a bucolic voyage of discovery.
Anne, the only person who had any idea who I was, had become embroiled in a deep conversation with a lady she clearly hadn’t seen in ages, and so I wandered into the farmhouse in search of coffee. A lovely elderly lady greeted me, making a huge fuss of how tall I was. She turned out to be the mother of the owner of the cows that we were about to chaperone. Whilst pouring me a wickedly strong coffee, she explained how for her son it would be a difficult day because he had been kicked by a cow two days previously and had broken his foot. As a consequence, he would not be able to take part in the transhumance —the first one he had missed for thirty years. Lucky bugger, I thought.
“Vous n’avez pas de baton?” the old lady asked, pointing to my empty right hand.
“Er, non. C’est necessaire?”
What a silly question, of course it was necessary. One of the rules of the countryside is that you never go on a long walk without a walking stick, in spite of the fact that we walk absolutely everywhere else without one, mostly without falling over. Experienced hikers know full well that it is a vital ingredient in making you look the part. Thick socks, hiking boots and overlarge khaki shorts containing a disproportionate number of pockets aren’t enough. You have to have a gnarled walking stick.
I tried to protest to the lady that I was happy without a crappy bit of old wood in my hand (a combination of good manners and lack of vocabulary meant that those weren’t the exact words I used), but she insisted that a ‘baton was found for me, and a team of excited kids was enlisted to search nearby barns for stick potential. Minutes later the kitchen was full of young people thrusting bits of old wood in my direction. This went on for some time and was just beginning to nudge from ‘disconcerting’ towards ‘uncomfortable’ when I heard a call from outside announcing imminent departure. I grabbed the nearest stick, thanked the kids (all of whom were now disappointed, except the one whose stick I’d chosen) and rejoined Anne and the others.
The farmers had been busy whilst I’d been enduring my onslaught of wood, and now around thirty sturdy, muscular and impressively long cows were gathered by the farm gates, ready for the long trek to the mountains. A broad-shouldered farmer raised his stick, made a kind of gurgling sound and we all set off. How very noisy it all was. Every kind of cowbell, from tinkly to boomy, seemed to have been attached to the necks of our bovine companions. The result was a somewhat unsettling cacophony, a strange melange of ‘concentrated countryside’ and free jazz. Ouch! Not the best recipe for those of us with hangovers, but nonetheless my first transhumance was under way.
§
Cows walk surprisingly quickly. You’d think they’d dawdle—carrying all that soon to be dead meat on them—but no, they move along at a fair old lick. I suppose I would do the same if a bloke in a beret were hovering near my backside occasionally whacking me with a stick.
The initial part of the journey led us up and down the tortuous, narrow roads that connect the surrounding villages. We stopped twice and collected more cows from other farms, just as an army might recruit new troops on the long march into battle. Soon it felt like we were a formidable fighting force, the resounding din from our cowbells ready to strike fear into the hearts of our enemy, had we happened to have one.
I also discovered that the walking was never going to be dull, because every twenty paces or so we were required to use some nifty footwork in order to side-step newly deposited obstacles that were a few inches high, soft and slightly steamy in nature. I’m speaking, of course, of cow poo.
Your cow is an extremely unselfconscious creature. Over the centuries, particularly in Western culture, man has gone to great lengths to make the process of his bodily waste disposal a sanitised and uncompromisingly private business. Sophisticated devices are enclosed within cubicles, enabling the user to evacuate the bowels in pleasingly solitary confinement, away from the eyes of the world. Cows, on the other hand, let it drop out of their arses as they walk along. They don’t even break stride. Honestly, the word ‘uncouth’ is too good for them.
After an hour’s road trudging we passed another field of cows on our left, but this time we didn’t stop and invite them to join us. These cattle belonged to a farmer who was going to keep them in the lowlands for the summer. Suddenly there was much confusion when one of our cows managed to break free from our party and wander in and join the others. Was it, I wondered, going though some kind of mid-life crisis? Had it been longing to start a new life for some time
? Perhaps here it had seen a wonderful opportunity and had jumped at it with all four feet. The new life was shortlived, however, as three of our stick-wielding farmers rounded the offender up, each of them giving it an extra whack in order to communicate the error of its ways.
At the other end of this same field I could see that a bull was hard at work. Or, at least, trying to be hard at work. It was attempting to mount a cow, but the sloping field was making it extremely difficult and he kept sliding off. I stopped walking and watched with some interest, as did a few of the younger members of our party, who would soon return to their parents with some awkward questions. The bull kept trying, and the bull kept failing. He was a firm believer in the old ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ adage, and I noted there was a distinct lack of romance about the whole procedure. No candles, no soft music, no sense of the moment having to be right. Nature clearly affords the bull more leeway in these matters than it does to the human male. As a rule, if during intercourse a man slides off a woman four times consecutively, he is not generally made welcome for the fifth, sixth and seventh attempts. (This is an assumption, I hasten to add. I am pleased to say that I have gathered no empirical evidence on this.)
I guess the truth of the matter is that it’s hard to have sex on a slope. Personally I’ve always preferred flatter terrain. Probably because it makes sense to ask only one part of your body to defy gravity at any time. I found myself thinking that the bull in question ought to have known this, and should have found himself a little flat area he could have called his ‘place’, which he then used specifically for horizontal mountings.
At a junction we were greeted by a man who was holding crutches and propping himself up against a small van. It was the farmer whose cows we were now transporting. It seems that he wasn’t going to use his injury as an excuse to slope off into town to play boules or go shopping. No, he wanted to be as involved in this transhumance as was humanly possible. He greeted his farmer colleagues warmly and then directed us all up a steep path into the woods, before getting back into his van and speeding off—no doubt ready to meet us at the next bit of road when we emerged from cross-country terrain.
This part of the walk was noticeably harder and I began to feel it in my legs. Two and a half hours of hard graft was not proving to be the best of hangover cures and I was ready for a break. I was ready for a sit-down. In fact, to be honest, I was ready to stop for the day. I’d had enough. We were only a fraction of a way through the 37 kilometres and yet I was feeling it already. I hadn’t trained for this, and I wasn’t prepared physically—and certainly not mentally. Images of comfy chairs dominated my mind, along with hot baths and luxurious double beds.
Imagine my relief, then, when we came to a clearing and there before us were half a dozen people busily laying out a magnificent spread of bread, wine, meats, cheeses, yoghurts, fruit and cakes, all laid out on picnic tables. It was like a mirage.
“What’s this?” I asked Anne, who was looking irritatingly fresh.
“It’s lunch,” she replied. “Tuck in. You’ve earned it.”
“We all have,” I said, eyes positively bulging at the sight of the culinary treat that was now before us.
A grey-haired man with chiselled, angular features approached me proffering a plastic cup of red wine. I readily accepted, even though it was only 11.30am and, as everybody knows, drinking before midday means that you’re only one step away from being an alcoholic. Never mind, the wine hit the mark and I began happily chatting with the wine’s procurer.
“I have done this transhumance one time before,” said the man in a tone of voice that suggested he might not be about to do it again soon. “You must enjoy your lunch because the next part is hard and with many hills. You will not stop again for perhaps three and a half hours.”
“Three and a half hours?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Yes,” he continued, perhaps taking some pleasure from being the bearer of very bad news. “And even then you will not yet be half of the way to your destination.”
“Christ!” I said. “Sod that for a game of soldiers.”
“I do not understand. Where are there soldiers?”
“I’m sorry. It’s an expression. It means…it means…it means it’s a long way.”
“Ah yes—it is a long way.”
I shuddered at how far it was, and downed my wine with an impolite gulp. As the man began to pour me another one, the aches in my legs started to make me ponder possible escape options. There had to be some way out of this.
“What is your name?” I asked, deciding that this fellow could be a potential accomplice.
“My name is Rene,” he replied. “And you?”
“I am Tony. Excuse me asking, Rene, but what are you doing after this picnic lunch?”
“I am returning to the village in my car.”
“Would you be able to give me a lift?”
“Of course. But are you not going to finish the transhumance?”
“No,” I said firmly, and with enormous conviction. “I can’t be bothered. And anyway, I have a guele de bois”
“Oh, OK,” said Rene with a shrug that suggested he wasn’t overly impressed with me.
I quickly found Anne, made some feeble pretext about ‘just realising that I needed to sort some things out in the town’ (a transparent excuse not that different to the one her husband had used) and soon I was heading for Rene’s saloon car, having watched him, along with some others, clear up the remains of the magnificent picnic. I should have helped them, but I was just too tired, and besides, I had my second cup of red wine to finish and that needed my full attention.
“So, you do not like walking?” said Rene as I jumped in next to him and he started up the car.
“I don’t like walking that far. Anyway, I’ve seen enough bulls exercising for one day,” I said, making rather a crude mime with my arm and clenched fist.
The recently consumed wine had given me the confidence to experiment with some earthy humour. Rene didn’t laugh, though, or make a comment. He merely raised an eyebrow.
“I will soon be a neighbour of yours,” I announced, moving on to a more mundane topic.
“Really?”
“Yes. I am buying Jean-Claude’s house.”
“Aaaah!” said Rene, taking his eyes off the road for an alarmingly long period of time in order to size me up. “We heard that there was another Englishman coming to be with us. And so it is you.”
“Yes, it is me.”
Rene said nothing. There was silence, apart from the hum of the diesel engine. The effect of the wine was being replaced by fatigue, and I had no idea where to take the conversation next. The result was that we said nothing further to each other until he dropped me back at Malcolm and Anne’s. Rene, it seemed, was not that keen on me. Never mind, I thought. It was inevitable that I wouldn’t be a hit with everyone in the village. So what if I hadn’t won Rene over? The main thing was that I made myself popular with the people who really mattered.
“So, will you be coming to the annual village lunch tomorrow?” I enquired, getting out of the car.
“Yes, of course,” he said emphatically. “It is absolutely necessary for me.”
“Why is that?” I asked, preparing to close the car door.
“Because, Tony, I am the mayor of the village.”
6
Food, Wine and Belote
“So, you met Rene then?” said Anne with a wry smile, as we met in the hallway the next day.
To my shame, I’d been fast asleep in the loft apartment when she’d eventually made it back from the transhumance the previous night.
“Yes,” I said. “I wish I’d known that he’s the mayor. I might have handled things differently.”
I was only too aware of how important this man could be to me in the coming months. As I understood it, any changes and improvements to my new house would need to be referred to him for permission. It was important he liked me. Moaning about hangovers, shirking on hel
ping him with the clearing up and making poor jokes about bulls shagging might not have been the best way to speed the process.
“How did your business go in town?” asked Anne.
“Business?” I replied with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, that business. The business that I had in town. Yes, that went very well, thanks.”
I wasn’t lying. Sitting in the sun and doing the odd bit of shopping had all gone off surprisingly well. Virtually no hitches other than an irritating bit of cloud between 16.40 and 16.47.
“How was the rest of your day?” I enquired, trying to appear guilt-free.
“Tiring, but fun,” she said, looking a little fatigued.
“Yes, well, it’s a long way,” I said, finally clearing up any ambiguity on the matter.
“Today will be long too,” said Anne with a smile.
“Yes, but with less walking.”
§
Today was the day of the village lunch. In fact, it was more than just the village lunch—it was both the village lunch and the village dinner. Tradition demanded that the village ate together as one on at least one day of the year, and owing to the constraints of farming and life in general, not everyone could make lunch and not everyone could make dinner. The solution was to have two meals on the same day, running consecutively. Furthermore, those who were free to attend both were strongly encouraged to do so. Since I fell into this latter category, this now meant that I was faced with a long day of eating and drinking. I was better prepared for this than I was the 37-kilometre hike.
In terms of being accepted in these parts, I knew that this might be a make-or-break day. A short and somewhat unimpressive exchange with the mayor aside, the previous day hadn’t exactly been an overwhelming success with regard to getting to know the villagers. Today was a great opportunity to put that right, given that it was an event specifically designed to bring people together. I for one had every intention of cooperating with that process.
As is often the case for events to which one is looking forward, I was ready to leave much too early, finding myself waiting in my linen suit on Malcolm and Anne’s patio. I drifted in and out of reverie, soothed by the greens of the rolling foothills and the distant grey peaks. I felt content. I guess I’d rather have been about to go to the village dinner as part of a couple—Tony and his lovely wife—but that was not to be, and I was happy to pitch up with Malcolm and Anne as the solitary eccentric Englishman, and have the rest make of me what they would.
