To the west of the Seine the country varies. Some towns, like Lisieux, lie surrounded by broken ground well clothed by trees, while much of the district, notably that south of Evreux, is monotonous and almost devoid of hills at all.
We find here some instances of those long, straight roads which it seems to be the highest ideal of the Vicinal Committee to make. We shall meet them again in plenty elsewhere, but may as well describe them here. Take for instance that road running between Evreux and Lisieux; it undulates slightly, and at each little crest the white ribbon can be seen rising and falling, and growing at last so small in the endless perspective, that it almost vanishes from sight. Six miles from any town a man is found carefully brushing the dust from this road, though what good he can possibly do by the clouds he raises with his long, pliant sweep is a mystery. On each side of the road there is a broad ribbon of green, and in this case it is overhung by a double row of trees that really do give some shade. The peasants walk in this green aisle, but even with the grass underfoot the patience needed to traverse perpetually such monotonous roads must be great; it is the quality often found in those whose lives know little variety. Sometimes these high roads are planted with poplars, which mock the wayfarer, for like so many other trees in France, these poplars are stripped of all their boughs almost to the top, and the little tuft of light leaves remaining gives no relief to sight or sense on a glaring road under a summer sun; oaks, horse-chestnuts, beeches—almost any other tree, and all seem to grow well—would have been far better for shade and comfort; yet for one road planted with these umbrageous trees a dozen are lined by the scanty and disappointing poplar. Along them pass the market carts with hoods like those of a victoria; and even the drivers of slow travelling carts supply themselves with miniature hoods, exactly like those of perambulators, to cover their seats, for no one could endure the hours passed in the sun without some protection.
A great deal of Normandy is flat and bare; the flint and trefoil style is common. Wide fields of mustard of a crude raw yellow, not golden like the Pomeranian lupin fields, are often to be seen. The flat landscapes are broken by a few stiff or scraggy trees, tethered cows, or cottages of lathe and clay; yet, we hear the song of the lark and scent the breath of roses, and in the spring and early summer orchards of cherry blossom make gleaming sheets of white on many a roadside.
The valley of the River Rille, up which Pont Audemer lies, is of a different style altogether, still it has characteristics in common with other districts. The valley is flat, and from it on each side so steeply rise the fir-crowned hills that in describing them one could almost use the word rectangular. Though the trees are fairly thick there is a ragged, unfinished, rather scrubby look, very often seen in Normandy.
CHERRY BLOSSOM
If we spring westward now to Caen, we find the flat and bald landscape everywhere. The country is almost incredibly dull, and this is the reason why Caen, such an interesting town in itself, makes so small an appeal as headquarters. The long, straight roads radiate from it in all directions. Here and there there is a lining of trees, but generally only a green ditch, waterless, and a line of cornfield, blue-green or yellow as the season may be, with perhaps a ragged fringe of gnarled apple-trees standing ankle-deep in the corn, and the wide sky, like a great inverted bowl of clear blue, fitting every way to the horizon. There may be fields of deep crimson trefoil to vary the colouring, or there may be fields yet unplanted in which the bare brown earth seems to stretch to eternity, and far away in the midst are the stooping figures of two or three men and women busily working with bent backs on a shadeless plain. Yet in this wide flat country there is a freshness and an openness that one might imagine could permeate the blood, so that the peasants who were born and reared here might suffocate and die in a mountainous country, as the mountaineers are said to pine and die in a plain. This flat plain to the westward of Caen, and surrounding Bayeux in the district of the Bessin, has been, so long as history has any record, a prime agricultural country with magnificent pasturage. The most notable points in the little villages which stud it are the wonderful churches, out of all proportion to the size of the hamlets they represent. Of course this feature is found all over the country, and in almost every small town there is a cathedral, so that one cannot but wonder where the money came from which built such glorious monuments to piety. The line going to Bayeux runs at about seven or eight miles from Caen, between two little villages, Bretteville and Norrey, which share a station between them. The church at Norrey, built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is a very model of architectural perfection and simplicity, the tall spire is something in the style of the marvellous St Pierre in Caen itself. Bretteville falls not far short of it, though the tower is after a different pattern. A very few miles on, at Andrieu, is a church with a splendid tower of the same date as Norrey, and about two miles south, at Tilly aux Seulles, a church of which the nave is eleventh century, the choir twelfth, the tower fourteenth, and the portal fifteenth, all in the artistic and finished style we associate with that period when there seems to have been nothing but good work. This group of churches is worth mentioning as striking, even in the profusion to be found in Normandy. Leaving Caen and going southward, we plunge before very long into the hilly country from which the Orne rises. This is known as the Bocage, a name which suggests rich foliage. The part of the country in which Mortain and Domfront lie has been called the Alps of Normandy, and certainly it can hold its own for picturesqueness. It is, however, comparatively little known; the line of the quick-trip-man may touch Falaise, but it goes no further south. Yet even at Falaise one can see part of a ridge extending for many kilometres, a ridge which has been so magnificently utilised as the site of the castle where William was born. The hills through Mortain and Domfront run parallel with this ridge, and are of the same description. Indeed the positions of the castles at Domfront and Falaise are very similar.
THE HARBOUR AT LOW TIDE, GRANVILLE
Turning now to a new district westward, we find a rugged granite coast, chiefly notable for the splendid views it affords of the bay of Mont St Michel and its famous rock, and on a wider scale of the Channel, where lie the Iles Causey and Iles Normandes (Channel Isles). There are here a group of fine towns, Avranches, Granville, Coutances, and St Lo. The first named is the capital of the Avranchin district, which stretches up to the little stream Couesnon, separating Normandy and Brittany. Thus we are almost at the end of a general topographical survey; there remains only that peninsula of the Côtentin, very little visited, and entirely off the tourist track, yet in itself delightful. The hills rise and fall, and are well covered with trees, which, though not of a great height, grow warmly and bushily. The roads are good, and the country is studded with ancient chateaux, now for the most part farmhouses, which shall have, as they deserve, a chapter to themselves. We have thus run very quickly over Normandy in a general survey, gaining some idea of the characteristics of the districts, and calling them by the ancient names they bore in the days of the Norman dukes.