Day 3 Tonnerre to

Day 3: 6 July - Tonnerre to Laives via Alise Ste Reine - 126 miles

On the campsite was an extended family of thrushes, their plumage so very handsome that I'd wondered if they might be fieldfares or redwings.

TomTom's points of interest helped us to find the Fosse Dionne which on my evening walk I'd seen signposted.

Fosse Dionne

Without UV filter.

The Fosse Dionne, the second deepest water source in France - the continual supply of water has long mystified people.... In 1758 it was converted into a "lavoire", a washing place for laundry. Legends are attached to the pool, one of which has it that it was the lair of a ferocious serpent slain by a local saint – a tale which might relate to the draining of malarial marshes. The alarming hole at the bottom of the pool is popularly supposed to lead to hell.

Divers have penetrated 360m along a narrow underwater passageway with no end in sight. Further exploration is now banned as three divers have been killed in exploration attempts.

(I'm guessing that the "vauclusian" spring at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse is the deepest water source in France, the depth of it is (so far) known to be 315m).

	GR = Grand Randonnée (Big Walk). En route to Santiago di Compostella, tired already and still 2095km to go.







	Faded signwriting. Am I a sorry victim of nostalgia? Perhaps so, but there really is something about that artwork (and art I'm sure it is). Sometimes on a roof, but more often found on the gable end of a private house it successfully demands too much of my concentration as I negotiate the sharp bend, narrow bridge or level crossing alongside which, and so many moons ago, a mischievous salesman chose a wall for his promotion. Most common are the advertisements for Dubonnet in purpled blue (like school ink) and rusty orange.

I wonder how long-lasting were the contracts drawn up with the householders. For nowhere near as long as the paint, would be my guess.

What a truly fabulous feature but, like the rest of the town, as tired as an elderly pilgrim.

Our roads took us past more fields of "thigh-high asparagi" (ooh, I did laugh at that one, but eventually had to leave it alone).

Next topic on the free-wheeling agenda was potential roles for Slack Rabbit Jim in a film to be directed by Chewy-Chops Tarantino.

Papillon she was called. Can you imagine anything much less like a butterfly than a barge?

An aire de services for canal boats. Water and electricity are provided (and motor vehicles kept out by a barrier).

The countryside looked like a scaled up version of Herefordshire. Rain was only just holding off as we drove across, up, down and around a seemingly old, partly forgotten and perhaps slightly bewildered version of rural France where one is conscious that Paris is a very long way off and that nowhere near is there any other particularly significant town to distract one from that feeling of very-much-out-on-a-limb-ishness.

Alise Ste Reine, named after a local Christian who was decapitated for refusing to marry a Roman governor, is a small town which appears to have slid down one side of a large flat-topped, steep-sided hill of classic hillfort configuration. Up we went then followed an old street which contoured around the hill, presumably on the spring line.

We walked up a long flight of steep steps through woodland and out onto the flat top............

In 52BC in the Battle of Alesia (Alise Ste Reine), Julius Caesar built a fortification around the town to besiege it, but Vercingetorix on the hilltop had already summoned his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans, so Caesar built another outer fortification against the expected relief armies. That relief came in inadequate numbers, estimates vary from 80,000 to 250,000 soldiers. On the inside Vercingetorix, the tactical leader, was cut off from the relieving armies and without his guidance the attacks were initially unsuccessful, but did reveal a weak point in the fortifications. The combined Gallic forces on the inside and outside almost made a breakthrough. Only when Caesar personally led the last of his reserves into battle did the Roman army finally prevail.

This was a decisive battle in the creation of the Roman empire. After Vercingetorix Celtic Europe ceased to exist. He was the man who tried to save it, to stop the spread of what was the European Union of his time, the Roman idea of civilization. Vercingetorix was and still is a hero.

He was imprisoned in Rome for five years before being publicly displayed in Caesar's triumph in 46BC. After the triumph he was executed, probably by strangulation in his prison.