The last words of the manuscript of The Unquiet Path were written this week and I’d like to share this extract with you here:
At last it is winter, my favourite time of year. Everything seems clearer and simpler in this season, a nurturing time for someone like me who often needs silence and space well-sheltered from other people. My default mode from November to February is cheerful, although this pilgrimage is going to give that a good test in the coming months. Still, challenge lends meaning to the task and my Tro Breiz would not be much of an experience without trials and obstacles. So I tell myself. At least I don’t expect to meet many people on the paths, and I hope to give all hunters a wide berth so that I can savour the great emptiness of the countryside in real peace. That has been one of the greatest gifts of this journey. I don’t think I am cut out for a busy route like the Compostela, nor anywhere outside Brittany.
I have been looking forward to returning to Saint-Malo. The Rocher, as locals call it, is a personage as much as a place. Inhabitants self-identify with its protected insularity and forbidding exterior. The town is set in a singular, unforgettable environment, both attractive and intimidating, a challenge to the spirit, a formidable theatre of the elements. First I walk out along the mole and back, which gives the best view of the walled city set in the sea and its changing perspective from far to near. As this is a bit of a slow day, to take easy-going time here, I then go right round the ramparts, their medieval bulk mostly hidden in 17th century remakes and expansions to enlarge the enclosed area. I do it every time I visit, it’s like an itch that has to be scratched. A few off-season tourists stagger against the wind and soon retreat down steps to the protection of the walls at ground level. Whatever that is here, where many adjustments have been made to fit development into the sloping terrain.
From my windswept circuit it is easy to see that Saint-Malo is the essence of sea as vehicle. It’s been the start point of journeys of extraordinary boldness and vim for corsairs, adventurers and explorers. In 1534 Jacques Cartier set off on a voyage that led to the discovery of Canada. Réné Dougay-Trouin left here bound for Rio de Janeiro, which he captured in 1711. Their statues stand on the promenade in the face of icy blasts and salt sea spray, together with that of Robert Surcouf, the corsair who enriched himself to the tune of a vast fortune by his maritime exploits. He operated in European waters and the Indian Ocean against ships of the East India Company and Portuguese cargo vessels.
Surcouf (1773-1827) was also an armateur, financing many ships operated by others, and he owned extensive lands and properties in the area outside the Intra-Muros. He epitomises the energy, expertise and sheer canniness that gave the ‘gentlemen of Saint-Malo’ such a dangerous reputation. They also had an expansive vision, which continues today. Every four years the great transatlantic challenge for solo sailors begins from this harbour to ply the Route du Rhum to Guadeloupe. The wider world seems very close in Saint-Malo. It would not be surprising to discover that Odysseus put in here briefly before finding out the natives were a match for him in wiles and bravado.
A different journey, that of life from cradle to grave, began and ended here for French literary lion François Réné de Chateaubriand, the Father of Romanticism. As I gladly take a degree of shelter within the tall buildings of the walled city, I pass along the street that now bears his name, where he was born on September 4th 1768. In his greatest work, Memoires de l’outre tombe, he remembers his early years playing with the mischievous local children on the strand between the château and the Fort Royal. ‘I grew up the companion of the swells and winds’, he says. Despite a career in the marine, politics, and diplomacy at the highest level, quite apart from his literary renown and glitzy life in Paris, Chateaubriand’s final resting place is also here, on the island of Grand Bé, accessible at low tide. According to his memoirs, Saint-Malo n’est qu’un rocher, is nothing but a rock. In the end, it was just that for him.
It’s an intense sort of place, bolshie, unapologetic, secure in self, a portal as much as a port. During the Wars of Religion in 1590 the town made the audacious declaration Ni Français, ni Breton, Malouin sum (Neither French nor Breton, I’m a Malouin) and declared the city an independent Republic. It only lasted until Henri IV converted to Catholicism four years later, but expressed the same spirit that had seen local opposition to Duchess Anne de Bretagne’s development of the château when the century was young. One of the towers is called Qui qu’en groigne, because it was built ‘in spite of complaints’. The sum of all the characters shaped by Saint-Malo adds up to one towering personality.
As I leave the walled city, the beach stretches on and on, and I stretch out the time, reluctant to finish what has been a perfect day of gentle movement in beautiful weather. I can’t believe I’m so lucky in January. Cold, dry and sunny are the desired conditions for winter walking. Many people and dogs are out on the sands, enjoying life in their respective ways. The humans are more leisurely than the canines, often chatting with such engagement that they fail to notice their pet is half a kilometre away terrorising more timid creatures or knocking over every small child within reach. Only the bawling kids seem to mind any of it. Freedom and independence, Saint-Malo style, is a fine thing.