Chapter III: The Forests of France

The forests of France are a source of never-ending interest and pride to the Frenchman, of whatever station in life.

They are admirably preserved and cared for, and a paternal ministerial department guards them as jealously as a fond mother guards her children.

No cutting of trees is allowed, except according to a prescribed plan; and, when a new road is cut through,--and those superlative roadways of France run straight as the crow flies through many of the finest forest tracts,--as likely as not an old one is replanted.

The process of replanting goes on from day to day, and one sees no depleted forests of a former time, which are to-day a graveyard of bare stumps.

If there is any regulation as to tree-planting in these great forests, it would seem, to a casual observer, to be that where one tree has grown before two are to be made grow in its place.

There is a popular regard among all travellers in France for Fontainebleau, Versailles, and perhaps Chantilly, but there are other tree-grown areas, quite as charming, little known to the general traveller: Rambouillet, for instance, and Villers-Cotterets, of which Dumas writes so graphically in “The Wolf Leader.”

Normandy has more than its share of these splendid forests, some of them of great extent and charm. Indeed, the forest domain of Lyons, in Upper Normandy, one of the most extensive in all France, is literally covered with great beeches and oaks, surrounding small towns and hamlets, and an occasional ruined château or abbey, which makes a sojourn within its confines most enjoyable to all lovers of outdoor life.

Surrounding the old Norman capital of Rouen are five great tracts which serve the inhabitants of that now great commercial city as a summer playground greatly appreciated.

Game of various sorts still exists; deer in plenty, apparently, together with smaller kinds; and now and then one will hear tales of bears, which are, however, almost unbelievable.

In some regions--the forests of Louviers, for instance--the wild boar still exists. The chase for the wild boar, with the huntsmen following somewhat after the old custom (with a horn-blower, who is most theatrical in his get-up, and his followers, armed with lances and pikes in quite old-time fashion), is, as may be imagined, a most novel sight.

The forests of Roumare and Mauny, occupying the two peninsulas formed by the winding Seine just below Rouen, are remarkable, and are like nothing else except the other forests in France.

There are fine roadways crossing and recrossing in all directions, beautifully graded, with overhanging oaks and beeches, and as well kept as a city boulevard.

Deer are still abundant, and the whole impression which one receives is that of a genuine wildwood, and not an artificial preserve.

In the picturesque forest of Roumare is hidden away the tiny village of Genetey, which has for an attraction, besides its own delightful situation, an ancient _Maison de Templiers_ of the thirteenth century, a well of great depth, and a chapel to St. Gargon, of the sixteenth century, built in wood, with some fine sculptures and paintings, which was at one time a favourite place for pious pilgrims from Rouen.

Not far away is Henouville, with a sixteenth-century church, lighted by five great windows of extraordinary proportions. The choir encloses the remains of Legendre, the almoner of Louis XIII., who was curé of Henouville, and whose fame as a horticulturist was as great as that brought him by his official position.

The near-by Château du Belley and its domain is now turned into a farm.

La Fontaine, a hamlet situated directly on the Seine bank, is overshadowed by a series of high rocks of most fantastic form, known as the chair, or pulpit, of Gargantua.

The forest of La Londe, of 2,154 hectares, on the opposite bank of the Seine from Rouen, is a remarkable tract of woodland, its oaks and beeches quite reminiscent of Fontainebleau. The trees as a whole are the most ancient and grand of those of any of the forests of Normandy. Two which have been given names are known respectively as _Bel-Arsène_, a magnificent beech of eleven great branches, planted in 1773, and the _Chêne de la Côte Rôtie_, supposed to have the ripe old age of 450 years; and it looks its age.

The forest of Londe is what the French geographer would describe as _pittoresque et accidentée_. It is all this would lead one to infer; and, together with the forest of the Rouvray, exceeds any other in Normandy, except the forest domain of Lyons.

At the crossing of the Grésil road is the _Chêne-à-la-Bosse_, having a circumference of three and a half metres; and, near by, one sees the _Hêtre-à-l’Image_, a great beech of fantastic form.

Amid a savage and entirely unspoiled grandeur is a series of caves and grottoes, of themselves of no great interest, but delightfully environed.

Near Elbeuf, on the edge of the forest of Londe, are the _Roches d’Orival_, a series of rock-cut grottoes and caverns,--a little known spot to the majority of travellers in the Seine valley. Practically the formation begins at Elbeuf itself, onward toward Rouen, by the route which follows the highroad to the Norman capital via _Grand Couronne_. At Port du Gravier, on the bank of the Seine, is a sixteenth-century chapel cut in the rock, like its brethren or sisters at St. Adrien on the opposite bank, and at Haute Isle, just above Vernon.

At _Roche-Foulon_ are numerous rock-caverns still inhabited, and at the _Roche du Pignon_ begins a series of curiously weathered and crumbled rocks, most weird and bizarre.

On a neighbouring hill are the ruins of Château Fouet, another of those many riverside fortresses attributed to Richard Cœur de Lion.

The forest domain of Lyons is the finest beech-wood in all France, and its 10,614 hectares (rather more than thirty thousand acres) was in the middle ages the favourite hunting-ground of the Dukes of Normandy. It is the most ample of all the forests of Normandy.

There are at least three trips which forest-lovers should take if they come to the charming little woodland village of Lyons-le-Forêt. It will take quite two days to cover them, and the general tourist may not have sufficient time to spare. Still, if he is so inclined, and wants to know what a really magnificent French forest is like to-day, before it has become spoiled and overrun (as is Fontainebleau), this is the place to enjoy it to the full.

The old Château of Lyons, and the tiny hamlets of Taisniers, Hogues, Héron, and the feudal ruins of Malvoisine, are a great source of pleasure to those who have become jaded with the rush of cities and towns.

The château of the Marquis de Pommereu d’Aligré, in the valley of the Héron, can be seen and visited, or rather the park may be (the park and château together are only thrown open to the public on the _fête patronale_--the first Sunday of September). Croissy-sur-Andelle is another forest village, and the Val St. Pierre, a sort of dry river-bed carpeted with a thick undergrowth, is quite as fine as anything of the kind at Fontainebleau.

At Petit Val is a magnificent beech five and a half metres in circumference, and supposed to be four hundred years old.

At Le Tronquay there is a great school, over whose entrance doorway one reads on a plaque that it is--

“_Commemorative de la délivrance des paroissiens du Tronquay admis à porter la fierté de St. Romain de Rouen, le 5 mai, jour de l’ascencion, de l’anne 1644._”

At the end of a double row of great firs, lie the ruins of the Château de Richbourg, built by Charles IX.

La Fenille is a small market-town, quite within the forest, where one may get luncheon for the modest price of two francs, cider and coffee included, if he wanders so far from Lyons-le-Forêt as this.

Here there are the remains of some of the dungeons and the brick walls of a château built by Philippe-le-Bel. The tiny church dates from 1293, and in the cemetery is a sculptured cross of the time of Henri IV.

In the canton of Catelier are found the most remarkable trees of the whole forest. One great trunk alone, which was recently cut down, gave over thirty _stères_ of wood; which means nothing as a mere statement, but which looked, as it was piled by the roadside, to be a mass of timber great enough to fill the hold of a ship.

At the source of the Levrière, a limpid forest stream, is the manor-house of the Fontaine du Houx, of the sixteenth century, belonging to a M. Hebert. If one is diplomatic he may get permission to enter to view the bedroom of Agnes Sorel, that royal favourite of other days whose reputation is a bit higher than those of some of her contemporaries.

The doorkeeper will gladly accept a tip, so the visitor need have no hesitancy in making the demand, though he will have to choose his words.

The old manor is a fine representative of a mediæval house, surrounded by a great moat and garnished with a series of turrets. The chief features, outside of the apartment in which slept the gentle Agnes, are a fine staircase, a tower with a drawbridge over the moat, and, in the vestibule, a fine tapestry from the Château de la Haie.

The Château de Fleury, at Fleury la Forêt, is a fine structure, dating from 1645, and at Croix-Mesnil is the Château Louis XIII., which formed the dwelling of the grand master of rivers and forests in that monarch’s time.

By no means are these all of the interesting attractions of this great national forest, but it ought to be sufficient to inspire the true forest-lover to seek out other beauties for himself.

The road of the _Gros Chêne_, called also the “Chêne de la Londe,” and “l’Homme Mort,” and aged perhaps four hundred years, leads to the Carrefour des Quatre Cantons, near which is the Chapelle Ste. Catherine; a famous place of pilgrimage where, according to popular belief, any young girl who brings a bouquet to the shrine, and says a mass, is assured of marrying within a year. After this there is another act of devotion to be gone through--or is it a superstition in this case? She must bring thither the pins from her marriage veil.

The Abbey of Mortemer, founded in 1134 by the monks of the order of Citeux, is another architectural monument with a remarkably picturesque woodland site. The living-rooms (seventeenth century) have been restored, but the church, of three centuries before, is quite in a ruinous condition, though a great open-ended transept remains, as well as a fine rose window and some of the beautifully arched walls of the old cloister.

The Ferme des Fiefs, and the Château de Rosay, situated in a charming park, where the Lieure falls in a series of tiny cascades, about completes the list of the forest’s attractions; but its hidden beauties and yet undiscovered charms are many.

Perhaps some day the forest domain of Lyons will have an artist colony, or a number of them, such as are found in the encircling villages of the forest of Fontainebleau, but at present there are none, though it is belief of the writer that the aspect of nature unspoiled is far better here than at the more popular Fontainebleau.