Vive la serendipité!
Yes, you guessed it: this is another post in praise of serendipity walking, the art of making discoveries while wandering around aimlessly with the sole purpose of entertaining yourself.
At least, this is how it is commonly defined, although, on a deeper level, there is much more to it than that. Serendipity also means to open up your travel experience to the vagaries of fate, to allow in uncertainty: to give chance a chance.
Take our own latest encounter with this type of “adventure for beginners”: on the morning of the day we were about to discover what we eventually did discover, …
… we did not even know we would have enough time to visit Le Mans – we were just scheduled to change trains there, with only 30 minutes to fill between arrival and departure.
But we went early to the train station in Paris – the idea was to have a leisurely breakfast there – and happened to arrive just in time to catch the train before the one we were scheduled to take (the doors were literally about to close).
In the end, we found ourselves arriving in Le Mans with more than 2 hours of time to spend: enough for a good look at the town beyond the station.
That said, our exploration of the city did not start well.
Our 2.4 Hours of Le Mans Starts Here
For much of our walk down Avenue du General Leclerc to the inner borders of the town centre, it was mostly cookie-cutter office buildings and one-shop-down-two-flats-up-buildings of the type you see everywhere in France, while further up, on Avenue Francois Mitterrand, you could even find a rare example for a city-centre council estate.
For the first 30 minutes of our walk, we only took one picture: the one you are seeing above. But then, at the end of the Rue des Fossés Saint Pierre, we found this walkway …
… and decided to see where it would lead us – which was like stepping across an invisible border into a country of fantasy and wonder.
Some magical worlds start down a rabbit hole, some in the back of a wardrobe: this one opens up behind some nondescript 20th century housing.
The path climbs gently uphill for a while, past springtime trees in full blossom and a vineyard, …
… until you reach a stairway and, at the top, a row of timber-framed houses.
This is the entrance to the Cité Plantagenet, the hilltop old town of Le Mans.
This Cité, roughly 100 meters deep and 400 meters long on the left bank of the river Sarthe, contains an array of medieval buildings alongside narrow cobblestoned streets.
Considering its relatively small size, it also offers a surprisingly wide range of views since it is perched on a hill which allows you to peek into both directions from its western and eastern edges.
It is one of those places where you feel that every house has a story to tell …
… even houses that may, from afar, look as though they had been built fairly recently.
But appearances – and replastering jobs – can deceive.
Explore the Cité from the west to the east in the direction of the Cathedral whose views slowly unfold through gaps in the dense urban fabric: this is how the citizens of Le Mans experienced their old town for 1000 years – going back to a time when it was not the “old town” yet but actually quite new.
And when you see the Cathedral in all its glory …
… walk down the stairs by its side and turn towards the station: your 2.4 hours of Le Mans is almost up.
It was only after our return that I had the chance to read up on the history of the Cité Plantagenet. Its name – although bestowed on the quarter only recently (before 2003, it was simply known as Old Le Mans) – was not pulled blindly out of a hat.
There really was a close connection with Britain’s first royal family: Henry II (Peter O’Toole in the multi-Oscar-winning The Lion In Winter) was born here, and while his son, Richard the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins in his screen debut), resided in the Cité for a while, his wife, Queen Berengaria, settled here after his untimely death.
Would it have it deepened our experience if we had known this in advance of our visit? Possibly yes, possibly not. There are, after all, two ways of exploring an unfamiliar place: you can read up on it before you go, but you can also come totally unprepared.
I am not saying which is the better, only that, this time, the second approach served us extremely well. Seeing everything for the first time creates a sense of awe and wonder that is, ultimately, the essence of all discovery and adventure.
Think of Marco Polo in China, Cortez in Tenochtitlan – we can only imagine what it would be like to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower if we had never seen a picture of it before, but we can recreate the experience on a smaller scale.
An example: Why did the owner of the Maison du Pilier aux Clefs, the “House with the Pillar of Keys”, …
… decorate the load-bearing pillar on the corner of his home with images of keys that seem to be floating in mid-air, as though the whole thing has been designed by René Magritte? (You have already seen the house from afar on one of the photos above.)
Why indeed – but that sense of baffled enchantment would have been lost if we had known the story behind this. (I still refuse to look it up.)
The only thing I knew about Le Mans before our arrival was that the city was closely connected to the history of motor racing: almost every year since 1923, Le Mans has been hosting the 24 Hours, the sport’s most famous endurance race.
The race, run on a course (approx. 10 km out of town) that is partly dedicated track, partly ordinary public road, is generally considered one of the sport’s three legendary races, alongside the Grand Prix of Monaco and the Indianapolis 500.
In Le Mans, 100 years of racing history may be looking down on you, …
… but the city also offers you the opportunity of looking down on this history yourself. You should not miss it.
