A good few years ago one of the founders of the now CPR FB group (Jonas Ewe) made a comment which I paraphrase “you know Sigeric was on a business trip and in a hurry to get back to Canterbury to protect his new won seat”. From this I have often applied my schoolboy maths and deduced that his fastest way would have been the shortest way which would be a straight line (aka a Roman road) with due allowance for the odd mountain or lake.
At that time the received wisdom of Sigeric’s 56th stopping place, Antifern, was Yverdon-les-Bains, a location at right angles to the crow flying route from Orbe(55) to Pontarlier(57). I often discussed the oddity of this with the late Francis Geere who was a resident of the region. A little while later he came back with a map showing a hill named Antifer looking down on the chapel of Saint Maurice with its 7th century crypt in the village of Jougne. With his usual tenacity Francis took on the VF authorities and eventually won the argument showing the translators were fallible and that indeed this was the most likely 56th stopping place.
With these thoughts well embedded I have long wondered why Sigeric hung a left turn in Guînes as he had most likely followed Chaussée Brunehaut and its coastward extension La Leulène from Arras to Guînes and which continues straight as a die to the then Channel port of Sangatte.
19th Century Sangatte.
The famous British Library manuscript names the last stopping place in France as Sumeran which the translators of the manuscript have associated with Sombre an inland hamlet about 5km to the north-east of Wissant. While there maybe off-line evidence to support this association, however, I find no online evidence to support this. Then browsing the history of Sangatte I discover that Sangatte is a relatively modern name with the town’s Roman name being Sclives and its medieval name Saint-Martin de Sclives. A little more research showed that the dominant language in the area at the time of Sigeric was an old form of Dutch of which I would doubt that Sigeric’s scribe had a good knowledge, and so would no doubt take a shot at a phonetic spelling of the place which might have been pronounced Sint-Maarten. This is of course all conjecture, but my ears seem to find a closer phonetic relationship between Sint-Maarten and Sumeran than Sombre and Sumeran.
I wonder if there is a historian with a smattering of medieval Dutch in the house who could comment?
The coastal walk from Calais to Wissant can be stunning in good weather and if you are able to blank out thoughts of the many refugees that have perished trying to cross the Channel to England. However, if my hypothesis holds up, those folks that take the direct route from the coast to Guînes may have history on their side.
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