Day 10 Part 3 - In the footsteps of Joan of Arc, James Moore and Supergrass

After watching the powerboat race for an hour, I left the noise of the river and headed for the cathedral. I walked first to the western facade, having seen Monet's studies of it in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris last week. The stonework is beautifully crafted and contrasts with the plain interior.

One of the cathedral's most striking features is its spire. The stone tower is topped with an amazingly delicate gothic spike, so sharp and elegant. In fact this is an iron-and-steel spire made in the twentieth century and replaces at least three previous wooden spires which were covered with gilded lead and all of which suffered destruction by fire.

The cathedral has certainly seen tough times. In 1944 it was badly bombed as part of the allied air raids on Rouen in preparation for D-Day. In the 1990s a tornado tore away a pinnacle of the tower, which fell over 100 feet and embedded itself in the roof of the nave, causing a partial collapse.

The cathedral commemorates the life of Joan of Arc, who was burnt at the stake in Rouen by the English in 1431, aged nineteen. I didn't realise that she wasn't canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, until as late as 1920.

So I'd made it to Rouen, tired but not exhausted, bruised but not beaten. Perhaps James Moore felt the same when he arrived, having won the very first cycle road race between any two cities in the world, Paris-Rouen, in 1869.

Wikipedia tells me that 'The Road to Rouen' was also the name of a 2005 album by the group Supergrass. I must listen when I get home.