The Oak of Madame

This oak's story exists in exactly one place, and it is bolted to a post beside the trunk. The forest register mentions it in a single line, ce chene a une histoire locale a decouvrir sur le pupitre, this oak has a local history to be discovered on the panel, and then declines to repeat it. Which Madame the tree is named for, and what she did here, we cannot tell you. If you walk out and read the panel, photograph it and send it in, and this paragraph gets better. The measurable part: a pedunculate oak of more than 150 years, 105 centimetres across the foot of the trunk, which is around three and a third metres round down there. On the ages we have, that makes it the oldest tree we have mapped around Rouen, in a city whose registered trees are mostly a century or so old. It stands on the Petit-Essart circuit in the Foret de La Londe-Rouvray, a waymarked loop rather than a forest track, about 11 kilometres south of the city. Park at the Jean Coiffier centre in Les Essarts, or walk up from Oissel through the Vallee du Catelier. The path climbs and drops, so take real shoes.