Stage 10 : And so into Switzerland

It was pouring with rain as we stepped out the next morning. Thankfully, Polly had a spring her step and was thrilled with her new purchases. On the main street we were stopped by someone who told us he was a local journalist. Were we walking to Rome? Could he take our photographs? Thrilled and a bit embarrassed about being local celebrities, we were snapped along with our pilgrim passports. What fun! I wonder if they were ever published.

Our route to us out of town and soon started to climb steeply. We had a rather misty view of the Chateau du Joux and a brief cliff edge walk. Then it was uphill again to our first 1000 metre mark. We descended all the way back to the road, slithering and sliding all the way as the rain poured down heavily. It really was a dangerous descent. I was much relieved when we got back to road level unscathed. Wait a minute...we've been here before. We turned up past that discount store...Hang about...So we've walked all the way uphill and all the way down it and for what??? A murky view of the chateau?


Spirits were a bit low. We trudged on along the N57; the rain bucketing down on us. Eventually, we came to a bar. We were too late for lunch, but decided to stop for a drink and get out of the rain. By this stage we only had about 5k to walk to our overnight stop in Les Fourges but we decided to sit tight and see and if the rain would ease off. It didn't. We started talking the some locals and they were fascinated by our story. They wanted to know where we were heading for tonight. When we told them, one of them (the big one who looked a bit like Obelix, Asterix's chum) volunteered to take us there in his car. We looked at each other...it didn't take us long to agree and thank him for his kind offer. We clambered into the car; sharing it with tools, broken bits of furniture, bottles, bags and half eaten sandwiches. We didn't really care. Our new chum, Obelix, somehow managed to get in the car, even tough he seemed bigger than it, and off we went at breakneck speed. We were there in three minutes. It would have taken us about an hour and a half to walk it in these conditions. We were very, very grateful. I ricked my back pulling my rucksack out of the car.

Les Forges sits on a little plateau, looking for all the world like a Swiss town. I bet they had some wild winters round here. After a shower and a siesta to ease my back, the rain had stopped so we went out for a stroll round town to check out where we could have supper. There were only two likely places. One was closed and didn't look like it would be opening anytime soon. The other was a very quiet bar/tabac type of place. We weren't too optimistic. There was no menu but the (land)lady said she could get us something. It didn't seem promising. We had an excellent charcuterie plate to start with and followed this with turkey, cauliflower and the ubiquitous chips. It was simple but superb. Polly notes in her diary that 'we have been shown such kindness.' Another great example of the generosity we have been shown in France.

After a very disturbed night, (the wind howled a gale (at least it might have been blowing the rain away) and my back was agony) we awoke to a wild sky, black and forbidding, with a shady of weak sunlight at the edges. We hoped for the sun but feared the clouds.

We were at the Swiss border in no time. It seemed to be unstaffed. We wondered if we should make ourselves known...but there was no-one around. Surreal. It felt weird as we walked out of France. We'd been walking for over a month and had such a marvellous time. I was going to miss France. Ahead lied Switzerland, a new adventure.


Yet we were both tired. My back was hurting and Polly had developed a very sore foot. We were feeling down and getting irritable and argumentative.


We were beginning to wonder whether we could carry on.

Stage 9 : Moulthier to Pontarlier

It's probably no exaggeration to say that the interior of our overnight accommodation in Moulthier was less impressive than the location. Gulp. The elderly lady who answered the door was eccentrically dressed and she seemed to sporting someone else's false teeth. When she spoke they danced around her mouth looking for, yet failing to find, a place to fit.

We were shown around. The kitchen was large and very dated. It had a large table in the centre of the room where we could prepare our food. We hadn't got a lot of it to be honest. And we were nowhere near a shop to buy more.

Our room looked like it hadn't been decorated since the fifties. The 1750s. The bed had a counterpane but no other bedding apart from an extremely soiled bolster.

I decided to have a shower to get rid of the cobwebs. Not the best idea I've ever had. The shower was in the kitchen, behind a filthy curtain at the back of the table. It was horrible. I think it was the only time I've ever come out of a shower dirtier than I went in. I advised Polly not to bother with the shower.

We ate our supper on the kitchen table (which had a very greasy tablecloth) without much enthusiasm. The cutlery had a life of its own too. The knife handles having a separate existence to the blades. They'd probably been in the family for centuries. The handles and the blades only being changed every decade or so.

We adjourned to bed, into our sleeping bags, hoping we didn't get bitten by anything in the night. Neither of us slept much, the night was interminable. In my nightmares still now, I believe I'm there, tossing and turning and hoping the night will end.

Eventually, light dawned. The sun did not penetrate into the valley but we could see it high above us shining on the cliffs and trees. We had nothing for breakfast, so were keen to get moving. Our hostess assured us we could walk straight down the river to our destination, saving us walking back up the mountain to rejoin the route we left late yesterday. It would knock several kilometres off our day's walk which we were both keen to do. It was the best news we'd heard in a while. Yes, she said, there was no need to clamber back up the mountain. Polly was cheered but I was not too optimistic. "You should be more trusting," she noted. "Harumpf,"' I replied.

We walked along the river for a while, the sun trying to peep into the valley. We soon came to a divide in the path...one fork went left, the other went right and seemed to follow the river, but it was not a very clear path. Should we go left or right? After a more than usually heated debate, the left-hand route got the vote. On we went...the route went uphill...hang on a minute...aren't we supposed to be going along rather than up??? Do we go back down again? Our own guidebooks and maps didn't help. I saw a road just up ahead so on we went to try and get our bearings from there. The path eventually reached a small road which we followed, in the direction of the river,  until we came to a huge hydro-electric generating plant. It sprawled the edge of the river and, after trying to circumnavigate it for what seemed like an age, we came to the conclusion that there was no way round it! We had no idea what to do. The river route was definitely not the right option. Had we walked along the path to the right we'd have ended up here anyway, unable to pass the hydro-electric plant. We had to laugh about the very notion of walking along the river...who's idea was that? Oh, wait a minute, perhaps she hadn't been out of the house since the end of WWII. It was the only explanation we could think of.

So, what do we do now? Our route lay some way off, over the top of the mountain. We couldn't go round it, which by my reckoning meant we had to go over it. Oh what joy. By now the sun was beginning to come through and we faced the prospect of walking up a mountain to try to rejoin our, much longed-for and greatly missed, original path.

We went up and up and around the hairpin bends for at least two hours. The sun shone. We were getting hotter and hotter and sweating profusely.  Every step of the way we regretted, more and more, staying at Moulthier. Eventually, we reached the outskirts of Ouhans. We arrived at a restaurant just in time for lunch! I wanted to crack on but Polly wanted to have a break and lunch. I guess it was a no-brainer, really. We hadn't eaten properly for a couple of days and there wasn't likely to be much else open today, as it was Sunday. In the end, we decided to splash out on a meal. Well, we hadn't eaten properly recently and we felt like celebrating finding our route again. The restaurant was quite full, but there were spaces for two. Instead we were shown to small room at the back of the restaurant at a table on our own. We realised that we must have smelled just like pilgrims. Nevertheless, we had a great time and managed to laugh about our situation. Just because we didn't want to walk for 30k in one day, how could we have ended up so far off the beaten track? You had to smile.

Cheered, well fed and watered we were back on track and only a short hop and skip to Goux les Ousiers. I looked at the guide book for the address of our overnight hotel. And then I realised we weren't actually staying in Goux...we were booked in to a place nearby called 'La Vrine' which must be around here somewhere. So we asked a friendly looking local. He shook his head and pointed to the mountain. "It's just over there," he explained, "maybe six kilometres." We looked at each other. Our hearts sank. There was no alternative. We had to march on. Our route took us up and up and around more hairpin bends for another couple of hours. Eventually, we reached the top of the plateau and we could see the hotel way off in the distance. It took us an age to get there. We seemed to walk for an hour and not get anywhere. The hotel was still a tiny dot in the distance. It was located on a main road (the N57)

When we eventually got there we were delighted to find that they had just opened. We had a cold, cold beer and adjourned to our room. A clean room! And a fab shower! What a pleasure, what a treasure. We retired to bed early without any dinner, feeling clean and tired. We slept the sleep of the just...just like pilgrims.

We woke early and decided to try our luck with the hotel breakfast. We arrived just after a coach party had left. The room looked like it had fought a losing battle with a plague of locusts. Our hosts managed to rustle something up for us and we settled on a route to Pontarlier which did not involve walking down the N57.

We had one of our best walking days. We went over meadow and farmland, spotting buzzards and sparrowhawks and thousands of swallows gathering in their masses on phone-lines for the journey south. It was a great day to be out walking.

Too soon we were on the outskirts of Pontarlier. We found a street map and began examining it, wondering whether our accommodation was on this side of town or the far side. A cyclist rode up to us and asked us in French if we were walking the Via Francigena. "Ah oui," in my best French. "Parlez vous anglais?" asked our new chum. We told him we were English and we had a hale fellows, well met moment. It turned out that he was cycling the VF and had set off from St Neots only a week ago. It had taken us slightly more than a month to get there.

We were exchanging contact details with our new chum, Frank, and professing our delight at meeting another pilgrim on the way, when along came another. Amazingly, she was walking in the opposite direction, from Rome to Canterbury.

What great fun. We hadn't met a soul and then, like London buses, two turn up at once! We said our cheery goodbyes and headed off into town.

A fellow pilgrim!

Two fellow pilgrims!!

It was time for a kit inspection. Polly's boots were falling to bits. The sole was flapping off one of them. We'd been ministering them for some time, but now it did look like we'd have to find her a new pair. We understood that rain was forecast for the following day...so it was definitely the right time to be doing it. Her rain coat was also beyond redemption. Pontarlier has a great walking shop. It was the first one we'd seen since Rheims. We ummed and ahhed about whether we should spend so much money. Eventually, we saw sense and shelled out a pretty penny or several for new kit. Just in case she needed it, we agreed.

We went to bed early and were woken several times by the sound of a serious thunderstorm.

Stage 8: Besancon to Moulthier

Hot, hot, hot...it was a long slog into Saone and Mamirolle. We had a drink in a bar and wished we hadn't. Mine host was a bit of a misery. We felt we were intruding. And it seemed like the loos hadn't been cleaned since the early 1970s. So, after a brief stop we were headed back into the sun. It was with a bit of relief that we entered the dappled shelter of the woods. We walked for two hours through the forest and had a magical moment, seeing a young fawn with its mother; they spotted us and, after a brief moment when they were weighing up whether or not we were a threat, they crashed out of sight.

We arrived at a farm, heralded by a distinctly unmusical cacophony of tinkling bells. We wondered where the noise was coming from but soon realised that it was being made by a herd of cows with bells round their necks. They looked up at us. Polly looked back at them. Cows have an innate curiosity about the world around them, but not the slightest idea what to with the information they receive. It's as if they're saying, "Look! Humans!" munch, munch, "Ooh look! Humans!" munch, munch, "What was I saying, "Oh yes, Look! Humans!" We reached the farmyard and Polly attracted more interest from a bunch of assorted critters; ducks, hens, a sheepdog, guinea fowl and very friendly turkey. They followed Polly. She stopped. They stopped. She moved on. So did they. It was like a scene from Dr Dolittle.

It was a meeting of minds.

We made slow progress in the afternoon sun. Agreeing we could go no further without a short break, we took off our packs and sat down under a tree. A farmer drove up to us on his tractor. He warned us that his dog was loose and might attack us. Bravely, I told him we weren't afraid of dogs...but did he know an alternative route, just in case? Non, there was no alternative route. We eyed each other without speaking, wondering what we should next. Dogs are a nuisance on most long distance walks. They can be lovely but you learn to keep your distance. Eventually, it was the farmer who broke. He went home, tied up the dog and made the route safe for two grateful, yet very hot and weary, pilgrims to pass.

Not long after this we plodded into Etalan, our overnight stay. It was a bar/tabac/hotel/restaurant of the type we'd stayed in several times before. It did a good line in cold beer. We had a simple but very tasty meal (a beef daube with couscous and harissa) and then it was time for an early night underneath a very loud candlewick bedspread. 

The next morning was one of most athletic on the whole route. A local farmer had taken it upon himself to block off the route so could fence in his cattle. We had to take off our packs and crawl on our bellies under five different electric fences. And yes, the fences were live. And did I say cattle? Mind the cow pats! Bugger...

In the afternoon, we walked through a beautiful forest up and up...to the top of the valley with green meadows above the fir trees. Polly said it was "Sound Of Music" country but, luckily, I dissuaded her from singing!

We walked through another farm and were joined by an enormous black dog. Given yesterday's excitement we didn't know if was going to be friendly or not. I needn't have worried on that score. It was probably the friendliest dog in Christendom. He wanted to play. He walked with us for about a kilometre, nudging into me and nuzzling my fingers. It was great fun. At first. After a while we tried to get rid of him. But he wasn't leaving us. I shouted and pointed the way home. He thought I was playing. We decided to ignore him in the hope that he'd just wander off. He didn't. And then I had a masterstroke, let's sit down and ignore him...he thought that was the best thing ever. 

He walked up to me, licked the back of my head from neck to crown and knocked my hat off. See the photo...you can tell I'm impressed. I eventually, of course, had to walk him home. Two kilometres there and back on a baking hot day. I was cheered by the fact that we didn't have too far to go to our overnight stop. We'd planned a short day so we could get our do our laundry and a kit inspection. 

Oops. I'd got the distances wrong. I thought I'd booked in to a room in a nearby village...turned out that the village was further away than it appearing in the guide book. The village we were staying in was six kilometres further on...up and over a mountain. The road took us up and up and round and round hairpin bends.  Then we went down and down and round and round again. When we reached the village we learned that it was right in the very bottom of the valley. So we kept going. The final part of our trek that day was a steep, downhill, grassy path. The last thing our weary feet needed. At last we reached our stopping place. A wonderful location on the river in what had obviously been the house of the watermill.