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.
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| A fellow pilgrim! |
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| 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.
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