Combien de fois, au hasard d’une heureuse et profonde journée, n’avons-nous pas rencontré la lisière d’un bois, un sommet, une source, une simple prairie, qui nous commandaient de faire taire nos pensées et d’écouter plus profond que notre cœur !
Silence! Les dieux sont ici.
- Maurice Barrès, Il est des lieux où souffle l’esprit
Can't believe I've been on the road for 24 days already! And covered more than 500 kilometres! It feels as if I just started yesterday. And yet every single day on the Via Francigena seems so long - a whole adventure in its own right! Half of the adventure is in the walking, the other half is in the great variety of places to stay. I like to alternate between staying in company and having a nice quiet room to myself. Which is the case today - at the convent in Saint Thierry, where the golden rule is SILENCE. And there are no other pilgrims here to talk to, anyway. The only people I see this afternoon will be nuns, at vespers and at dinner.
Last night was very different! My space at the Emmaus Centre in Berry-au-Bac consisted of a pull-out cot in a corner of a meeting-room or classroom next door to the cafeteria. Not much privacy, as there were windows and a glass door on two sides of the room. No pillow or blankets. One of the companions living in the community was very concerned I would be cold without a blanket, but no-one knew where to find one. In actual fact I was warm enough with my thermal liner (warmer than a regular silk liner) and the emergency blanket I carry with me. It's recommended to carry one for use in the eventuality that you should, say, break an ankle out on the trail and need to wait for help to come. Or find someone else in such circumstances. Or find a place to stay without blankets, as was my case! I covered myself with the silver foil emergency blanket and slept very soundly, looking no doubt like a fish ready to be baked in the oven; but there was no-one there to see. All the residents disappeared to their rooms after dinner, and I pulled the blinds down and went right to sleep. Which is probably why I was ready to get up by 5:30 in the morning!
I packed away my shiny, rustling foil emergency blanket, my sleeping bag liner and my new square French pillowcase, purchased in Arras, which I had stuffed with my clothes and jacket to make a pillow. Then I made myself some instant coffee and oatmeal using the microwave in the deserted cafeteria, packed up and set off.
The road out of Berry-au-Bac crossed the Aisne River and two canals running along beside it, then headed across the fields to the next village, Cormicy.
Cormicy was entirely destroyed in the First World War. A plaque beside the town hall recalls a particularly atrocious episode. The men in the village were sheltering from the shelling in the tunnels underneath the town hall when the building was hit and collapsed. The rubble blocked the exit from the tunnels, and as the shells were filled with poisonous gas, the men in the tunnels all suffocated.
Honte à la gloire militaire, honte aux armées, honte au métier de soldat, qui change les hommes tour à tour en stupides victimes et en ignobles bourreaux.
- Henri Barbusse, Sou feu
(Shame on military glory, shame on armies, shame on the soldier’s profession, which changes men, some into stupid victims, others into base executioners.
- Henri Barbusse, Under fire)
It's hard to imagine today how revolutionary those words sounded in the militarised and nationalistic Europe of 1916, or how bold Henri Barbusse was to publish them while the war was still under way. He could have been court-martialled and executed.
Leaving Cormicy, a more cheerful theme began to emerge for the next section of my walk. You can tell you really are in champagne country when the children's schoolbus is run by a company called Champagne Mobilité!
Champagne vineyards have a unique grace. The vines, however old, are pruned low, with a single shoot arching out from each plant, all curving in the same direction like a row of ballet dancers.
Across the vineyards, through the woods and then through more vineyards - coming out of the woods onto the south-facing slope - I eventually arrived in Hermonville, where I had high expectations of finding a bank machine and a bakery. I found both, though in reverse order - which necessitated a walk to the far end of town to get cash, and then back to the other end for food! I was down to my last few euros, as the people at my last chambres d'hotes only took cash; I had left Laon thinking I still had enough money for a few more days but, despite the pilgrim discount, paying cash for dinner, bed and breakfast had pretty much cleaned me out. And the cash machine at the post office in Corbeny had been inside the building, which was of course closed for the May 8 holiday yesterday! Luckily I knew I would not be turned away even if strapped for cash at last night's accommodation, which Google Maps categorises as a "homeless shelter" 😄. I can make my donation to Emmaus Centre with Paypal via their website, to thank them for putting me up. However I wasn't sure if the nuns I'm staying with tonight would work the same way! So I was relieved to find that the automatic teller at the bank in Hermonville was open for business. Feeling flush again, I walked back a couple of hundred metres to the local bakery. Their usual store is closed due to malfunctioning roller blinds, or renovation work, not sure which, but the bakers have set up glass cases full of goodies in the garage next door. I picked a bun studded with chocolate chips to eat right away as well as a mini-quiche to save for my lunch later on, and asked the lady if she could make me a cup of coffee. She did so right away, and even brought out a chair so I could sit down while I ate my bun and drank my coffee in the garage, as it had begun to rain rather than just sprinkle.
Hermonville is a very pretty little village, and I would recommend it over industrial Berry-au-Bac for an overnight stay.
The Via Francigena then took me into the woods, on a very pleasant but muddy trail! There was nowhere to sit down for a break... until I found a tree that served as a perfect umbrella, with a patch of dry ground underneath. Here I paused to drink my flask of tea before walking the last few kilometres into the village of Merfy, where I left the Via Francigena to walk about a kilometre and a half up the road to the Abbey of Saint Thierry.
Berry-au-Bac - Saint-Thierry 21.5 km
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