What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking, and the wild (1851)
We left our hotel across from Clairvaux abbey / maximum security prison this morning and walked ten kilometres through the forest. Part of that was on a very muddy forest track that is part of the 100-kilometre Joan of Arc Trail.
It was lovely to walk through the forest, but slow going with the need to keep dodging mud puddles, and so it was quite a relief to turn onto a smaller forest path leading down into the fields of the valley below. Here we attracted the attention of some curious cows before arriving in the town of Cirfontaines-en-Azois (population 191). We paused by one of the village's two lavoirs to eat the bread and cheese we had pocketed at breakfast in our hotel.
The next village was postcard-pretty Aizanville, where all the houses appeared prosperous and impeccably tended. A big old mill stood by the river, a crystal-clear chalk stream.
We climbed to the top of the ridge behind the village, where the Via Francigena again splits in two. The GR145 swings round to Châteauvillain, a large town with all the facilities a modern pilgrim could wish for, while the Voie de Sigeric or Chemin Historique follows in the footsteps of Sigeric straight south via a series of small villages offering few or no services. The two routes may be compared on the sign in the photograph below.
The Blessonville route is much shorter, and as today is a holiday in France (again) there would have been no shops open in Châteauvillain anyway, so the choice was clear! Straight along the valley floor to Blessonville, where we were expected at the Maison du Pèlerin. Upon arriving I called Fabrice, the man who runs the hostel along with the other members of the local pilgrims' association, and within a few minutes he appeared from the house two doors down, accompanied by his granddaughter and bearing a large basket of groceries. He let us in and then remembered he had two bottles of beer chilling for us in his refrigerator, so he went back for those while his granddaughter showed us around. The Maison du Pèlerin has a beautiful kitchen with top-quality cabinets and appliances on the ground floor, and a bedroom with six bunks and a shower room upstairs. Once again we have the whole place to ourselves, so we could spread out our things and relax for the evening!
I had asked Fabrice if the church across the road was open; he replied that it wasn't, but his wife had the key. After we had been in our new home for an hour or so, there was a knock on the door and there she was, bearing a large set of keys. She opened the door and showed me around the church of St Peter and St Paul, even taking me into the sacristy and taking some 18th-century hymnals out of a cupboard so I could have a look at them.
A sparrow had got into the church and couldn't find its way out again, so we spent some time attempting to usher it out with a broom without knocking over any of the saints or breaking any stained-glass windows!
After this excitement I returned to the hostel to heat some soup and melt some cheese over bread for our dinner. And now here we are, enjoying the comforts of our temporary home after another beautiful day on the Via Francigena!
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| With Elaine and Fabrice |
Today's accommodations: Maison du Pèlerin, Blessonville
Abbaye de Clairvaux - Blessonville 24 km
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