Joanne's long walks: Road to Home 2023 Day 50: Lignerolles

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.

- William Hazlitt, On Going a Journey (1822)

Before we left France, we were given a word of advice: walk quickly and get through Switzerland as fast as you can, because everything is so expensive. And we are so good at taking advice, that on our first full day in Switzerland, we walked a grand total of... 7.5 kilometres! 😄

The Via Francigena route takes you down one side of the Gorge de l'Orbe to the town of Orbe itself, then back up the other side of the gorge. If you look at the map stage by stage, you may not notice that you are backtracking; but if you look at a map of the whole way, this becomes clear.

I had heard that the Orbe river valley was one of the most beautiful parts of the whole Via Francigena, so I thought it might be well worth going all the way up the gorge to Orbe and back down again. But I could also see on the map that we could cross the river at various points to shorten this route. It is not easy to find affordable accommodations here, and I had found nothing in either Orbe or Cossonay, so I booked Chez Epicure in Lignerolles, where we stayed last night, and then an airbnb room for three in Romainmotier. That meant we were free to either walk all the way through the gorge to Orbe and back out again, or take a direct route of less than ten kilometres from one town to the other. This is what we ended up doing, because more rain showers and thunderstorms were forecast for this afternoon!

We retraced our steps as far as Les Clées, then followed the road to Bretonnières, where we found a café open and sat down on the sunny patio. We were only planning to have a cup of coffee, but somehow I ended up eating a giant chocolate sundae topped with whipped cream - at 10:30 in the morning!

From cow to ice cream in under 5 kilometres

After this pick-me-up and a chat with the café owner about Swiss wines, the Via Francigena, and life in general, we carried on along the cycling route to Romainmotier. As we approached the village, we heard the sound of music: the village band was playing. When we came to the abbey we discovered that we had arrived on the day of the local parish festival!

We visited Romainmotier abbey, the oldest in Switzerland, established by Saint Romain in the fifth century! Remnants of the 11th-century Romanesque reconstruction of the abbey are still visible despite a twentieth-century restyling. We asked for a stamp for our pilgrim credentials, and then compared stamps with three French pilgrims whom we had not seen before but may quite possibly see again along the Way. As we were standing talking to them, Curtis from Atlanta came along - having walked all the way into Orbe yesterday in the rain, and all the way out again this morning - and we immortalised this rare meeting of so many pilgrims at the same time and place!

The French pilgrims were just setting out for their day's walk to Cossonay, and so they said goodbye, while we settled down to enjoy some lunch at the parish festival. We bought a bottle of local white wine which, we were told, is traditionally drunk in small glasses, like shot glasses.

After lunch we got talking to a man wearing a Via Francigena T-shirt, who told us about a new pilgrimage path that stretches from the Mediterranean across France, part of Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and all the way to the Baltic sea, called the Huguenot Way. It claims to be one of the longest pilgrimage walks in Europe - though not as long as the Via Francigena!

This man introduced us to the pastor of the abbey, who offered to buy us all a dessert from the bake sale in the parish hall. He also introduced us to our landlady for the day, who is, coincidentally, Canadian by birth; she told us we could go right over and make ourselves at home. On our way up the hill to her home - probably not by the shortest route - we were accosted by a woman leaning out of a window who had seen the Canadian flags on Audrey and Elaine's packs. She too was a Canadian living in Switzerland! And she was about to set off on the Via Francigena in Italy, starting at St. Bernard's Pass next Sunday. We realised we may well meet Kim again further along the Way, and exchanged phone numbers. Then we continued to Gioia's home and settled in, just in time, before it started to rain. Exactly as forecast! As everyone knows, the Swiss are perfectly on time - even with their rainstorms!