Road to Home 2023 Day 56: Ollon - Pissevache

There is something that distinguishes the rugged from the gracious in landscape, and in our Europe this something corresponds to the use and presence of men, especially in mountainous places.

- Hilaire Belloc,  The Path to Rome (1902 )

Our sleep was interrupted last night by the sound of rain pattering on the skylight of our attic room upstairs from the café in Ollon. But by morning the rain had stopped, and a delicious aroma of freshly baked croissants wafted up the stairs from the café below.  We dressed, went down for breakfast and settled our bill, which was very small by Swiss standards! Café owner Louisa's husband cycled from home to Rome some years ago, and so the two of them sympathise with pilgrims and offer super-discounted rates for dinner, bed and breakfast. 

We stepped out into the fog and climbed through the vineyards into the forest. Then we descended through another vineyard on a steep, wet path, being careful not to slip on the wet stones and grass, and trying to avoid stepping on the snails that were absolutely everywhere, revelling in the wet weather!

We descended into the valley, and it began to rain gently as we walked along the embankment of the Rhône, then crossed a footbridge into the village of Massongex, where we stopped to take off our raingear and rest at an outside table of a restaurant that turned out to be run by Italians - a couple from Lecce and a bartender from Sardinia! They didn't have any breakfast foods on the restaurant menu, but they made me a cappuccino and offered us some free slices of a cake that their children had made at school! 

A Roan crossing the Rhône 

Massongex

Authentic Italian cappuccino!

It was no longer raining, so I changed into a dry t-shirt at the café and walked for the rest of the day in short sleeves. We soon came to the Abbey of Saint Maurice, where a large gathering of people was just coming out of the church. Now we could see why there had been no rooms available for pilgrims at the abbey, or at any of the places we had contacted about accommodations in Saint Maurice! We had arrived on a very special day, as the town was celebrating the ordinance of two new priests. One of them was posing for photographs with his colourfully dressed family on the steps of the abbey as we arrived. The rest of the congregation was just leaving the church as we walked up, gathering for an aperitif in the square across the road. We were offered a glass of wine and given a stamp on our pilgrim credentials, endorsed with the signature of the Abbot himself, Monseigneur Jean Scarcella.

A historical note: The Abbey of Saint Maurice 

The Abbey of St. Maurice is built on the ruins of a Roman shrine of the 1st century B.C. dedicated to the god Mercury, in the Roman staging-post of Agaunum. Around the year 370, Theodorus, Bishop of Valais, constructed a small shrine to commemorate the martyrdom of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion, which was said to have occurred in the area where the abbey is located. Maurice was the commander of the Theban legion, which was ordered to hold pagan sacrifices and harass the Christians at Agaunum. He refused, along with the Christians among his soldiers, and they were all put to death at the place now known as Verolliez, or vrai lieux, meaning the "true spot" where this holy event occurred.

Theodorus gathered together the local hermits to live as a monastic community, thus establishing the Community of Saint-Maurice, one of the oldest in Europe.

In 515, the Basilica of St. Maurice of Agaunum became the church of a monastery under the patronage of King Sigismund of Burgundy, who was the first ruler in his dynasty to convert from Arian Christianity to Trinitarian Christianity.

The abbey became known for a form of perpetual psalmody known as laus perennis, practiced there beginning in 522 or 523. Chants were sung round the clock by several choirs in rotation, never ceasing, until the 9th century, when the monks were replaced by a community of canons, who still live in the abbey today.

Another noteworthy fact about the Abbey of Saint Maurice: it claims to represent the halfway point between Canterbury and Rome on the Via Francigena. 

We are only halfway! Or about one third of the way, if you also take into consideration the Via Francigena of the South, between Rome and Santa Maria di Leuca. 

I thought France was a big country to walk across; well apparently Italy is pretty big, too!!

We were not able to see the cloister, or the museum containing the treasures of the Abbey, which were closed for the duration of the festivities. And so we continued through the town of Saint Maurice, stopping to converse with an elderly lady dressed in yellow out for a stroll with her walker, who told us all about her years living in Canada as a medical researcher. 

Walking through the neighbouring town of Epinassey, we were harassed by the sound of  gunshots at a nearby target shooting range, echoing horribly off the cliffs of the narrow mountain valley. We waited until the sound had faded somewhat before sitting down to eat our picnic of bread and cheese saved from breakfast at the café in Ollon. It was delicious bread and cheese, but it was our fifth meal in a row consisting entirely of bread and cheese - the previous day's breakfast and lunch had been the same, and for dinner we had sampled the famous Swiss fondue, which we wanted to try at least once, but which was probably not the best choice in nutritional terms, given the circumstances! 😄

Soccer tournament in Evionnaz 

Cascade de Pissevache 

We then pressed on up the valley toward Evionnaz, where we stopped at a grocery store to pick up something for our dinner in the evening, seeing as our hotel was in an isolated location and had no dining facilities. And no kitchenette, either... or even a kettle! What to choose for dinner? Bread and cheese would have been the most obvious choice... but not for the sixth meal in a row!! The small grocery store had only a limited selection, but eventually I found some gazpacho soup, and some quark and fruit for making birchermuesli with the oats I have been carrying on my bag. I was expecting to find birchermuesli on the menu in cafés in Switzerland, but have not seen it once yet, so I have been making my own! It is a tasty and nutritious breakfast food which is also good as a dessert, and easy to make without cooking facilities. Just leave oats to soak overnight in quark or yogurt thinned with milk, and mix with fresh and/or dried fruit as available!

Our hotel is located at the foot of the waterfall known as Pissevache, and yes, the name means just what it sounds like! 😄

There was no-one at the hotel when we arrived, and we had instructions to pick up the key from a keybox. We walked around  the semi-derelict former restaurant building twice before we located the keybox, on the basis of photographs sent to me by the hotel owner; we then walked round it again, trying the key on all the doors, before we realised the hotel itself was actually in another building, next door, which we had not noticed until then as it was on the far side when we arrived, and hidden behind a tree. When we finally got in, the room was fine, apart from the rather cool and damp feel that one might expect at the foot of a waterfall at the bottom of a gorge in the Alps. Fine, that is, apart from a few missing light bulbs, and wifi that didn't work, causing me to incur additional data roaming charges to upload this blog entry! Oh, and the first time I used the bathroom sink, I put the plug down and it wouldn't come back up again, so after that we had to rely solely on the shower as our only source of running water for washing our hands and brushing our teeth. 

Now as the French saying goes, le pèlerin n'exige pas, le pèlerin remercie; meaning the pilgrim is thankful for everything he or she can get. But I believe this is meant to apply to to inexpensive and by-donation pilgrim hostels, not 100-euro-a-night hotel rooms! Apparently this is the sort of hotel you can expect to get for a hundred francs in Switzerland - that's a hundred euros, for the current exchange rate is roughly at par. 🤔 

Today's accommodations: Hotel la Cascade 

Ollon - Cascade de Pissevache 24 km