When we arrived in Nus yesterday afternoon, Adriana and I took the bus back to her place, rested for the remainder of the afternoon, and then went for dinner at the home of our friend Rosalba, who also shared our accommodations in Santa Maria di Leuca two years ago and celebrated her birthday there! I was privileged on that occasion to partake of her birthday dinner of delicious seafood; last night we spent a lovely evening together at her home and made our plans for today.
In the morning Adriana dropped me off at Rosalba's house and she and I drove together to Nus, where we breakfasted on delicious pastries and espresso at Pasticceria Buzzi - highly recommended if you make a stop in Nus! Then we walked up the hill to pick up the Via Francigena again at the village church.
The Via Francigena stays away from the valley floor, which is pretty much all taken up by the river, the motorway, the local highway running parallel to it, and the railway line. Not much space left for pilgrim paths! And in any case, the historic route of the Via Francigena would have been up above, as evinced by occasional remains of Roman roads still visible today, because the valley floor was in past centuries swampy, malarial and subject to flooding. And in fact the constructions down at the bottom of the valley are all modern, as Rosalba pointed out to me; the ancient villages with their stone houses and churches are all raised a little way up the hillside above the valley floor, mostly on the south-facing slope of the mountains, referred to locally as the adret. The opposite side of the valley, the envers, is in the shade most of the time, which might have been better for walking on a warm day like today but renders the right bank of the river less suitable for agriculture and therefore for human habitation. Even today, land and houses on that side are worth less, Rosalba told me. No-one wants to live in a house that never sees the sunshine at all during the winter months!
The south-facing adret, on the other hand, is warm enough for growing fruit trees and grapevines, and in fact we snacked on plums from Adriana's garden and figs from Rosalba's while sitting amid vineyards heavy with ripe grapes.
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| Chambave rouge grapes |
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| Muscat de Chambave |
As the valley descends toward the plains, more and more of these grapes are pergola-trained, as in the last photo: a system which offers the advantage of taking up less space on the ground and allowing the grapes to be shaded by their own leaves, so they don't have too much sunlight. Because as Adriana told me yesterday, Valle d'Aosta is the region with the least rainfall in all Italy! This may seem surprising, as mountainous regions are normally associated with rain... but here we are in the rain shadow of Mont Blanc, or Monte Bianco. All the rain falls on the French side!
So how do the farmers of Valle d'Aosta manage to grow their crops, without rain? Since medieval times they have constructed and maintained a system of irrigation channels, called rûs, which contain to play a very important role in the local geography and economy. They bring water from the higher-up side valleys of tributary streams into the dry central valley of the Dora Baltea river, permitting planting of arid slopes that are too steep to retain water, because what little rainfall they receive washes off right away.
My friends still use the water of the rus in their gardens and for tasks not requiring drinkable water (such as washing off muddy hiking boots!). In the past, maintenance work was performed on them by corvée, under the supervision of an appointed expert who was in charge of controlling the flow of the waters, opening and closing various floodgates to distribute precious water to various parcels of land.
Rosalba told me there are plenty of very green and pleasant walking paths which follow the rûs higher up the sides of valley . But the Via Francigena follows the route of the historic road to Rome, in place since the days when Imperial Rome conquered the Gaulish tribes who originally inhabited the area. In many places this route has, unfortunately, been paved over, so today's stage involved a lot of walking on asphalt, though with very little traffic.
One of these remaining vestiges of the ancient Roman road to Gaul is the stone arch of the bridge at Châtillon. This single arch with a span of 15 metres rested on piers which are still used by the modern bridge today, resting firmly on the rocky banks of the Marmore river, just upstream of its confluence into the Dora Baltea at the bottom of the valley.
Roman engineering was strong enough to survive until 1691, when French troops destroyed the bridge during their retreat from Valle d'Aosta.
But let me backtrack for a moment and illustrate a couple of the highlights of today's walk: the church of Santa Lucia in Diemoz and the colourful paintings affixed to a house on the trail in Chandianaz.
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| The rectory in Diemoz |
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| Signing the visitor book |
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| Chaniandaz |
The chief highlight of the day, though, was the amazing views over the valley which, once again, made all the zigzagging up and down the hillsides worthwhile!
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| The Via Francigena is waymarked as path 103 in Valle d'Aosta |
Today's 16.5 km seemed longer than yesterday's 18, perhaps because we were in the sunshine more often... 🥵 Or perhaps because there were even more ups and downs. In any case, by the time we arrived in Châtillon I was quite happy to receive confirmation by phone from the Capuchin friar Father Stefano that he was expecting me and I could come along over right away. My friend Rosalba hopped on a bus to reclaim her car in Nus and drive back home, while I filled up my two canteens with chilled purified water at the Maison de l'Eau water dispensing machine across the street for only 7 cents a litre. Today's lesson: do not fill a canteen with fizzy water! It will leak under the pressure and dribble chilled purified water along your backside and down your leg all the rest of the way to the monastery, so that you arrive looking like you have an incontinence problem! 😅
Luckily Father Stefano didn't seem to notice and gave me a very friendly welcome to my quarters for the evening. The Capuchin friars in Châtillon have a very small establishment right in the centre of the town, and offer only one room for pilgrims, with three single beds and a unique bathroom set-up 😂
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| Turkish toilet, cover with wooden rack to convert to shower! 😅 |
I declined to take a shower under these circumstances and went for a walk around the town instead. Down to the Roman bridge pictured above, then up to a neighbourhood of old houses at the top of the village.
When dinner time rolled around, I walked into the restaurant recommended by Father Stefano, and... there in the corner was Frédéric, the French pilgrim Elaine and I walked with between Dampierre-sur-Salon and Besançon back in May!! He has also started again from Aosta, with his son, this time. I pulled up a chair at their table and we had a great dinner together, though my participation in the conversation was limited: after two and a half months of disuse, my French is even worse than it was in May, and I haven't done any revision over the summer as I really wasn't expecting to have to speak French on the Via Francigena in Italy!
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| Look who's here!!! |
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