Road to Home 2023 Day 43: Besançon

La pensée est plus qu'un droit, c'est le souffle même de l'homme. Qui entrave la pensée, attente à l'homme même. 

À toute diminution de la liberté de la presse correspond une diminution de civilisation. 

- Victor Hugo, Discours de Bruxelles (1862)

Our rest day in Besançon began with a visit to the birthplace of Victor Hugo, now a museum about the writer and about freedom of the press. Just across the square is the location of the home and former photography studio which is the birthplace of the Lumiere brothers, inventors of the cinématographe and pioneer filmmakers.

The birthplace of the Lumiere brothers 

Close by Place Hugo are the remaining vestiges of the city's Roman origins, a few columns and a triumphal arch built in 175 BC and dedicated to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Just through the arch, used as a city gate in medieval times, is the cathedral, where I ended up spending much of the rest of my day. We visited it in the morning as tourists, and to ask for the cathedral stamp on our pilgrim credentials. Then we went to see the astronomic clock in the tower beside the church, and headed into the main square to look for something to eat.

Roman columns

Porte Noire, originally a Roman arch

The cathedral entrance

The cathedral, empty, in the morning 

Unusual circular altar

The astronomical clock

The square, as seen from our restaurant 

After lunch and a nap, I went back to the cathedral and attended a special service being held for Pentecost and adult confirmation. There were many adults being confirmed into the church, and the cathedral was absolutely packed, right down to the back row. I arrived early so I had an aisle seat, and imagine my surprise when, at the head of the procession of altar boys and clergy, bearing the incense, I spotted Jacques, the friend and representative of the Via Francigena Association I'd had dinner with in Champlitte! I don't know whether I was more surprised to see him, or he to see me! In any case, the service was a lovely one, with lots of involvement on the part of the entire congregation, all joining in the singing and taking communion. Afterwards, drinks and snacks were served in the garden of the bishop's house across from the cathedral, and there Jacques introduced me to the Archbishop of Besançon! He endorsed my credential for me, and we had a photo taken together. 

The packed cathedral after the service

With Jacques and the Archbishop of Besançon 

In the evening I met up with Elaine and Mick for dinner at a brasserie in the park close to our accommodations. Mick had had a very different sort of day from mine, attending a gathering organised by anarchists and speaking to political activists in a city that has a long history of anarchism. Besançon is the hometown of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, considered the father of anarchism and of mutualist philosophy, the first person to define himself as an anarchist, author of the phrase Property is theft. 

Meanwhile, Elaine had been scouting out the beginning of tomorrow's stage on the Via Francigena,  which appears to start with a steep climb above the citadel of Besançon.

I hope to be ready for it, after my day of rest!

Road to Home 2023 Day 42: Gy - Besançon

For the pilgrim, what purpose may the city serve? For the pilgrim, only streets make sense, not the houses – houses tempt one to rest and relax, to forget about the destination. 

Zygmunt Bauman, From Pilgrim to Tourist (1996)

Day 43 will be my first day of resting and relaxation, spending an entire day in the city of Besançon! My original plan was to walk as far as the high-speed railway station,  several kilometres before the city itself, and take the shuttle service into the city centre,  then take it back the next morning and walk the remaining kilometres into the town. This was because I had found good, inexpensive accommodations in the centre of Besançon despite the shortage of rooms over the long weekend, so it made sense to book two nights. But I ended up walking the whole 35 kilometres into the city centre, and so Sunday will be my very first day off from walking!

Elaine, Frédéric and I set off from our accommodation by the 19th-century fountain in Gy to follow an old variant of the Via Francigena, marked here and there with an arrow and the letters VF spray-painted in yellow, combining forest paths with the D66 road. We regained the official route of the GR145 at Etuz, where we stopped for a snack in the shade of the old lavoir - mairie. These structures combine a wash-house on the ground floor level with a town hall upstairs, and they replaced the village church as the central gathering-place of the village when public life in France was secularised following the revolution. Along with the churchyard, they are often the only public spaces in the villages where we feel free to sit down and take a break.

In Etuz I said goodbye to Frédéric, as he hurried on to the next village, Cussey-sur-l'Ognon, in time to take the bus into Besançon, where his walk ends for the time being, to be resumed in September. He didn't want to miss that bus, as the next one wasn't until Tuesday! Elaine decided to go with him in order to arrive in Besançon while the shops were still open and look for a new pair of shoes - the soles on hers are wearing thin.

I continued walking with Mick, the man from Northumberland who is walking to Palestine, who had caught up to us while we were resting in the lavoir. We charged through Cussey-sur-l'Ognon and took a shortcut along the D1 - which I do not recommend - to cut out some of the twists and turns in the official Via Francigena route, which goes out of its away to take you onto small dirt roads rather than walk on the narrow shoulder of the road between the traffic and the long grass. Just before Auxons we ran into Yves, a French walker we had crossed paths with the evening before in Gy, where he joined the Via Francigena after walking the Via Ligeria from Nantes. Another break for more snacks - in my case, bread and chocolate - in front of the church in Auxons, and then we were off on the final stretch into Besançon, which never seemed to come; every time we thought we had climbed the last ridge, expecting to see Besançon appear in the valley below, another ridge appeared. Endless suburbs and a technology district remained to be passed before we finally reached the city centre!

Highlights of this part of the walk included meeting our host from two nights ago in Dampierre, who just happened to be driving by in his car; getting spat on by a donkey - which cried in dismay when we then walked away; and finding our path barred by two snakes intertwined, whether in love or in war I cannot say. We met a young man with a dog trudging up and down the hills with two large shoulder bags who asked us if this was the right way to go south. (Couldn't he just look at the sun??) We stopped to refill our water bottles and refresh ourselves at the fountain in a cemetery,  the only reliable source of drinking water along the trail in France. 

Besançon or bust!

I took this picture for Mick's Facebook page

Arriving in the bustling city centre of Besançon on a sunny Saturday afternoon on a long weekend was a bit of a shock! All those well-dressed people, all those shops and sidewalk cafés! We hurried along to the diocesan centre in the former seminary, built between 1670 and 1695, where Elaine and I had booked a room. We ended up sharing our room with Mick as we had both a double bed and a single bed in our room, and there were no more rooms available. After a shower and a brief rest the three of us went out for a huge dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant and an after-dinner drink at a bar. Exhausted by our long walk in the hot weather, we turned in early, only to be kept awake by trance music playing at some outdoor venue, presumably in association with the Pride parade that Elaine had seen in the city centre earlier in the afternoon. 

It sounded like a fun party, but even if I had been able to summon the energy to get out of bed, I doubt my legs would have had much dancing in them, after walking 35 kilometres! 😄

Curried spinach, raita & naan

Kulfi & mango lassi

Centre Diocésain 

Privileged to stay in this enormous and beautiful place

Today's accommodations: Centre Diocésain Espace Grammont 

Gy - Besançon 35 km

Road to Home 2023 Day 41: Fresne-Saint-Mamès - Gy

Ancient roads leave behind both a cultural and a spiritual legacy; like rivers, roads affect the country they run through, and the cultural and spiritual trail left behind by an ancient road never vanishes.  Those who walk such a trail get something out of what has been left there by earlier travellers.

Via Francigena pioneer Giovanni Caselli, in The Roads from England to Italy (2009)

Today we walked a combination of trails, starting out on a modern highway, reaching the Via Francigena, and then branching off onto the Chemin de Compostelle, following one of the many paths that cross France to join the Camino de Santiago in Spain. 

This allowed us to shorten what would otherwise have been a very long stage on a hot day, and find accomodations on a long weekend! The pilgrim accomodations in Bucey-les-Gy were already fully booked up, so we followed the Chemin de Compostelle to the next village, Gy. And I'm glad it worked out this way because one of the walkers I had initially shared accommodations with in the first part of this walk, Mick the Irishman from Newcastle, is also staying at the pilgrim hostel here! We hadn't seen each other since before my four-day detour around the Somme to my great-grandfather's grave, back in April. It turns out Mick was laid up for five days in Reims with blisters on his feet, and so we are once more in the same place at the same time!

Today's stage took us through some pretty countryside and a lovely forest, though unfortunately all on paved roads. The morning was warm and humid, and by nine o'clock we were already covered in sweat! The humidity cleared up a bit in the afternoon but the sun was very hot, and in addition I suffered from allergies,  which I don't normally get at home! Luckily Mick has some allergy medication in his backpack and gave me some tablets when we met at the hostel.

We stopped for lunch in a shady spot by the mairie/lavoir in Vantoux, where there is a beautiful fountain with a cast iron sculpture. The water is not drinkable, but at least I could splash myself and soak my hat in it! It's suddenly that hot - and to think that only a couple of days ago we were still wearing our jackets in the morning!

The afternoon brought us to the town of Bucey-les-Gy, where a farmer just pulling up in front of his barn on a rather ancient tractor called us over and asked if we would like to see his....er.... rooster! 😅

After this curious episode, seeing as the two gîtes in Bucey-les-Gy were both full up, we left the Via Francigena and followed the coquille de Saint Jacques symbol across the fields to the neighbouring village of Gy, where we are housed for this evening at Gîte de la Fontaine, an accommodation in a beautiful old home available only to pilgrims walking either the Via Francigena or the Chemin de Compostelle. One of the wonderful things about walking ancient pilgrimage routes is that doors are open to you that are not open to ordinary visitors passing through by car! Doors of monasteries, castles, private homes, and beautiful historic buildings like this one!

Elaine, Frédéric and I settled in, showered and washed some clothes, and agreed that once "Michael the Irishman", whom we'd been told would be arriving later in the afternoon,  was here, we'd all go out for a drink. Michael the Irishman turned out to be Mick from Newcastle, who is indeed originally Irish , despite his Geordie accent, and I already knew him from the first few days of my walk, but hadn't seen him for almost a month! So we had a lot of catching up to do over that beer! Then we returned to the hostel for the dinner our host had prepared and left in the refrigerator for us. All we had to do was cook the spaghetti, and I volunteered to do that, as the expert on making pasta! I also volunteered to make the coffee tomorrow morning, because the hostel has a proper Italian stovetop moka coffeemaker!

With Frédéric, Mick and Elaine

Today's accommodations: Gîte de la Fontaine,  Gy

Fresne-Saint-Mamès - Gy c. 20 km

Our route vs. the official Via Francigena route 

(gps signal was bouncing around a bit and added some non-existent kilometres!)

Road to Home 2023 Day 40: Dampierre-sur-Salon - Fresne-Saint-Mamès

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.

I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what we shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night.

- William Hazlitt, On Going a Journey (1822)

Today we walked in company, but without speaking of anything other than the present moment and what we saw around us.

Following breakfast, the stamping of pilgrim credentials and the settlement of accounts with our amusing host at Au bon vivant, we set off in the company of Frédéric, a French walker who is staying at the same accommodations as us for the next couple of nights. After a quick stop at the supermarket and bakery for lunch supplies, we headed out of Dampierre and back to the Via Francigena, which cuts across the edge of the town on the other side of the Salon river. Soon we were back out in the fields, with only cattle for company. 

We skirted a wheat field then followed a forest trail, passing under the railroad tracks through a dark and narrow tunnel. We emerged onto a bicycle path beside the river Saône. We passed the Savoyeux locks and climbed the hill to look down on where the canalised river flows through the Savoyeux tunnel, built in 1843 to connect two meanders of the Saône and make the river navigable. 

We sat beside the river for a break and a snack, and I finished off the chocolate-covered biscuits that had fused together in my backpack - it's getting too warm to carry chocolate! I covered my hands and face in chocolate in the process - well they say cocoa butter is good for the skin!

As we were getting up to go, we were joined by Ross, the British walker I had first met in Seraucourt-le-Grand but not seen again since - until he walked into our dormitory last night. The four of us continued together as far as the village of Vellexon, where we stopped for a lunch break on a bench in the shade of a bus shelter, as the afternoon was becoming very warm. 

At Vellexon - a name we decided would be appropriate for an asteroid - we parted ways: Ross had several more kilometres to go along the GR145 to Bussey-les-Gy, while the rest of us had decided to shorten today's stage by detouring off the Via Francigena to stay in a small hotel in Fresne-Saint-Mamès. Our improvised route started off beautifully, on a dirt road following the meanders of a stream called the Romaine, where we repeatedly disturbed a heron attempting to fish in the stream; the last time we passed by it, the bird flew right over my head! The dirt road eventually took us back to the highway, and we continued along its grassy shoulder to Fresne-Saint-Mamès. We made a quick stop at the local supermarket to pick up an afternoon snack and lunch supplies for tomorrow; we bought a litre of grapefruit juice and quaffed it all in the supermarket parking lot! Anyone seeing us might have supposed we were winos downing a litre of cheap swill straight out of the carton!

Following the main road through to the top end of the town in the warm afternoon sun, we finally came to our colourful lodgings at the Hotel du Mouton Blanc. The corridors are blue, the rooms bright orange, the "wild west" saloon-themed restaurant a deep red. On the menu tonight was salad, chili and rice - not very French, but tasty and nutritious!

Today's accommodations: Hôtel du Mouton Blanc

Dampierre-sur-Salon - Fresne-Saint-Mamès 24.5 km