I woke up to a glittering Lausanne. The sun was shining and I relaxed. I was ahead of my planned itinerary and felt no sense of rush. Laundry done and blog updated, I took a stroll around the lake in search of a sailing club that I had walked past the previous day.
I was too early for opening and so ambled round the outskirts of the city, walking through a university campus to find a supermarket for lunch. Everything felt civic and metropolitan. I was annoyed to be in walking gear amongst fashionable students.
When I returned to the sailing club I rented a small dinghy for an hour and found myself quite rusty at preparing its rigging. On the water, there was barely a hint of wind. I gently drifted out a few metres but was crawling along. I made slow tacks for the hour, a little bit frustrated at my speed, but enjoying the sun.
On returning to the micro-harbour I was told I could have another hour in the hope that the wind might pick up. It did, slightly, and I could travel with a bit more excitement. I pointed the bow to the south east of the lake, in the direction I would be walking, and moved towards the intimidating peaks of the Alps. The water played gently and sparkled in the sun. My legs got burnt.
In the afternoon I returned to the old city. I briefly visited a hiking shop and enviously eyed the wealth of exceptionally expensive hiking gear. My inflatable pillow had several slow punctures but the replacements were beyond my means. I bought a single spare tent peg for two Francs.
I continued up the hill and returned to the cathedral to have my credential stamped. Sitting outside was Paul with his boots and socks off. His feet looked slightly hooked in an uncomfortable sort of way. Our reunions were becoming inevitable.
We shared another beer and he told me how he’d been welcomed into stranger’s homes for the previous two nights. In the first he was given raclette and in the second he told me they had the biggest television he had ever seen. I was a little jealous but knew that his experiences could not be mine.
The beer was expensive and the late afternoon sun was glaring in my face. We talked haltingly and Paul excused himself after about half an hour: he was going to leave the city and find somewhere to camp near the lake.
I headed further up the hill that Lausanne is built on, in search of a view. It didn’t disappoint me. Lake Geneva is ta stunning place. I would spend the next few days slowly creeping round it, being constantly awed by its shifting beauty.
In the evening I spoke to my very good friend, Ed, on the phone who was planning to come and join me to cross the Alps. He booked his tickets on the basis of my original itinerary, so I had several days to go not very far. I planned a new schedule and it meant that I would walk less than twenty kilometres each day for the next week. I slept serenely in my tent.
The campsite was quite full of other camping pilgrims. There were two young German women who were cycling to Santiago. They were making a fairly elaborate breakfast on a camping stove. They asked me why I was making the pilgrimage. I bumbled my usual nothings: I don’t know, many reasons, to see Europe, to think a bit and then a vague ‘pour spiritualité’. I returned the question to them. They said, ‘the same as you.’ ‘Why not do it?’
I left the campsite fairly late. I had toyed with the idea of staying another day because I owned abundant of time. I decided not to. The path followed the edge of the lake. It was a popular route with joggers and continued in the metropolitan area for a long while.
As I was leaving the city edge I passed through a strange empty fairground. The rides were too close to each other for it to have been set up as a functioning attraction. Men were walking along with struts of rollercoasters hitting them with spanners. I thought it might be waking from a winter hibernation. There’s a fairground that comes to Newcastle called the Hoppings. Maybe Lake Geneva is where travelling fairgrounds live when they’re not travelling.
After walking for about an hour I came by a popular spot that had a diving platform built into the lake. There was a school group on a trip and a few people swimming in the water. I unshoulder my bag and went to the platform. The water was cold but very refreshing. I swam for a while and then returned to the shore to eat my lunch.
Continuing to walk after a relaxed pause, the path left the lakeside and crossed into the terraced vineyards that border a large portion of the lake’s northern edge. In 2008 they were appointed a UNESCO world heritage site. The Swiss seem very proud of this: I was told about it at least four times. They are, to be sure, incredibly beautiful. The resulting vista of vineyards, lake, and Alps in the background is genuinely arresting.
I was shocked by the beauty. I was urged to make a spectacle of my wonder. I was alone on the hillside but I felt like I needed to run and tell someone I had seen a miracle. Except of course, it wasn’t a miracle. It was a UNESCO world heritage site and people lived there.
I descended into the picturesque town of Cully. There was a campsite that was directly on the edge of the lake. I was thrilled when the owner allowed me to pitch my tent with a perfectly unobstructed view. I sat for a while, the Alps having grown ever so slightly since the morning.
On the way into town I had bought a bottle of wine from a local vineyard collective. It was white and had a hint of a secondary fermentation: the smallest fizz on the tongue. I climbed down to the lake cooked my dinner, drank and ate. I decided I would stay another night at this campsite.
I read St Augustine in my tent that night, not entirely sober. The first chapter of the Confessions is good reading for a lone pilgrim.
The next day was joyful. The smallness of the town meant that there were no sights that I would have felt guilty not seeing. I read and wrote and ambled along the lakeside enjoying a light breeze. It was just a little too cold for swimming.
I bonded with a Belgian couple about the dodginess of the campsite WiFi. Soon the husband was telling me about his own adventures when he was younger; how he had hitch-hiked to the South of France and picked fruit. And a run in with the police I didn’t fully understand the details of. And about how it was all just after his military service or possibly it resulted from the fact he was running away from it.
He wrote out an address for a campsite in Italy. He said it was worth visiting if I was passing. Its about 50km from the route so unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll make it this time.
By the early evening the weather had turned. It was starting to rain and a fierce wind was straining the guy ropes of my tent. The campsite was next to a sailing club and some brave windsurfers saw the change in the weather as a cue to head out into the lake.
I got into my tent and tried to get an early night. Sleep was unforthcoming. The wind was strong enough to blow the sides of the tent onto me in my half-waking state. I was worried something was going to tear. At 2am I sat up and pushed back against the wind for a few minutes. I gave up, put earplugs in and did my best to ignore the tempest.
By around 5am the wind had died down. I granted myself a lie in on account of lost sleep. Again, I didn’t have far to walk. I was heading for another campsite on the lake, inbetween Vevey and Montreux.
I walked slowly and stopped often. I was enjoying my new pace.
The path remained in the vineyards, climbing steeply up the side of the lake. They’re planted on terraces because it would be impossible to grow them on the natural gradient. It must make for hard picking work. There were some amazing looking almost rollercoaster like contraptions that must have been designed for harvest time. They were old steel tracks with grooves for cogs that wound up the hillsides.
I passed through picturesque villages, each one saying how important they were for the local wine production. There was an interesting church somewhere along the route that had an incredibly historic apse with a starkly modern extension. Both were frescoed, and the result was strangely jarring if not unpleasant.
I walked through the next few villages stopping occasionally to talk to hikers who were enjoying the now sunny day. Just before reaching Vevey I began talking to a couple: John and Jacqueline. Jacqueline asked if I would say a prayer for them both when I arrived in Rome. I promised that I would.
Just as we were saying goodbye Jacqueline asked if I had eaten lunch. I replied that I hadn’t and was invited to their house, fives minutes away. John used to be a commercial artist for Nestle, which has its HQ in Vevey, but now he paints full time. He has striking blue watery eyes. His paintings, which decorate their apartment, are dominated by blue. I think the lake must have called him by name.
As Jacqueline prepared lunch, John took me to his balcony and showed me the visible peaks of the Alps. A small, perfect triangle was at the centre. At the base of that mountain is Martigny, he told me, where I would be in a few days. From there, he said, you go right to the Great St. Bernard pass. It still looked distant.
He took out an Atlas. I showed him where Newcastle was. He told me he had never been to the U.K.; I promised I would show him round some London galleries if he did visit. John told me that he had worked on a Kibutz in the Middle East then gone further south before moving to Milan where he had met Jacqueline. There had been some kind of political trouble which led him to return to his native Switzerland.
Jacqueline served up pasta with a crisp salad. She told me she had been to London. She had lived there in the ‘époche’ of the Beatles. When she had arrived, she said, she had only brought long skirts. At her first day in class she realised that everyone was wearing miniskirts. She got to work with scissors and made the necessary alterations. Heavy eye make up was also described and mimed. When she returned home to Italy after several months her family were shocked.
Jacqueline had stayed with a family in London. The mother of this family had apparently reliably served up “MEEET AND TOOO VEGITABLES”. Jacqueline, in turn, insisted I took more helpings of pasta until the serving bowl was empty.
Then, strawberries and ice cream which felt like a transportation of some kind of Wimbledon fantasy. Again, I was persuaded to finish the bowl.
As John was making coffee, Jacqueline told me about her son who lived north of the border in Germany. She was a little sad he was so far away. I felt like small comfort. “I am not alone, though. Me and John have each other.”
I was sad to leave their apartment. I’ve been the recipient of a great deal of generosity but it is no less surprising each time. It was beautifully joyful and spontaneous. I once again promised to say my prayer in Rome for them and to send a postcard when I arrived.
I walked down into Vevey which took less than half an hour. It was a pleasant town that undoubtedly had something of the English seaside to it. Something about the edge of the water persuades leisure. I passed through, only slowing my pace a fraction.
Of course, the pilgrimage is a holiday. Or some holy days, perhaps. But a backpack and walking boots don’t easily lend themselves to seaside skippings.
I stayed close by the lake for another half hour or so and arrived at my campsite. It was very relaxed and again had an amazing set of pitches right on the lakeside. I set my tent up had a beer and read some more. Jacqueline’s pasta had filled me up, so I didn’t need much dinner.
Later in the evening, as I sat by the lakeside, the clouds began to gather and turn grey. People started to make their exits and return to shelter. I waited until the first drops of rain began to fall and then went for a shower. When I emerged I found that a full blown storm was underway.
The surface of the lake had been transformed into a rain-receiver. It was an enormous puddle and each of the million raindrops threw up a wet sign of the lake’s disruption. The accompanying wind patterned these splashes in extraordinary lines.
I stood in the shower block completely stranded. I was laughing at the apparent violence which was doing me no harm. I was very glad I was under a roof.
It took about half an hour for the storm to abate enough for me not to get completely drenched whilst walking back to my tent. I had left my t-shirt out to dry, ironically. Otherwise my tent had proved faithful once again. I climbed into it and slept easily.
The following morning I walked into Montreux. The lakeside route was punctuated with statues and memorials to the artists and writers who had been visited or worked on its banks. It is an incredibly impressive list. Ever since Rosseau wrote about the lake it has been a beguiling location for artist-heroes to sojourn. I’m planning a post about the Romantics and the Alps so stay tuned for that.
The area surrounding the city is called the Montreux Riveria. If Vevey feels like Scarborough, Montreux definitely aims for something more like Monaco. There is a casino and lots of towering hotels with expensive-looking terraces. I passed through, something about the slightly faded glamour warding me off.
Shortly after leaving the city, I passed the castle of Chillon. It looks like it was imagined in a fairytale. It was made famous by Byron who wrote about it in The Prisoner of Chillon. He also carved his name in the basement. Historically it was an important castle as it guarded the road from Italy. It made me very aware of my destination. I didn’t pay the entry fee; I might have done if it was Shelley’s subterranean signature.
Just as I had taken a photograph on the castle I turned to see a man in walking clothes and with a backpack. We met eyes and smiled. You develop a bit of a sense for other pilgrims: usually a little tanned and looking out of place.
His name was Gerard. He had also come from Canterbury but was only going to Aosta. He had walked many pilgrimages before. The conversation was a little stilted but not unfriendly. He clearly enjoyed his own company.
He told me he usually walked around forty kilometres a day. His wife was also a walker but apparently not as fast so they walked separately. Like everyone else he told me my pack was too heavy. He had camped on his first pilgrimage but not since then. I thought maybe I was holding him up.
We reached Villeneuve together which is where I was spending the night. He was to walk another fifteen or so kilometres. We shook hands and I was confident I would never see him again. He would be in Italy in a few days time.
I found the campsite and pitched my tent. Villeneuve is another historic town. It is strangely managed. There is a small shopping centre that has been constructed around the site of medieval fortifications but not in a curatorial way. It felt like the ancient tower got sucked into the glass and steel beams.
It was also the last town on the edge of the lake for me. It was overcast but I wanted to have a final swim in the water as a farewell to the most beautiful place I had ever seen. The temperature surprised me; it was the warmest it had been. I swam up to a buoy and saw the castle in the distance. Perhaps I would swim over to it. It didn’t seem so far. Not as far as Rome.
I returned to the shore. My feet were uneasy on the gravelly beach and I kept slipping. I wanted to watch the sunset over the lake so I walked along the shorefront and found a bench at a marina. I sat there for a while but the clouds were too thick. There were a few rays that peeped out but that is all I was granted. I returned to my tent for bed.
The short distances I had been enjoying had made me quite lax at rising. I didn’t start my walk the following day until 10am. My guidebook suggested I head towards a canal before meeting the Rhône. As I was leaving Villneuve up one of the canals I spotted a heron. Curiously, it had been a heron that had welcomed me to the lake. I wondered if they knew each other. Guardians of some watery keys.
The route took me beside a bird sanctuary. It was a wetland area that had been constructed at the edge of the lake with a wooden tower as a bird hide. I climbed up the tower and was genuinely surprised by the quantity of wildlife: the lake by the lake had a hundred or more birds bobbing on it. I spent a while watching them skid across the lake.
A sparrow appeared at the edge of the hide itself. It disappeared and reappeared several times. It had a pinch of hay clasped in its beak. I looked around. In the roof of the building I saw its nest. I was clearly preventing its home-building. I descended the stairs and left the bird to its peace.
I had a great-aunt who died a few weeks ago whilst I was in France. She was a keen bird watcher. Sometimes she had sent me postcards describing what she had seen from her back window in Yorkshire. The last time I had seen her was a few months ago and she hadn’t recognised me. I expect that bird tower is her memorial.
I continued walking for another kilometre or so. Then, I was struck by the absence of a memory of packing my towel. Remembering a forgetting can be fun. This wasn’t. I turned around and retraced my steps back to the campsite. I am quite a sentimental person and I attach too much importance to property.
I passed the bird hide and then down the canal again. I realised I must have left it at the marina when I had laid it out to dry when attempting to watch the sunset the previous night. When I arrived the benches were in a different configuration. Perhaps my memory had failed me.
Glancing round and approaching an acceptance of its permanent loss I saw it hanging on a half-wall. It was soaked from the night’s rain but I was pleased to see it. I rang it out and attached it to the top of my bag. I wondered how much further I would have had to walk before thinking that returning for it would have been foolish. I came to no conclusion.
For the third time I walked up the canal and past the bird hide. It took me a while to reach the point at which I had turned back. They felt a little like empty kilometres but I was convinced of the importance of retrieving the towel.
Soon, the route passed through a small town called Noville. It is industrial in a way that I had become unaccustomed to whilst passing along the lake. Then, I followed a broader canal for a long while, heading always in the direction of the mountains.
The path itself was disappointingly dull and I realised that to reach Aigle, my intermediate stopping point, I would have to divert off it before reaching the Rhône. I crossed a road and then passed through farmland. Rain began to spit gently and I tried to increase my speed.
Eventually I arrived at the town and found another campsite. It was slightly out of the city and adjacent to a swimming pool that gave free access to campers. The sun had come out and after quickly shopping and doing some laundry I swam half a kilometre in lengths.
The next day I abandoned my guidebook and took a different route to St Maurice. It was a little more scenic and involved traversing a couple of steep ridges instead of going around them. I didn’t mind too much because I was concerned I was losing a bit of fitness just before I needed it most for the Alpine crossing.
Leaving Aigle I passed through more vineyards and a castle that had been transformed into a wine museum. The tastings that were on offer did look very tempting but it was too early in the morning to be reasonable.
The sun was shining brightly and I was glad that the ridges were wooded and offered the cover of shade. Being amongst trees again was a real pleasure. There were some quite severe inclines that did result in a little breathlessness but I descended into the village of Ollon before too long.
Then, it was up another ridge where I met a man walking his dog. He told me the path I had just taken was called the ‘Sentier Provence’ because the woodland had its own micro-climate and much of its flora could be found in the south of France. That explained the sweating.
Out of Ollon I climbed another ridge along the appropriately title ‘Sentier Pelerin’ (Pilgrim Path). The name tricked me into following it away from the route on my phone and I ended up walking in the wrong direction for a while. I re-routed myself and walked down from the final ridge of the day and made a beeline for the Rhône which led up to St Maurice.
I was quite surprised by the river. It wasfat and full and flowing very fast on account of the increasingly melting snow. I was disappointed and then surprised by my disappointment. I had expected something more dignified from this ancient European artery.
I followed it in the opposite direction to its flow. Then a few kilometres later I crossed and walked on its other side. The weather began to look threatening again and I became quite keen to reach the safety of the town.
Just before reaching St Maurice, the river valley narrows radically into a steep gorge. All of the paths of travel (river, road, path, railway) squeeze next to each other to fit through. As I was passing through, I was struck by the wind that clearly was being forced through the same thoroughfare.
Walking a historic pilgrimage is a peculiar sensation because more often than not you are detached from the history of it. When walking along a hiking trail or a tarmacked road, it is hard to feel connected to the Francigena’s medieval roots. However, there are moments of remarkable synchronicity where you become aware of the footprints that are under your own.
The natural gateway of the gorge into St Maurice was one of these moments: there was no other way the travellers could have passed.
I arrived at the town. It is the home of the oldest continually running monastery in the world. Its presence on the west side of the Rhône had saved it from the Swiss reformation.
St Maurice was a Roman legionnaire who refused to slaughter his fellow Christians. His commanders killed him and decimated (killed one in ten) of his legion. The bones of the martyrs were later collected and an Abbey was founded near to the site in order to house them.
The Abbey accommodates pilgrims and I was told that I would be met at 5:30pm. I had about an hour and a half to look round the museum of the abbey.
It is quite an incredible site because it shows the archaeological remains of the churches that had been there from the fifth century. They were frequently destroyed or damaged because they were built right against the cliff edge and often fell victim to falling stone.
The abbey, due to the extraordinary number of relics it owns, was, and still is, an important place of pilgrimage in its own right. The archaeological site had excavated the initial resting place of St Maurice and a tunnel for pilgrims to pass through and glimpse his grave.
After leaving the museum I quickly ran to a supermarket to try and buy something for dinner but it was shutting just as I arrived. I walked back to the abbey, not sure of what I would be eating that evening. Little did I know, there would be provision and provision in full. It was nearly 5:30pm so I went to find my welcome.
As I entered an office, I spotted another rucksack and expected I would not be alone for the evening. Sure enough, another pilgrim emerged from the cloisters where he had been in conversation with one of the canons (the canons are essentially non-cloistered monks who usually have wider responsibilities and are ordained).
Roland was a bearded man. He had a necklace with very many small metallic icons attached to it. He also carried a thick wooden pole that must have been about seven-feet long. He asked if I was a Catholic and when I replied that I wasn’t: “Well, all manner of miracles can happen on the long road.”
We were shown to our adjacent rooms in a small hostel very close to the abbey. Roland and I agreed to have a beer after Vespers. The service was entirely sung by the canons. There were about twenty five of them and additional congregation of five in the nave.
The service ended and Roland took me across the street to a bar he knew. It had been his last section walking the Via Francigena, having done the complete route over the course of several years. He was a very authentic pilgrim. He spoke in disparaging terms of ‘walkers’ who used the route merely for pleasure and exercise. He measured distances in how many rosaries could be said.
We got on well and he told me about his experiences on the Francigena and other pilgrim routes whilst puffing his way through several Malboro reds. The first beer was fairly quickly drained and he suggested going for dinner. I wasn’t sure how far my budget would stretch but he made it very clear he would be paying: “It is my duty as the old pilgrim to the young pilgrim.”
Roland took us to a restaurant he knew from the last time he had been here. It had a Michelin recommendation on the wall. He pointed at it and said it was the only thing you could really trust. I said it make for a strange pilgrimage. He laughed and said, “a Baroque pilgrimage perhaps.” It was his final night and he was clearly keen to party.
He ordered two Kirs as an aperitif and then talked me through the menu. I hadn’t eaten in a proper restaurant all journey, so I was a little overwhelmed.
We made our way through two courses and two bottles of wine. First a white and then a red, Roland insisting that they came from the closest vineyards they had on the list.
Over dinner he told me about his “secret weapon”: the rosary. He told me that he would say the rosary of the Joyful Mysteries in the morning when he was feeling fresh and then in the final five kilometres he would say the rosary of the Sorrowful Mysteries. “And you have no idea how much it helps. And now, you must have it.” And he handed me his holy beads.
Then, he insisted I have a cheese plate to give me strength for crossing the Great St Bernard Pass in the coming days. The last of the red wine was finished. I thought we might be about to call it a night. Roland asked for a local aquavita as a digestif. I think it was a kind of apricot brandy.
At this point our conversation strayed into a discussion of the metaphor of the Eucharist and the doctrine of the True Presence. I was told there was no metaphor. More aquavita. I tried to explain that I thought metaphors were truly powerful. That to claim something as a metaphor was not to diminish its authority but perhaps to strengthen it. That actually, there is considerable magic in metaphor. I’m not sure how much of this I said.
There was a brief diversion into Scotch which I contributed. Next to the apricot, it tasted like petrol. Roland insisted that we cleanse our palettes with a final measure of the brandy.
When the bill finally came I internally winced: it was a fair amount over my budget for a week. We walked back to the abbey full of good cheer. Roland insisted that his ‘pilgrim brother’ should visit him in Vienna where he assured me I would receive a very warm welcome. I didn’t doubt it.
I stumbled back into my room and collapsed onto the bed. I woke up the next morning fully clothed and with my glasses still on. It had been my first bed in Switzerland and I hadn’t used it very effectively. The taste of the brandy was coming up from my stomach. I didn’t feel well at all.
It was Corpus Christi feast day. Roland told me I ought to stay because there would be a mass with a procession afterwards. I certainly couldn’t face hiking, so at 9:30am I was in the abbey church. It was an incredibly popular service. The church that had been near empty for Vespers was packed.
Afterwards, the procession made its way through the town. I walked beside Roland who told me it was not being done properly: “there should be at least four altars, preferably six, along the roadside, with special prayers at each. When you come to Vienna you will see they know how to do it properly there.”
It was just before noon by the time the procession had reached its conclusion. Roland turned to me and offered me lunch. I couldn’t turn him down.
We walked through the town and briefly considered an Italian restaurant but Roland decided “you will have enough Italian food in the next days.” We ended up back in the same restaurant as the previous night at the very same table. “I think it is the nicest place in town.”
One beer and three more courses, including some local asparagus. It did wonders for the hangover. “Now,” he said “You must walk to Martigny and I must take a little sleep.” He was getting the train back to Vienna that afternoon. We walked back to the abbey and said our final goodbyes. He gave me his phone number and told me he wanted lots of pictures from the way. I promised I would be sure to send them.
Considerably buoyed by a very hearty lunch I set out on the route to Martigny. It was a little over sixteen kilometres and started by passing Vérolliez (translation: the true place): the site of the massacre of St Maurice and the Theban legion. I said a rosary but it took me quite a long time. Roland had told me he did it in Latin and at speed. I wonder what the did to the computational distances. Would I walk further if I prayed more slowly?
Afterwards, the path stuck close to the valley side passing through woodland and an enormous waterfall. There were huge boulders that must have fell from the cliffs at some point. I passed through several villages where everything was shut for the feast day.
Just before arriving in the city there were several enormous power sub-stations. They seemed out of place amongst the radical beauty of the Alps, which by now were seeming very close indeed. The final few kilometres dragged a little.
Martigny is, once again, a very historic town, made so my its proximity to the pass. It isn’t however, especially beautiful. Roland had told me: “the Swiss are the only country in Europe that doesn’t need German bombs to destroy their cities; they can do it with money.”
As I was heading to the east of the city, where my campsite was, I looked to the right and saw the valley slope upwards into what I knew instinctively was the beginning of the route to the pass.
That evening, Ed would arrive and we would spend the next few days climbing through that valley towards the pass and the Italian border.
P.S. Some of you may know I have already crossed the pass. I fell a little behind with the updates and already know these are getting offensively long so didn’t want to overdo it. I’ll update with a Martigny – Aosta section very soon.
Thanks for reading!