Penultimate

For architecture, among all the arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe

Unberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

I made a ridiculously slow start this morning, without the pressure of having to pack up and check out. After yesterday’s sumptuous breakfast, it was thin pickings today, with only a bowl of soup for supper last night, and an oat bar for breakfast. I called in at the shop next door to the B&B, and bought a small bread roll and a banana to supplement my lunch (cost: F2.3).

I dropped down to the Rue de Gare where I hoped, with any luck, to arrive back at the end of the day, having finished in Cossonay. And then dropped further down into the valley past some mosaics which reminded me that Pascale had said I must see the Roman mosaics here before I leave. Perhaps I will be able to manage that tomorrow morning since everything is closed today as it’s a Sunday.

The mosaic seemed to be river-themed, and I indeed I crossed the Orbe for one final time down in the valley bottom. It was quiet and lake-like here out in the valley where it wasn’t squeezed by the sides of its gorge.

Down at the soccer pitches I met my first Chien de Suisse: Simba, a Chinese chow chow, sitting on a patch of grass waiting for his mistress to turn up.

She had been on the path I now took, (checking it successfully on the preloaded route on the Swisstopo app — triumph!), which curved with the fence of the river and climbed up into a long woodland. I stopped only to photograph Herb Paris for which I have been looking forever and have never seen (another triumph). It is pretty distinctive amongst the woodland undergrowth. I love the way the leaves are arranged in fours, and that all the parts of the seed head follow the quatrefoil pattern.

Now all I needed was a bee orchid, and my happiness would be complete.

Conditions underfoot for the next hour and a half were rocks, mud and wet grass by turns. The vegetation at this time of year is so much lusher than it was earlier on in the season and I didn’t regret wearing shorts because it was quite humid and close.

It’s been a while since I heard a nightingale, but a solitary cuckoo struck up sonorously away in the trees, and when I stopped to listen to it, I could also make out a golden oriole too, amongst the constant chatter of chiffchaffs, robins, blackbirds and blackcaps. In the later part of the wood where small stands of fir and hemlock had been planted amongst the deciduous trees there were also firecrests and goldcrests hopping unseen amongst the high branches.

It was a sweaty walk, uphill, but it flattened out eventually on a wider track, more populated, with occasional cyclists and (I think) a hunting hut. I was hunting orchids.  There weren’t any bee orchids but I did see something better! Another new one: greater butterfly orchid, Platanthera chlorantha.  These are near-threatened in the UK due to the use of pesticides which kill the fungal networks with which the orchids associate.  Here in the calcareous woodland edge they were quite plentiful.

I was excited by this new spot and when I texted home with a photograph, I saw that Martin, one of the group of four Annual Amblers whom I had met at the border crossing yesterday, had messaged to invite me to join them at supper this evening. What a perfect way to celebrate my last night on this long, long trail! They were meeting in a town some way away and I could take a bus to get there and back. I texted my huge thanks and said I would let them know, depending on what time I finished today’s walk. I really hoped I could make it: it had been such fun to meet them yesterday, and it was such a kind invitation.

All this messaging meant that I missed the shortcut into the village of Bretonnier, and once I was in the village missed the road out. As a result I spent quite a bit of time wandering the village streets admiring the massive construction of the old farmhouses. Swifts were screaming overhead as they must have done here for centuries, and inhabitants were sitting on their porches, tucked behind the foliage of climbing plants and pots to screen them from nosey pilgrims. It was a quiet Sunday.

There was a produce stall set up outside one house where the garden was entirely given over to herbs, fruit and vegetables. There wasn’t anything for sale so early in the season, but I liked the signs which invited passers-by to pay what they felt they could afford and what the produce was worth.

The market garden of the home grew in a higgledy-piggledy organic way on the edge of the woods,

but the woodpile on the other side of the road was mathematically exact, and having stacked wood at home, much less perfectly, I wondered how on earth they’d managed it.

On the other side of the next stretch of woodland (where wild lily of the valley was still in flower) was the next village, Romainmôtier, described as ‘serene’ in the guidebook. It was actually the highlight of the day, by quite some way. It was a mediaeval village, its geographical position tucked into the heart of a steep valley meaning that it had stayed quite small.

Cafés, restaurants and art galleries were open on a Sunday and all doing a thriving trade.  The jewel here was the Cluniac abbey, the first sizeable protestant church on this route since Canterbury and Dover.

It was a stunning surprise: the cool and empty  narthex was exceptionally peaceful, and created a traditional space before entering the main church itself.

The vaults of its ceiling still bore painted plaster decoration in parts, the colour pigments preserved over the centuries by the lack of light entering through the small, splayed windows.

I felt immediately comfortable and at home here.

The main church felt familiar; perhaps it was the presence of familiar protestant church furniture: an organ, flower arrangements (here long-stemmed but short-lived wildflowers from the verges),

and choir stalls, complete with carved misericords for perching on during long prayers.

Everywhere ancient plaster had remained were wall paintings. Up by the altar was a huge panel, colours still bright after all these centuries.

Around it the side walls and columns of the chancel were decorated with bands and rectangles of a pointilliste design.

In the chapel of Saint Gregory painted lace decorated the walls,

and every rib of every vault.

Shaft of light illuminated the pilgrims and other visitors coming in, and all it was silent, except for two visitors in the chapel, quietly reciting a long passage from the Bible.

It was more than serene: it was peaceful, that deep peace of the ages, and I could have stayed there all day. But I had to leave, and I felt the same kind of dissonance coming out into the village streets where people were strolling about, chatting at cafe tables or buying bread from the boulangerie, as I had done yesterday, leaving the otherworld of the Orbe gorge.

Between high pastures above the village in the fork of a road, there were two benches on a grassy bank.

I took my rucksack off and paused for lunch. There was the bread roll from this morning, a red pepper and half my remaining sausage. I couldn’t be bothered to get the knife out and make myself a sandwich so I just bit off hunks.

Then it was back into the woodland trail for another long section coming gently down off the high plateau,

past two commune-run refuges and another stall selling produce at the side of the trail (prix fixe this time).

I met quite a lot of people today out on the trails — none to converse with, but all saying hello as they passed. All the cyclists made me think of Stephen, up in Scotland trialing a new bike. Going downhill looked ok, but uphill? I couldn’t imagine anything more ghastly!

There were couples, friends, individual walkers, pairs of families with small children heading out for picnics on the heaths and in woodland clearings. Everybody was enjoying, except a boy truculently dragging his long wooden walking stick on the tarmac by its leather handle, and his testy parents, who were using their own walking sticks properly.

It was two o’clock and I had started to flag. I had used up all the energy from my meagre bowl of soup last night, and the oat bar this morning, and I didn’t have much left in the tank. Rookie error, to be so underfuelled. A few hundred yards out of the woodland I realised that I had turned in the wrong direction when I had reached the road and I stood there for a while, feeling that I simply didn’t have the energy to retrace my steps. I considered a shortcut, looking at the route overview on the map, and seeing that the official route traced a wide arc, connecting several villages, to arrive in Cossonay. I could see back roads on the map which would instead take me pretty much directly there, so I decided to bail out of the Francigena route for the afternoon and use what energy I had left to get to Cossonay the shortest way.

I dropped down to the village of Ferreyres, where tinkling cows munched, heedless of the Alpine view beyond, and where hay had been cut in the meadows.

I was not heedless though, and I tried to get the PeakFinder app to work, which would overlay the names of all of the mountains I was looking at over the panoramic view on my phone camera. But it appeared there was about 100 MB of data to download for it to work, so I decided to wait to do that when I got back on Wi-Fi. There would be other views tomorrow, when I came down to the shores of Lac Léman, or Lake Geneva.

The road I had chosen went through a village called Dizy (the second wonderfully-named village of the day, after Envy, just outside Romainmôtier). To get there, I would have to climb about 100 m, the idea of which did not thrill me, so I sat on a handy wall to gather my energies and charge my phone a bit from the battery.

Once I got myself sorted out, I looked down at my lap and it took me a moment or two to realise that my shorts were swarming with little black ants. I had sat on an ants nest! They were all over my rucksack as well, even getting between the mesh and the foam on the back where I couldn’t get at them.

Tiredness vanished, and I lept into action to brush them off, trying not to get bitten too much in the process. I’m afraid the ones that had got inside the mesh got squashed.

I sadly don’t have any photographs of the hasty operation.

After that burst of energy had flooded my body with adrenaline I found I could get up the hill quite effectively, and the back road was indeed very quiet and peaceful. I can’t imagine that any of the villages on the official route would’ve had more to offer. The red black and gold clocktower was quite a feature,

and I loved this variant on stoop life, a vintage beer fridge.

It was only 2 km from Dizy to Cossonay, across wide straight roads planted with crops, and the perfect view of the Alps ahead to inspire me. I can’t see why there is a dearth of accommodation in Cossonay — it’s quite a substantial mediaeval centre, with modern outskirts and a small industrial area; much bigger in fact than I thought it would be. There were some houses crawling to the hill with lovely pot plants out the front,

and an interesting bell tower separate to the church — which seems to be a feature of most of the towns and villages around here.

Eventually at the top of town I reached the official end of the day, the Church of St-Pierre and St-Paul.

And so my penultimate day was completed! I decided I was going to make sure I ate a really good supper tonight and breakfast tomorrow, so that I could make the most of my final day’s walk. In the meantime, I had to get back to Orbe.

The Swiss public transport system seems to be integrated, with excellent apps where you simply put in your starting and end points and the whole journey is planned for you and tickets purchased. My journey involved three separate modes of transport — and the first of these was a funicular.

It was super exciting — the people inside the gondola were just chatting as though it were nothing special, but it was a FUNICULAR and I’d never been on one before. Another gondola was coming towards us on the precipitous single track, and they were perfectly choreographed to swerve onto opposite sides of the twin tracks which functioned as a passing place in the middle of the track.

The funicular took me right to the station below Cossonay and as I got onto the platform undercover, it started to rain — perfectly satisfyingly. The train took me to Chavornay, a station only 3 km from Orbe.  I did consider walking the rest of the way, but when I realised that my third mode of transport (which I had thought was going to be a bus) turned out to be a tram, I decided to take it.  The tram had an extremely friendly driver who stood outside to greet everyone at the door, and (I thought probably in a very un-Swiss way) ignored all the rules to allow a passenger he knew to stand with her dog almost in the cabin as he drove.

As we went up hill into town he waved at some children at the bottom of a garden who were waiting for the tram to go by.

We passed the Nestlé research and development plant on the outskirts of Orbe, and also the factory where they make Nespresso.

I thought of the ex-Nestlé Annual Amblers heading off for their lovely meal by the lake — it was kind of them to invite me to join them and such a shame that I would be finishing too late to make it. But I had a lovely surprise which made me feel as though I were a little bit with them anyway, which was that they had made a very generous group donation to my fundraiser for Plant Your Future — thank you, Martin and friends, it was a wonderful way to end the day!

Stats for the day

Distance: 23.89 km

Pace: 4.4 km/h — I did my best

Ascent: 531 m

Tick bites: 1

Chien de Suisse #2