Le Grand Départ

In search of a beginning

Yvonne Cloetta, My life with Graham Greene

We had a fabulous weekend chez Hester and Angus, including Angus’s birthday party on Saturday, a small walk to get me in the mood with Hester’s walking group The Heidis on Sunday and an actual swim in the lake:  cool and fresh and utterly delightful.  The happy conversations at the party and on the walk, and the familiar sight of the Jura and the awe-inspiring one of Mont Blanc filled me with the first genuine anticipation I have felt for this walk, and I was now eager to begin. Thank you Angus and Hester both, for such a warm and welcoming weekend.

We hitched a lift with Angus to his school in Lausanne this morning.  We left at 6.45, just as the sun was rising, and were dropped off at the International School of Lausanne, high up above the city, from where we needed to make our way down to the shores of the lake through Lausanne forest. We set off into the damp morning, sharing the forest path with the slugs.

Pretty soon the Tour du Sauvabelin emerged from the trees before us, essentially a 35m high spiral staircase constructed out of local wood, logs and rough timber from the Lausanne forests

Designed as an engineering project to challenge architecture students and finished just over 20 years ago, the tower was embraced by the locals, including Hester and Angus who had told us to watch out for this real highlight of the first part of the walk. Many had sponsored a step for the project, getting their names on plaques on the risers they had contributed money to.

Of course, we had to climb it and take a view.

The view from the top was a stunning 360° panorama with the Jura behind us and the early morning sun filling the valley up past Montreux where we are to start our climb to the Col si Grand St Bernard over the next few days, still far away across the huge lake, simultaneously a sobering and exhilarating prospect.

However, right there and then my full focus needed to be on the descent from the tower, now revealed to be a gigantic double helix: the curving vault above the staircase I had climbed was the floor of the stairs we now went down. I felt slightly dizzy as the stairs took me rapidly down and around and around, and it took all my concentration not to stumble. My legs were pretty shaky by the time I got to the bottom.

It felt somehow right to emerge from the forest into the city, rather than be dropped off directly at the hotel where I had finished the walk last year. We climbed up through the old town to the cathedral, determinedly closed until 9 o’clock, but nonetheless providing a marker for the start of this part of the pilgrimage and a connection to the far away Cathedral of Canterbury where this route started a year and five months ago.

Down through the bustling city we walked, over cobbles and down historical covered wooden staircases, getting ever closer to the lake shore, my legs still feeling worryingly like jelly after the tower climb.

We had been concerned about where we might be able to reboot our water bladders, but there were fountains everywhere, and also cafés, into which we looked longingly, smelling the coffee.

We walked on, sharply downwards, enjoying needles from the urban pines underfoot, the scents of the city, exotic flowering plants everywhere, and the growing warmth of the late summer sun.

All of a sudden, the Château d’Ouchy was before us with the sparkling lake as a backdrop. I was thrilled finally to be here where I had felt so triumphant at the end of my 1100-km trek last year, and share the place with Stephen.

Anne and Raffaele on reception kindly gave us a stamp in our credentials, and said it was a real shame we had missed Thomas (who had welcomed me last year), who wasn’t on duty until that afternoon. It felt wonderful to have a ceremonial sendoff and even more wonderful to actually take to the Via Francigena again — the long road to Rome.

And so we took up the route. The Francigena took us along the lake shore, here a long ribbon of paved walkway. Lines of lime trees and willows framed views out over the sparkling water, today somewhat choppier than yesterday when we had swum at one of the many public beaches scattered along the shoreline.

How typically egalitarian: so much access to the water for the locals; the price tags in multiple millions for lakefront properties do not prevent the rest of the population from enjoying their lake.

Early morning swimmers were out, making for the two pontoons linked by swimming pool lanes,

and the lake shore was lined with pollarded lime trees, willows and low hedges of figs, dotted with little cafés, benches, and even swing seats, the more relaxing to read on.

We passed the Museum of the Olympics, and I belatedly recalled that not only that Lausanne is the headquarters of the Olympic the Olympic organisation, but also that one of the lovely Heidis with whom I walked with yesterday, works for them.

Our path was a perfectly flat concrete thread unspooling along the waterline, providing access to runners, walkers, school children with their snacks, and grandmothers out walking their little dogs, pushing their sleeping grandchildren in prams.

The port of Pully had signs up about toxic algal blooms, although the water to us looked pure and exceptionally clear, with schools of fry darting about amongst the waterweeds.

A tethered barge was full of it: raked out to minimise the risk of it clogging up propellers and outboard motors.

And then on along this civilised path, noting the absolute lack of litter and dog mess and instead enjoying the shade of the plane trees. The foliage was just beginning to turn: it felt at times as though we stood on the cusp of Autumn.

In the village of Lutry, however, there was still a feeling of full-on summer, with planters of roses and exotically Mediterranean flowers all along the boulevard lined with exquisite villas — an enchanting Riviera atmosphere.

After Lutry the path descended onto the beach for a stretch, and occasionally we had to time our passage quite carefully, scuttling along the soaking stone slabs and at times taking our lives into our hands to avoid the waves, raised by the brisk wind, smashing into the shoreline.  I got one wet boot — Stephen got none.

We paused for lunch (bread, cheese, salami, and tomato purchased from the Lutry Coop and enough for tomorrow too) in the churchyard of a little church at the end of our start of the section where we would climb up through vineyards which are so special they are recognised as a World Heritage Site.

We now climbed up to take a transverse path out through vineyards, red and white grapes heavy on the vines and positively basking in the sun. It seemed like every square centimetre of the self facing steep slopes had been crammed with vines..

These were sometimes trained in the traditional Guyot manner with two buds bursting open to create vines trained horizontally (the less labour intensive method), and sometimes with the old and traditional local ‘goblet’ method of training in which six or eight canes are lifted, tied together and secured to a post (requiring a lot of work) to reveal the bunches hanging underneath individual plants, in both cases leaves obscuring the bunches of grapes are removed, to allow the grapes to bask in as much sun as possible.

The grape grown here, Chasselas, is distinctively copper in spring, and the grapes themselves turn properly gold, almost translucent in the sun. They were mesmerisingly beautiful and we were very good and didn’t pick even a single one.

The path dropped down (annoyingly, since we were only going to have to climb back up again) to the village of Cully, which offered more beautiful beachfront properties to salivate over, restaurants and cafés, and a series of shady plane trees, including a truly enormous one planted in 1798.

Here too was a little public beach area, right by a tiny marina, halyards on the moored sailing boats clinking in the high wind.  A small campsite was mostly full of campervans and motorhomes parked directly on the lake front, although a single small red tent perched on a tiny grass area, surely had one of the best views possible.

Just after the marina, the path took a sharp left turn and climbed up a set of concrete steps that seemed never to end. I took the photographic opportunity afforded by a tiny 4-foot high door in one of the walls to take a little break and let my heart rate slow, so that it didn’t explode out of my chest.

And then we were back up into the expansive world of the Lavaux Grand Cru vineyards rising up to our left, with the wide, sparkling space of the lake constantly to our right.

The vineyards are ranged on terraced, precipitous and slippery clay slopes which put the walls under immense pressure.  This land was first cleared of forests for vine cultivation  by monks in the twelfth century, although the 10,000 terraces and 450km of walls which consolidate the vineyards on the shudderingly steep slopes took several centuries to complete and are still in constant need of repairs.

Stephen marched through the vineyards on the vignerons’ service road.  There was a shady picnic bench under a vine pergola.  Was I allowed to stop?

Was I heck.

The road went on and on and on. I did insist on a break at about 18 km though, in another little shaded seating area.

I juiced up my phone and watch a little, and gazed out at the incredible view. Every minute it seemed the end of the lake and the towering mountains, still small in the distance, were coming closer.

The pause allowed us to contemplate the almost unimaginable depth of the glacial Lac Léman: we were at 372m here, but the lake waters plunge a further 310m below the surface; at its deepest point the lake is almost at sea level. 

The remainder of the walk took us for another 10 km through the vines, and although we were pretty much mesmerised by the unfolding views, the heat of the day was building, stored in the cement and reflected back at us.

Tiny lizards flashed away into crevices on the tops of walls.  Buzzards wheeled overhead. Stephen picked us some fantastic tiny and exceptionally sweet figs from a roadside tree.

We liked the mini monorail funiculars with a single seat perched precariously on ratchet wheels, and a basket for grapes.  The rails descend vertiginously down the slopes, twisting and turning as the snake through the vines.  It must be quite a sight to see them in use.

Lovely as they were, the vineyard road was pretty steep at times, and we were not sorry when it came to an end and we dropped off into the winegrowing village of St Saphorin, finally overtaking a German walking couple we had been leap-frogging right through the vineyards — although, on this first day, we hadn’t wanted to walk with anyone else, and it seemed they hadn’t either!

In the village winemaking was underway: enormous steel bins full of grapes stood in the streets

eventually to be hauled up by a pulley

and tipped into a hopper to be crushed in high-tech fashion.

A conveyor belt took the stalky leftovers after the grape-crushing and dropped them into skips.

It was a lovely village!  And even had a little spiral cat staircase leading up to someone’s windowsill

And then — oh God, we had to climb again, but this time into the very outskirts of Vevey, to the quarter of Corseaux, and asking (fruitlessly) at the local posh cafe in front of the (closed) church for a stamp for our credentials, wss treated to walls full of many lovely stills from Charlie Chaplin films, capitalising on his later life here in self exile, to escape McCarthyism.

We went heading quite steeply down now to the lake. But before we got there, the path had one last treat for us.  On the gates of the tiny local cemetery was a brass plaque indicating that this was the last resting place of Graham Greene who had lived locally in Corseaux — Greene, whose instructive belief was that you had to go out and see the world to have anything to write about.

We made a brief search but quickly realised that we were not going to be able to find his grave, instead finding a single Neolithic tomb in the same cemetery, the 5,000 yr-old slab cairn of one of the region’s earliest inhabitants, poignantly similar to today’s graves.

The quiet back road the path took us on (helpfully signposted through its complex urban passage) continued to fall steadily until finally, finally, after 29 km, we reached the Rivage gardens, complete with communal beds of Swiss chard (of course!) in three colours, and gloriously wave-battered statues in the water.

We collected our stamp at the information office down by the ferry quay.  Even more important than that though, was the absolute necessity of taking off our shoes and putting our feet in the water. Immediately rejuvenating! There is now apparently nowhere to swim until we reach Lake Viterbo, but the waves were simply too strong today to take a last dip. I got soaked by a particularly aggressive wave as I dipped my feet in the water — which was, at the end of such a hot day, extremely refreshing.

It was fabulous just to sit, and watch the world go by — including the famous ferry. Reader, I did watch it glide by with a fair amount of yearning.

Tonight we were to be hosted by wonderfully generous Annika, who like me had met Dutchman Ian on the Francigena last year and he had put us in touch.

She met us in the park and gave us a little tourist treat which otherwise we would have missed out on by driving us to the 12th century now-protestant church of St Martin on the hillside, where the Francigena OG Bishop Sigeric (see blogposts passim) passed by on his way to Rome to avoid the swampy malaria-infested country below.

seventeenth and eighteenth century memorial slabs in its cool interior bathed in the jewelled light from the modern stained glass windows.

It was similarly cool out in the cemetery.

Annika took us to the British war graves hidden away in an immaculately-kept peaceful part of the cemetery.

Here in Switzerland, refugees, those who had escaped from prisoners of war camps, or crashed planes. These war graves are unfailingly moving, and connected us right back to the faraway cemeteries of the north of France.

It was the end of a very long day — with the extra at the start, almost thirty kilometres.  Tomorrow’s walk should be similarly warm but very much shorter.  For now we repaired to Annika’s to chat, shower, eat her delicious reine-Claude plums, and admire her beautiful smokey-grey cat, Luna.

Single most important stat for the day:

Distance: 29.87 km — too far for a grand départ!