Eva on the Via Francigena (and beyond)

Song of the Day: One Time Too Many – Phoenix

This is a great song, and one that I’ve carried with me since my very first iPod(!) if you can imagine a day when we didn’t all have Spotify subscriptions. Phoenix was one of the first bands that I started to get into outside of my parents’ influence when I was in about 7th grade, and I was very excited to show new music to my dad — only to realize he had given me this song years before. Ah, well.

Today, I think, was my last canal day for awhile. While I can’t say I’ll miss them too much, it was a good send-off for the canal system that I have been following on-and-off since I arrived in France 18 days ago.

To be completely honest, I woke up feeling unmotivated this morning, even though I knew I had a short day of walking today. I think the heat and lack of air conditioning in France has been difficult — every morning I wake up feeling gross and dehydrated no matter how much water I drink the day before. This morning was no different, and as I slowly packed up I found myself trying to remind myself why I was doing this. But I think that’s a topic for another blog post.

After some bread and butter I was feeling rejuvenated and ready to head out. Monique had very kindly given me some tomatoes from her garden to have with lunch today, so I carefully packed them up in the top of my bag to ensure they weren’t crushed, then grabbed my things and was out the door. I left late, maybe at 7:05 or so, and within a few minutes was outside of the village and cutting through a forest path. According to the guidebook, I will eventually be entering boar territory in the next few days. I’m not overly worried about it, just mildly concerned, because I think wild boars are terrifying. At the agriturismo in Umbria we had one called Tony who I usually had to feed, and I was always concerned he would break down the fence between us when he saw me coming his way with a bucket of food scraps. Anyway, apparently (like bears) you can make noise to warn off boars, so even though I didn’t think this small stand of trees had any I figured it would be good practice to occasionally sing and make loud noises.

Pretty quickly I was out of the woods and back on a farm road that paralleled the Autoroute. Even with the sound of the trucks flying by on the highway, this was a really beautiful and peaceful way to start the morning. The sun was only just coming up over the horizon, and the fields were glowing in the early light. Windmills, happily spinning in the morning breeze, were silhouetted on the horizon. I marched along contentedly, thinking that maybe morning people are onto something here. After maybe 2 miles, I dipped into the small village of Ablancourt, which was quiet and sleepy. I didn’t see a single person, but passed by rows of beautiful half-timbered houses and their well-maintained gardens, before crossing over to the canal.

I will say, I still have frustrations with canal walking, but today was much better than yesterday (even if I did get swarmed by mosquitoes early on). A big contributor was that it was a windy day, which helped mitigate the heat. But also the scenery was a bit more varied. I passed a number of cliffs on the opposing side of the canal — completely new geography than what I’ve seen so far in France. I also passed a “Calcium Cement” plant, where workers were loading up a barge.

About an hour outside of Vitry I realized I was starving, and needed to have an early second breakfast / first lunch (before 10am!). I was running somewhat low on snacks, so ended up making a sandwich of sliced tomato and saucisson (I then also ate the remaining tomato out of hand, like an apple — it was that good). The tomatoes were juicy and sweet, a welcome addition to my normally very basic sandwich. Having polished off most of my food except for my emergency ramen and emergency peanuts, I re-packed my bag and headed for the last hour. It was hot at this point but not unbearably so, and while I was a bit stiff I didn’t have any real pain in my feet / legs / hips / back — thankfully.

I ended up catching up via text with my friends Jordan and Ryan, who are both in Europe on holidays in Sicily and Spain, where the heat wave is even worse (over 100 degrees consistently). I commiserated — certainly when the weather was that bad in Rome in July, I rarely left my house during the day, and only did to go to an air conditioned bar. It was miserable. I applaud anyone who manages to suffer through it as a tourist.

I started thinking again about a train of thought I’ve come back to many times this summer — which is how scary the changing climate really is. There have been heat waves in Europe, I think, every summer since my first time visiting (in 2015 when I studied in Prague, where we had no air conditioning and would sit in the grocery store refrigerated section to cool off). This summer there were only really a few weeks, maybe a month, between unbearable periods. At a certain point, I imagine, we will stop calling them heat waves and just acknowledge that this is the new normal for summer. And yet, in my lifetime I remember summers where this didn’t happen like clockwork. I remember it would snow every year in DC during winter when I was a kid. Now we can go a winter without any real snow.

I’m still quite young, and to be honest I find it terrifying to think about the logical continuation of this trajectory. What will the world look like when I’m 40? If I have kids, what future will they be facing? And I know I’m quite young, too young to feel like I have no hope here, but when I look at how things are trending I do find it hard to have hope for the future. I recognize that I — and everyone — will need to make significant sacrifices and lifestyle changes going forward. This is true whether or not we act against climate change — either we sacrifice to reduce our carbon emissions, or we sacrifice because our normal way of life is no longer feasible in a hotter world (or, realistically, both). But I struggle to see real leadership on this issue, and I don’t see a clear path to solving the underlying global collective action problem. Anyway, I suppose most of what I can do now is try to change my individual behavior — I don’t drive, I try to reduce my consumption and buy secondhand, I try not to buy and return excessively online. The next frontier for me is probably changing my diet to reduce my meat consumption…difficult to even consider in cow country at the moment.

Putting my minor existential crisis aside for the time being, and back to the walk. The walk into Vitry was really nice, with trees planted along the path that arched over the canal, providing shade. It was a pleasant path all the way into town, where I discovered the people of Vitry are quite friendly. As soon as I entered town a woman stopped me to ask about my walk. Then, a few minutes later, a dad walking with his wife and son stopped to ask about my walking plans. Later in the day I had another man come up to me and tell me about how nice the canal paths are for walking.

Vitry-le-Francois was built in the 1500s to replace a town that was fully razed, and as such is very much a “planned city”. It’s a perfect square with a grid system, which makes navigating easy. While the buildings don’t have the same medieval village charm, the high street was nice and busy. I headed to the Hotel de Ville for my stamp, and then walked through the small public gardens behind. Since it was only 11, and I had hours until my Airbnb check in, I found a secluded bench, put on a podcast, and laid down until 11:45 or so.

A bit dazed from my non-nap, I meandered over to the church (while it’s large, it’s not a Cathedral). Interestingly, along the nave, they skipped a column for one of the arches, so among the normal arches is one extra-large arch. This added a lot of light and air to the space, and is not something I’d ever seen before. Leaving the church, I meandered around the town’s market, admiring the cheese and veg vendors, before popping into an Indian restaurant for lunch. There I was brought a stein of mango lassi (just what the doctor ordered) and a lunch of Chicken Tikka Masala and garlic naan. The lassi was fantastic, and the rest of the food was quite good, though a little sweet for my taste.

After lunch I did a quick shop and checked into my Airbnb, where I went about my normal pilgrim chore of laundry and planning. I’m having issues finding somewhere to stay in Braux le Chatel — 2 of the 3 pilgrim hosts are unavailable, and I have not been able to get in touch with the 3rd. Not sure what I will do if I can’t: the options are either search for something down the road on top of an already 18 mile day, or walk 20 miles to Chateauvillain, where the only accommodation is over $100 on Airbnb. I just learned about the concept of France’s “empty diagonal” — a wide swath of depopulated land stretching from the Pyrenees to the Ardennes. I have been walking through it for the past few days, and I wonder if these accommodation issues will continue.

Final mileage: 9.44mi
Walking time: 3h 25m
Elevation gain: 433ft

Accommodation: Basic studio rented on Airbnb. Self check-in with a key box. Easy and basic — the apartment has no Wi-Fi, which I hadn’t noticed in the listing, but isn’t a big deal as I’m only here for a day. It does have a very nice shower.