I’d actually begun composing my last update Wednesday from Liddes, but the hospitality (and great conversation) provided by Therese and her friend Anne proved to be too great a distraction for me. Therese had lived in Quebec for 13 years until the albergue she owned was destroyed in a fire. Anne is an enthusiastic walker and has travelled quite extensively in Europe, and so she was particularly interested in the details of my trip.

I had to turn down their offer to join them for dinner, since I was hoping to be out the door and on the road by 7:00. I was successful in that, and my day of walking to the Great St Bernard Pass was relatively uneventful. When I arrived in Bourg Saint-Pierre, I stopped off for a coffee and then went into the church. As you may have guessed from the name of the town, the church has St Peter as its patron. I lit a candle and used my prayer rope for a bit, and then after filling my water bottle (checking for signs first!), I headed off again.

By this time it had started to rain lightly, so I pulled my rain poncho on and put my Tilley hat over top. I stayed warm and dry, although I was glad I’d switched back to my merino t-shirt as my inner layer.

As I’d hoped, I made better time with the lighter pack and an early night. ‎I stopped for lunch above the tree line on the shore of Lac des Toules, created by an enormous dam. It was quite windy and it continued to rain intermittently but I found a spot on the doorstep of a Swisscom hut that provided me shelter from both. I ate leisurely, making sandwiches with the bread Therese had given me the evening before and some meat and cheese I had bought in a small shop in Liddes. Dessert was some Swiss chocolate I’d bought when I stopped for coffee in Bourg Saint-Pierre.

At some point in the afternoon, I realised the last time I’d seen an eagle (flying below my own elevation) had been several hours previously when I was still walking through the forest.‎ You know you’re in the Alps when…

The rain never really stopped for long until I was within a few kilometres of the Great St Bernard Pass, so I kept it draped over my pack as a rain cover that I could easily pull back down without stopping to take my pack off. I kept climbing, and realised again just how out of shape I’d become since I walked the Camino. Eventually I ran out of water, and because I’d been sweating a fair bit I was getting a little worried about dehydration.

As I came to the last marker before the final push up the rapidly narrowing valley, I saw a vehicle pull off the road and stop in a small parking area. I quickened my pace a little, and as I approached I saw three people get out and start pulling on hiking gear.‎ I approached them and explained my situation. Without hesitation, the husband began rummaging through their camping gear and handed me a 1.5 litre bottle of water.

I thanked them profusely, and even had to decline an offer of food. I took shelter under a massive concrete structure which houses part of the ventilation system for the tunnel running beneath the mountain. After guzzling half a litre, I poured the rest into my 1 litre pop bottle and decided a bit of chocolate was in order. I also packed away my rain poncho, but replaced it with my brand new windbreaker.

I set out again in high spirits, which only improved when a car coming down from the pass slowed at a point where the trail was quite close to the road. I waved, and when they pointed their camera in my direction I struck a manly sort of pose. Feelin’ like a champ! Looking back down the way I’d come, I was amazed to watch a bank of clouds rolling in to fill the valley — below me! At around the same time I finally caught my first glimpse of the hospice several hundred meters above me. The next time I looked, it was gone, enveloped in a bank of cloud. Speaking to one of the Augustinian fathers who live there, he told me they have fog 200 days a year.

I arrived while it was still light, although the community had just begun Vespers. One of the lay volunteers at the hospice showed me to a waiting room and asked if I’d like some tea. On my affirmative, he went and brought a teapot, sugar, a small stirring spoon, and a cereal bowl. Now THAT’s how to serve tea to cold tired pilgrims at 2473 m above sea level! Dinner followed soon after, and then I was assigned a room. After a luxuriously long and hot shower, I decided to step outside again.

So it was that I was the first person to greet Percy and Anna as they came trudging up the slope in the rain with their headlamps on in the dark. Since I’d already been through the routine myself, I was able to show them to the kitchen where the staff were still cleaning up after dinner.

I didn’t bother to stick around, since both of my new English friends speak French fluently, but I have to assume they were well-looked after. Inscribed in the wall in the foyer of the Hospice of St Bernard is the saying, “Ici  ‎le Christ est adoré et nourri” or “Here Christ is adored and fed.” That has been the guiding principle of the hospice since it was founded by St Bernard in the year 1050. He had felt called to minister to Christ in the person of the poor, desperate, hungry travellers who ventured over the pass, and this ministry has been continued by his successors without interruption in the millenium since.

Retiring to my room, I finished typing up the YMMV post and then got to sleep early. Just as at Maison Saint-Bernard in Martigny, the community does Matins at 7:15, followed by breakfast. It was at breakfast that I spoke more with the English couple who had arrived out of the dark the night before.‎ It was only at this point that we introduced ourselves, but apparently when they checked in, they’d been told of the only other pilgrim staying there that night who was on his way to Jerusalem.

Percy and Anna have been operating a holiday resort in the Martigny area for the past year (4vallees4saisons.com) and since this time of the year is the only slow time, they’d decided to take six days and see how far along the Via Francigena they could get.‎ I’m assuming that their line of work has kept them very fit, since they’d begun walking from Orsiéres at 1:00 pm Thursday afternoon and made the 26 km hike with a 1572 m rise in elevation in the posted 7.5 hours while carrying packs and doing the last few kilometres through the rain in the dark. Wow.

They had a hotel room booked for tonight in a town 26 km further on. I doubt I’ll bump into them again on this hike, since there’s just no way I’m able to do that kind of distance in this kind of terrain. Some folks (Hi Zach!) think that going uphill is more difficult than going downhill. Here’s the thing: yes, going uphill will get your heart pounding‎, but all you have to do is rest until you’ve caught your breath and then carry on. It feels hard, sure, but it’s a short term thing. Going downhill, however, is very easy from a cardio perspective. What makes it truly challenging is the constant strain on your thighs, bracing against the weight of your pack and your own body so that you don’t slip or lose balance and go tumbling down the incline. Let me tell you, at this altitude, there’s a lot of incline to tumble down! Even taking frequent rest breaks‎ doesn’t really help, at least not the way it does for the cardio exercise of going uphill. Nope, this is anaerobic exercise, meaning your muscles strain and burn and eventually start trembling from exhaustion. And then the next morning when it’s time to start all over again, those same muscles are now sore and rigid.

So here I am, under my tarp  in an alpine meadow ‎campground in the town of Etroubles in Italy. I only walked about 14 km today, but I dropped from 2473 m above sea level at breakfast to 1280 m altitude at dinner. I’m cozy and warm in my merino wool long underwear inside my down sleeping bag listening to dogs barking in the distance and a cow bellowing much closer than that.

Along the way today I had a wonderful conversation with Martin, who is doing working at the hospice in lieu of serving in the Swiss military. He’ll be returning to school at the end of the month to resume his studies in history. He’d also like to add Italian to his already impressive list of languages. Much later in the day, I stopped off at the Château Verdun in Saint Oyen. This had been endowed by the royal family of Savoy to provide hospitality to travellers headed across the pass. It also served to supply the Hospice at the pass itself. It’s still run by the church, and there is a cloistered monatic community attached. When I arrived more or less on a whim, having already decided to proceed to Etrouble‎s, Josef was very warm and helpful. Unfortunately they didn’t have any open rooms, but he stamped my pilgrim’s passport, offered me coffee or tea, and most importantly to me, showed me to the toilet.

So. That had better be all for tonight‎. I paid €2 for an hour of internet access via the campground WiFi. (I may be able to upload some photos, but it’s also getting late.) There is a free municipal WiFi zone, but in order to use it, you have to register and then receive a validation code by SMS. That’s fine, but it’s set up to reject non-Italian mobile numbers. The gentleman at the campground was surprised when I came back asking to buy some online time, but when I explained, he laughed and said, “Ahh, Italia!”

The acronym YMMV is a standard online disclaimer. Over the past few days of walking, I have certainly learned how true it is.

In Switzerland, the signposts along the extensive network of hiking trails do not give distances‎ to destinations. They give times. I was aware of this from reading the account of another pilgrim walking the Via Francigena. When I mentioned this to my most gracious host in Lausanne, Micah confirmed that the times were generally accurate, even for families hiking with two small children.

To this I must say, Your Mileage May Vary. When I did the Camino de Santiago almost five years ago, there were stretches where I maintained a speed of 6 km/h for hours on end. That’s a pretty good clip on a treadmill at the gym (3.73 mph if you want to try it out), but carrying a backpack and wearing suitable clothing for January in northern Spain ‎makes it even more so. There were days when I walked more than 40 km without feeling utterly drained by evening.

Here’s where my comparison breaks down, though. On the meseta, the trail is broad, even, level, flat, and straight. All you have to do is walk in a straight line and the kilometres just roll by with barely an effort.  (Well, and I’m no longer as fit as I was then.)

Tuesday and Wednesday provided a very different experience for me. In fact, my guidebook specifically identifies the stretch between Martigny and Sembrancher as “the worst section of the whole Via Francigena, all the way from Canterbury to Rome.” The trail is narrow and steep, quite often with a dramatic drop to one side or the other where you can hear the river, highway traffic, and the occasional train all rushing past.

In actual fact, the first stretch from Martigny to Bovernier was quite nice. It was steep, and the trail was extremely narrow, but I paced myself and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then in Bovernier, I stopped in a café to refresh myself, and when the proprietor learned what I was doing, she refused to accept payment.

So it was that I started ‎the next bit of trail with a spring in my step. Free stuff is awesome, but even better is the kind of validation I’d just received. The spring in my step even survived my carelessness at the lavoir (covered water trough, in the past used as a public laundromat). I posted a photo highlighting my inadequate awareness — after taking a good hearty swig from the tap and refilling my water bottle, I realised there was a sign prominently posted stating that this was not drinking water. First time I’ve seen that since I arrived in Switzerland ten days ago!

Anyway, I emptied my water bottle and continued on. It’s probably just as well I got rid of the extra weight, since although the next section wasn’t as unrelentingly steep as the previous, it was much more trying. ‎ It began innocently enough with a broad trail through a pine forest. (A thick layer of fallen pine needles is wonderful to walk on!) Then the trail narrowed and headed uphill, where I began picking my way across a steep slope littered with fallen boulders. That description is utterly inadequate, but I didn’t dare free up a hand to take a photo. (Bear in mind that on the first stretch of the day, I paused to take a picture of the trail with a handrail mounted into the cliff face with a river about 100 metres below.)

Finally I cleared the last of the boulders – did I mention the damp, slick moss? – and returned to pine forests and peace. Once I was literally out of the woods, I knew I was close to Sembrancher. Although I’d originally planned to walk through to Orsiéres, I decided that I’d had enough for the day. When the town finally came into view in the valley below, I plunked myself down for a good long break and even went online to tweet my intention to stop there for the night. Ironically enough, I thought to myself that, yes I was tired, but that I could continue if I had to.

Blerg. By the time I’d had dinner and discovered that neither the hotel nor the campground had anything available‎, it was 6:30 PM. Light fades fast in the mountain valleys, even while the sky directly above is still glowing with twilight. I have a headlamp for just this eventuality, and while I missed out on the natural beauty surrounding me, I did eventually arrive in Orsiéres and book myself into a very nice hotel. Even with a pilgrim discount, one night there cost about as much as my three nights in Paris.

A thought which has been recurring to me over the past few blister-filled days is that perhaps I ought to lighten my load. The next day I paid a visit to the church of St Nicholas and then struck out. The trail was not particularly challenging, especially after the previous day, but after a few hours on the trail I’d decided I needed to stop at the next post office and mail the non-essentials home. Of course, I wasn’t about to unpack the contents of my bag in the middle of the post office, so I decided to have a short day, find a room, and run some errands.

According to my guidebook, Liddes is the last place with any type of shop before reaching the pass, so this was a logical place to stop. The auberge right next ‎to the post office has both private rooms and dormitory accommodation available, so I decided to try my luck there. The patio was full of people socialising, and there was a good crowd indoors as well. Always a positive sign. And my first impressions were not mistaken. The owner, Therese, is an exemplar of hospitality. I’m sure most people walking the Via Francigena will stop in Bourg Saint-Pierre instead of Liddes, but if ever I return to this town I know where I’ll be staying. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep my receipt, so I don’t have the precise address or even the current name, but in Alison Raju’s guidebook, Chez Therese is listed as Hôtel La Channe. It’s right next door to the post office, and it is not to be missed.

So, back to my mileage. I had assumed that I’d have already been walking for six weeks by the time I reached the Alps. Plenty of time to work on my conditioning, right? Except that, as mentioned in a much earlier post, visa restrictions forced me to ‎start walking in Lausanne. Between my relatively poor fitness level, the high altitudes, and carrying supplies for seven months on the road, I’ve been taking almost twice as much time to complete segments of trail as compared to the posted times. I expect that to change now that I’ve dropped some weight from my pack. I may not hit the speeds and distances I did on the Camino until I get out of the Alps, but I’m alright with that. I’m not in a race, and if I take longer to get somewhere than I expected, that’s okay too. My goal is to be in Jerusalem in time to celebrate Pascha. Any other timelines are irrelevant.