Day 32 – Besancçon to Ornans

The Fifth Station of the Cross: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry his cross

Monday 1/5/2018

Distance 26km Total Distance from Canterbury 768.6km

So back on the road, on another public holiday. May 1st is the Fête du Travail or Workers’ Day/ Labour Day. It is a day for demonstrations in support of workers’ rights in France. Last year on this day there was rioting in Paris, and hundreds of arrests, and the same happened today. But not in sleepy Besançon. And the events today, though given blanket coverage in the French media did not compare with Les Événements of May 1968, fifty years ago. These were riots of both student and workers over an extended period which led, at one point, President de Gaulle to flee the country.

In 1955 Pope Pius XII instituted the Feast of St Joseph the Worker on the First of May, I guess to counteract the insidious communist undertones of international Workers’ Day. It is listed as an ‘optional memorial’ in France, the lowest category of feast day. And there was no sign of it in Besancçon.

In France, May 1st is also called the Fête de Muguet. Muguet is what we call Lily of the Valley, a small and strongly scented white flower. Sprigs are given as gifts in France on May 1st, following a tradition established by King Charles IX in 1561. Apparently anyone can sell Lily of the Vally on 1st May without a licence, and there is no tax on earnings for such sales on that day. Apparently!

Well, whether or not that is true, the muguet-sellers were out in force on Mayday morning in Besançon and virtually no one else was to be seen. After resisting for quite a while, and disappointing perhaps ten sellers, I eventually bought t a sprig for €1.  This proved to be a bargain because up around the cathedral, where there were rather more tourists, the price had risen to €3.

As I walked through a deserted Besançon I was very happy to meet once again Mark and Diane from New Zealand, who remain the only other pilgrims-to-Rome I have met since I left Canterbury a month ago. They were taking a rest day in Besançon, and had hoped to do some shopping, but this looked very unlikely. I had previously met them about 2 weeks before in Corbeny.

The path out of town proceeds back to the cathedral, and then climbs up to the citadel steeply, and then there is a rough set of steps to come back down to road level next to the river. I was interested to see on Google maps that I would descend to the curiously named Rond-point Huddersfield-Kirklees (the ‘Huddersfield roundabout’) and would have liked to take a photograph. Kirklees is a district in West Yorkshire, and Huddersfield is its largest town. They are twinned with Besançon.  When I came down a very steep set of steps, (of which the guidebook says ‘not recommended in wet weather with a heavy rucksack’),  Huddersfield-Kirklees was nowhere to be seen. I had come down a set of steps on the wrong side of the ‘peninsula’. On a day which was going to be hilly enough, I decided not to climb up again, and I re-routed.

Very quickly I was out in the countryside, and found myself climbing steeply again. When you start seeing Stations of the Cross and Mysteries of the Rosary along the route it is often a sign you are coming to a church or chapel, and perhaps particularly to a Franciscan church. St Francis was a great believer in what we would call visual aids, and he ‘invented’ the crib as we know it. The road was getting very steep and I was quite envious of a young child who had a very attractive mode of travel. Here she is, enjoying a bank holiday stroll:

In the Book of Deuteronomy God reminds the dispirited chosen people you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his child, all the way that you travelled until you reached this place. (Deut 1:31)

Not so for me. The road was significantly steep now and took a diversion off the tarmac as a short cut.

And keep going

And just about to emerge at the tarmac again, it got steeper still.

At this point I was finding it hard going. I emerged at right angles to a stretch of tarmac, which was above my head and I needed to climb about 5 feet to get there, but it seemed almost vertical. My head just peeped over the top. Across the road I could see on the far side one of the stations of the cross, which seemed very appropriate It was already hot and I took a slight pause for breath. And I needed to try and work out the best way to get up – I didn’t really want to scramble on all fours, but it was looking like it might be necessary.

Just at this moment a sleek cyclist zoomed past in front of me on the road, from right to left, a man who was obviously fit and untroubled by the incline. With a great effort, I managed to pull myself up and get on to the road. Just then the man on the bike appeared again coming back down from the summit. And he drew to a halt. He greeted me and we started talking. It soon became apparent his English was much better than my French. In fact his English was quite exceptionally good. We chatted for nearly 20 minutes, about France, and about cycling, and about walking in general and the Via Francigena in particular.  I asked him where he had learned such good English. At this, he put on a very posh accent and said:

“Hello,  Harrod’s sports sunglasses. This is Matthew speaking. How can I help you?”

Many years ago he had spent a couple of summers working in Harrod’s (a large, and very famous, upmarket department store in London). Was he still by any chance in the recreational eyewear business? No he wasn’t. He is an aerospace lawyer!

I had my breath back so I said to him that I needed to head further up the hill and I guessed he needed to head down. ‘No’ he said, ‘I am still going up. I’m going to check on my ‘garden”. I was a bit puzzled. ‘I saw you at the edge of the road’ he said, ‘and I wasn’t sure if you were OK. So I turned around and came back to see if you needed a hand.’

I have to say I was very touched by his concern and kindness. Things like this happen again and again as I walk, but still always seems very special. And of course the Stations of the Cross include the story of Simon of Cyrene being drafted in to help Jesus when he found the going tough – and of course much tougher than my going. But still….

And just in case you think I am exaggerating about the steepness of the climb today, here is a ‘profile’ for the day, as recorded by my watch:

A few hundred metres further on I came to a hamlet called Chapelle des Buis which had an exceptionally beautiful small Franciscan church, the source of the Stations and the Rosary Mysteries, which made the hard  climb completely worthwhile. It was not extremely old, dating from 1860 and it had been modernised inside, to provide a very beautiful contemplative space. The ideal stop after my exertion to get up the hill.

There were a lot of very beautiful windows. A sample:

I stayed a while in the church to celebrate May 1st, but eventually I had to leave as I still had 20km to cover. My original plan had been to go to a place called Etalans. I had already had to revise that idea and made my way to Ornans instead. And as tomorrow will show, this had unexpected consequences.