Tag Archives: 100DaysOnTheWay

Accommodation Arles-Carcassonne

After several requests, I think it is useful to publish here the list with references of the places where I've updated along the way, in Arles-Carcassonne. Being a segment out of "walk" is not official welcome pilgrims, but of tourist facilities, with the exception of la Maison du Pèlerin de Saint-Gilles.

GPS tracks Lourdes-Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (path of Pyrenean Piedmont-GR78)

GPS tracks of the second stage of the journey of Pyrenean Piedmont (GR 78), from Lourdes to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, where the French way.

ATTENTION: when using the GPS you may not switch off your brain! Remember to always pay attention to what you are doing and where you put your feet. The best judge of the path to be followed must be your head, not GPS.

Continue reading GPS tracks Lourdes-Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (path of Pyrenean Piedmont-GR78)

GPS tracks Carcassonne-Lourdes (path of Pyrenean Piedmont-GR78)

GPS tracks of Pyrenean Piedmont Journey from Carcassonne in Lourdes (GR78).

ATTENTION: when using the GPS you may not switch off your brain! Remember to always pay attention to what you are doing and where you put your feet. The best judge of the path to be followed must be your head, not GPS.

Continue reading GPS tracks Carcassonne-Lourdes (path of Pyrenean Piedmont-GR78)

GPS tracks Monginevro-Arles (GR 653D)

GPS tracks of Via Domitia (GR 653D), Monginevro in Arles.

ATTENTION: when using the GPS you may not switch off your brain! Remember to always pay attention to what you are doing and where you put your feet. The best judge of the path to be followed must be your head, not GPS. Continue reading GPS tracks Monginevro-Arles (GR 653D)

CAMMINO DI SANTIAGO E VIA FRANCIGENA – Donne in Cammino

VENERDÌ 27 FEBBRAIO 2015, H. 18:00, all’AUDITORIUM di ZONA 3, Via Valvassori Peroni, 56 – Milano

Camminare per centinaia di chilometri  con lo zaino in spalla, verso una città che è stata meta di pellegrinaggio per secoli. Verso se stessi. Verso il mondo.
Scopriremo insieme il Cammino di Santiago e la Via Francigena: gli itinerari che portano i pellegrini a Santiago de Compostela e a Roma.
Seguiremo i passi di due donne che hanno inseguito il proprio sogno zaino in spalla.

Programma:

  •  Introduzione – Alessandro Ghisellini
  • Camminando sulla Via Francigena – Cristina Menghini
  • 100 Giorni sul Cammino da Milano a Finisterre – Sara Zanni
 A seguire: rinfresco e condivisione pellegrina.

Day 16: Savines-le-Lac – Notre Dame du Laus

Today we had a very beautiful but hard walk because of the difficult gradients we had to face. An other quite important element, today, was the weather that, over the last two days,  completely changed: the cold air coming down from the glaciers has been replaced by a warm wind the warms up the grass and dries the air in our throats and the ideas in our brains.

As it’s becoming usual, I’ve been walking with Roberto, while Stefano is still dealing with some physical problems that, we hope, are slowly getting solved.

Leaving Savines-le-Lac behind us was not really a pain, despite the beauty of the place: the reception, yesterday, almost didn’t exist, except for a kind lady who tried in every prossible way to help us find an accomodation, but came up against a wall of rubber…

On the opposite, today, after many uphills and downhills, we arrived at the sanctuary of Notre Dame du Laus. We were tired and sweaty, since we had found some relief only in the cold water a lady gave us, when we passed in front of her house. Here everything is well organized and they gave us an accomodation with half board for 24.50€ each… and we are sleeping exactly over the cell of Bénoite!

Tonight, after a moment of prayer in the church of the sanctuary, we also met our first pilgrim in France: it’s Ignacio, a guy from Argentina who is walking from Santiago to Jerusalem.

This post is a bit of a nonsense, I know, but I’m literally falling asleep…

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Day 15: Embrun – Savines-le-Lac. It should have been an easy one, but…

This morning, we got up fresh and relaxed after spending the night at the Hotel Le Tourisme in Embrun. We had breakfast at the bar, took some pictures of the first bronze shells and said goodbye to Stefano’s boots. We were in a good mood, ready to face a beautiful day and quite a short walk, that would lead us to the Boscodon Abbey. At the exit of the city, we separated: Stefano wanted to wait for the cathedral to open, while Roberto and I, we had already visited it yesterday evening.

So the two of us started walking down from the hill where the centre of Embrun lies and then up in the woods that circle Boscodon. We both recommend you to follow the red and white signs, so that you will not live our experience.

At a certain point, while we were climbing on the side of the hill, we noticed that the GR was cutting the turns of a concrete road, setting quite a ripid trail in the wet wood. Hoping to find an easier path, we started walking on the concrete, checking sometimes our direction with the GPS. At a certain point, we must have misunderstood: the GPS device was showing that we were walking on the wrong side of the hill and the abbey was now in the valley next to the one that we were following. It was not too bad, apparently.  The stage we had planned was short and making a bit longer wasn’t a terrifying idea. So, we asked the GPS navigator to guide us to the abbey and it instantly elaborated a track across the woods. It was clear and easy on the map. But on the ground, it disappeared after 200 meters: instead of walking on an easy trail, we were walking in the high and wet grass and later in the wood, crossing creeks and fences. After 15 minutes, we managed to get to a small dirt road near to some houses: the one we were looking for. We started following it and it looked all right. For 5 minutes.

Then we found a closed gate in front of us and, behind it, we couldn’t see any road. The lady we found in the next farm explained us that we should open the gate, follow the road, follow the creek, get to the bridge, take on the left … et voilà, l’Abbaye!

We showed her that the road was closed and there was no sign on the ground: she replied that “they” – probably the gods of the roads – should come and sign it again. She closed the gate behind us and simply went away.

And this is where our adventure really began. As we had guessed, the road didn’t exist any more: it was covered by the grass and the wood and it was impossible to follow it. Following tracks, probably made by some boar, we went downhill to the famous creek and, after half an hour of trudging and slipping, we crossed a small creek: we could finally see the abbey in front of us… the direction was right! We started climbing the hill in the direction of the houses but, when we got at the end of the climbing, Roberto told me to stop: we couldn’t go further, there was a vertical cliff cut by another creek, that reaches after a few meters the one that we had already crossed. And after reaching it, the water fell down for some 15 meters. We had to get over the cliff, going back to the first creek and reaching the second one’s shores.

After some more trudging and slipping we are on the shores of the second creek. We now had two possibilities: fording the creek throwing some rocks in the water or crossing the chasm, passing on a truss that supported a big tube. Sincerely, I found the truss option terrifying, but the water was flowing too fast and fording would have been really dangerous. And Roberto looked enthusiastic of our strange bridge. So, one foot after the other, we arrived, like two survivors from Vietnam at the feet of the Boscodon Abbey, a place of meditation and prayer.

It’s a pure romanic monument, without frills, and it welcomed us with a comforting silence. After thanking Holy Mary and the Child for guiding us there, safe and sound, we had a light lunch and changed our socks.

After a while, we could start walking again and after a couple of hours, we reached Savines-le-Lac and the lake of Serre-Ponçon. Savines-le-Lac is a recent village, built for the people of several other villages covered by the water of the artificial lake. It is a turistical center, but it doesn’t really welcomes the pilgrims: even the youth hostel closed up some time ago and the pilgrims must rest at the normal hotels with normal prices (that means very high!). Not really thanks to the help of the Tourism Office, we managed to find a room at the Hotel Les Sources and we spent a relaxing evening chatting… Before sleep, just a thought for my friend Eva and her baby Alberto, born in Budapest 3 weeks ago: one of the best things of my coming back home will surely be meeting him!
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Days 13 and 14: L’Argentière-la-Béssée – Guillestre – Embrun

After one day of silence, I need to take a step back: the evening when we slept in L’Argentière, the owner of the gîte (quite a kind of a woman!), told us that yesterday it was the Feast of the Ascension and that all the gîtes would probably be full until monday… This, obviously, didn’t cheer us up, so, quickly enough, we tried to work out where we could sleep in the following nights. Thanks to the employee of the Tourism Office of L’Argentière,  we have a bit forced the priest of Guillestre to host us in a parrish room. So, yesterday, we walked for 22 wonderful km  along the Valley of the Durance, to Mont Dauphin, where Roberto was kindly bitten by a dog in a heel, while he was taking a picture of a sundial. Then, we had lunch, trying not to fly away because of the strong wind and, in the afternoon, we reached Guillestre, to meet Stefano and the good priest.

The dinner was a bit difficult: after trying to find a place in 4 restaurants (really, all the restaurants in Guillestre), we had to go to a snack-bar, the only one willing to welcome us. At 20:30 the priest arrived and gave us our mansion: a catechism room with large wooden tables and a small toilet with a kitchen corner. Tonight, we couldn’t have a real shower, so we went to “bed” (or to table) straight after dropping our backpack on the floor, probably like the ancient pilgrims were used to do pretty every night.

This morning I was more tired than yesterday, with my left hip completely rigid, but a warm tea restarted my engine. Stefano spent a little time taking some pictures, while I went on with Roberto, with 2 goals clear in my mind: 1. Solving the accomodation problem for tonight 2. Buying some food.

It’s useless to say that we failed both our goals: none of the gîtes answered the phone and the only grocery store we met, after 20 km, was closed. Anyway, we were prized by the pretrifying source, geological wonders and breathtaking landscapes.

Since now I’m writing from Embrun, from a king-size bed in a 5-places room that we will pay as a triple… we have nothing to complain about!

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Les Vigneaux: the fresco of the vices and virtues

A legend says that monsieur Carle, a very important man from Les Vigneaux, president of the provincial parliament of Grenoble, wanted to leave an indelible mark of his life in the memory of his fellow citizens. He decided to ask a young Italian painter to paint a fresco to decorate the southern facade of the church of Saint-Laurant: since he was firmly convinced of the fidelity of his wife Louise and of his own blamelessness, he picked the theme of the vices and virtues and charged his wife to watch over the works.

The beautiful Louise didn’t turn out exactly insensitive to the beauty of the young Italian and seduced him within a few days. Still not satisfied, an evening when her husband was in Grenoble, he took part in his place to a party at the house of the Lord of Rame. No need to say that, in the absence of her husband and of her lover, the Lord of Rame took care of the lonely woman.

Still not happy, on the next day, Louise went supervising the work of the painter with her new lover, rousing in the heart of the young painter a wild desire of revenge. So the fresco was completed with the portraits of Louise, in the shoes of Lust, monsieur Carle, in the roles of Anger, and the lord of Rame, with the appearance of Pride.

When the husband was back, he say the fresco and understood what had happened. In turn, he meditated revenge. After paying and sending away the painter, he made fast his wife’s mule for several days, and then he invited Louise to go with him to visit a village not far away. As soon as the thirsty mule came near to a creek, Louise lost control of the animal and it drag her into the water, drowning her.

The revenge of the betrayed husband was so consumed, and he got away by having a Mass said for the deceased wife in the church of Saint-Laurant.
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