I sprang to life at 3am. I negotiated with consciousness for 15 minutes before throwing in the towel and rising. Fortunately, the place had a kettle.
My rising wasn’t solely a function of the curious mixture of jet lag and adrenaline that announces each new walk; rather, the support team for a group of priests was–despite genuine efforts–making a racket in the attached lodging for larger groups. I can’t begrudge them their efforts; full respect to those priests for making the walk through the night first to Bourg-Saint-Pierre and then onward to the pass, with time spent in prayer in different churches along the way. They deserve some coffee.
So I worked diligently to fill three hours, and then at 6am I deemed it sufficiently light (or, rather, not dark) to hit the road. As a consequence, I was utterly alone throughout my walk to the top, aside from the very rare vanlifer along the way.
I’ve mostly departed from Switzerland on the Via Francigena in mid-to-late June, and I imagined that this mid-August timeline would look familiar. The theme from these first two days, though, has been just how dramatic the changes have been. For the most part, that has little to do with the built environment. Most of the towns and villages look entirely familiar; the bar offerings, the souvenirs for sale, and the look-and-feel of each center are all congruent with my memory. Heck, even the waymarks–most commonly the red and white striped stickers–seem pretty much identical. One of the few changes of any note in this regard was the presence of a snack bar at the dam on the ascent to Grand Saint Bernard, alongside some 20 RVs and converted vans. Perhaps June is too early for such traffic, with the pass only recently reopened for the season, and varying degrees of snow covering the ground.
That also speaks, though, to a heightened presence of tourist and hiker traffic at the pass itself. I sailed through the climb, made so much simpler by the lack of wet snow on the trail, and arrived just before 9am. In doing so, I nearly caught the priests, who must have beaten me just by 15 minutes or so, and who were now packing the pews in the hospice’s small chapel. While that tied up the monks as well, fortunately the clean-up crew was still busily wrapping up the morning meal, and they were able to provide me with a credential. I opted out of standing at the back of the cramped church for the service, instead opting to take in the suddenly-clear skies over the pass.
I looped first to the kennels behind the parallel building, home to a nicer hotel and restaurant, but alas, they are closed for now, as renovations unfold. No matter–even without the dogs, there was plenty to enjoy. And I wasn’t alone in that regard. The hotels on the Swiss (where the monks are) and Italian side of the pass were disgorging their weekend visitors, who all looked like models from an outdoor gear catalogue. I’ve never been here in August before, and I suspect I’ve also never been here on a weekend, and the pass definitely draws in the crowds during the peak of the Alpine season. I gradually worked my way along the trail into Italy, admiring the lake and surrounding peaks all the while, and then popped into the bar for a cappuccino and brioche–somehow still just 3.5 euros even in this dramatic location.
The day’s second act was even better than the first, beginning with the stunning descent from the pass. Close-cropped grass and craggy rock dominate the landscape for the first few kilometers, and with clear skies the views were endless. All through this stretch, I encountered fit Swiss and Italians powering uphill, all firing their trekking poles into the trail with gusto. Outside the first Italian town, Saint-Rhemy-en-Bosses, I encountered my first small group of walkers heading downhill, but I didn’t take them for pilgrims. Indeed, if there were any pilgrims on the trail today, they blended into the other walkers.
There’s a short-cut we used to take from Saint-Rhemy to Saint-Oyen. For some reason, the official VF has continued to swing wide to Saint-Christophe before doubling back around; it’s one of those route choices that has never made sense to me. Admittedly, the last time we walked it, some trees had fallen across the trail; and sure, road construction had made the transition from the trail to the highway before Saint-Oyen a little parkourish. I was sure all of that would have been tidied up over the past six years.
Alas, those trees were still there, with additional layers of detritus built up. Whole stretches of trail had disappeared entirely; it seemed like a minor landslide wiped out part of it. Another consequence of August was that the tall grass that covered parts of the trail, still lush and vibrant in June, was all yellowed and dying at this point. Not to mention, it should be noted, slippery as ice. When I tried to power through one particularly dense stretch across a steep hillside, my feet whooshed right out from beneath me and I began losing very badly at chutes and ladders. Fortunately, the problem was the solution; I snagged fistfuls of the long grass, which proved to be excellent handholds, and tugged my way back up to the trail-by-name-only. I exercised a little more caution from that point on.
As I continued descending from Saint-Oyen, August truly began to show its stuff. If the buildings and towns hadn’t changed, the natural world had shifted into total fruition–aside from that grass. Up first were the vineyards, with green and purple grapes alike hanging heavily on their branches. Then were the tomatoes, filling every home garden along the walk. There were apples hanging heavily on their branches, and pears doing their best to catch up. Plums, some deep purple and others bright lavender, seemed to cover every square inch of their branches. Pumpkins and other squash lurked deep within their low-lying vines, while zucchini flowers sprouted up above. I even spotted a few eggplants, along with a stretch of kiwis. The final descent into Aosta swung wide through one last vineyard complex, including what felt like an entirely gratuitous ascent. No matter. Even after a very hot afternoon, the walk was completed, and for the first time I was able to stay in the center of Aosta–courtesy of the Filipino nuns. 25 euros got me a private room right between the cathedral and Roman theater.
In a day marked by change, that new accommodation in Aosta proved to be the only change of note in a city defined by its permanence. Along with the theater, Aosta boasts a triumphal arch of Augustus (the association with the first emperor is in the town’s name itself), a monumental town wall (the Porta Praetoria), and all kinds of other ruins. Like Aquileia, which I visited in the northeast on the Via Flavia, Rome left a deep impression here. Perhaps most of all in the young men who, participating in some sort of gladiatorial cosplay, were walking around the town center in loincloths and shinguards.
