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Wednesday April 15. Brianne-le-Château. 23.5 km.

 I stood at the exit of last night’s village wondering which way to take. The road to Brienne-le-Château is 10 km long and fraught with transport trucks.  The path the Via Francigena takes is 24 km long and fraught with chemicals on crops.  Perhaps influenced by a somewhat recent reading of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ (1678), where short easy roads tend to lead to terrible outcomes, I took the long way.  And sure enough, crop spraying.  Right on my path!


Some country photos.




Brianne-le-Château was disappointing. The castle is now at the centre of a very large psychiatric complex. The town is flat, with low buildings, reminding me too much of semi-deserted Italian seaside towns from my past walks. 


Army barracks, grey and uniform, and a very dull museum about Napoleon who went to school at 10 years old in a military academy here didn’t cheer me up.  In the mother church of the region, posters confirmed the plethora of village churches in the area, all served by one priest, l’abbé Etsoh-Landzahmbé, a jovial-looking priest from Zaïre, I think.


The church had some nice 16th century stained glass. In the churches with old glass, parishioners took out the windows during the wars and reassembled them afterwards. I love this little Noah’s ark.


I was booked to stay in the first pilgrimage hostel run by Camino volunteers that I have encountered so far. I was looking forward to meeting other pilgrims and volunteers, but I couldn’t stand the town any longer, so I hopped on a bus for a 40 minute ride to Troyes ( economical at about $6.50) where I got myself a nice little apartment and bought fruit and vegetables for a nice little supper.



Comments

  1. RitaApril 16, 2026 at 5:08 AM

    Sounds like you squeezed as much joy out of this day as you could. So glad the sheep obliged you with his picture--love the horns!

    ReplyDelete

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