Les Hôpitaux-Neufs to Les Ballaigues on the Via Francigena

 

This was our first long day of hiking. It took us about 9 hours to traverse 15 miles, including a break for lunch and many breaks for taking more photos.

From Les Hôpitaux-Neuf, France, the Via Francigena (VF) takes a dirt path on the outskirts of town toward Jougne, then Grand Rue (Main Street) to town hall, the library, and the church. Unfortunately, we thought we could get a pilgrim passport here, but found out that the Jougne Town Hall now only stamps the passports. This credential is used for some pilgrim accommodations, and travelers to Rome can use this to demonstrate their pilgrim status, in order to receive an audience with the Pope. We are hoping we will not need this for any of the pilgrim accommodations that we plan to use.

The morning started off cool and overcast, but we had no rain today. I chose to wear running shoes today due to the distance we were traveling, and I thought we would be on pavement often, but we mostly hiked on dirt paths today. 

From Jougne, the path quickly leaves the road and heads downhill to the Chapelle Saint-Maurice, with its many tombs and the ubiquitous potted flowers. From here, we walked through the hamlets of La Ferriere Sous Jougne and Les Échampés, subsequently crossing the French-Swiss border near a farmhouse and continuing to Les Ballaigues.

Outside Les Ballaigues, there is a short road that deviates from the VF, passing a small segment of the ancient Roman road. The preserved section is only long enough for viewing, not for travel, but is worth viewing. It still shows the cart tracks on other side of the paving stones and captures the difficulty of travel even with paved roads.

Les Ballaigues is a small town with the last services before our day’s destination, Romainmôtier-Envy. There is a great little market here, Marché Reymond, located just a little bit off the trail. This grocery has a little bit of everything and I highly recommend it to travelers to the area. We pieced together a lunch of fresh bread, chêvre, smoked salmon, apricots, and Swiss chocolate. A small park adjacent to the market offered park benches and a book exchange (similar to the little free libraries found in the U.S.).

From here, our route deviated from the Via Francigena. The “official” route of the VF heads east to Orbe, then southwest to Romainmôtier. Since we weren’t able to find accommodations in or near Orbe and wanted a few rest days in the schedule, we decided to cut out that segment and head southeast to Romainmôtier. This meant that we needed to figure out the route on our own, which I’ll share in a subsequent post.