Day 3. May 19, 2018. Chaumont to Les Côtes. 17 kms

Ode on a Sausage

Each day at noon

I find it a boon

To gnaw at my sausage from Lyon.

This amorphous mass

Appears rather crass

But its meat would please the Pan-theon.

It’s a shape quite absurd,

Like a fossilized turd,

Its brown and white skin quite scabulous,

But I have to admit

I enjoy every bit,

For the taste of this sausage is fabulous.

Down the treacherous steps to the street, past the squatter, down the steep stony path to the highway, across the field, down the road, and then along a track through the forest, down to the town of Frangy. I would pay for this loss of elevation, I thought.

A nice town with all facilities. I kind of wished I had stayed there. Only an extra half-hour downhill. But it happens all the time. You stop for lunch on a log infested with ants and around the next bend is a picnic table.

And indeed it was uphill all the way to Desingy. As I walked through the village, the church bell began to sound. It was perhaps the most magnificent bell I have heard. So often the church bells in France are cracked or dull, but this was a bell which spoke, which sang. Our onamaopeic words could not do justice to the quality of this sound, with its overtones and harmonies, the ding, the dang and the dong blending into each other, and the “ng” stretching out forever until chopped off by the next chime. I don’t think I’ve heard a bell with such character before. I listened in wonder. Perhaps the churchbell carried by the cow yesterday had been a premonition.

Just after the village I sat down with my back against a calvaire and retrieved my Swiss cheese and the sausage which my dear friends from Lyon had given me as I changed trains for Geneva at Lyon-Part-Dieu. Truly a magnificent sausage that fills a void but leaves me a little sluggish as I walk on during the afternoon.

After an uneventful day I arrived at the Gîte Edelveiss at Les Côtes, across the river from Seisshel. It’s a huge gîte that caters to larger groups as well as pilgrims. It has seen better days, but was, as the French say, correct.