So all day long the noise of battle rolled
My genial host from Le Moulin dropped me back at Chanaz. Always the purist I would begin this morning where I finished yesterday. Not so, my companions. They would walk an easy ten kilometres to Yenne.
The gîte was comfortable enough, with Wifi, by no means the rule on this walk.
Our host is a art teacher, conducting his lessons in the gite where we stayed. On the drive into town I asked him whether anyone could paint: “Some music teachers say that anyone can sing. Is the same true of painting?” “Yes” he said. “If they love what they are doing.” “What about talent,” I asked. “Love is talent,” he said, or perhaps it was the other way round.
The walls of the gîte were lined with his students’ paintings. One was particularly impressive: a Turneresque mass of colour that would’ve graced the wall of any gallery.
He bade me farewell and warned me of the climb ahead. 500 metres he said.
How unpleasant for the birds this morning! Their cheerful song was drowned out by the roar of motorbikes. The booming of a loudspeaker that must have been heard in Geneva was punctuated every ten seconds by the snarl of machines racing up through the gears, everything from the thunder of Harleys to the strident wail of small engines.
After an hour’s climbing I reached a high plateau and strode purposefully between fields of clover and vines.. Then up a steep track onto a road through the hamlet of Vetrier.
I must’ve blundered into the rally, for motorbikes came whizzing by, their noxious fumes lingering in the air behind them. I continued to hear the sounds of the rally all day long. From time to time a few bikes would race by, and sometimes I could hear the distant tones of the rally announcer. This was a a veritable invasion of bikers.
I left them behind and passed little village of Montagnin, within a couple of hundred yards of the gîte where I had stayed last night.
An old lab lumbered towards me along the trail, wheezing all the way. I have been having pleasant encounters with dogs this time. Yesterday, a young German Shepherd came racing out towards me, stopped to be patted for about ten seconds, and then dashed off again from whence he came. What was going through his mind?
G’day, mate. How’re you goin’? Just came to say hello. OK, on your way. I’ve got things to do.
I have been reading a book by a naturalist who imprinted himself upon a batch of wild turkeys, sitting with them when they hatched, spending all day with them, taking them on walks into the woods, until they came to accept him as one of their own. He observed their developing personalities and came to regard them as sentient beings. If this true of turkeys, then how much more so of the larger animals, and especially dogs!
Mind you, some animal rights groups would not have approved of his project. There is a group in England which maintains that we do not have the right to keep pets.
We bring to your attention
That your little dog’s detention
Does not accord with our beliefs at all.
Your dog’s domestication
Is just colon-isation
For which we’ll put you up against a wall.
(Marxist Animal Rights League (MARL))
Then a bewildering contradiction of signs with the arrow pointing one way and the shell the other. I made the right choice and came to the village of Vraisin which offered a panoramic view of the Rhone below. Down the side of the hill into a broad valley of vineyards with several wineries, and up again and through the village of Jongeux.
A further climb up a steep hill brought me to the little chapel of Saint-Romain, in front of which was a curious juxtaposition of Pagan and Christian traditions.
The chapel itself was built next to the ruins of an early Christian church dating back to the fifth century. The descent was treacherous. A narrow path zigzagged down the steep slope over sodden leaves and slippery rocks. This was perhaps the most dangerous path I have experienced on any Camino.
Finally, I reached a road, crossed a highway, and then strolled along the Rhone to Yenne. I checked in at Centre d’Accueil, Clos des Capucins.
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