Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

For all its charms, the communal gite at Charly lacked one important element for a comfortable stay – large enough windows to let sufficient air into the rooms to prevent them becoming raging infernos in mid summer! Ah well, it was somewhere to spend the night even if I tossed and turned in a lather of sweat for a lot of the time! I expect better things at the Chateau de Pelly!

I was out of the door before 8am as I hoped to reach Pelly by early afternoon and recharge my batteries before a long (44km) day to Yenne tomorrow.

As I walked across a granite ridge with panoramic far reaching views, I had to pinch myself that I was in France rather than the Swiss Alps.

In fact Haute-Savoie (together with the neighbouring department of Savoie) only became part of France in 1860. The men in both areas were given a referendum to vote and become part of France which they (99.8%) overwhelmingly did. The British government, that was opposed to French expansion at the time, made bitter accusation of vote rigging!

Before then the Duchy of Savoy had had a chequered history. Created as a Duchy by the Holy Roman Emperor at the beginning of the 15th century, the Duchy was at various times part of the Kingdom of Sicily and Sardinia, before being occupied by Napoleon and finally annexed by France in 1860.

The walking was relatively easy partly thanks to my early start which helped me avoid the worst of the midday heat.

A sign board by the side of the path told the story of Jean-Baptiste Fantini crossed tge Grand St Bernard Pass from Boleto to come to the hamlet of La Motte in 1877 and take up work as a granite splitter. Remains of his activities can still be seen dotted around the surrounding countryside.

I met an elderly couple out for a Sunday walk. The wife was wheeling some sort of trolley and the man, who looked to be in his 80s, was shuffling along at a snail’s pace supported on a couple of walking sticks. I told them I was walking to the Mediterranean coast near Aigues-Mortes. They both looked horrified. “Why on earth are you doing that?” they asked. ” It’s so crowded and polluted on the French coast. We much prefer it around here”. It was an argument, that I could see, I wasn’t going to win. I headed on to Frangy.

Frangy boasted a couple of bars, two supermarkets, a run down hotel and a huge gathering of “petrol heads” standing proudly besides expensive looking motor bikes and, what looked to my untrained eye, like F1 racing cars. There were also loads of mechanics loitering around, so maybe some sort of racing event was about to take place. I didn’t see any obvious racing track or road that had been sectioned off, so what they were all planning to do was a bit of a mystery. Perhaps they had just decided to have a meet up, compare cars, have a chin wag and enjoy lunch with friends. This sort of thing seems to happen all over France during the summer.

I reached the Chateau de Pelly shortly after 2pm and proceeded up the long drive towards the imposing entrance gates.

There were a couple of cars parked outside, so even though I had arrived a good few hours ahead of schedule, it seemed that the owners were in.

I entered the main courtyard, made for a door way with an escutcheon beside it and rang a rusty bell, hoping that it would be audible to the owners within.

The owner, Gilles, appeared after a few minutes and welcomed me into the kitchen. They had had a big familly gathering the previous evening and were still clearing things up.

The bedroom, which was reserved for pilgrims, was superb.

The pilgrim bedroom also boasted a huge balcony with far reaching views over the surrounding countryside.

I got chatting to Gilles’ wife who told me they had bought the chateau 18 years ago after her husband had sold his engineering business. The chateau is run as a gite, but they also have one room reserved for pilgrims like myself. In all that time they’d only hosted a couple of Brits! A familiar tale…

Over supper we chatted about the Chateau. From my internet digging I had discovered that it boasted 3 turrets, a dungeon and a chapel. The Pelly family had been local aristocrats who had played minor military roles supporting the Dukes of Savoy. The family had died out in the early 20th century and the chateau had subsequently fallen into a parlous state of disrepair.

It was bought in 1965 by an American financier called Bernie Cornfeld who pumped millions into restoring and renovating it before his untimely death in 1995.

Apparently the Chateau isn’t ideally situated for pilgrims who tend to walk up to 20km each day which is a great pity because it puts most other pilgrim accommodation to shame. I shouldn’t complain though as I had the whole chateau to myself for a night which will live long in the memory.