The pretty little mountain village, Bourg-St-Pierre is perfect spot for a night’s rest. From here it is just 11.5 kms to the Col du St Bernard, the pass between the two highest mountains of the Alps, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. St. Bernard is our final destination on the Via Francigena.
St. Bernard’s Pass is steeped in history and symbolism. All roads might lead to and from Rome. But across the mountain range, paths are few and far between. Some experts say that this pass has been used by people since the Bronze Age, well before the city of Rome was founded, and several millenia before the birth of Christianity.
If, like me, you had been wondering all along the VF whether you were really following Sigeric’s path to Rome, here at a narrow pass at nearly 2,500 metres above sea level, you can be pretty sure that your footfall couldn’t be too far from where Sigeric walked (or perhaps rode a donkey?) 11 centuries ago.
21 June 2023 – dawn had barely broken when we set off for our final day on the Via Francigena. Other than a brief descent to cross the River Dranse, the road sweeps inexorably upwards. I feel as if the thousand kilometres walked in the last two months were just the preparation for this climb, to that mountain pass just ahead: there to marvel at the grandeur of the snow-capped hills, to reach the sanctuary that Bernard of Menthon built circa 1049 as a respite for tired and hungry walkers.
On paper, the walk to the Pass is not much steeper than the 1000 metres we climbed the previous day to get to Bourg-Saint-Pierre, though our VF app rates today’s walk as ‘challenging’ while yesterday’s was merely ‘moderately’ difficult. And just 5 days ago, a walker reported icy slopes in the final stretch to the top.
But I am bursting with so much anticipation that I hardly feel the ascent as we climb past the pine trees, and beyond the Alpine timberline.
Then: Difficulty strikes… in the shape of three young bulls. Yes, no bull! I mean yes, definitely bulls. They are standing right on the path, indeed right in front of the stone marked with the Swiss yellow track sign. And there are hundreds of other similar looking creatures as far as the eye can see!
As I am trying to recall what the brave Pandava heroes of the Indian epic did while facing various impediments on their post-retirement final walk up into the heavenly mountains (too long a story to tell, but you can read it here if you are really keen), I notice my courageous companion is silently slinking away.
To cut a long story short, after discounting many absurd options proposed by you-know-who, I walk back to the tiny cottage we had passed just a few minutes back and knock.
Not Frodo the Hobbit, but Michael the Angel answers the door in the guise of a Swiss German having his morning cuppa. Patiently, he explains that those creatures in the paddock are completely harmless to humans as they are either cows or ‘young bulls, just playing.’
Half hour later, having repeated his assurances in many languages and tones and realising that we are settling in for the night unless he walks us off his property, he sighs, pulls on his boots and proceeds to escort us through the slough of the bovine mire. For the record, even Michael has to pick up a log at one point to discourage the young bulls from getting too playful.
Apparently the herds of cattle spend a week each year on these lower hills, before setting off for higher pastures. Michael is a font of local knowledge but has a devilish gleam as he bids us ‘bon courage’ (because we clearly need some) adding ‘I have never seen pilgrims frightened by cows.’
Past the cow crisis, the intrepid walkers are immediately rewarded with stunning views of Lac des Toules, the mountain lake fed by River Dranse. It gets even more exiting when a pair of Alpine Marmots put in an apperance!
You’d think at this point a walk could not get better. But somehow it does.
In the final three or four kilometres the path leaps over the national highway and tunnel which are now the main thoroughfare from Switzerland to Italy. Heart pounding from the climb, adrenalin coursing through the veins, it is all too breathtaking for words (yes, puns intended).
We walk skipping through melting snow and then a final tumble across ice and we are at the St. Bernard’s Pass Hospice.
The weather at the Pass turns moody. We had been walking for weeks with spring on our back, facing into summer. But suddenly in the last hour the sky turns grey. The mountain lake, crystal clear when we arrived at two in the afternoon, is blanketed in a milky mist the next morning.
There is something dramatic too about a mountain shelter that has stood open for a thousand years, every day of every year. Though much has changed. The mortuary which once housed the remains of medieval travellers who perished on the icy slopes, has long been closed. The monastery, which Bernard of Menthon established, persists but with only a handful of monks.
Even the famous St Bernard dogs are now just tourist attractions, as sophisticated search and rescue technology has made them redundant.
St Bernard’s Hospice is now a hostel and a more up-market Auberge, which continues to house travellers, though these days, unlike Bernard’s times, few are starving and many roll up on wheels, via the sealed road.
Still, compared to most pilgrim destinations, Varanasi, Mecca, Rome, the cool emptiness of the refuge that Bernard created seems an awful lot closer to a haven. But then again, Indians have always imagined that their gods live up on the top of the icy mountains (Himalaya means the land of ice). The kings and queens of the epics always head for the hills at the end of the story. So, perhaps, it is just the stories in my head that make St Bernard’s Pass such a perfect place to end a long journey.