Day 20 Bar-sur-Aube to Colombey-des-deux-eglise

• Day 20
• Saturday, 15 September 2018
• Bar-sur-Aube to Colombey-des-deux-eglise
• 472 km to yesterday
•   10 km today (not including mis-directions)
• 482 km on Via Francigena to date

I breakfast in the hotel. On checking out the manager asks to take a photo. I leave my email address and he undertakes to send it to me.

My intention today is Chaumont-en-haute-Marne; about 40 km away.

But I make an awful mess of leaving Bar-sur-Aube.

I have gone several kilometres down a lovely quiet road, when something doesn’t quite feel right. I backtrack to a cross roads, sit down and work it out.

My restart is promising and soon I can see a big Lorraine Cross on a forested hill some distance away. While I am not aiming for it as such, my road to Chaumont will take me close.

My road takes me the other side of the hill and signs tell me of the burial place of Charles de Gaulle and a museum. Through the encounter with de Gaulle at Reims Cathedral, I decide to stop the night. And providence has put an Hotel at this decision point.

I spend the afternoon, firstly at the de Gaulle graves (parents and their daughter) in the cemetery of the parish church. Then to the museum. Here, amongst much other material, I read that de Gaille's “non” to the English joining the Common Market as it was then, was mainly to prevent the Americans “coat-tailing”.

A nice meal at the hotel.

And so to bed.