Via Francigena Part 2 route map |

Calais ~ Guînes ~ Licques ~ Wisques ~ Thérouanne ~ Amettes ~ Camblain l’Abbe ~ Arras |

Distance: 139km (174/1,900km) |

Time (for us): 8 days |

Ascent: 1,304m |

Ruins | Churches | Nuns, monks & abbeys | 1000 years of history |

The beginnings of the continental Via Francigena, what a moment. (The UK bit from Canterbury is here by the way). The route winds out of the Calais port into the fields, forest and villages off the usual tourist trails, in the department of Pas-de-Calais. This is an adventure into a pretty, green hinterland. Our first milestone: Arras.

Early mornings on the Via Francigena in Pas-de-Calais, France

It starts in a deserted Calais, where we arrived in the late afternoon. We walked into the evening, past Calais’s huge clock tower and eerie Rodin sculpture, out along streets and still canals. In gathering dark we pitched up at our first French campsite, 14km away, a free-to-stay for pilgrims. That first night over the Channel is a big feeling: you arrive in France with about 730km and six weeks of walking ahead.

Trust us, it’s such an impossible, amazing prospect to get your head around.

Over the next few days we were plunged into the dark, thick forest of Guînes. Everywhere we went, there were layers of old history to wade through: here’s the field Henry VIII met the French King, when all this was still part of Britain. There’s the Colonne Blanchard, commemorating the first ever balloon flight across the Channel almost 250 years ago. And there are crumbling wayside chapels along every big road in Pas-de-Calais – so pretty, so unfamiliar.

Colonne Blanchard on Via Francigena in Pas-de-Calais, France
Via Francigena chapel near Inghem, Pas-de-Calais, France
Resting on the Via Francigena near Licques, Pas-de-Calais, France

Every village in Pas-de-Calais had the same staples too, dotted along their little main streets. There’s always a little boulangerie, selling baguettes and pastries for a €1, which we would eat stuffed with tomatoes and cheese. There’ll also be a large, imposing church: empty, unlocked, everything inside cool. We would sometimes sit in them, or on our bags in the shade outside, pretty hot and tired. One chapel we forced the door open and created deep tracks in the thick, yellow dust that covered absolutely everything. Lots of places are completely deserted.

Via Francigena rest day in Pas-de-Calais, France involves visits to a local bakery
Via Francigena approach to Licques, Pas-de-Calais, France

As well as camping in these little places, there are other types of stay available along the route in Pas-de-Calais: French gîtes, pilgrim halls, B&Bs, abbeys. A week in, we stayed with the nuns of Wisques, an order who take in any pilgrims in their guesthouse. The convent itself is an unbelievable sight: a huge Gothic-style building, turreted and walled. It’s also impressive to find a nun waiting for you when you arrive, reading serenely on a dining-room chair in the middle of a field.

The Abbaye Notre Dame in Wisques, Pas-de-Calais, France on the Via Francigena

Our nun showed us to a bright, airy guesthouse, filled with little wonders. Rickety furniture stuffed the rooms, books lined the walls, old tin pots and pans cluttered the kitchen. The Sister had left the front door flung wide open, out onto the gentle hills rolling out all around us. We wondered a bit how we had ended up here, in another life almost. But hey, looking around it felt like we couldn’t have gone far wrong.

Early morning start on Via Francigena from the Abbaye Notre Dame in Wisques, Pas-de-Calais, France

The night was quite the experience: most of the nuns stay behind the walls of the abbey, but we ate dinner with a couple of them. They beamed and chatted away, insistently passing us giant slices of terrine. Afterwards, a bell rang somewhere and we were led into their cavernous church to watch complis, their final service of the day. All the nuns -about sixteen or so- were already standing on the other side of the chapel, behind a grille. It was all sung in Latin, to which we were given the French translation (ie so we had no idea what was going on). But the drift of their high voices up into the dark shady Abbey felt soothing.

Pilgrim traces were everywhere as we walked: the cheery yellow Via Francigena signs nudging us onward to Rome even here in Pas-de-Calais. We noticed a little pilgrim man on campsite signs, or in shop windows. Shopkeepers passed us loaves of bread as we popped in to get our pilgrim passports stamped. (You can read about how we got our passports in Canterbury here). And we stumbled across the cottage of Saint-Benoît Labry, a local saint from a teeny-tiny Amettes who journeyed to Rome himself as a pilgrim – to, er, die there (so a bit off-putting, but still).

House of Saint-Benoit Labry in Amettes, France on Via Francigena

After we left the nuns we were walking steadily to Arras, coming across the giant ruined façade of monastery Mont-Saint Eloi. Utter havoc had been wreaked on it over the years, stuff of revolutions and Wars. It marked the first time too that we had seen France’s scars from two World Wars. The ruin suddenly seemed more like a battleworn watchtower, survivor and protector of old Arras.

Mont Saint-Eloi abbey ruins on Via Francigena in Pas-de-Calais, France

The long walk through the outskirts of Arras to its centre was meandering, and blisteringly hot. Our only real stop was at a little spring – struck, so they say, by local legend Saint-Bertille in the middle of some desperate drought.

Fontaine Sainte-Bertille on Via Francigena near Arras

When we finally arrived in the main square of pretty Arras, we sat and looked around, actually amazed. Amazed to have really walked there, amazed we were still in one piece. We had booked a tiny AirBnB across the railway, and wandered the streets for two days. We really liked Arras: cute cafes and artisan shops line the squares that were originally medieval, now a lot of careful post-War reconstructions. It’s a bright, sunny place with a dark and gutsy undertow which we found completely compelling. And plus it’s where we began to think: we can actually do this.

Place des Heros in Arras on Via Francigena

Two weeks of walking. Honestly it had already begun to feel triple that, and we wondered why. With whole-day-every-day-walking, everything about how you live and how you think shifts. Your mind wanders with you, and we are both still adjusting to a life of constant change – but also of adventure.

It’s actually not really a walk, it’s a whole lifestyle.

Via Francigena junction near Acquin, France

We’re curious: what interests you about the experience of walking the Via Francigena? Did you know anything about Pas-de-Calais? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!


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