Pas de Calais at summer time. On the Via Francigena, a break with Colette, hotelier for GR 145 pilgrims
At the Deux Tilleuls farm, in Amettes, Colette welcomes pilgrims who come and go between Canterbury and Rome in the footsteps of the priest Sigéric, appointed bishop in 990 and who went to Rome to fetch his insignia.
This is the story within the story, that of a woman who perhaps wanted one day to join “her pilgrims” as she calls them and to follow in their footsteps, in pursuit of them, to find them. .
Colette Gévas welcomes hikers on the GR 145, that is to say the Via Francigena, depending from Canterbury in England to Rome in Italy.
Located in Amettes, a small, lost and very friendly town in Pas-de-Calais, at the farm of Deux tilleuls, Colette has memories full of the heads of her hikers.
In her files, she has a treasure: the names, the photos, the letters without forgetting the addresses of the people who have slept at her house, for 25 years.
People from Uruguay, Canada via New Zealand, Japan etc. If there is an exotic place in Amettes, a place where you can touch the whole world with your fingertips, it is in this farm, as soon as Colette opens one of her binders and tells her story.
In 2019, for example, hikers of 27 nationalities passed through her home.
For her, her hikers are not customers. Moreover, she flips through the pages of her binders like an album of “family photos”.
Amettes, for each of the hikers in whom a pilgrim sleeps, is an important step. It allows you to follow in the footsteps of Saint-Benoit Labre, born in the village in 1748. A holy traveler, too, who also walked as far as Rome.
But currently we are at the beginning of the path. At the start of the 2,300 km that separate Pas-de-Calais from Rome.
The hikers who arrive at Colette are 6-7 days away and their bodies are already in bad shape, blisters have appeared, morale is wavering. As a result, Colette motivates them by telling them about the hidden treasures of the city of Arras through which they will pass. And then there is Reims and its Champagne!
So often, Colette wonders if her motivational work is working. If “his hikers” went all the way. That’s why she’s happy when she receives words or postcards telling her like this:
In addition to food and lodging, Colette affixes the famous credential (stamp of passage) on the pilgrim’s passport.
There are only two and a half months of walking left before Rome!