Dieppe to Geneva walk 2023: DAY 17 - SAINTE-CROIX to LOIVRE (Wednesday 3 May)

Conditions were ideal for walking today. The sun was out when we left Sainte-Croix this morning, and stayed out all day.

A sunny start to the day - leaving Sainte-Croix

From Sainte-Croix to Corbeny - mostly on farm tracks, with a small section on a main road

Our day was scheduled around food. The first village we were passing through was Corbeny. It has one bakery, but its weekly closing day was Wednesday (we remembered from our previous walk across France that if a bakery has a weekly closing day, it will usually be the day we are going to be there). We were therefore counting on the bakery in the next town on our route, Berry-au-Bac, for our daily supplies of bread and healthy fruit. As that bakery closed for lunch between 1pm and 4pm, we had to keep up a steady pace to get there before it closed. We picked up the GR145 at Corbeny and followed it into Berry-au-Bac, making it with time to spare.

Corbeny

Self-service pizza, bread and local produce in Corbeny

The GR145 between Corbeny and Berry-au-Bac

Water cistern in case of fire. We have seen a few of these over the last few days. This one is in Juvincourt.

There were very few options along today's route to buy dinner supplies - we were self-catering tonight. The most likely place was a supermarket in Cormicy, just a few kilometres on from Berry-au-Bac. This supermarket was closed for lunch until 2:30, so we had a bit of time to fill in. We had our healthy fruit stop on a bench in a dugout by the football field in Berry-au-Bac, then walked on to Cormicy where we had lunch in front of the village church.

Berry-au-Bac. Not many old buildings here. Like so many of the villages in this region it was devastated in World War I.

On to Cormicy

Cormicy. Lots of interesting history - Joan of Arc passed through; the village was almost completely destroyed during World War I, and it hosts several Champagne wineries. We liked the bollards in front of the supermarket that are shaped like champagne bottles.

We bought our dinner supplies in Cormicy, and then headed for Loivre, about 9 kilometres away. On the way, we passed a French national cemetery, and signs to another destroyed village. We also walked along another canal, and had one more rest stop before arriving at our accommodation.