I love watching a city come to life. I left my comfortable flat on the Rue du Turenne and skirted past the Neptune fountain (currently not emitting water) for one last time and headed off on the Via in search of breakfast.

With french boulangerie open from 7am, I knew I would be able to find something. A little way down the Rue Baudimont and found a bustling bakery, the bake bringing through breakfast pastries as well as the first runs of bread. The smell was both divine, but strangely familiar. I realised I had been transported to my time working a summer job at a cake factory in Broadheath, near Worcester. Happily the fare on offer here was far superior to the anaemic sponges and deep filled apple pies for nameless supermarkets. (If you are lucky I may tell you about my adventures there some other time!)

I don’t know about you, but my go to pastry is a pain au raisin – who doesn’t like beautiful puffed pastry with crème patisserie and a healthy dose of raisins (at least one of your five a day in a pain au raisin, I’m told). Failing that I had a hankering for a chausson aux pommes: unctuous stewed apple to send me on my way.

However to my chagrin, I found neither of these delights. However a pain de sucre caught my eye, this looked like it had apple in the middle. And so suitably stocked, I walked down to the square in front of the station to eat breakfast (which also included mandarins). It quickly turned out that my pastry was exactly as described, what I had taken to be stewed apple was simply a mound of sugar placed on a brioche base. I do hope the retired GPs in our village, Richard and Karilyn, aren’t reading this – there had to be twice the recommended daily intake of sugar in this one baked comestible alone. Head slightly buzzing, I finished my breakfast and carried on my journey through the Arras suburbs.

The official Via Francigena route leaves Arras through the bustling suburb of Bearains, with its shops and eateries, and European base of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, incidentally. It continues south towards Mercatel, skirts to the west of several small villages before passing through Gomiecourt and into Bapaume via Avesnes-les-Bapaume.

However as the map shows, I took a more westerly route in order to visit Douchy-les-Ayettes, where is buried the uncle of John Ashcroft, one of my parishioners. Joseph Victor Ashcroft had been killed in 1916 serving with a Territorial battalion of the Liverpool Regiment. I had bought a British Legion cross at the 1914-18 Museum at Souchez and intended to place it at his grave on behalf of John and his wife, Jean.

Perhaps still turbocharged by all that sugar, I made it through the the suburbs and into the open countryside in very good time, averaging over 5km/hr. It seems on a Saturday morning all the learner drivers are out and I even passed a group of motorcyclists being put through their paces on a quiet lane.

At Bucquoy Road Cemetery, an extended family from Gloucester were making an early visit to an ancestor who was buried there. There were three generations in the trip – the grandfather having visited several times before, it being a first time visit for his grandchildren.

I reached Douchy-les-Ayette at about 11.30. It’s a village of a similar size to Marden, although much more compact, with a number of farms in the centre of the village, as is the French way. As I found the cemetery on the eastern edge of the village, I could hear children playing in the farmyard next door, and even elicited a cheery wave from the youngest boy. I paid my respects to Joseph Ashcroft and laid the cross by his grave; purple flowers in full bloom at the foot.

I had lunch here and then set out again. It was growing increasingly hot, and I’m not much of a fan of walking in the heat. Happily I had missed much of the heat in the first ten miles, but I would endure a fair bit of it on the walk from Douchy to Bapaume.

However, I dug in, set a reminder on my phone to keep applying sun cream and checked the water in my bottles. The Horne Section podcast kept my company for much of the way until the telltale towers of the mairie and church heralded Bapaume.

I hope to have a bit of time to explore the town briefly tomorrow. When I arrived the fair was in town, loud music, screams of children, ice creams and a general sense of mild mayhem ruled. This general atmosphere was made all the more surreal by an ice cream van driving around playing the tune “Jingle Bells!”

As I type, the families have gone home to be replaced by loud disco music, boy racers screeching around the town and the goaded screams of ride goers. I suspect there will be a few sore heads in the morning! I’m hoping that the double glazing of the Hotel de Paix lives up to its promise. Accommodation wasn’t forthcoming and I had to go with the most expensive option, but hopefully that should spell a good night sleep: I should at least be able to rely on a good sugar crash to send me on my way!