Limoges calling ...... is anyone there?

We have not had the internet for several days and so there is a lot I could load.
Below are a couple of the things I was going to put up but was not able to do so. We are now in Limoges on a proper break (2 nights/1 day) for some rest and re-organisation as we have not really had such a stop since Chartres (almost 650 Kms away. Our other rests have been taking time out to shop and shorten the distance to the next stop by public transport to keep on track.

Last night we searched for a hotel and found an Etap behind the station which promised free WiFi but it is one of those scrappy services and is only available in the room where the breakfasts are served so I am writing this in a hurry so we can go down and do the uploading and check out details for the route ahead.

The last few days have been very interesting. Cluis to Crozant was a strange mixture of walking down very (and I mean VERY) steep paths and scrambling up (yes, almost VERTICAL) paths and ending up going on the east side of the lac rather than the west – adding time and distance to the day. Crozant was a beautiful place full of references to the impressionist painters who once stayed there.

Then, La Souterainne was spent in a beautiful house owned by a couple of English people who are doing it up. The food and company were excellent and the room was great (but cold). The walking had been pretty good but my feet have been suffering pretty badly with blisters between toes, etc as a result of the stupid boots, etc..

Benevent l’Abbey was in a small refuge (as mentioned below) and we met, two French men as well as the French, German and Dutch person we have been encountering on a regular basis. It was also where we encountered a man from Leeds (Darren) who was staying there as a permanent guest – his ex-partner and two children live near by and this is the best he can do at the moment – we keep him and his family in our prayers, too. There were other English there. The woman running the place lived up the road and ran a Gite/Chambre d’Hotes and a bar down the road was run by an English couple (he brewed some of the beer served there, too) and when we went to sample the beer we met some other English living near by. You can get fish and chips there, too, from time to time... They all seemed happy with living in France, even if they were a bit bemused by the French way of doing things from time to time.

Billages was another good walk where we ended up in a sort of Gite/CH where the lady who ran it used to be a top designer/ceramicist for various companies and now did some consulting while doing her own thing in a rambling set of ex-farm buildings. She made us great food, plied us with drink and we generally had a lovely (but cold) evening. These places will be great in the French summer – which had not arrived by the time of writing this.

St Leonard de Noblat was a municipal refuge and the man who looked after it looked after us really well, we had a great evening and Renee, the Dutch man of the group we have been regularily sharing places in the evenings, cooked us onion souple, Michel, the man who lived in St Leonard plied us with chips and other things and Yves/Bernard also provided copious wine, bread etc, too. Sadly, they are now ahead of us and we may miss seeing Yves again this time ‘round as he is only going from Vezelay to somewhere beyond Perigueux this time. Yves is a very experienced pilgrim who has done many of the routes to Santiago and is a really good bloke too. We may catch up with Renee and Bernard so we look forward to that, too.

Now, in Limoges I sit at the room’s little desk with the window open and a view of the station tower which is very impressive. A good city with lots to see and do but we have stuck to (yesterday) getting new boots for me and then me wearing them in last night and today while we wandered around and did other essential shopping. And, of course, we have spent a lot of time here too, resting our weary bones.

Final note, I have not got as much that I want to put on because I have spent quite a bit of time writing poetry and will load some of that separately at a later date, and because I have been writing about things that will form a different section of the blog (reflections). One of the things we have been reflecting on is the fact that we have been in France for over a month now and we have some odd things to say about the experience.

One of the key ones is that we have been looking forward to living in France in order to become more attuned to the country and its people. However, this particular jaunt has been different from anything most people will experience. We are both right there in the streets and (often) in the homes of the French and we spend most of our time hearing and talking (badly in my case) French. Yet we are in a different lce virtually every night (and all the way through the day, too. So we are not experiencing the same place and the same people over a long period. We are outside French society as much as any foreigner can be much of the time and, although we are welcomed most places and people know and understand pilgrimage in a way that they don’t in the UK, it is still an eccentric experience. It both enables us to be part of the place and be outside of it at the same time and this is an experience we are reflecting on and processing in all sorts of ways....

OK, so I will stop, append a couple of other bits and use my nice new boots to walk down to the breakfast room where I can do some computer-type things, including loading this up. Hopefully the sun which is now shining will start to warm up our way and dry those soggy paths for us!

A tout a l’heure

Exit Crozant (14.05.2010)

After a pretty long day’s walk our night in Crozant was just what we needed. The hotel was there just as we passd the sign for the town and it was in a beautiful location. Stay in the Hotel du Lac at Crozant, folks, the place is spotless, the people running it are both lovely and professional, the accommodation was good and so was the food. The bar and restaurant look out onto fantastic views of the river, the bridge with the ruins of the castle towering above and high cliffs clad in a variety of deciduous trees. The river curves on beyond the hotel one way and curves past the lower part of town on to the lac in the other direction. At the jetty and landing area in front of the hotel you can jump on a boat and take a trip up the lac or rent boats/kayaks and do your own exploring.

So, when we left this morning, knowing we had a slightly shorter and easier day, we were aiming to take our time but still get int5o La Souterraine by about 4pm so we could find accommodation. We were looking to either stay with one order of sisters or perhaps go to the campsite and stay there.

The owner of the hotel did not know the camp site but was able to tell us that the centre commercial which would have provided us with food, etc for camping was on the other side of the town – which put us off the campsite but then we thought we might buy stuff in the centre then go out afterwards (it’s a couple of Km outside the town on the wrong side for us...)... We revised our route so we walked the first part a la pilgrim, then we walked on the road and avoided some of the potentially wet bits. Then back on the pilgrim way into La Souterraine (the earlier route we had chosen had gone closer to the camp site).

We arrived and walked to the church. After a prayer Alison wanted to walk around so we did that rather than head off in search of the nuns. It was OK as a church but, was were about to leave a man who had just arrived at the table next to the exit called to us and asked if we were pilgrims. We stopped and said yes and he asked if we needed our credencials stamped and we said we did so he got out the stamp and we got out our pilgrim passports and he did the stamps as he asked us where we were staying that night. When we said we didn’t know he told us to go to the English place and gave us a leaflet.

We are now in a lovely en suite room at the top of a beautiful late 18th century town house in its own garden (for 20 Euros!!!) and there is a dinner and breakfast for reasonable amounts too! We can use the last of our cash here and Alison gets paid tomorrow!

Phew, if we had not asked the man at the hotel this morning, if he had gone to the campsite, if we had not bothered going to the church, if we had not stayed to look at the church, if we had not bumped into the little man with is stamp and talked to him.....

12/05/2010

Today is our first day without rain (apart from some light drizzle) so my feet have been reasonably dry for the first time for a while. I have developed a blister on my left little toe and there are several other parts of my feet where blisters are seeking residence ‘though they have been convinced to stay away up ‘till now. So, I am counting my blessings and thinking that I might be able to get to Limoges (about 150 km from here) without having to replace my boots.

My boots, are the problem. Cracks appeared in the top of both boots near the end of the tongue/laces. Water started to leak in and this seemed to cause a major failure of the waterproofing of the boots. We bought some waterproofing spray in Nevers and that was great for about a day and a half. I also filled the cracks with the rubber glue you use to repair things like air beds. This helped for a very short time, too. But my feet have an inconvenient susceptibility to forming blisters when wet, so it has not been good recently from that point of view.

Still, despite the rain, the walking has been good and the countryside has been very interesting. Despite walking through some notable wine regions we have not seen a single vineyard since leaving Vezelay. This in itself is weird. We walked part of the route signposted as the scenic route through the region passing the main “Vignobles” and we saw lots of cattle, a few sheep, some chicken and horses, various varieties of grain and some rape but the only vines were in people’s gardens and draped across their houses.

Weirdly, we walked through lots of places that could have been south of Edinburgh with similar style farms built in sandstone around a large cobbled courtyard and then we moved on to more lush countryside with more trees, small fields and a strong feeling that we were walking through some old fashioned English country scenery. A Few vineyards would have helped dispel the déjà vous feelings we were having though the “Auberge de Maplethorpe” we passed yesterday did help confuse rather than resolve the situation.

Today we are resting for the night in a refugio in Cluis in a little “place” behind the church. It has a room downstairs with a little table, chairs, a sink, 2 gas rings, ‘fridge, microwave and tumble drier (yippee!!) There is a double futon downstairs where Alison and I are sleeping and up stairs there are 2 sets of bunk beds where two men and two women are sleeping tonight. At the bottom of the stairs is a shower and a loo. So for a contribution (suggested at 7 Euros but pay as little or as much as you can afford) you can stay a night here if you are a pilgrim.

I keep thinking that we need to rethink things like accommodation in the UK. On one side, for pilgrims where we set up a series of pilgrim routes across the country and get refugios started to support walkers on these routes. It also leads us to thnk that local communities could provide simple facilities such as these for more pressing needs. We have long talked about how we could prevent much of the homelessness that occurs in our country. If someone was about to find him or herself homeless that night (due to a relationship break down or something) such a place could provide emergency accommodation and ensure that the person had access to immediate advice at the place where they were staying. The idea would be that no one would need spend more than a few days there at most. What ever their situation, they would be helped to sort things out fast and the period where homelessness kicks in and alienation begins would be avoided.

Each local community could have such a place attached to a village hall/parish hall or some other building, looked after by a team of volunteers and an outreach/advice worker could be assigned to a set of refugios, ready to go where and possibly even when needed. It would be about trying to avoid making a crisis out of a temporary problem and avert a short term difficulty becoming a long term problem.