The sun is burning through the clouds as I write....

Just got into Nevers and have the chance to add something so here are a few snapshots.... more later!!!

End of the first phase (02 05 2010)

Arriving in Vezelay was wonderful...... Dougald and Betty walked out to meet us and walked the last bit with us and we walked up to the Basilica where the woman stamped our pilgrim passports and made quite a big thing of it when she realised how far we had come. We walked around and found our place for the night in the Franciscan pilgrim hostel up near the church and then we had dinner with Betty and Dougald to celebrate (thank you B and D!). then we went back and sorted ourselves out for the night.

Of course, it rained on the way in and it poured down in the evening. We actually watched it come in from the high viewpoint afforded by our dormitory window. Currently it is too dark to know what the weather will be like tomorrow and we have no access to a forecast.

In the morning we will get up and receive a blessing from the Franciscan friar before setting off. Hopefully the shop will be open and we will be able to buy some supplies for the day. Monday is a pretty difficult day in France if you want to go shopping as most places are shut and those that open only stay open for a short while. Also, the villages we are going to pass through look like they are mainly free of any such facilities so we will just have to see what happens.

Another day, another set of surprises. We hope that it is a bit more predictable than it has been as we will be walking with Betty and Dougald and we don’t want our first (or any) day ending up like some of the ones we have been experiencing recently!

The weather turned as we approached Vezelay. (04/05/10)

We had been expecting it for some time but it didn’t rain until we were virtually in sight of the town. Then it waited until we were in Vezelay and sorting ourselves out before it really started to rain. Thankfully, by the morning it was calmer and the rain was mostly very light. So, our first day out of the town was overcast, windy and cool with a steady dampness that imitated rain from time to time.

On the second leg of our journey towards Nevers we expected rain all the time we were walking and experienced much colder winds, but the rain never came. Then, some time after we had settled ourselves in the refugio, the rain began to fall and it pretty much continued to pour until well into the night.

At time of writing, we are getting ready to settle down for the night and everyone has sorted themselves out. The toilet is across the square, past the other side of the town hall where we are staying.

Our hope is that the rain will run out by the morning but, if it does not, at least we will be heading for a reasonably comfortable night tomorrow and will, hopefully, be able to dry things before setting out the next day.

We now have the lights out and I am writing in torch light while Alison reads by her torch. Not sure I can be bothered doing much more in this situation so might seek out my notepad and pen and use them before reading the Gospel and going to sleep......

The place we are staying – a room on the side of the Mairie, which also contains the school, is large enough to hold one set of bunk beds, a small table, some chairs, cupboards and work surfaces including a sink and cooking hob, a paraffin heater and a shower, is brilliant. There is another room at the other end of the building with space for more people to sleep in. There is food available to buy very cheaply – and wine, and the only thing missing is a toilet located within the building. But that is a minor issue when everything else is so good.

Wet road walking (05/05/2010)

In the shade of your hat, your sheltering hood, inside the sealed skin of waterproofs the muffled stride and steady drone of rain is interrupted by the careless swooping spray of cars and driving wave of water from the side-sweeping roar of lorries.

It is often hard to talk, the ideas you have are intruded on by visiting vehicles and passing close calls. The cattle watch and sometimes follow as you pass the fields, the sheep huddle on steaming piles of dung, their newly shorn backs shivering from the cold and rain. Lifted by a shared packet of little biscuits or the sweet/sour French sweets tightly wrapped in clear cellophane, we walk and share broken conversations while feeling for leaks in jackets and the effects of steadily dampening feet. Light jokes and snatches of song punctuate the silence as we climb the next hill before we stop to drink water under a tree and review the route on our maps and texts.

Thinking of dry clothes, hot coffee and weight free feet – better together than on our own. Better with a purpose and a place to head for.

Music therapy

Sitting on the bed in a truckers’ hotel in Premery after walking through heavy rain with everything drying I have put some of Alison’s MP3 player music on the mini-laptop and I have been doing things (mainly trying to dry my leaky boots) while Bob Dylan has been singing to us.

Now we are playing our daughter’s band (well the only four tracks that we have of her music) as I sit and do some writing/collecting some of the most recent bits and bobs onto one file for publishing.

The music in my head needs recharging so this is all good. We have also listened to a bit of Jake Thackray’s stuff and will listen to a bit more later. Dominique has stopped singing and we now have a bit of David Bowie asking if there is life on Mars. Not sure about that but wonder just how much life is left in the French countryside sometimes when we are looking for places to stop and to stay. Just checked the updates on the French Amis des Pelerins website and it is scary what seems to have been scored out rather than added in....

The music will help but the options for night stops are not as good as we had expected and in some cases seem to be declining as we go. Ho hum.... look at those pilgrims go, it’s the best selling show... is there life on....

And now.... (06/05/2010)

We are staying in a lovely house on the edge of Nevers with two people who have walked the Camino and host pilgrims. They have just 'phoned up and booked our next stop south of here and are making food as we get ourselves clean, etc. Their house is beautiful!

We walked through deep, misted valleys and along the side of busy roads for part of today and ended up emerging from the clouds into the suburbs of Nevers as the sun pushed the grey away for a brief while.

All in good spirits, we are praying that things go well in the elections, that our proxy votes work and that we will eventually return to a country that has avoided a Tory landslide..... Bon courage to you all, we miss you but are happy pressing on, even if my boots do leak (because even if they do, we still end up finding places full of hospitality, warmth and heaters that dry what needs to get dry, etc.... This is the nature of walking the Camino and of being pilgrims.

Happy days!

PS none of the above has been edited (again) so sorry for the messiness of it all. Things just go as they go, and we fit in what we can.