Gothic confections 22 06 2010
Burgos is an attractive city. It was cold on the way in but today has been sunny and generally warm (when you are out of the wind that is).
We arrived and bumped into a woman (hi Deidre) we have not seen the crossing from St Jean to Roncevalles – she is a lovely Irish Canadian (born and brought up in Ireland, moved to Canada). She pointed us to the new municipal refugio which is just behind the cathedral, is beautifully presented and brand new. Extremely good in many ways but, like so many other places it does lack some things.
For example our dorm had ten rows of bunks (4 individual beds to a row) and each bunk was a good width with comfortable mattresses. The bunks were separated by a column of lockers so Alison and I were top and bottom and the people next door were separated by the lockers. Each row has a wall separating it from the next so when you get into bed you are open on one side and have a wall with a light and socket on your other side (and a wall head and foot. If you sit up on the top bunk you see the lines of bunks and can wave to your neighbours in the rows beyond). I hope that is all clear....
So, a margin of privacy in a hostel is unusual and welcome. What was not so good was the row of four showers and two loos for all of us to share. Oh, and climbing the narrow ladder to the top bunk was torture!
Two other things. There was not a kitchen. On the ground floor there were some tables and benches fixed to the floor and although they looked good they were not particularly nice to sit at and it felt like one of those places you go to eat your packed lunch at a museum. In the same space were 4 pay as you go internet units, a couple of microwaves and two washing machines and tumble driers. All a bit limited for the few hundred pilgrims who can stay there at any one time.
The second thing was that when we arrived we handed over our pilgrim passports, paid our money and were led off by one of the workers there. He stopped us at the place where you take your boots off and we then stacked them in the large racks provided before we were marched off up stairs to be allocated our beds. It did feel a bit like going to a prison. I was half expecting him to tell us to strip and shower!
Having said all of this it was a very good place. The point is not that these short comings were really significant or that we were in any way being mistreated or short changed. The place was really nice, the facilities were better than many places we have been so far and it was four Euros fifty each for the night. The point is partly that it is amazing what can be achieved with even the minimum of services and partly that the process is different from most other things in our lives. We got the things we needed and we all found space for each other. We did not complain or try to get some extra service for ourselves. We bumped into lots of people we have not seen for a while and exchanged news, we had a good night’s sleep and didn’t even complain when people set their alarms for half five when the doors don’t open until half six (and we wanted a lie in to at least seven, which didn’t happen).
It also makes you more aware of the things you miss and don’t miss. It shows you what it might be like if you have to live like this for longer than just a pilgrimage and it lets you see why people will get ratty from time to time and fed up of being so limited in terms of personal choice and personal space. If you can have that revealed in such a wonderful new resource as the Burgos Municipal Albergue then it is something worth taking note of.
So we had a rest day today and are staying in a small one star hotel in the centre of town for our second night. This meant we could put our backs down somewhere safe and not have to get our sleeping bags out to claim our beds, etc. We have walked all over the place (and not covered half of what we would like to see. We also went to the big supermarket we checked out on our way into town and bought some essentials....
One of the high lights has been the cathedral. I first wanted to see this place when I was a student in 1973 and bought a Geographical Magazine with the church on the cover. It has been much cleaned up and so on since then but the whole thing is quite astounding in so many ways. We paid E2.50 (the pilgrim rate) to get in and as we walked around the cathedral part the section of the church still functioning as a sacred worship space the monks/priests were singing plain chant there and it was being piped throughout the place, so start your visit as soon as the place opens, folks.
It took us the best part of three hours to go around and we popped out as if it had taken 5 minutes. Stunning art, stunning spaces, fantastic stone and wood work, fascinating historical displays. Must go back and do it properly some time.
We went to the front to photograph it and realised that we had not gone into the church part – we always visit the church and give thanks but had failed to do it the day before. So we went in and did that and prayed for all sorts of things and people close to our hearts. The second chapel we went to had the amazing crucifix with Christ in the cross wearing an extraordinary sort of skirt. On the way out a priest came rushing up to me and asked me to stop. He opened the door of the confessional and I though that he had sussed me out (quite astutely) as being a sinner in need of such help. But no, he just wanted us to have little prayer card/leaflets on the Crucifix which included a pilgrim prayer – he had sussed us out as pilgrims!
We then went looking for a present of some pilgrim tat for our friend, Mike, and found a shop across the square that looked the business. We were just on the verge of selecting a suitable thing when Alison’s phone started to ring and guess what.... Yes, it was Mike himself! So we had a nice chat in the sunshine by the cathedral steps.
Anyway, here we are, in a bar in Burgos, drinking beer and coffee (me and Alison in that order) and taking advantage of the wifi to put this little package together so I better stop. Our task will be to find a cafe without the world cup blaring in it. Yes, Burgos does seem to have the bug more than most places. And yes we need to find one that has fewer smokers as the public spaces seem to be full of them. Ho hum, I still prefer the strange beehive type sound from a telly playing the world cup than I do having smokers all around me. One way or another, I am certain we will have a lovely evening.
I hope you have the same too!!!
Show me the way.... 20/06/2010
Just a jumble of different things for the moment.
We were in a private refugio last night and it was cold!! It was designed for hot, hot weather and everyone seemed a bit confused (they have a swimming pool on the garden but people didn’t even want to go out and say hello to the bunny rabbit on the lawn or hang their clothes out.
We shared a dorm with about a dozen Spanish people in a walking group. We passed them on the way that day and we were not sure if they were just a weekend walking group or pilgrims. So, now we know that some Spaniards (mainly, but not exclusively men) are extremely loud and do not stop being loud even when they are asleep (ditto as previous comment). They were lovely and full of high spirits but when they got up this morning it was a bit like bedlam (a mixture of whispering and shouting, tiptoeing around and slamming doors, roars of laughter and loud shhhing, etc.) while trying to get up early without disturbing the rest of the people in the room....
The meal was good but there was not enough of it (fish soup, roast chicken and potatoes with salad and crème caramel) and I managed to break a tooth on the salad.... I am still trying to work out how I will recover from that and so my nerves are a bit shot now. (for those who don’t know, I have a pathological terror of dentists and dentistry)
Today’s walk was another new landscape with wonderful oak forests and wide open sweeping hillsides, and although we did do a bit of climbing up hills it was nothing like the profile shown on the guide. But that is not a surprise. If you want a good, useful and practical guide to the Camino do not (I repeat DO NOT) buy the Brierley guide.
[at this point I have deleted the comments on the Brierley guide as they were not kind] the text continues...
......, but, after being so annoyed by the French guide we must confess we miss it so. At least it was informative.
The best one we have seen so far (Guide that is) is the one published by Dodo. They have sketch maps that actually give you useful information which is pretty accurate, their information about places and accommodation is reliable and up to date and it does not try to be a sort of middle aged, middle class English Yoda (although I do prefer Yoda’s approach to English).
So, there you are, I was trying not to gripe about anything and have found myself rubbishing our guide book (well, thank your lucky stars that I restrained myself, folks!) – just buy the Miam Miam Dodo guide and stop worrying.
Anyway, you could almost walk this without a guide because it is basically so well signposted, there are so many information guide boards on the route and every refugio has tons of leaflets and info about the next places. All of the people who run the refugios also know the route very well and can give you loads more info. Oh, and if you are a teeny wee bit worried after all of that just go into the kitchen or the local bar or the dining room and sit down with some pilgrims who look OK and start chatting to them and agree to walk with them for a day or two. It is just so simple when every little place has at least one refugio and where everyone wants to help you. We walked just slightly off the route (about ten feet actually) n the direction of a supermarket the other day and a car hooted at us. The driver then wound down the window and told us we should be on the other side of the road for the Camino and even wanted us to walk across in front of him so we would be sure of going the right way. Yesterday a woman walked us through a small town because there were some road works and she was worried we might get lost.... Only rubbish English guides get you lost on this Camino, folks!
So, now we are in another private refugio – it is a private “Network” place. We have found that they are actually extremely well run, clean and good value for money. They are also smaller with smaller rooms and many have things like individual lockers (which are really important if you are walking on your own as it means you do not have to take all of your belongings with you into the showers).
We are one day away from Burgos and everyone is telling us to get a bus so we can avoid having to walk through the industrial/commercial part of the city and we are wondering why they want us to do this. What is this obsession with hating cities and related things. We like urban walking as well as rural walks and find factories interesting as well as wanting to get to a really good, big supermarket. We would hate to get the bus and watch a fantastic large supermarket zip by us as we headed for the centre of town. Please take note, it is cheaper to shop in a hyper market than it is to shop in a small “supermarket” in the centre of a large city. If you don’t believe me try it at home! So we will walk, walk, walk tomorrow and if we see a bus after the super market we might get it then.
Tonight we will have paella, then tortilla and pudding as part of the night’s deal and tomorrow we hope for slightly better weather. It was lots of large clouds sweeping across a bright blue sky with large dark clouds of mist and rain in several directions as we walked. The wind was cold and gusty and the temperature was pretty low. No complaints, especially as it did not rain and I suspected that it might. Also, it is better to walk in cooler rather than hotter conditions, especially when you are walking up hill.
Still managing to avoid most of the World Cup and wondering where we might go to escape the Olympics when they invade our home town in a couple of years time. The Spanish seem to be extremely laid back about the whole football thing (only interested in their own matches, it seems). Ho hum....
Walking on the same old path again 19 06 2010
Today was another day of textures and colours. We walk around sweeping curves in hills and new vistas open out with corn fields gashed red with poppies and walk along between different types of grain fields giving us the soft yellows of ripe rye and the deep blue greens of barley each edged with wild flowers in reds, yellows and blues. Textures, colours and sweeping valleys of curves and sudden changes of angle punctuated our day. And, as with yesterday, the sky helps to give some scale to the landscape showing us just how large this country is. Massive white clouds drift along the sides of the valleys in slow squadrons patrolling the upper reaches and casting chequered shadows that travel along the fields and over the edges of the valleys. Even the motorway and the parts of the roads still being built look small here.
Starting in Santo Domingo we did this journey arriving in Belorado (which sounds like the name used for a cheap brand of cigarettes or naff frozen foods) in time to book into the albergue, do tomorrow’s shopping (tomorrow is Sunday) and have lunch in a local bar – beer and Tapas. Now, after a shower and washing clothes, etc. we are catching up on writing and things.
In addition to the scenery, we have been meeting up with and spending time listening to people we have not seen for a little while and we have encountered other people – some who are distinctly odd. We met Richard, the Scot who is walking wearing a kilt in a little village on top of a hill (the hill was Rioja Alta and the village was Ciruena). On the side of the hill was a posh golf course and beside that was a distinctly grim series of blocks of flats and houses. It was a major tourist development without any shops and with a large “club” area with two swimming pools, children’s play area and a high fence around it. Most of the flats were unoccupied and many were for sale. As we walked through the development we passed along further undeveloped streets with empty plots and weeds breaking up the surface of the roads and taking over the pavements. We felt that people who had bought into that grim development were now firmly located in what we used to say to our children was the “serves you right department”. It looked like it had grown and floundered on the basis of a high level of greed and low level of sense....
Anyway, in the little village of Ciruena we found a bar and headed there for a well deserved drink. At a table outside was Richard talking to a Spanish pilgrim. We went inside to sit while drinking our beer then joined them outside to make our sandwich and chat. We had not seen him since the day we entered Pamplona. He told us several stories about the people he had met and things he has seen and we shared some of ours. As we chatted another person we had not seen since leaving St Jean appeared. Anne, who had set off from St Jean on her bike the day we left for the high pass walked up to us with walking shoes on her feet and a rucksack on her back. We walked into Santo Dominica together and listened to her story then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with her (she stayed in the same refugio as us too).
Before giving a short outline of her tale I must share the following incident with you.
On the way towards Rioja Alta (but before we had even started to climb the not very steep hill) we were walking along one of the relatively well kept but still coarsely surfaced paths that make up many sections of the Spanish Camino. It was warm but overcast with a light breeze and we kept looking back for signs of cyclists as they tend to come in small groups and approach you quite quickly and silently giving you no warning that they are there. Usually they just give a short shout of “Hola” or “Buen Camino” just before they are on your back and you have to jump out of their way or have them skidding into your back – which is a very unpleasant experience.
I looked back and saw both a cyclist and a car behind it some way back. I warned Alison and kept monitoring them by glancing back. They went past a small group of walkers, then a couple and still the bike was just a head of the car and I thought both what a shame it must be for the cyclist being harassed by a car like that and also thought the cyclist must be either an idiot who cannot work out how to stop or a pain in the butt for blocking the car in that way.
Alison and I stood off the path to let them past (she was going to take her fleece off so it seemed like a good time to stop anyway) and we watched in awe as a quite good looking woman in possibly her forties cycled past us. She was wearing very expensive clothes and riding a very posh bike. She was cycling slowly and seemed very pleased to have us watching her as she went by. The car behind her was driven by a fit, very well dressed man of similar or slightly older age driving brand new top of the range Mercedes with cream leather interior, etc. He was accompanying her as she wobbled stylishly along the path.
A few hundred metres on the path began to climb at a gentle angle as it reached the latter stages of the valley we were walking along. She stopped the bike and to car stopped behind her. The man go out and they stood together for a few minutes before she climbed back on the bike and he ran behind her for a good hundred feet or so pushing her until she was going slowly but steadily up the hill.
Despite their distinct lack of speed and the open aspect of the camino at this point they were long gone when we reached the top of that valley some five minutes after them (the path out of the valley continued up the side of the next and on along the side of the golf course and we could see up it for more than a kilometre when we reached to top). Perhaps she had done her designated exercise for the day or had become sufficiently bored with it to want to stop. Whatever the reason, they had taken up the bike and left a la merc before the real hill climbing began.
Look out in the papers and magazines to see if any famous woman claims that she has recently cycled the camino – it might have been her.
Contrast this with Anne’s story.
Anne walked the Camino 9 years ago and decided, as she had a bike, to spend some time cycling the Camino revisiting places she had enjoyed and checking out new places. With seven weeks to do this in she though it seemed feasible to cycle to Santiago and return to St Jean in time to go back on the transport she had booked.
She was thoroughly looking forward to the experience and was only worried a bit about the problem of being able to watch the World Cup while doing the Camino (Refugios all seemed to close too early for the games).
She soon found that cycling was not as good as she had hoped.
Firstly, the guide she was using was pretty out of date. Add to this the fact that the country road she was hoping to use was on the way to being replaced by a major motorway and you begin to see her peoblems.
She would start from a place and soon discover that the route she was hoping to take soon developed into a large roundabout with all the exits going onto major high ways. When the old road existed it was so busy it soon became too dangerous to use on a bike. She asked various people for advice (including the police) and they all said the same thing. Either cycle on the camino itself or risk the busy road (but only if it was still the old road – she could not cycle on the motorway, even she wanted to...).
Cycling on the Camino was not really an option for Anne. There are very many stretches of it that are incredibly steep, muddy, uneven, filled with boulders and very twisty (not to mention heavily encroached on by all sorts of trees and bushes. Ths is all great stuff for a strong, experienced All Terrain Biker with the right sort of equipment. For Anne it was not an option – Anne is very petite, she has a standard woman’s road bike and only basic experience with no idea of to cycle such routes.
She then discovered that many of the standard refugios are not particularly welcoming to cyclists. Many refuse cyclists and others say cyclist can come in if there are spaces left after 7pm in the evening (Refuios in Spain are not allowed, by Law, to refuse any pilgrim help after 7 pm in the evening)
She found this deeply upsetting and another aspect of the journey that was destructive to both her morale and her enjoyment of the pilgrimage.
By the time she had done two or three days she was beginning to wish she had never started and within another day she was ready to completely break down.
She managed to find a good refugion in Logrono that welcomed bikers and the woman who ran the place was extremely supportive and helpful. She talked it through with Anne and let her stay an extra day. Anne walked around the town distraught trying to work out what to do. She had seven weeks to do the Camino and get back to St Jean for her transport home but she just could not face another day on the road. She moved from place to place finding herself crying and in despair. She went to a church hoping to find some clue and found the reading for the day was one about the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. This made her cry even more as she wondered what the story might mean for her.
She went to the pilgrims’ information bureau at the start of the bridge over the river leading into Logrono. The pounding water below seemed to be washing away her hope rather than feeding her strength and, when she asked for help in the bureau the really nice man behind the counter only confirmed her worst fears. He really wanted to help (the bureau is a great place, by the way – clean, well designed, brand new and peopled by really good staff) but the simple solution was that she needed to seek the help of hospitaliers in each refugio she stopped at. They would be able to guide her along the route safely, pointing out the best local options for her on the way. The solution only seemed to make her prospects worse.
Eventually, she found herself at the door of an outdoor pursuits shop and she walked through the entrance and into the walkers’ department. There she bought a rucksack and a pair of walking boots.
When she returned to the refugio the lady there threw her arms around Anne and congratulated her on her decision. The bike and any un-needed equipment could stay at the refugio until Anne returned for it in a few weeks time. She sent Anne to the bus station to find out options for getting her nd the bike back to St Jean and everything just fell into place.
So, now Anne is walking to Santiago and is so much happier she just cannot believe how happy she is. She had made a mistake and had been given the chance to correct it before it destroyed her and now she was enjoying everything except, perhaps, the awful performance of the England team. But she knew there was nothing she could do about that.
I keep thinking of the contrast between the woman on the bike with the Mercedes following her and Anne who is no longer on her bike. I keep getting new thoughts of what it all means and I keep thinking that it is all part of that rich, heady concoction that is the Camino.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Thursday, 17 June 2010
I just have a few minutes before lights go out so here is something for the blog....... Argh!!!
Here I am sitting in Spain
I have a few things for this blog but I will add them on to the end of this.
Today we got up and Alison was beginning to have a migraine so we took things a bit easy. We were slow in getting ourselves ready and it was closer to 8 than 7 when we left the refuge. We walked from Viana to Logrono and stopped for a coffee before heading through to a Pharmacy to buy ibuprofen (the smallest they had was 600mg tablets!) and then found a supermarket on the outskirts of town just by the camino. There we bought some essentials and lunch (some ham, a large tomato and bread).
We stopped at Navarette for lunch and then a beer at a bar and arrived in Ventosa quite late for us at about 4pm. The albergue (I should start calling them that, now) is a lovely Spanish house that has been beautifully restored with a nice garden and good washing facilities, excellent kitchen etc. Phew, it feels like unbridled luxury after the last couple of days ... and it has wifi so I will be posting this.
The past couple of days have seen us in pretty wonderful but odd places.
2 nights ago we were in Villamayor de Monjardin which is a wonderful little village half way up a small mountain with a beautiful little Romanesque church where we shared prayers with the woman who ran the parish Albergue there and where we spent time wondering over a fantastic crucifix from the 12th Century which is truly a masterpiece. Carved in wood then covered in silver it is exquisite and took our breath away.
Montjardin was the simplest of places and we all slept in one large room on a platform with a variety of different types of mattresses for us to choose from. But it had a shower, the place was cold but clean and the welcome was genuine.
In Viana the Albergue was also next to the church but this was a much grander church with a massive baroque altar piece that dominated to huge church. The Albergue had two rooms with mattresses on the floor and we shared in the preparation of the evening meal then went to Mass next door while the Hostalieres cooked the food which we then shared on our return. Mass was lovely with a priest who took obvious pleasure in having pilgrims as guests and he blessed us individually at the end of the service. He also spoke to each of us and had obviously worked at being able to converse with pilgrims from a number of different countries. He also took the time to share the sign of peace with everyone in the church....
After a lovely meal we went to bed very tired.
The thing about yesterday was that it was the coldest and wettest day we have had in Spain and the paths were also the worst we have experienced here. Usually the paths are pretty good and a number of them have been paved or surfaced in some way but yesterday the claggy mud clung to our boots and formed slippery tracks down steep narrow paths and through puddle ridden lanes between sodden nut and fruit trees. The Albergue had radiators but the Hospitalieres did not know how to put the heating on and seemed convinced that it was probably best not to try and find out how to make it work. So we arrived wet and left wet the next day (today) which was the only drawback to the place, really.
In both places, as with every place we have gone through and stayed at so far, the people have been wonderful, full of their own great stories about their travels and keen to find out about yours. I am gathering a long and varied set of stories and am nurturing them as I walk along. We have been meeting some of the same people in each place we stay at and encountering others as we go from village to village so now we have a little travelling community that we are part of. A sort of tiny moving village or a caravan of pilgrims sharing nights and swapping lives in different places each night.
No doubt the rooms with mattresses are the closest we will get to both the experience of homeless people and also the nearest thing we will find to the sort of experience medieval pilgrims will have had. The inns of the time often just had a series of straw mattresses or just straw on the floor to sleep on. Some people might have found places with smaller rooms and others will have slept on the benches in the tavern near where the fire was kept alight all night. As we walk we discover different levels of comfort, individual experiences of communal and private hospitality and meals either shared at a long table or in a small bar or restaurant where other pilgrims are also eating the pilgrim menu. On the road, although we may only pass some and be passed by others, there is a gentle camaraderie that can be expressed in conversation or in a simple “Buen camino!”. Many people (as was the case in France, too) wish us this or give us some other greeting which is telling us that they recognise us as pilgrims and wish us a good journey. It lightens the load and adds power to your step, it really does.
So, today we were a little under the weather and, although we covered around the 30km again it took a while and we were not sure if we were going to do it at first. My feet seemed to be determined not to settle into the boots today and Alison was feeling pretty rough. The camera had been put in the little bag we use for ‘phones, passports, etc when we have stopped for the night and I had packed the thing away in the bottom of my sack without realising it was there. So, because we had other things to deal with I left it where it was.
As a result we missed taking pictures of Viana. I had not taken any on the wy in because it was too wet and the camera was having tantrums (shorting out and telling me the batteries were dead, etc) so we have none of the aubergue which is on the top couple of floors of a tsall building next to the crumbling facade of the church. I missed photographing the two storks nesting on a high wall above the roofs of the town and the beautiful plaza with its colonnaded sides and the various modern and ancient statues within the centre of the town. I also missed the way out through the medieval streets with their overhanging balconies and eccentrically edged walls. The banks of vineyards and huddles of olive and nut trees we passed as we climbed out and over the side of the valley heading towards the higher mountain valleys filled with clouds and rain. The entrance to the next town, Logrono began with a walk by the raging river whose weir had disappeared under the torrent of brown water tumbling from under its tall stone bridge. The islands below the weir were also swamped with the powerful torrent and, as we crossed over the bridge we watched logs being swept through its arches and dragged under the brown water by large whirlpools. The sound of the river tumbling down through the valley was impressive.
Logrono is somewhere we will revisit. Its medieval streets and fine buildings are also filled with lovely shops, bars and restaurants and the place had a great atmosphere. As we left the town we walked along a series of little parks out around a large lake and then over the terraced hillside filled with vineyards and small orchards up past fields of poppies that would have made an impressionist painter salivate and up to enjoy our lunch in a little hilltop village before stopping to have a beer with a young German girl we have walked the last few days with (Hello Vera!) and a couple of young Norwegian guys walking with a young German who were sitting enjoying a beer and Vera’s company. They are all in the albergue here tonight adding their energy to the place.
And now, after having a lovely meal in a little restaurant in the village Alison has gone to bed and I am just finishing off this little note before sending it out and going to bed as well (Lights out at 10pm folks!!!).
I am still processing this whole thing, still meeting people and enjoying the journey with Alison. So much to write about, so much to do, so much still to look forward to - can there be a better description of happiness?
Now for a quick set of notes and a little rant – sorry for any repetition, it is just I will not have time to edit this before I have to send it out.
Snoring and the art of letting go – plus a rant 14/06/2010
Monday and it is Puente la Reina at the municipal refuge. Last 2 nights (Saturday and Sunday) were spent in a little hotel in Pamplona and before that we were in a little private refuge where the people in our room should have entered themselves as the Camino Snoring team in the next Olympics. In fact, I think that I spent part of the night convinced that I had worked out a way of harnessing the enormous power contained within these snores to help solve the world’s energy crisis. One of these days, instead of an alien race using us as power cells (as in the Matrix) we will just put little contraptions on snorers’ heads at night and the energy they release will keep our light’s burning and our industries working.
Ideas like this are why we are walking to Santiago....
One of the things we end up discovering is that we are able to accept the least and not expect anything more. This may seem like a good thing if you are not doing it yourself. From our point of view it means that the effects of any hardships we face are reduced considerably as we do not expect anything more and accept what we are allowed for that day.
Ah, true humility, I hear you say. Ah, you are finding harmony and acceptance, you are living life more simply – if only we could all do that!
Well, think of the story of the snoring I have just given in a relatively light fashion. Now consider this.
We stayed 2 nights in Pamplona in a small hotel (a lovely room on the fourth (top) floor with 3 other rooms on the same level). The first night there was loud music in the large plaza a short distance away which stopped about 10pm and we didn’t mind. It felt like we were in a city! Then, our last night was marked by a musical interlude. A short time after settling down for the night (we were getting up at 6 and leaving by 7 at the latest) someone started to play short interludes of music. God knows what they were doing but it was short, loud phrases of music. Much of it was the same phrase repeated. Sometimes it progressed but mostly it just repeated and repeated with small variations of length. It was like someone or a small group, endlessly rehearsing the same intro.
It kept me awake for a while but I managed to settle down and I kept succeeding in ignoring it for a while then it would become more intrusive until it woke me up again. Alison closed the windows hoping it was from outside but it was from within the hotel (probably on the same floor as us).
Eventually, I asked Alison what the time was (thinking it was around midnight by then). It was 3am!!! I got up and went to the door, opened it and shouted “SSHHOOOSHH!”. It paused then continued. I went to the loo then flushed it and headed for the door again, intent on wandering down the corridor in the nude, banging on the door and telling them to stop. But the noise ended as I opened the door so I went back to bed.
The point is not that I have become more tolerant. We were paying good money to enjoy a restful time in a nice place and this was not acceptable. I should have stopped it shortly after it started. NOT at 3 am. I have learned to accept the minimum standard and to expect it even when I am paying for something better.
Translate this into real terms.
A homeless person is quickly stripped of the normal set of expectations, values and so on and becomes someone whose standards have been lowered to an unacceptable level but they are not aware of it and when people give them rubbish two things happen; the homeless person accepts it gratefully and uncritically and the person offering it interprets this as an acceptable level to serve/treat the homeless person. So suddenly you don’t need to treat these people the same way as you would other people, you don’t need to apply the same standards, they don’t want decent things, they don’t like or understand them, they can’t appreciate them, etc. It’s trap that is very dangerous for both sides.
Of course, this also applies in our society to people of different classes – our society is designed so the people at the top think that they somehow deserve/have earned their place and that the people at the bottom are happy there, don’t know/want any better, wouldn’t know what to do with something better, etc., So you can design an economy and a social system that takes advantage of this view and it allows you to maintain status at one level at the price of denying it to other levels of society and you have a situation where the people at the top feel justified and vindicated by the “proof” of their situations and other peoples’ as if it was all natural and based on some sort of measure of merit.
Just think... from being kept up at night by snoring people, to being kept up by some weird music to a criticism of the socio economic (class) situation in the UK. What a surprise. I actually have a lot more on this elsewhere.... but I won’t bore you any more......
One final point which relates to this. I heard that the new minister in charge of destroying our higher education system has said that students are a burden on the tax payer........
A BURDEN ON THE TAX PAYER????
Our education system is an investment that society makes in the future of the country and we should be investing very heavily indeed if we want to be even a half decent, half successful country in the future. To not invest would be a massively stupid mistake. Investing in this way is the wisest way to spend our taxes, Idiot!
Of course, what he is planning is a two or three tier higher education system where the rich and a small hand full of lucky people enjoy decent higher education and the rest will do 2 year (mainly “vocational”) degrees without holidays in a cut down university (Tesco Uni Plc) near their home. This was Thatcher’s dream in the early 80’s along with charging fees (what ever happened to that idea?)!
Anyway, what is a burden on the tax payer is not just spending our taxes paying moronic politicians like him. There are PUBLIC SCHOOLS, for example ETON that enjoy charitable status. We, the tax payers, subsidise PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!! They are a burden on the tax payer. If we want to cut back on spending on education shouldn’t they be first on the list?
And of course, many private health organisations also enjoy charity status. If you want to cut back on health spending let’s stop using tax payers money to subsidise private health care.
I could go on but perhaps you can all add something to the list and perhaps someone can start a FACEBOOK page on this.
My standards are too low now for anyone to listen to what I have to say anymore.
Sorry about the rant.......
I have a few things for this blog but I will add them on to the end of this.
Today we got up and Alison was beginning to have a migraine so we took things a bit easy. We were slow in getting ourselves ready and it was closer to 8 than 7 when we left the refuge. We walked from Viana to Logrono and stopped for a coffee before heading through to a Pharmacy to buy ibuprofen (the smallest they had was 600mg tablets!) and then found a supermarket on the outskirts of town just by the camino. There we bought some essentials and lunch (some ham, a large tomato and bread).
We stopped at Navarette for lunch and then a beer at a bar and arrived in Ventosa quite late for us at about 4pm. The albergue (I should start calling them that, now) is a lovely Spanish house that has been beautifully restored with a nice garden and good washing facilities, excellent kitchen etc. Phew, it feels like unbridled luxury after the last couple of days ... and it has wifi so I will be posting this.
The past couple of days have seen us in pretty wonderful but odd places.
2 nights ago we were in Villamayor de Monjardin which is a wonderful little village half way up a small mountain with a beautiful little Romanesque church where we shared prayers with the woman who ran the parish Albergue there and where we spent time wondering over a fantastic crucifix from the 12th Century which is truly a masterpiece. Carved in wood then covered in silver it is exquisite and took our breath away.
Montjardin was the simplest of places and we all slept in one large room on a platform with a variety of different types of mattresses for us to choose from. But it had a shower, the place was cold but clean and the welcome was genuine.
In Viana the Albergue was also next to the church but this was a much grander church with a massive baroque altar piece that dominated to huge church. The Albergue had two rooms with mattresses on the floor and we shared in the preparation of the evening meal then went to Mass next door while the Hostalieres cooked the food which we then shared on our return. Mass was lovely with a priest who took obvious pleasure in having pilgrims as guests and he blessed us individually at the end of the service. He also spoke to each of us and had obviously worked at being able to converse with pilgrims from a number of different countries. He also took the time to share the sign of peace with everyone in the church....
After a lovely meal we went to bed very tired.
The thing about yesterday was that it was the coldest and wettest day we have had in Spain and the paths were also the worst we have experienced here. Usually the paths are pretty good and a number of them have been paved or surfaced in some way but yesterday the claggy mud clung to our boots and formed slippery tracks down steep narrow paths and through puddle ridden lanes between sodden nut and fruit trees. The Albergue had radiators but the Hospitalieres did not know how to put the heating on and seemed convinced that it was probably best not to try and find out how to make it work. So we arrived wet and left wet the next day (today) which was the only drawback to the place, really.
In both places, as with every place we have gone through and stayed at so far, the people have been wonderful, full of their own great stories about their travels and keen to find out about yours. I am gathering a long and varied set of stories and am nurturing them as I walk along. We have been meeting some of the same people in each place we stay at and encountering others as we go from village to village so now we have a little travelling community that we are part of. A sort of tiny moving village or a caravan of pilgrims sharing nights and swapping lives in different places each night.
No doubt the rooms with mattresses are the closest we will get to both the experience of homeless people and also the nearest thing we will find to the sort of experience medieval pilgrims will have had. The inns of the time often just had a series of straw mattresses or just straw on the floor to sleep on. Some people might have found places with smaller rooms and others will have slept on the benches in the tavern near where the fire was kept alight all night. As we walk we discover different levels of comfort, individual experiences of communal and private hospitality and meals either shared at a long table or in a small bar or restaurant where other pilgrims are also eating the pilgrim menu. On the road, although we may only pass some and be passed by others, there is a gentle camaraderie that can be expressed in conversation or in a simple “Buen camino!”. Many people (as was the case in France, too) wish us this or give us some other greeting which is telling us that they recognise us as pilgrims and wish us a good journey. It lightens the load and adds power to your step, it really does.
So, today we were a little under the weather and, although we covered around the 30km again it took a while and we were not sure if we were going to do it at first. My feet seemed to be determined not to settle into the boots today and Alison was feeling pretty rough. The camera had been put in the little bag we use for ‘phones, passports, etc when we have stopped for the night and I had packed the thing away in the bottom of my sack without realising it was there. So, because we had other things to deal with I left it where it was.
As a result we missed taking pictures of Viana. I had not taken any on the wy in because it was too wet and the camera was having tantrums (shorting out and telling me the batteries were dead, etc) so we have none of the aubergue which is on the top couple of floors of a tsall building next to the crumbling facade of the church. I missed photographing the two storks nesting on a high wall above the roofs of the town and the beautiful plaza with its colonnaded sides and the various modern and ancient statues within the centre of the town. I also missed the way out through the medieval streets with their overhanging balconies and eccentrically edged walls. The banks of vineyards and huddles of olive and nut trees we passed as we climbed out and over the side of the valley heading towards the higher mountain valleys filled with clouds and rain. The entrance to the next town, Logrono began with a walk by the raging river whose weir had disappeared under the torrent of brown water tumbling from under its tall stone bridge. The islands below the weir were also swamped with the powerful torrent and, as we crossed over the bridge we watched logs being swept through its arches and dragged under the brown water by large whirlpools. The sound of the river tumbling down through the valley was impressive.
Logrono is somewhere we will revisit. Its medieval streets and fine buildings are also filled with lovely shops, bars and restaurants and the place had a great atmosphere. As we left the town we walked along a series of little parks out around a large lake and then over the terraced hillside filled with vineyards and small orchards up past fields of poppies that would have made an impressionist painter salivate and up to enjoy our lunch in a little hilltop village before stopping to have a beer with a young German girl we have walked the last few days with (Hello Vera!) and a couple of young Norwegian guys walking with a young German who were sitting enjoying a beer and Vera’s company. They are all in the albergue here tonight adding their energy to the place.
And now, after having a lovely meal in a little restaurant in the village Alison has gone to bed and I am just finishing off this little note before sending it out and going to bed as well (Lights out at 10pm folks!!!).
I am still processing this whole thing, still meeting people and enjoying the journey with Alison. So much to write about, so much to do, so much still to look forward to - can there be a better description of happiness?
Now for a quick set of notes and a little rant – sorry for any repetition, it is just I will not have time to edit this before I have to send it out.
Snoring and the art of letting go – plus a rant 14/06/2010
Monday and it is Puente la Reina at the municipal refuge. Last 2 nights (Saturday and Sunday) were spent in a little hotel in Pamplona and before that we were in a little private refuge where the people in our room should have entered themselves as the Camino Snoring team in the next Olympics. In fact, I think that I spent part of the night convinced that I had worked out a way of harnessing the enormous power contained within these snores to help solve the world’s energy crisis. One of these days, instead of an alien race using us as power cells (as in the Matrix) we will just put little contraptions on snorers’ heads at night and the energy they release will keep our light’s burning and our industries working.
Ideas like this are why we are walking to Santiago....
One of the things we end up discovering is that we are able to accept the least and not expect anything more. This may seem like a good thing if you are not doing it yourself. From our point of view it means that the effects of any hardships we face are reduced considerably as we do not expect anything more and accept what we are allowed for that day.
Ah, true humility, I hear you say. Ah, you are finding harmony and acceptance, you are living life more simply – if only we could all do that!
Well, think of the story of the snoring I have just given in a relatively light fashion. Now consider this.
We stayed 2 nights in Pamplona in a small hotel (a lovely room on the fourth (top) floor with 3 other rooms on the same level). The first night there was loud music in the large plaza a short distance away which stopped about 10pm and we didn’t mind. It felt like we were in a city! Then, our last night was marked by a musical interlude. A short time after settling down for the night (we were getting up at 6 and leaving by 7 at the latest) someone started to play short interludes of music. God knows what they were doing but it was short, loud phrases of music. Much of it was the same phrase repeated. Sometimes it progressed but mostly it just repeated and repeated with small variations of length. It was like someone or a small group, endlessly rehearsing the same intro.
It kept me awake for a while but I managed to settle down and I kept succeeding in ignoring it for a while then it would become more intrusive until it woke me up again. Alison closed the windows hoping it was from outside but it was from within the hotel (probably on the same floor as us).
Eventually, I asked Alison what the time was (thinking it was around midnight by then). It was 3am!!! I got up and went to the door, opened it and shouted “SSHHOOOSHH!”. It paused then continued. I went to the loo then flushed it and headed for the door again, intent on wandering down the corridor in the nude, banging on the door and telling them to stop. But the noise ended as I opened the door so I went back to bed.
The point is not that I have become more tolerant. We were paying good money to enjoy a restful time in a nice place and this was not acceptable. I should have stopped it shortly after it started. NOT at 3 am. I have learned to accept the minimum standard and to expect it even when I am paying for something better.
Translate this into real terms.
A homeless person is quickly stripped of the normal set of expectations, values and so on and becomes someone whose standards have been lowered to an unacceptable level but they are not aware of it and when people give them rubbish two things happen; the homeless person accepts it gratefully and uncritically and the person offering it interprets this as an acceptable level to serve/treat the homeless person. So suddenly you don’t need to treat these people the same way as you would other people, you don’t need to apply the same standards, they don’t want decent things, they don’t like or understand them, they can’t appreciate them, etc. It’s trap that is very dangerous for both sides.
Of course, this also applies in our society to people of different classes – our society is designed so the people at the top think that they somehow deserve/have earned their place and that the people at the bottom are happy there, don’t know/want any better, wouldn’t know what to do with something better, etc., So you can design an economy and a social system that takes advantage of this view and it allows you to maintain status at one level at the price of denying it to other levels of society and you have a situation where the people at the top feel justified and vindicated by the “proof” of their situations and other peoples’ as if it was all natural and based on some sort of measure of merit.
Just think... from being kept up at night by snoring people, to being kept up by some weird music to a criticism of the socio economic (class) situation in the UK. What a surprise. I actually have a lot more on this elsewhere.... but I won’t bore you any more......
One final point which relates to this. I heard that the new minister in charge of destroying our higher education system has said that students are a burden on the tax payer........
A BURDEN ON THE TAX PAYER????
Our education system is an investment that society makes in the future of the country and we should be investing very heavily indeed if we want to be even a half decent, half successful country in the future. To not invest would be a massively stupid mistake. Investing in this way is the wisest way to spend our taxes, Idiot!
Of course, what he is planning is a two or three tier higher education system where the rich and a small hand full of lucky people enjoy decent higher education and the rest will do 2 year (mainly “vocational”) degrees without holidays in a cut down university (Tesco Uni Plc) near their home. This was Thatcher’s dream in the early 80’s along with charging fees (what ever happened to that idea?)!
Anyway, what is a burden on the tax payer is not just spending our taxes paying moronic politicians like him. There are PUBLIC SCHOOLS, for example ETON that enjoy charitable status. We, the tax payers, subsidise PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!! They are a burden on the tax payer. If we want to cut back on spending on education shouldn’t they be first on the list?
And of course, many private health organisations also enjoy charity status. If you want to cut back on health spending let’s stop using tax payers money to subsidise private health care.
I could go on but perhaps you can all add something to the list and perhaps someone can start a FACEBOOK page on this.
My standards are too low now for anyone to listen to what I have to say anymore.
Sorry about the rant.......
Friday, 11 June 2010
News from over the mountains
We are now pilgrims who are walking with, past and towards other pilgrims and it is amazing. We know so many by sight and have had all sorts of conversations with so many, too. Interestingly, we are still just two people walking the Camino and we are walking it at our pace and in our own way. It just means we are not alone on the road for much of the time, which is strange, and we are staying in large refuges with large numbers of people.
Last night, after walking over from France (see notes below), we stayed in a place called Roncesvalles. The refuge holds at least 120 people in a very large building (all in one room) with three rows of bunk beds the full length of the building, the beds grouped in fours so Alison and I were on two bottom bunks sleeping next to each other, which was nice. There were three loos, two sinks and two showers for the men and the same for the women so things could be a bit busy at times. Across the road was the monastery that owns and runs the refuge (with the help of volunteer hospitaliers). On either side of the monastery are two hotel/bars with pilgrim menus and the monastery has a pilgrim mass at 8pm.
So, you arrive and wait until 4pm for the monastery people to register you, accept your money and stamp your credenciales. While you are waiting you have a drink in the hotel/bar and buy a couple of pilgrim meals for later on in the evening. – the 7pm sitting if you are going to mass and the 8.30 if not. Then, after registering with the monastery, you go over, are given your bed and you can settle down.
At 7pm you go and have your pilgrim meal (which is a bit of a rip off), go to Mass and go back to bed. Lights out at 10pm and lights on again at 6am.
Tonight we are in a small private refuge in a place called Zubibi which was a decent 20 odd kms from our last stop. We got here just after 12 midday and have settled in well. The internet actually works and we are going to eat here having bought some bits and pieces in a little shop.
The pilgrim menu is more elaborate in the hotel here but it is 11 Euros (compared with 9 last night) and the refuge is 10 Euros, which is a couple more than the municipal one. But this is smaller with only 8 people to a room and INTERNET)so we will eat here and relax. We are also here because the next stop would make tomorrow’s walk to Pamplona really short and we wanted to space things out a bit better.
A few of notes on walking over the mountain and about being in Spain.
• Leaving from St Jean was wonderful. We liked the place and liked the experience.
• On the way out we were graced with a beautiful rainbow which basically heralded us into the mountains.
• The walk up was not as hard as we had expected but that was because it had been talked up a lot by so many and we, although we may not look it, are now very seasoned walkers who just put our heads down and do the business.
• What was hard was the wind. We encountered serious, no VERY serious, wind as we walked towards Spain. People were being blown over and injured. Alison was actually blown off her feet at one point and we spent the hardest bits either standing waiting for the wind to die down so we could continue, or walking with our arms linked so we could keep each other on the path – and some of those paths are proper mountain paths with very steep, long drops on one side.
• At one point the wind changed direction for us and literally blew us up and over one of the parts of the path – we enjoyed this wonderful gift and couldn’t stop laughing for some time.
• Just when we really needed something to eat and a place to rest we saw a tiny mountain hut (stone built) and we walked around it to find some shelter. The wind seemed to get worse at each turn as we went around the building. Then someone tapped on the window and opened the door when we returned to the front. It was a tiny emergency mountain refuge so we sat in it eating our food and listening to the wind hammering at the walls and door.... fantastic. We are sharing the room here with the German woman who opened the door for us and a French man who welcomed us in, too.
• We are not tuned to Spanish yet and with such a multitude of different nationalities to walk with (in our room are a German woman, a French man, an Australian couple and an Italian couple) we are finding it an interesting challenge. We have a French/Spanish phrase book and are trying to say things in Spanish whenever we enter a bar or shop or what have you. We say, “Hola” to everyone we meet, which is also great!
• Spanish cars have an “E” instead of the French “F” and this is also weird (I keep looking and thinking why have they added another line to the F or wondering where the FR and NCH bits are. But we will get used to that. All the notices are in Spanish and that helps.
• Spain is clearly a different place as soon as you start to walk through the villages. The houses are different, the streets are different and so are the people. It is dramatic to experience such a change just by passing an imaginary line on the ground. Actually, it was a cattle grid that constituted the border and we did not need passports or have to deal with customs, etc. In fact it didn’t even say “Welcome to Spain!” when we passed the line. Instead, there was a great big stone which told us we were now in the Navarre Region which is a very important, proud and historic region – welcome!
• Our rest day in Pamplona (the capital of the Navarre Region) will help us tune in a bit more, but we are loving the country and its people and hope to fall in love with the language as well!
End of notes, now for our tea, so I will post this and we will eat. One thing... it is pretty cold at the moment (Alison is suffering...) but I’m sure it will warm up soon.
....... Going to bed now after an amazing discussion with an artist from Toronto who is reworking the Wagner Ring cycle or rather deconstructing it and allowing it to reconstruct itself in a complex but elegant way..... sweet dreams.
Last night, after walking over from France (see notes below), we stayed in a place called Roncesvalles. The refuge holds at least 120 people in a very large building (all in one room) with three rows of bunk beds the full length of the building, the beds grouped in fours so Alison and I were on two bottom bunks sleeping next to each other, which was nice. There were three loos, two sinks and two showers for the men and the same for the women so things could be a bit busy at times. Across the road was the monastery that owns and runs the refuge (with the help of volunteer hospitaliers). On either side of the monastery are two hotel/bars with pilgrim menus and the monastery has a pilgrim mass at 8pm.
So, you arrive and wait until 4pm for the monastery people to register you, accept your money and stamp your credenciales. While you are waiting you have a drink in the hotel/bar and buy a couple of pilgrim meals for later on in the evening. – the 7pm sitting if you are going to mass and the 8.30 if not. Then, after registering with the monastery, you go over, are given your bed and you can settle down.
At 7pm you go and have your pilgrim meal (which is a bit of a rip off), go to Mass and go back to bed. Lights out at 10pm and lights on again at 6am.
Tonight we are in a small private refuge in a place called Zubibi which was a decent 20 odd kms from our last stop. We got here just after 12 midday and have settled in well. The internet actually works and we are going to eat here having bought some bits and pieces in a little shop.
The pilgrim menu is more elaborate in the hotel here but it is 11 Euros (compared with 9 last night) and the refuge is 10 Euros, which is a couple more than the municipal one. But this is smaller with only 8 people to a room and INTERNET)so we will eat here and relax. We are also here because the next stop would make tomorrow’s walk to Pamplona really short and we wanted to space things out a bit better.
A few of notes on walking over the mountain and about being in Spain.
• Leaving from St Jean was wonderful. We liked the place and liked the experience.
• On the way out we were graced with a beautiful rainbow which basically heralded us into the mountains.
• The walk up was not as hard as we had expected but that was because it had been talked up a lot by so many and we, although we may not look it, are now very seasoned walkers who just put our heads down and do the business.
• What was hard was the wind. We encountered serious, no VERY serious, wind as we walked towards Spain. People were being blown over and injured. Alison was actually blown off her feet at one point and we spent the hardest bits either standing waiting for the wind to die down so we could continue, or walking with our arms linked so we could keep each other on the path – and some of those paths are proper mountain paths with very steep, long drops on one side.
• At one point the wind changed direction for us and literally blew us up and over one of the parts of the path – we enjoyed this wonderful gift and couldn’t stop laughing for some time.
• Just when we really needed something to eat and a place to rest we saw a tiny mountain hut (stone built) and we walked around it to find some shelter. The wind seemed to get worse at each turn as we went around the building. Then someone tapped on the window and opened the door when we returned to the front. It was a tiny emergency mountain refuge so we sat in it eating our food and listening to the wind hammering at the walls and door.... fantastic. We are sharing the room here with the German woman who opened the door for us and a French man who welcomed us in, too.
• We are not tuned to Spanish yet and with such a multitude of different nationalities to walk with (in our room are a German woman, a French man, an Australian couple and an Italian couple) we are finding it an interesting challenge. We have a French/Spanish phrase book and are trying to say things in Spanish whenever we enter a bar or shop or what have you. We say, “Hola” to everyone we meet, which is also great!
• Spanish cars have an “E” instead of the French “F” and this is also weird (I keep looking and thinking why have they added another line to the F or wondering where the FR and NCH bits are. But we will get used to that. All the notices are in Spanish and that helps.
• Spain is clearly a different place as soon as you start to walk through the villages. The houses are different, the streets are different and so are the people. It is dramatic to experience such a change just by passing an imaginary line on the ground. Actually, it was a cattle grid that constituted the border and we did not need passports or have to deal with customs, etc. In fact it didn’t even say “Welcome to Spain!” when we passed the line. Instead, there was a great big stone which told us we were now in the Navarre Region which is a very important, proud and historic region – welcome!
• Our rest day in Pamplona (the capital of the Navarre Region) will help us tune in a bit more, but we are loving the country and its people and hope to fall in love with the language as well!
End of notes, now for our tea, so I will post this and we will eat. One thing... it is pretty cold at the moment (Alison is suffering...) but I’m sure it will warm up soon.
....... Going to bed now after an amazing discussion with an artist from Toronto who is reworking the Wagner Ring cycle or rather deconstructing it and allowing it to reconstruct itself in a complex but elegant way..... sweet dreams.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
fair set for Spain
At the foot of the mountain pass 09 06 2010
Wow! We are in St Jean and resting in the refuge. We walked with more people than we have seen since Student Cross today and the refuge is big but everyone is friendly and helpful. We know what to expect in some respects over the next day or two and have more advice for the days to come.
Tomorrow consists of us walking over a mountain pass that is just over 4,700 ft high and then down the other side. We then arrive in a place which consists of only a few buildings. On one side of the road is a monastery with a restaurant/bar either side of it. On the other side of the road is a large building. You queue up then go into the monastery, pay for your night’s stay then go over the road to the building which has one large room with 120 beds and a couple of showers. You sort yourself out, cross to one of the restaurants and show them your pilgrim passport, ask for the pilgrim menu and pay 8 Euros then they tell you when to come back. Food is served between 6 and 8 then back to the hostel to sleep. Oh, and if you want to go to the pilgrim Mass at the monastery you find out when it is, tell the restaurant and they will fit you in before the Mass starts (we will do this).
So, we have gone around St Jean, bought food for tonight, etc and even bought a couple of hiker’s sticks as tomorrow we go up then down quite steeply (6hrs up and 2 down) and with packs on it might be good to have something to help stabilise us as we go. So, 7 Euros each seemed like a good price to pay for that little bit of extra help.
Interestingly, the man at the pilgrim bureau told us that numbers are actually down this year rather than up. It would appear that a combination of factors might be the cause. The economies of various countries may be one, the fact that everyone has been saying how busy it is going to be might be another and the weather might be an additional one. Yes, it did rain for most of the day today but it was not cold and the views, even with clouds and mists, were spectacular. We cannot believe that we are actually in St Jean and tomorrow we will be in Spain! I keep worrying that something might happen and we won’t be able to do it.
I have a big blister on the side of my big toe (right foot) and was wearing flip flops when we went back to speak to the people at the pilgrim advice place and I kept my feet well under the table in case someone looked at them and said, “Sorry, we don’t allow people with such bad feet to go walking in the mountains, it’s too dangerous!”
Well, they missed their chance and I will be heading off tomorrow just like everyone else. They can’t stop me now ... Haaaa haaa ha
The weather forecast does not look great for the next few days but it won’t matter, really. We are just happy to be here and still doing this.
Next stop Spain!!!!
Ultrea!
(PS the pilgrim bureau has a couple of computers connected to the internet so I will put this and the last couple of blogs on a stick and try and up load it soon, Cheers!)
Mountains so green 08 06 2010
We love the Pyrenees because they are so beautiful and part of the reason for their beauty is their setting. They are huge mountains but they are a new range and have not been seriously glaciated and their foot hills are not scoured and stripped by ice age glaciers as the uplands were in much of the UK. So, the milder weather, the moisture from the Atlantic/Bay of Biscay and the thicker soil mean the place is very green and fertile. And then the mountains loom over these hills drawing you towards their misty peaks with their occasional remnants of snow and strange shapes and ominous bulk. Add the good beer, cider and wine, the great food and welcome and the French/Basque/Spanish culture and you have a heady concoction worth savouring.
We, as with the rest of this trip, will simply pass through enjoying glances and brief encounters but will return to sample it all in more detail later.
Today we walked through this lovely land, climbing up the considerable hills and trudging back down them as we drew closer and closer to the fabulous mountains. We had expected it to rain but it began grey and grew warmer and sunnier as the day went on. We stopped at a small town called St Palais to buy some lunch and walked on to the place called Gibraltar where three of the routes join into one Camino for the last day and a half’s walk. We had bought a half kilo of strawberries and had put half the packet in a small plastic box we have so we ate the rest as we headed toward this mythical place.
Our map gave us no clue as to where the other routes actually joined us but we knew that we would see the new, conjoined route on the other side of the valley as we descended towards the “Stele de Gibraltar” which would mark the joining point. We saw the path climbing steeply up the next hill but there was no one walking on it. We sat down on the Stele, which is a funny sort of stone marker with a large stone base, and began to eat our lunch of bread and Rillettes when we saw our firts pilgrims from another route. Two Belgian men who waved to us from a path about 20 metres further down the hill. After 5 minutes they reappeared and asked us if we were sitting on the Stele and we said we were. They took some photos of it and said good bye.
We met them resting at theb top of the next hill. We also met about half a dozen other pilgrims. By the time we arrived in Osterbat where we are staying the night we had encountered a few more and saw lots as we sat in the bar drinking a pression. Now, we are in a Chambre D’Hote just over a Km past the village looking at the weather closing in - black clouds are tumbling off the mountains and filling up the wide sky above the great valley we are on the edge of. It is a large farm with one of its barns converted to take pilgrims and provide a very large dining room. We are in the main house in a room on the ground floor with a sort of conservatory with large windows opening out to the view down the valley looking west. There are at least another 20 pilgrims staying here!
We go in for dinner in about 10 minutes so just a couple of other things before I put this away (there is no internet here, either).
Tomorrow we walk to St Jean Pied de Port and that is our last place in France. We took a copy of all of the maps and texts of the route from Vezelay to there and have been throwing the used ones away each night, so tomorrow night we throw away the last of the Voie de Vezelay papers and begin the Camino Frances.
In just over two months we have been on one pilgrimage made of several parts. One was the walk from Walsingham to Willesden and then on through London to Portsmouth. This had its own character and special moments/experiences that we will never forget. Then we entered France and walked completely openly, seeking assistance from parishes and finding all sorts of new experiences as we grew familiar with the country, its language and peoples. Pilgrims on a route of our own with new places every day and no knowledge of what the night would bring us. Then we entered Vezelay with the wonderful welcome of our friends (Betty and Dougald) and began a new type of pilgrimage; one that was being walked by others and was in some ways very established but still a melange (as the French would say) of unknowns and new experiences. We grew deeply familiar with the route’s guides and their weird style of writing and route planning. We became even more intimately entwined with the French, there land and the heart beats of their society. I have been dreaming in a mixture of English and French since about Chartres...
We have wlaked along eating wild strawberries, we have munched on handfuls of cherries from the trees, we have seen and heard so many different birds, insects and other creatures (French frogs make very loud, weird noises, by the way) and we have walked through glorious forests of all kinds (some for more than 30 km at a time), by huge rivers and lakes, across high ridges and through all kinds of landscapes and towns. Great people, great food and a great deal of things to reflect on
And now we will be entering a new pilgrimage in a new country where we do not know the language, where the new guide is in English (Quoi?) and there are lots of folks to meet, etc....
Just a footnote to this – we had a very good, large but simple meal here and the host sang a variety of songs and had us all join in both during and after the meal. There was a large glass of the local Muscat sweet wine as an aperitif and copious amounts of red wine during the meal so we all had a great time .. food, wine and song. I will post the details of the place which is just 1 km outside Osterbat on the chemin to St Jean.
Sauveterre and all that – we hoped to publish this on 07/06/2010 but couldn’t!
We have a very brief opportunity to connect with the internet and I have been busy writing other things so have not put anything together for the blog for the last few days so let’s do a summary!!!!
The last blog was in a place where we stayed in a convent (Saint Sever). It is also where a version of the Pamplona style bull run takes place in early summer (we are just missing it, actually). So, they block of the streets, send in young bulls and let the local men have some fun being gored by therm. Lovely...
Next was Hagetmau (looks like a German name but is pronounced Hah-jey-mow). Another place with a bull ring and more Spanish/Basque influences. Good place with a lot to see and take in but we were busy sorting ourselves out with the key to the refuge at one end of the town and the refuge at the other. We had it to ourselves (apart from the ghosts) and it was fine – Oh and we bought some flip flops for me, so I am a much happier bunny in the evenings (no longer have to wear the boots all the time!
The walking is getting harder again as we move into the foothills of the Pyrenees so when we arrived in Orthez (which also has a bull ring) we were tired and had spent the whole day in the rain (with thunder and lightning – Alison even put her umbrella away). We stayed in the pilgrim refuge located in a 13th century building where the guy who wrote the original guidebook actually stayed, too... in the 13th century, of course. We shared the place with a pleasant German man who was walking from Seville, via Santiago, to Vezelay. There was also a second German man who was extremely grumpy and quite unpleasant most of the time. He was walking to St Tropez and was staying for 2 nights because he had been severely sunburnt the day before (when it was sunny rather than rainy). It was Monday, we had no food and the shops were all shut so we ended up eating in a little restaurant round the corner (one of only 2 or three open that night).
More hard walking in hillier and prettier country but this time just lots of mist then lots of sun with mist on the horizon. So, we have had hints of the mountains but no more than dark grey outlines. We know they are there – we can read maps, read guide books and we saw them when we were here last, two years ago. So we are in a pilgrim Gite where we are staying in a large house with a similar sort of dream like quality to one I wrote about earlier but this one is closer to my actual dreams with mountains nearby and more characteristics that are similar. Still not any of the places of my dreams, though. The walls on the first floor and on some of landings are covered in material stretched over a wooden frame (as used to be done in the 18th century) so it looks like wallpaper but when you touch the walls there is nothing behind the material, it is the original stretched fabric house!!!
Anyway, we are located in Sauveterre de Bearne and last time we were here we were camping below the medieval town next to the river. We walked over a little bridge at the campsite and walked around the island then. Now we are on the south bank of the river and our room looks out over the river and the same island.
Tomorrow we walk to Osterbat and on the way we join with two of the other routes towards St Jean Pied de Port where we all head up the mountain and into Spain. So, just about lunch time we will walk down a hillside on our own and will look towards a path on the opposite side of the valley. There we will see several other walkers all walking up the valley towards Osterbat. They will be the other pilgrims from the other routes. So tonight is our last night as fairly solitary pilgrims. Tomorrow begins a new type of pilgrimage with much larger refuges, many more people and a mountain range to deal with to boot! Oh, and in a couple of days, as we walk over this large mountain we will cross a line and find ourselves walking on Spanish soil. Another stage in the walk, another set of experiences and lots of new things to get to grips with.
Yes, we are completely without any real idea of what this new stage will be like and we will try to walk into it with open hearts and minds and just see what it brings us. For every pilgrim walking the Vezelay route there are tons more on the other routes (well the Puy route, really). So, when we have been walking with one or two others on the way and with an occasional glut of up to 6 or 7 of us in one place at one time, there will be dozens at every stop from tomorrow and, after Saint Jean Pied de Port, another order of magnitude will kick in... Phew! Weird when you think that we have spent over 2 months walking mainly on our own and have often found ourselves to be the only people in a refuge.
Wow! We are in St Jean and resting in the refuge. We walked with more people than we have seen since Student Cross today and the refuge is big but everyone is friendly and helpful. We know what to expect in some respects over the next day or two and have more advice for the days to come.
Tomorrow consists of us walking over a mountain pass that is just over 4,700 ft high and then down the other side. We then arrive in a place which consists of only a few buildings. On one side of the road is a monastery with a restaurant/bar either side of it. On the other side of the road is a large building. You queue up then go into the monastery, pay for your night’s stay then go over the road to the building which has one large room with 120 beds and a couple of showers. You sort yourself out, cross to one of the restaurants and show them your pilgrim passport, ask for the pilgrim menu and pay 8 Euros then they tell you when to come back. Food is served between 6 and 8 then back to the hostel to sleep. Oh, and if you want to go to the pilgrim Mass at the monastery you find out when it is, tell the restaurant and they will fit you in before the Mass starts (we will do this).
So, we have gone around St Jean, bought food for tonight, etc and even bought a couple of hiker’s sticks as tomorrow we go up then down quite steeply (6hrs up and 2 down) and with packs on it might be good to have something to help stabilise us as we go. So, 7 Euros each seemed like a good price to pay for that little bit of extra help.
Interestingly, the man at the pilgrim bureau told us that numbers are actually down this year rather than up. It would appear that a combination of factors might be the cause. The economies of various countries may be one, the fact that everyone has been saying how busy it is going to be might be another and the weather might be an additional one. Yes, it did rain for most of the day today but it was not cold and the views, even with clouds and mists, were spectacular. We cannot believe that we are actually in St Jean and tomorrow we will be in Spain! I keep worrying that something might happen and we won’t be able to do it.
I have a big blister on the side of my big toe (right foot) and was wearing flip flops when we went back to speak to the people at the pilgrim advice place and I kept my feet well under the table in case someone looked at them and said, “Sorry, we don’t allow people with such bad feet to go walking in the mountains, it’s too dangerous!”
Well, they missed their chance and I will be heading off tomorrow just like everyone else. They can’t stop me now ... Haaaa haaa ha
The weather forecast does not look great for the next few days but it won’t matter, really. We are just happy to be here and still doing this.
Next stop Spain!!!!
Ultrea!
(PS the pilgrim bureau has a couple of computers connected to the internet so I will put this and the last couple of blogs on a stick and try and up load it soon, Cheers!)
Mountains so green 08 06 2010
We love the Pyrenees because they are so beautiful and part of the reason for their beauty is their setting. They are huge mountains but they are a new range and have not been seriously glaciated and their foot hills are not scoured and stripped by ice age glaciers as the uplands were in much of the UK. So, the milder weather, the moisture from the Atlantic/Bay of Biscay and the thicker soil mean the place is very green and fertile. And then the mountains loom over these hills drawing you towards their misty peaks with their occasional remnants of snow and strange shapes and ominous bulk. Add the good beer, cider and wine, the great food and welcome and the French/Basque/Spanish culture and you have a heady concoction worth savouring.
We, as with the rest of this trip, will simply pass through enjoying glances and brief encounters but will return to sample it all in more detail later.
Today we walked through this lovely land, climbing up the considerable hills and trudging back down them as we drew closer and closer to the fabulous mountains. We had expected it to rain but it began grey and grew warmer and sunnier as the day went on. We stopped at a small town called St Palais to buy some lunch and walked on to the place called Gibraltar where three of the routes join into one Camino for the last day and a half’s walk. We had bought a half kilo of strawberries and had put half the packet in a small plastic box we have so we ate the rest as we headed toward this mythical place.
Our map gave us no clue as to where the other routes actually joined us but we knew that we would see the new, conjoined route on the other side of the valley as we descended towards the “Stele de Gibraltar” which would mark the joining point. We saw the path climbing steeply up the next hill but there was no one walking on it. We sat down on the Stele, which is a funny sort of stone marker with a large stone base, and began to eat our lunch of bread and Rillettes when we saw our firts pilgrims from another route. Two Belgian men who waved to us from a path about 20 metres further down the hill. After 5 minutes they reappeared and asked us if we were sitting on the Stele and we said we were. They took some photos of it and said good bye.
We met them resting at theb top of the next hill. We also met about half a dozen other pilgrims. By the time we arrived in Osterbat where we are staying the night we had encountered a few more and saw lots as we sat in the bar drinking a pression. Now, we are in a Chambre D’Hote just over a Km past the village looking at the weather closing in - black clouds are tumbling off the mountains and filling up the wide sky above the great valley we are on the edge of. It is a large farm with one of its barns converted to take pilgrims and provide a very large dining room. We are in the main house in a room on the ground floor with a sort of conservatory with large windows opening out to the view down the valley looking west. There are at least another 20 pilgrims staying here!
We go in for dinner in about 10 minutes so just a couple of other things before I put this away (there is no internet here, either).
Tomorrow we walk to St Jean Pied de Port and that is our last place in France. We took a copy of all of the maps and texts of the route from Vezelay to there and have been throwing the used ones away each night, so tomorrow night we throw away the last of the Voie de Vezelay papers and begin the Camino Frances.
In just over two months we have been on one pilgrimage made of several parts. One was the walk from Walsingham to Willesden and then on through London to Portsmouth. This had its own character and special moments/experiences that we will never forget. Then we entered France and walked completely openly, seeking assistance from parishes and finding all sorts of new experiences as we grew familiar with the country, its language and peoples. Pilgrims on a route of our own with new places every day and no knowledge of what the night would bring us. Then we entered Vezelay with the wonderful welcome of our friends (Betty and Dougald) and began a new type of pilgrimage; one that was being walked by others and was in some ways very established but still a melange (as the French would say) of unknowns and new experiences. We grew deeply familiar with the route’s guides and their weird style of writing and route planning. We became even more intimately entwined with the French, there land and the heart beats of their society. I have been dreaming in a mixture of English and French since about Chartres...
We have wlaked along eating wild strawberries, we have munched on handfuls of cherries from the trees, we have seen and heard so many different birds, insects and other creatures (French frogs make very loud, weird noises, by the way) and we have walked through glorious forests of all kinds (some for more than 30 km at a time), by huge rivers and lakes, across high ridges and through all kinds of landscapes and towns. Great people, great food and a great deal of things to reflect on
And now we will be entering a new pilgrimage in a new country where we do not know the language, where the new guide is in English (Quoi?) and there are lots of folks to meet, etc....
Just a footnote to this – we had a very good, large but simple meal here and the host sang a variety of songs and had us all join in both during and after the meal. There was a large glass of the local Muscat sweet wine as an aperitif and copious amounts of red wine during the meal so we all had a great time .. food, wine and song. I will post the details of the place which is just 1 km outside Osterbat on the chemin to St Jean.
Sauveterre and all that – we hoped to publish this on 07/06/2010 but couldn’t!
We have a very brief opportunity to connect with the internet and I have been busy writing other things so have not put anything together for the blog for the last few days so let’s do a summary!!!!
The last blog was in a place where we stayed in a convent (Saint Sever). It is also where a version of the Pamplona style bull run takes place in early summer (we are just missing it, actually). So, they block of the streets, send in young bulls and let the local men have some fun being gored by therm. Lovely...
Next was Hagetmau (looks like a German name but is pronounced Hah-jey-mow). Another place with a bull ring and more Spanish/Basque influences. Good place with a lot to see and take in but we were busy sorting ourselves out with the key to the refuge at one end of the town and the refuge at the other. We had it to ourselves (apart from the ghosts) and it was fine – Oh and we bought some flip flops for me, so I am a much happier bunny in the evenings (no longer have to wear the boots all the time!
The walking is getting harder again as we move into the foothills of the Pyrenees so when we arrived in Orthez (which also has a bull ring) we were tired and had spent the whole day in the rain (with thunder and lightning – Alison even put her umbrella away). We stayed in the pilgrim refuge located in a 13th century building where the guy who wrote the original guidebook actually stayed, too... in the 13th century, of course. We shared the place with a pleasant German man who was walking from Seville, via Santiago, to Vezelay. There was also a second German man who was extremely grumpy and quite unpleasant most of the time. He was walking to St Tropez and was staying for 2 nights because he had been severely sunburnt the day before (when it was sunny rather than rainy). It was Monday, we had no food and the shops were all shut so we ended up eating in a little restaurant round the corner (one of only 2 or three open that night).
More hard walking in hillier and prettier country but this time just lots of mist then lots of sun with mist on the horizon. So, we have had hints of the mountains but no more than dark grey outlines. We know they are there – we can read maps, read guide books and we saw them when we were here last, two years ago. So we are in a pilgrim Gite where we are staying in a large house with a similar sort of dream like quality to one I wrote about earlier but this one is closer to my actual dreams with mountains nearby and more characteristics that are similar. Still not any of the places of my dreams, though. The walls on the first floor and on some of landings are covered in material stretched over a wooden frame (as used to be done in the 18th century) so it looks like wallpaper but when you touch the walls there is nothing behind the material, it is the original stretched fabric house!!!
Anyway, we are located in Sauveterre de Bearne and last time we were here we were camping below the medieval town next to the river. We walked over a little bridge at the campsite and walked around the island then. Now we are on the south bank of the river and our room looks out over the river and the same island.
Tomorrow we walk to Osterbat and on the way we join with two of the other routes towards St Jean Pied de Port where we all head up the mountain and into Spain. So, just about lunch time we will walk down a hillside on our own and will look towards a path on the opposite side of the valley. There we will see several other walkers all walking up the valley towards Osterbat. They will be the other pilgrims from the other routes. So tonight is our last night as fairly solitary pilgrims. Tomorrow begins a new type of pilgrimage with much larger refuges, many more people and a mountain range to deal with to boot! Oh, and in a couple of days, as we walk over this large mountain we will cross a line and find ourselves walking on Spanish soil. Another stage in the walk, another set of experiences and lots of new things to get to grips with.
Yes, we are completely without any real idea of what this new stage will be like and we will try to walk into it with open hearts and minds and just see what it brings us. For every pilgrim walking the Vezelay route there are tons more on the other routes (well the Puy route, really). So, when we have been walking with one or two others on the way and with an occasional glut of up to 6 or 7 of us in one place at one time, there will be dozens at every stop from tomorrow and, after Saint Jean Pied de Port, another order of magnitude will kick in... Phew! Weird when you think that we have spent over 2 months walking mainly on our own and have often found ourselves to be the only people in a refuge.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Lots and lots and lots (04/06/2010)
Hello again folks ..... the wifi works in this cafe!!!!!
We are in a VERY basic refuge in St Sever (in the convent) and we had a beer in the local bar around the corner which said it had wifi so I have just pulled together some of the older and some of the latest stuff into one file so that we can up load it if the wifi really does exist and works, etc....
Again, totally unedited and a bit on the rambling sid rumpold style but we are sort of living in odd places with odd bunches of people and try to get things done as and when at the moment – and there is not a lot of chance to do as much as you want, etc.
So, sorry in advance but it does give you some idea of the latest bit.... more to follow when possible
PS we had a lovely dinner in Mont de Marsant yesterday and had great news that Ken (Alison’s dad) had returned home that day and is being looked after by Amy (Alison’s mum) so things are definitely looking up for him now – phew!!!
Here’s the rest of the stuff I could muster
Philippe was our hospitaliere in Rocquefort and he was lovely. (02/06/2010)
That didn’t stop me from having a couple of difficult moments before things settled down. Partly, it was because I was tired and hungry and had put together a scenario in my mind that he simply blew apart by being there and offering hospitality – yes, you have to work at being given hospitality as well as sharing it.... I knew this but it still takes a few minutes, sometimes.
So, I tried to communicate with him and offer my help. But he didn’t understand me at first, which really added to my difficulties, and he didn’t want my help to prepare the meal, which also made it hard.
I realised later on that he had not understood me because he thought I was Dutch and was listening to me as if I was trying to communicate to him that way. He actually understands more Dutch than he understands English so he was listening in a different way and was not hearing my French as if I was speaking English. Although that seems weird, I can assure you it is quite significant. Once he understood where I was “speaking” from he was able to get his head around what I was saying and that really helped.
So we sat together in a very well kept refuge and had a really nice meal provided by Philippe. We started with Cassis and white wine which is a standard drink across France and can be seen drunk by me from Normandy to the Mediterranean in Bar/tabacs everywhere. It was lovely and also interesting to watch the reactions of the Dutch man and German woman we were sharing the refuge with.
We then had some very nice duck pate with bread and Philippe had cooked some home grown onions, some local potatoes and some local, free range eggs as a large omelette for us to share with some salad, his own dressing, and more bread. The eggs were so fresh and so good that the colour of the yolks almost looked artificial. I would have needed to add turmeric or saffron to the omelette to make it as yellow as it was! It tasted great but, and this is only an addition rather than a correction, it would have been even better with some garlic.... and even with a fresh herb as well. But the simple solution was great and served everyone, regardless.
The conversation was good, too and we were able to enjoy a relaxed meal despite my initial dark feelings. Phew, even the simplest of things can be hard.... I had hoped for some simple salads, perhaps a bit of rillette and bread and some ice cold white wine because of spending so long thinking about it during the walk. But this was good and we ended up talking to other people, too, which is always good and was something I had expected to be hard simply because it had been hard the night before with the same people, but when you add a third party it is often a lot easier to get things going when you are all struggling and, despite our best efforts, it had been a bit difficult the previous couple of nights.
Does that all make sense?
Ho hum, and tonight we arrived after a longer day to find ourselves all cramped into two small rooms with two Dutch men in the best room and us sharing with the Dutch man and German woman. We settled down and got ourselves clean, washed stuff and checked out the shops, restaurants, etc. It is our Wedding anniversary (27th) and we thought it might be nice to eat out if we could.
On our return the hospitalier sorted us out a separate room. OK so it is still bunk beds and we are in a room just big enough to fit the beds (makes Dominique’s room spacious...) it is still a huge luxury! We can dress/undress without worry, share private space together, read/write/wake up/pack and so on without having to worry about our fellow travellers!!! In our world that adds up to a great deal. Add in the times for switching lights off and on and the closing of windows and you have pretty much sorted out an authentically private space...... just one or two things also needed but those will have to wait....grrrrrr.
So our evening in Mont de Marsand has been great – we found a really good little restaurant, we like the town (despite the presence of a Bull Ring – it used for more things and less for the bull fights, apparently) and it feels really good. It is a really good, busy small city with traffic to prove the point and we are situated on one of its busiest roads. We will come back!
Toodle oodle oooo
Ou est le tom tom? (02/06/2010)
Today we walked along more and more old railway lines and crossed over unfinished motorways. We also struggled with the stupid updates to an already silly set of route instructions BUT we moved from the Gironde to the Landes regions and the sign posting suddenly improved enormously!
It is amazing how important good signage can be on a walk like this. Especially when we are using these French route instructions and when there is a massive motorway cutting up our route in unpredictable ways.
Let me explain. Our French guide has led us to gain a wonderful new set of French words for things like paths, road conditions and features you might encounter on the way. All well and good but the style is, at best, annoying, often quite unreliable or astonishingly vague at crucial moments or mind numbingly detailed in ways that make your heart sink when it is a long and hard day.
So, for example, we are walking along a series of country paths and roads and we will need to keep an eye on when we have to turn from one path to the next. We will get endlessly detailed information about all of the junctions that we should ignore – the turning on the left with the old house marked 1840 and the disused telephone box next to the small road named Rue de Villion .. do not turn left here, keep on forwards – is the sort of instruction you get endlessly. It may be helpful to have the distance marked against each of these but the detail can be enormous and you may turn down one of them if you read it wrongly (turn right and keep on going can be remarkably similar in French, especially when it is pissing with rain and you are tired and hungry). But that is not all – the important turning will be shortly after several of these in a row and will consist of a turning on the right after 200m. So, no detail for that one and it can be any one of the next three turnings on the right that all fall within the next 200m – as it stands, 200m in this context is basically more than 50m and less than half a Km. So, good signing at this point really can help ease the pain of a well seasoned traveller!!!
Dusty old roses (01/06/20120)
Walking to Captieux we spent a lot of time on a disused railway line. Someone had taken the lines and the sleepers away but had not levelled out the path se we were constantly walking on an irregular surface with the bumps and furrows just the wrong distance apart for any sort of normal person’s steps. This is a tiring experience.
It was also overcast and mainly damp but the line was long and straight with forest ether side for most of the way so we were relatively sheltered, too.
We got onto the line after eamdering across the country side trying to follow the new changes made to the route to take into account the new motorway that is being built in the area. The changes on the Amis de St Jacques site led us a merry dance along different minor roads and paths and we ended up avoiding part of the way as the path was basically covered in knee deep dense grass and weeds and the mist was hanging over it like a nasty dark cloud. Instead we ended up walking along a very busy N road with thundering lorries and high speed cars whipping up a nice spray for us to enjoy so, when we saw a sign pointing us towards the old railway line we knew we had to take it.
By the time we reached Captieux we were happy to accept most sorts of accommodation. As it was, we ended up in the only hotel in town. The town, by the way, is full of parked lorries and other lorries seem to pass through it in all directions. When the new motorway is finished Captieux may end up a quiet little dusty afterthought and the remaining cafes, shops and so on will probably start to dwindle away. As it was, we ended up in the pilgrim room which had twin beds – identical twins as they both sagged in the same way and were equally hard. But the place was clean, the towels were big, the food in the evening and the breakfast were included and the TV worked.
On the TV we saw the riots in Paris and other cities following something that had happened in the middle east then watched part of a live debate in the French parliament where everyone was talking about justice and fair play, dealing with the unacceptable actions of a repressive state on what was humanitarian aid and so on. So we went out and bought an evening paper and sat in the bar/tabac across the road drinking pression and reading about the Israeli commando attacks on a flotilla of ships.
If we had not gone on this pilgrimage I had been planning to get involved in acting as a peace worker in Palestine (well, one of the people who act as a mixture of passive witnesses and so on in order to try to minimise the level and types of attacks the Israelis seem to constantly wish to inflict on the Palestinians. I could just as easily have been there as here, I suppose, and will have to think about this a bit more. When I recover from this I will do that.....
So it was strange picking up this news in such an obscure place. The world seems to be still ticking along (like a time bomb....) as we walk along the misty roads of southern France. Weird to think it is only about a week to go before we reach Spain!
On the way out of Captieux I noticed some roses in a hedge. They had once been white but were now a dirty sandy colour. The land all around here is very sandy and so fine that when it dires the wind can fill the air with the dust. Hence the dusty roses.
And all that Bazas (01/06/2010)
We visited Bazas two years ago on a hot July day as we worked our way back along the road towards Sauveterre de Bearne. This time we walked in through the medieval pilgrim gate and up to the place before the cathedral. It is a special place with its high facade looking a bit like the entrance to the basilica in Vezelay but larger and without the narthex – sorry, you have to know both to understand what that really means, I suppose.
It is the Cathedral of John the Baptist and there are some amazing paintings inside the building as well as the medieval carvings on the facade. The place is long and wide and lined with a number of arcades and so, after finding out about the refuge and its location, we sat at a bar shaded by one of these arcades and looked at the church happily with our feet slowly beginning to throb and our stomachs rumbling (we needed to get something to eat).
What was very strange was the fact that we walked around looking for a place to eat (everything closed) and for a bakers that would be open in the morning for our next loaf of bread and for some breakfast (we ended up with croissants) then went to the small supermarket (8 a 8) for the night’s food and we encountered an old man who was begging and passed a few other people who looked pretty much like homeless men close to where we had encountered the old man. In such a small and quite isolated place this seemed a surprise, somehow and was quite disconcerting. They were all a bit desperate looking and the old man was pretty aggressive when I told him I had no money to give him.
The refuge was quite odd, too. It was in the old boys’ school a short distance from the centre of town and its windows overlooked the side of the cathedral. It consisted of two rooms at the top of the building. One had the kitchen whci was basically a work surface with a two ring electric hob, a kettle and a coffee maker and a few random pots and enough plates and bowls for 4 people. In the same room on the opposite wall was a toilet, a sink and a shower cubicle. A three panel screen was available for privacy purposes. In the room next door were two sets of bunk beds and a table with 4 chairs.
We shared the place with a Dutch man and a German woman of similar age to me. She has done the Camino 4 times or more and is heading towards the northern route by the coast in Spain. He is walking for a bit longer then turns off to Lourdes. He comes froma town about 30 kms from the place Renee comes from but we are now 2 or 3 days behind Renee and may only see him when we connect with his blog at some time in the future....
Bazas is worth a bit of time on your journey south but go there during the week, and not on Sunday or Monday!
La Reole and the lion hearted eagle.... (30/05/2010)
When we were in La Reole my oldest friend Peter rang us hoping to be able to connect with us as we passed near his new home (Peter and Jackie live in Cahors, which is on another Camino route).As I talked with him we walked through the town looking for somewhere to eat. It was Sunday and virtually the whole place was closed but we walked along with the sky just edging towards rain yet keeping us hopeful and with some amazing old buildings emerging around each corner. One we passed was on the edge of the street named after Richard the lion heart and turned out to be the oldest Hotel de Ville in France. Then we walked up to the church and found that besides the church was this amazing old building that house the order that lived there and the passage which led between the church and what looked like the cloisters was not only lovely, it led to a sort of platform (in stone, of course) which looked out over the river Garonne some distance below us. Stairs led down to a large garden area with further steps leading down to the esplanade by the river. As I talked I watched a huge dark brown bird of prey with wings edged in very light feathers wheeling below us across the river and back, then around the trees down near the bridge. A wonderful sight etched against the dark green river.
We then walked back into the passage way and walked along another passage which led down the side of the church and ended in a reception area serving what must have been the concert hall. Lots of people had just come out to enjoy a glass of wine and various canpes, etc and we were seriously tempted to join them as we were very hungry but I was still on the ‘phone so we left there and eventually found a pizza restaurant which was open.
I could still picture the bird of prey the next day as we walked down those steps and ended up walking along the bank of the river towards the suspension bridge. Its ghost still wheeled above us as we walked out of the town in the vague morning mists.
Houses in a dream or two (31/05/2010)
Yesterday we walked from Ste Ferme to La Reole and we seemed to go higher and higher with each stage of the journey but it was OK. We walked at 5km per hour and did the 20 Km in just under 4 hours (and that was with a stop, too) but the weather was all over the place and we walked on some pretty grim paths as well as some OK ones.
In La Reole we stayed at a Chambre d’Hote where the man running it gave us the room at a standard rate and the breakfast for free. The house was on the edge of the medieval bit of the town just next to the hospital and when we arrived it looked like some sort of unremarkable house apart from some flowers in hanging pots outside a couple of windows and the door. In fact it was those that suggested to me that the house was where we might be staying...
We discovered how large the house was when we entered it. It reminded me a bit of a type of house I encounter in my dreams. Strangely, we had a conversation about such places when we were going to have a meal with Pauline and her two friends Karen and Jane. In the car Karen said that she often dreamed about a large house in her dreams. Although my dreams and hers will not be the same, there were similarities in what she said and so I was able to refresh my memories regarding my own dreams during our stay and was quite non-plussed to find that we were in a sort of dream like house on the first night away from Pauline’s. I must stress that this is not a “dreamy” house or a house that is like a dream but a house of the sort that can quite often feature in my dreams.
This one was much larger than it appeared to be at first notice from the outside. It was wide enough to actually have six windows across it on the first floor but it was also much deeper than you would have expected, too. The entrance led you to a large hall with a wide staircase swerving up to the next floor and there were several doors leading off in different directions and glimpses of rooms leading to other rooms as you stood in the centre of the hall. On the left hand side was a front room with a large pool table (possibly a billiards table as this is a very popular game in France, especially weith someone as old as our host was. There were also two large shotguns hanging on the wall casually between a couple of doors. The place was full of pictures, furniture and nick nacks which made the whole place “busier” in visual terms and compressed the space a little visually but also made you aware of the size and variety of spaces that were contained within the building.
In the morning we went to have breakfast and walked down the stairs. We turned to our right past the billiard room, past another room and below the landing behind the stairs were other rooms leading you further back into the building. We walked through one of these and past a vast living area to our right and another room which was a huge kitchen then entered a room that had a sloping roof (with several sky lights) stretching across the whole width of the back of the house. It was very large with a space for several tables, a fire place with arm chairs wither side of it, a large table with a huge TV in it and other areas, too. Several doors led out to the gardens on the back on either side. Goodness knows what was beyond the first section of the gardens at the back. As we ate we could hear sounds coming from other doors that led back into the house beyond where we were sitting – places where other people lived... places where other rooms led to other rooms, leading to a maze of unknown proportions deep into the bowels of the town, perhaps....
Upstairs was the same – several doors leading off each part of the landing and hints that beyond some doors were several rooms and corridors leading into other parts of the house. Strange place.
I will write about other parts of La Reole in another thing as I am now in Bazas and the place we are staying is somewhere we are sharing with a German woman and a Dutch man and the whole thing is a little bit disruptive so it is difficult to do everything i want to do and I need to get myself sorted before we decide to get ready for bed or it will all become very difficult. This is one of the problems with living in this sort of situation – we have to work around each other and we are all wanting to get up by 6 in the morning and have all walked for around 30 Kms today and expect to have to walk that again tomorrow.....
Suffice to say that I have bloody sore feet and am still trying to work out a better regime where I can actually walk without my little toes erupting into pain and blisters ... for a change... As it is, every day is a bright kaleidoscope of pain from my two little toes (and a cluster of blisters on my left inner heel, of course) and at times they just seem to balloon up into little balls that somehow cannot be put into bearably comfortable locations within my boots, so I walk along trying my best not to hobble while I try to force them back into a workable position to keep going. Eventually they comply and I can get the Kms done with some semblance of bearability.... Grrr it will sort itself out again soon but I just want it to work out sooner than it seems to want to.
Anyway, that is for tomorrow and now it is time to do things out before people finish sorting themselves out.
Weeding, water and wood-smoke - and the bells, the bells! (29/05/2010)
We did a lot of checking on the internet yesterday (I cannot connect this computer to Pauline’s internet but we can use her computer and I will transfer some files over and up load them shortly – if you are reading this it is probably because I have done that....duh..). Anyway, we looked at the internet and worked out how we might get back to the UK if we need to (if Alison’s dad is getting worse and we need to be back home) and we realised that if we walk today as planned we will end up in a small town in rural France with no means of getting anywhere except by walking or phoning up Pauline to come and collect us again. So we are with Pauline for another day – very big thank yous to Pauline!!!
The small town we were heading to had no bus service, no train service and no taxis and the nearest town with any of those was another day’s walk away. So we are here doing gardening, washing more clothes and airing/cleaning out our rucksacks and other belongings so that they are all sorted and ready for the next bit of the walk (or the journey home).
Our contingency plan is to get to Bordeaux, hire a car, drive it to Paris and drop it off there then jump on the Eurostar to Londres and hey presto we will be home. We know where the trains and buses are, where and when they go to Bordeaux and which company to use to hire the car. We also are keeping an eye on the availability of seats on the Eurostar bit too. For very many reasons we are hoping we will not need to use the contingency plan and although news from Alison’s mum sounds good, we are waiting for corroboration before we step deeper into rural France and make it very difficult for ourselves if the situation does go downhill for Alison’s dad....
So the agonies of not walking and not getting the journey done, the anxiety of being in the same place for more than a night or two (even a lovely place like this with lovely people for company) and the frustrations and difficulties surrounding the whole affair are leaving us in need of some sort of alternative regular activity. Hence we have washed the wood smoke smells out of our things (sleeping bags and silk liners, for example), we have aired everything we can including our rucksacks and bivvy bags and we have dug up and weeded part of Pauline’s garden (and will do more later). We may even get a swim in her pool because the weather has begun to improve a little and this may be the only day for a few days when the weather will be this nice. Forecasts for the next couple of days or so suggest rain and I am thinking that diving into a cool pool will be a very nice thing to do even if tomorrow sees us walking through the rain yet again. Despite staying at several campsites with pools we have not been able to have a swim and none of the pools have been open. The French seem to think that you can only use the pool during the high season and even recent hot spells have not been enough to convince them to open the pools earlier!
One weird thing I have begun to notice is how unsettling it is to hear the same church bells for more than a day or so. During our walk we have encountered many, many churches and have heard them ring the morning, mid-day and evening Angelus. Each church has its own distinctive style of doing this and their bells are all different in some way or another. Hearing the evening and morning one is quite common (7pm then 7 am we will hear when we stay in one of the many refuges and other places located next door to the church) but then we will hear a different mid day one and the evening is spent in a new place, etc. Even on rest days we are only ever going to hear one mid day Angelus from the same church.
Here at Pauline and Ian’s house we are next door to the local church and it has rung its second mid day angelus and I am beginning to get a bit disoriented.
Ho hum..........
Woodlands and their ups and downs (29/05/2010)
There are a lot of birds in France; I think I have mentioned this in the past. So much so that we have, from time to time seen dead/squashed song birds of various sorts (all of the small and brightly coloured sorts) as road kill along the way. This took a bit of getting used to because I swear I have ever seen a small bird in Britain as road kill. Lots of pheasants and a few other biggish birds (smallest being pigeons) but no smaller birds. I was thinking about this because we have been walking through many more areas with woods set aside for hunting and I recalled the overhead conversations about how the French shoot almost anything and I imagined that these were just collateral damage... but it is just the law of numbers. France has more wild birds of all sorts (apart from birds of prey) than much of the UK.
The previous day’s walk was spent crossing a landscape of mostly forests and the occasional village. The first stage of forests were a mixture of mushroom and hunting reserves and gradually became more hunting than anything. Of course there were the regular etangs man-made lakes) too. The French cannot resist damning up their local small rivers and streams to create small lakes so they can get a bit of serious fishing done alongside the shooting.
Gradually the paths got steeper and steeper on our way through these wooded areas and then, when it cleared for a bit and the vineyards began to appear in larger and larger forms the hills began to take on serious proportions. Our last major climb was pretty vertical but, thankfully it was on a reasonable surface. After a lot of winding paths and the occasional large tractor blocking our way we eventually arrived at the route down to Ste Foy and the Dordogne river. 34km of walking generally up was turned into a single, steep, very rugged drop through the woods. We thanked God that it had not been seriously raining for some time as the route would have been impossible (impassable) with added running water and mud. Usually such descents are compensated by stunning views but these were well hidden by the dense woodland covering the steep slopes.
The town was dusty and busy and we decided to enter it immediately and make our way to the church rather than take any detours suggested by the guide. So, on we trudged dreaming of cold beer and a sit down wondering if Pauline had found her way there yet when we walked towards the steps of the church and she emerged from its door looking just as surprised to see us as we were to see her.
Fretwork and worry (28/05/2010)
This rest day has been quite stressful in the sense that I have been worrying about Alison, her father and mother and the rest of the family and Alison has been worrying too..... Just to explain – Alison’s dad had a serious operation a couple of weeks ago and he is still not well; partly because it was a tough operation and partly because he is 89. So I worry about how Alison is coping with the worrying about this, I am worried about her mother who has been coping with the situation on a daily basis back in England and also concerned about the rest of the family, too. Of course, Alison has these worries and more to deal with.
So, it makes sense for the day to be stressful, but that is not the whole reason why it has been so difficult. Another reason is because it has been so easy and comfortable!
Yes, we are in Pauline and Ian’s French home and there are two other guests, Karen and Jane, and we have had a great time talking, eating, relaxing, getting washing done, and checking out stuff on the internet, etc. But we have hardly walked any distance at all and even on our rest days we usually have to walk around a lot looking for shops that sell the things we need, finding Laundromats, buying food, etc... and we have done none of that sort of thing. Staying two nights in a place and not even walking a few times around the town somehow feels like there is a seriously important thing missing from our lives. I am edgy and uncomfortable wondering how to cope with the immobility and the relaxed security of it all. Where is the pain? Where are the uncertainties? When shall we worry about the weather and wonder at the lack of places to sit or go to the toilet? I’ve been to the loo several times more today that I have on any day since I left Walsingham..... What’s going on?
At least my feet still hurt – that’s something to cling onto. Phew, I thought I was going mad there for a bit but now I know everything will be alright.
Now I can get back to worrying about the important things like Alison, her father, mother and the family....
We are in a VERY basic refuge in St Sever (in the convent) and we had a beer in the local bar around the corner which said it had wifi so I have just pulled together some of the older and some of the latest stuff into one file so that we can up load it if the wifi really does exist and works, etc....
Again, totally unedited and a bit on the rambling sid rumpold style but we are sort of living in odd places with odd bunches of people and try to get things done as and when at the moment – and there is not a lot of chance to do as much as you want, etc.
So, sorry in advance but it does give you some idea of the latest bit.... more to follow when possible
PS we had a lovely dinner in Mont de Marsant yesterday and had great news that Ken (Alison’s dad) had returned home that day and is being looked after by Amy (Alison’s mum) so things are definitely looking up for him now – phew!!!
Here’s the rest of the stuff I could muster
Philippe was our hospitaliere in Rocquefort and he was lovely. (02/06/2010)
That didn’t stop me from having a couple of difficult moments before things settled down. Partly, it was because I was tired and hungry and had put together a scenario in my mind that he simply blew apart by being there and offering hospitality – yes, you have to work at being given hospitality as well as sharing it.... I knew this but it still takes a few minutes, sometimes.
So, I tried to communicate with him and offer my help. But he didn’t understand me at first, which really added to my difficulties, and he didn’t want my help to prepare the meal, which also made it hard.
I realised later on that he had not understood me because he thought I was Dutch and was listening to me as if I was trying to communicate to him that way. He actually understands more Dutch than he understands English so he was listening in a different way and was not hearing my French as if I was speaking English. Although that seems weird, I can assure you it is quite significant. Once he understood where I was “speaking” from he was able to get his head around what I was saying and that really helped.
So we sat together in a very well kept refuge and had a really nice meal provided by Philippe. We started with Cassis and white wine which is a standard drink across France and can be seen drunk by me from Normandy to the Mediterranean in Bar/tabacs everywhere. It was lovely and also interesting to watch the reactions of the Dutch man and German woman we were sharing the refuge with.
We then had some very nice duck pate with bread and Philippe had cooked some home grown onions, some local potatoes and some local, free range eggs as a large omelette for us to share with some salad, his own dressing, and more bread. The eggs were so fresh and so good that the colour of the yolks almost looked artificial. I would have needed to add turmeric or saffron to the omelette to make it as yellow as it was! It tasted great but, and this is only an addition rather than a correction, it would have been even better with some garlic.... and even with a fresh herb as well. But the simple solution was great and served everyone, regardless.
The conversation was good, too and we were able to enjoy a relaxed meal despite my initial dark feelings. Phew, even the simplest of things can be hard.... I had hoped for some simple salads, perhaps a bit of rillette and bread and some ice cold white wine because of spending so long thinking about it during the walk. But this was good and we ended up talking to other people, too, which is always good and was something I had expected to be hard simply because it had been hard the night before with the same people, but when you add a third party it is often a lot easier to get things going when you are all struggling and, despite our best efforts, it had been a bit difficult the previous couple of nights.
Does that all make sense?
Ho hum, and tonight we arrived after a longer day to find ourselves all cramped into two small rooms with two Dutch men in the best room and us sharing with the Dutch man and German woman. We settled down and got ourselves clean, washed stuff and checked out the shops, restaurants, etc. It is our Wedding anniversary (27th) and we thought it might be nice to eat out if we could.
On our return the hospitalier sorted us out a separate room. OK so it is still bunk beds and we are in a room just big enough to fit the beds (makes Dominique’s room spacious...) it is still a huge luxury! We can dress/undress without worry, share private space together, read/write/wake up/pack and so on without having to worry about our fellow travellers!!! In our world that adds up to a great deal. Add in the times for switching lights off and on and the closing of windows and you have pretty much sorted out an authentically private space...... just one or two things also needed but those will have to wait....grrrrrr.
So our evening in Mont de Marsand has been great – we found a really good little restaurant, we like the town (despite the presence of a Bull Ring – it used for more things and less for the bull fights, apparently) and it feels really good. It is a really good, busy small city with traffic to prove the point and we are situated on one of its busiest roads. We will come back!
Toodle oodle oooo
Ou est le tom tom? (02/06/2010)
Today we walked along more and more old railway lines and crossed over unfinished motorways. We also struggled with the stupid updates to an already silly set of route instructions BUT we moved from the Gironde to the Landes regions and the sign posting suddenly improved enormously!
It is amazing how important good signage can be on a walk like this. Especially when we are using these French route instructions and when there is a massive motorway cutting up our route in unpredictable ways.
Let me explain. Our French guide has led us to gain a wonderful new set of French words for things like paths, road conditions and features you might encounter on the way. All well and good but the style is, at best, annoying, often quite unreliable or astonishingly vague at crucial moments or mind numbingly detailed in ways that make your heart sink when it is a long and hard day.
So, for example, we are walking along a series of country paths and roads and we will need to keep an eye on when we have to turn from one path to the next. We will get endlessly detailed information about all of the junctions that we should ignore – the turning on the left with the old house marked 1840 and the disused telephone box next to the small road named Rue de Villion .. do not turn left here, keep on forwards – is the sort of instruction you get endlessly. It may be helpful to have the distance marked against each of these but the detail can be enormous and you may turn down one of them if you read it wrongly (turn right and keep on going can be remarkably similar in French, especially when it is pissing with rain and you are tired and hungry). But that is not all – the important turning will be shortly after several of these in a row and will consist of a turning on the right after 200m. So, no detail for that one and it can be any one of the next three turnings on the right that all fall within the next 200m – as it stands, 200m in this context is basically more than 50m and less than half a Km. So, good signing at this point really can help ease the pain of a well seasoned traveller!!!
Dusty old roses (01/06/20120)
Walking to Captieux we spent a lot of time on a disused railway line. Someone had taken the lines and the sleepers away but had not levelled out the path se we were constantly walking on an irregular surface with the bumps and furrows just the wrong distance apart for any sort of normal person’s steps. This is a tiring experience.
It was also overcast and mainly damp but the line was long and straight with forest ether side for most of the way so we were relatively sheltered, too.
We got onto the line after eamdering across the country side trying to follow the new changes made to the route to take into account the new motorway that is being built in the area. The changes on the Amis de St Jacques site led us a merry dance along different minor roads and paths and we ended up avoiding part of the way as the path was basically covered in knee deep dense grass and weeds and the mist was hanging over it like a nasty dark cloud. Instead we ended up walking along a very busy N road with thundering lorries and high speed cars whipping up a nice spray for us to enjoy so, when we saw a sign pointing us towards the old railway line we knew we had to take it.
By the time we reached Captieux we were happy to accept most sorts of accommodation. As it was, we ended up in the only hotel in town. The town, by the way, is full of parked lorries and other lorries seem to pass through it in all directions. When the new motorway is finished Captieux may end up a quiet little dusty afterthought and the remaining cafes, shops and so on will probably start to dwindle away. As it was, we ended up in the pilgrim room which had twin beds – identical twins as they both sagged in the same way and were equally hard. But the place was clean, the towels were big, the food in the evening and the breakfast were included and the TV worked.
On the TV we saw the riots in Paris and other cities following something that had happened in the middle east then watched part of a live debate in the French parliament where everyone was talking about justice and fair play, dealing with the unacceptable actions of a repressive state on what was humanitarian aid and so on. So we went out and bought an evening paper and sat in the bar/tabac across the road drinking pression and reading about the Israeli commando attacks on a flotilla of ships.
If we had not gone on this pilgrimage I had been planning to get involved in acting as a peace worker in Palestine (well, one of the people who act as a mixture of passive witnesses and so on in order to try to minimise the level and types of attacks the Israelis seem to constantly wish to inflict on the Palestinians. I could just as easily have been there as here, I suppose, and will have to think about this a bit more. When I recover from this I will do that.....
So it was strange picking up this news in such an obscure place. The world seems to be still ticking along (like a time bomb....) as we walk along the misty roads of southern France. Weird to think it is only about a week to go before we reach Spain!
On the way out of Captieux I noticed some roses in a hedge. They had once been white but were now a dirty sandy colour. The land all around here is very sandy and so fine that when it dires the wind can fill the air with the dust. Hence the dusty roses.
And all that Bazas (01/06/2010)
We visited Bazas two years ago on a hot July day as we worked our way back along the road towards Sauveterre de Bearne. This time we walked in through the medieval pilgrim gate and up to the place before the cathedral. It is a special place with its high facade looking a bit like the entrance to the basilica in Vezelay but larger and without the narthex – sorry, you have to know both to understand what that really means, I suppose.
It is the Cathedral of John the Baptist and there are some amazing paintings inside the building as well as the medieval carvings on the facade. The place is long and wide and lined with a number of arcades and so, after finding out about the refuge and its location, we sat at a bar shaded by one of these arcades and looked at the church happily with our feet slowly beginning to throb and our stomachs rumbling (we needed to get something to eat).
What was very strange was the fact that we walked around looking for a place to eat (everything closed) and for a bakers that would be open in the morning for our next loaf of bread and for some breakfast (we ended up with croissants) then went to the small supermarket (8 a 8) for the night’s food and we encountered an old man who was begging and passed a few other people who looked pretty much like homeless men close to where we had encountered the old man. In such a small and quite isolated place this seemed a surprise, somehow and was quite disconcerting. They were all a bit desperate looking and the old man was pretty aggressive when I told him I had no money to give him.
The refuge was quite odd, too. It was in the old boys’ school a short distance from the centre of town and its windows overlooked the side of the cathedral. It consisted of two rooms at the top of the building. One had the kitchen whci was basically a work surface with a two ring electric hob, a kettle and a coffee maker and a few random pots and enough plates and bowls for 4 people. In the same room on the opposite wall was a toilet, a sink and a shower cubicle. A three panel screen was available for privacy purposes. In the room next door were two sets of bunk beds and a table with 4 chairs.
We shared the place with a Dutch man and a German woman of similar age to me. She has done the Camino 4 times or more and is heading towards the northern route by the coast in Spain. He is walking for a bit longer then turns off to Lourdes. He comes froma town about 30 kms from the place Renee comes from but we are now 2 or 3 days behind Renee and may only see him when we connect with his blog at some time in the future....
Bazas is worth a bit of time on your journey south but go there during the week, and not on Sunday or Monday!
La Reole and the lion hearted eagle.... (30/05/2010)
When we were in La Reole my oldest friend Peter rang us hoping to be able to connect with us as we passed near his new home (Peter and Jackie live in Cahors, which is on another Camino route).As I talked with him we walked through the town looking for somewhere to eat. It was Sunday and virtually the whole place was closed but we walked along with the sky just edging towards rain yet keeping us hopeful and with some amazing old buildings emerging around each corner. One we passed was on the edge of the street named after Richard the lion heart and turned out to be the oldest Hotel de Ville in France. Then we walked up to the church and found that besides the church was this amazing old building that house the order that lived there and the passage which led between the church and what looked like the cloisters was not only lovely, it led to a sort of platform (in stone, of course) which looked out over the river Garonne some distance below us. Stairs led down to a large garden area with further steps leading down to the esplanade by the river. As I talked I watched a huge dark brown bird of prey with wings edged in very light feathers wheeling below us across the river and back, then around the trees down near the bridge. A wonderful sight etched against the dark green river.
We then walked back into the passage way and walked along another passage which led down the side of the church and ended in a reception area serving what must have been the concert hall. Lots of people had just come out to enjoy a glass of wine and various canpes, etc and we were seriously tempted to join them as we were very hungry but I was still on the ‘phone so we left there and eventually found a pizza restaurant which was open.
I could still picture the bird of prey the next day as we walked down those steps and ended up walking along the bank of the river towards the suspension bridge. Its ghost still wheeled above us as we walked out of the town in the vague morning mists.
Houses in a dream or two (31/05/2010)
Yesterday we walked from Ste Ferme to La Reole and we seemed to go higher and higher with each stage of the journey but it was OK. We walked at 5km per hour and did the 20 Km in just under 4 hours (and that was with a stop, too) but the weather was all over the place and we walked on some pretty grim paths as well as some OK ones.
In La Reole we stayed at a Chambre d’Hote where the man running it gave us the room at a standard rate and the breakfast for free. The house was on the edge of the medieval bit of the town just next to the hospital and when we arrived it looked like some sort of unremarkable house apart from some flowers in hanging pots outside a couple of windows and the door. In fact it was those that suggested to me that the house was where we might be staying...
We discovered how large the house was when we entered it. It reminded me a bit of a type of house I encounter in my dreams. Strangely, we had a conversation about such places when we were going to have a meal with Pauline and her two friends Karen and Jane. In the car Karen said that she often dreamed about a large house in her dreams. Although my dreams and hers will not be the same, there were similarities in what she said and so I was able to refresh my memories regarding my own dreams during our stay and was quite non-plussed to find that we were in a sort of dream like house on the first night away from Pauline’s. I must stress that this is not a “dreamy” house or a house that is like a dream but a house of the sort that can quite often feature in my dreams.
This one was much larger than it appeared to be at first notice from the outside. It was wide enough to actually have six windows across it on the first floor but it was also much deeper than you would have expected, too. The entrance led you to a large hall with a wide staircase swerving up to the next floor and there were several doors leading off in different directions and glimpses of rooms leading to other rooms as you stood in the centre of the hall. On the left hand side was a front room with a large pool table (possibly a billiards table as this is a very popular game in France, especially weith someone as old as our host was. There were also two large shotguns hanging on the wall casually between a couple of doors. The place was full of pictures, furniture and nick nacks which made the whole place “busier” in visual terms and compressed the space a little visually but also made you aware of the size and variety of spaces that were contained within the building.
In the morning we went to have breakfast and walked down the stairs. We turned to our right past the billiard room, past another room and below the landing behind the stairs were other rooms leading you further back into the building. We walked through one of these and past a vast living area to our right and another room which was a huge kitchen then entered a room that had a sloping roof (with several sky lights) stretching across the whole width of the back of the house. It was very large with a space for several tables, a fire place with arm chairs wither side of it, a large table with a huge TV in it and other areas, too. Several doors led out to the gardens on the back on either side. Goodness knows what was beyond the first section of the gardens at the back. As we ate we could hear sounds coming from other doors that led back into the house beyond where we were sitting – places where other people lived... places where other rooms led to other rooms, leading to a maze of unknown proportions deep into the bowels of the town, perhaps....
Upstairs was the same – several doors leading off each part of the landing and hints that beyond some doors were several rooms and corridors leading into other parts of the house. Strange place.
I will write about other parts of La Reole in another thing as I am now in Bazas and the place we are staying is somewhere we are sharing with a German woman and a Dutch man and the whole thing is a little bit disruptive so it is difficult to do everything i want to do and I need to get myself sorted before we decide to get ready for bed or it will all become very difficult. This is one of the problems with living in this sort of situation – we have to work around each other and we are all wanting to get up by 6 in the morning and have all walked for around 30 Kms today and expect to have to walk that again tomorrow.....
Suffice to say that I have bloody sore feet and am still trying to work out a better regime where I can actually walk without my little toes erupting into pain and blisters ... for a change... As it is, every day is a bright kaleidoscope of pain from my two little toes (and a cluster of blisters on my left inner heel, of course) and at times they just seem to balloon up into little balls that somehow cannot be put into bearably comfortable locations within my boots, so I walk along trying my best not to hobble while I try to force them back into a workable position to keep going. Eventually they comply and I can get the Kms done with some semblance of bearability.... Grrr it will sort itself out again soon but I just want it to work out sooner than it seems to want to.
Anyway, that is for tomorrow and now it is time to do things out before people finish sorting themselves out.
Weeding, water and wood-smoke - and the bells, the bells! (29/05/2010)
We did a lot of checking on the internet yesterday (I cannot connect this computer to Pauline’s internet but we can use her computer and I will transfer some files over and up load them shortly – if you are reading this it is probably because I have done that....duh..). Anyway, we looked at the internet and worked out how we might get back to the UK if we need to (if Alison’s dad is getting worse and we need to be back home) and we realised that if we walk today as planned we will end up in a small town in rural France with no means of getting anywhere except by walking or phoning up Pauline to come and collect us again. So we are with Pauline for another day – very big thank yous to Pauline!!!
The small town we were heading to had no bus service, no train service and no taxis and the nearest town with any of those was another day’s walk away. So we are here doing gardening, washing more clothes and airing/cleaning out our rucksacks and other belongings so that they are all sorted and ready for the next bit of the walk (or the journey home).
Our contingency plan is to get to Bordeaux, hire a car, drive it to Paris and drop it off there then jump on the Eurostar to Londres and hey presto we will be home. We know where the trains and buses are, where and when they go to Bordeaux and which company to use to hire the car. We also are keeping an eye on the availability of seats on the Eurostar bit too. For very many reasons we are hoping we will not need to use the contingency plan and although news from Alison’s mum sounds good, we are waiting for corroboration before we step deeper into rural France and make it very difficult for ourselves if the situation does go downhill for Alison’s dad....
So the agonies of not walking and not getting the journey done, the anxiety of being in the same place for more than a night or two (even a lovely place like this with lovely people for company) and the frustrations and difficulties surrounding the whole affair are leaving us in need of some sort of alternative regular activity. Hence we have washed the wood smoke smells out of our things (sleeping bags and silk liners, for example), we have aired everything we can including our rucksacks and bivvy bags and we have dug up and weeded part of Pauline’s garden (and will do more later). We may even get a swim in her pool because the weather has begun to improve a little and this may be the only day for a few days when the weather will be this nice. Forecasts for the next couple of days or so suggest rain and I am thinking that diving into a cool pool will be a very nice thing to do even if tomorrow sees us walking through the rain yet again. Despite staying at several campsites with pools we have not been able to have a swim and none of the pools have been open. The French seem to think that you can only use the pool during the high season and even recent hot spells have not been enough to convince them to open the pools earlier!
One weird thing I have begun to notice is how unsettling it is to hear the same church bells for more than a day or so. During our walk we have encountered many, many churches and have heard them ring the morning, mid-day and evening Angelus. Each church has its own distinctive style of doing this and their bells are all different in some way or another. Hearing the evening and morning one is quite common (7pm then 7 am we will hear when we stay in one of the many refuges and other places located next door to the church) but then we will hear a different mid day one and the evening is spent in a new place, etc. Even on rest days we are only ever going to hear one mid day Angelus from the same church.
Here at Pauline and Ian’s house we are next door to the local church and it has rung its second mid day angelus and I am beginning to get a bit disoriented.
Ho hum..........
Woodlands and their ups and downs (29/05/2010)
There are a lot of birds in France; I think I have mentioned this in the past. So much so that we have, from time to time seen dead/squashed song birds of various sorts (all of the small and brightly coloured sorts) as road kill along the way. This took a bit of getting used to because I swear I have ever seen a small bird in Britain as road kill. Lots of pheasants and a few other biggish birds (smallest being pigeons) but no smaller birds. I was thinking about this because we have been walking through many more areas with woods set aside for hunting and I recalled the overhead conversations about how the French shoot almost anything and I imagined that these were just collateral damage... but it is just the law of numbers. France has more wild birds of all sorts (apart from birds of prey) than much of the UK.
The previous day’s walk was spent crossing a landscape of mostly forests and the occasional village. The first stage of forests were a mixture of mushroom and hunting reserves and gradually became more hunting than anything. Of course there were the regular etangs man-made lakes) too. The French cannot resist damning up their local small rivers and streams to create small lakes so they can get a bit of serious fishing done alongside the shooting.
Gradually the paths got steeper and steeper on our way through these wooded areas and then, when it cleared for a bit and the vineyards began to appear in larger and larger forms the hills began to take on serious proportions. Our last major climb was pretty vertical but, thankfully it was on a reasonable surface. After a lot of winding paths and the occasional large tractor blocking our way we eventually arrived at the route down to Ste Foy and the Dordogne river. 34km of walking generally up was turned into a single, steep, very rugged drop through the woods. We thanked God that it had not been seriously raining for some time as the route would have been impossible (impassable) with added running water and mud. Usually such descents are compensated by stunning views but these were well hidden by the dense woodland covering the steep slopes.
The town was dusty and busy and we decided to enter it immediately and make our way to the church rather than take any detours suggested by the guide. So, on we trudged dreaming of cold beer and a sit down wondering if Pauline had found her way there yet when we walked towards the steps of the church and she emerged from its door looking just as surprised to see us as we were to see her.
Fretwork and worry (28/05/2010)
This rest day has been quite stressful in the sense that I have been worrying about Alison, her father and mother and the rest of the family and Alison has been worrying too..... Just to explain – Alison’s dad had a serious operation a couple of weeks ago and he is still not well; partly because it was a tough operation and partly because he is 89. So I worry about how Alison is coping with the worrying about this, I am worried about her mother who has been coping with the situation on a daily basis back in England and also concerned about the rest of the family, too. Of course, Alison has these worries and more to deal with.
So, it makes sense for the day to be stressful, but that is not the whole reason why it has been so difficult. Another reason is because it has been so easy and comfortable!
Yes, we are in Pauline and Ian’s French home and there are two other guests, Karen and Jane, and we have had a great time talking, eating, relaxing, getting washing done, and checking out stuff on the internet, etc. But we have hardly walked any distance at all and even on our rest days we usually have to walk around a lot looking for shops that sell the things we need, finding Laundromats, buying food, etc... and we have done none of that sort of thing. Staying two nights in a place and not even walking a few times around the town somehow feels like there is a seriously important thing missing from our lives. I am edgy and uncomfortable wondering how to cope with the immobility and the relaxed security of it all. Where is the pain? Where are the uncertainties? When shall we worry about the weather and wonder at the lack of places to sit or go to the toilet? I’ve been to the loo several times more today that I have on any day since I left Walsingham..... What’s going on?
At least my feet still hurt – that’s something to cling onto. Phew, I thought I was going mad there for a bit but now I know everything will be alright.
Now I can get back to worrying about the important things like Alison, her father, mother and the family....
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