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.

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....

on the road again, again, again

As the song says.... on the road again...

We are so glad to hear that Alison’s dad has started to make real progress and is looking well after such a bad period. We can now head on towards Santiago keeping Ken and Amy in our thoughts along the way and keeping an eye on the texts and Facebook messages but plodding hard towards Spain.

My feet might complain but the rest of me is glad to be going again (and Alison feels that way too!)

Thanks to Pauline for the open house and wonderful welcome, thanks to our girls and to Martin for information and support and thanks to all for good will, prayers and encouragement. Normal service is being resumed as soon as possible.

Hur hur hurrrr

Oh and here is one of the several blog entries I have written in the past couple of days. I thought they were all on the memory stick but this is all I have and my computer is now switched off, it is late and Bert Janch is playing on the stereo and everyone has gone to bed and so I need to stop this and settle down too. So I will add more as soon as I can but for now I better send this off. Good night Bert, good night folks and good night everyone else.

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.....

The big P

24/05/2010

Perigueux is a lovely medieval city perched on what looks like an escarpment overlooking the river. We are in a hotel just across the bridge from the city and just below the Cathedral. Pilgrims get a free tour of the cloisters and stuff so we were treated to a fast circuit of the cloisters in high speed French which I understood more of than I had expected to – weird!

We have talked a lot about the nature of story telling in the context of Matthew’s Gospel (and other texts) and how the story emerges from a series of characters driving along the narrative using different angles and commenting from different points of view. Perhaps the basic framework was used to also tell the story as a spoken narrative with the storyteller’s own asides (of course, said the storyteller, as I stood there listening to Jesus this man came up to me and I had to explain this point to him before his donkey would get off my foot, etc....). Lots odf ideas and thoughts to process on this.

We also talked a lot about the nature of hospitality and the difference between being given or even buying hospitality and being allowed to take part in the process.

Sometimes we can help make food or clean up but a lot of the time, if the food is being provided or if there is a hospitalier on site, you are told not to do anything – even doing some of the cleaning up before leaving, etc. Then, in ones without a hospitalier you have the freedom to make your own food and take responsibility for keeping the place clean, etc. Everyone takes part and gets the job done quickly and it feels right to do this and leave the place as you found it.

Although being served is great, being involved in a community of shared service/responsibility can also be really good. This can extend into people’s own private space, too, but it is all related to what people are comfortable with and the like. But it is also related to issues of cost and what you get for payment and other value related things.

Which has lead us back to discussions we have been having about value systems in today’s world and about the corruption of values, how they are conceived, measured and applied. That whole area of debate needs to be revisited – tout de suite.

So, now we are in a small, steamy hotel room in Perigueux checking the weather and thinking it is moving from seriously hot (it was 30 degrees C at 5.30pm today) and dry but will be thunderstorms and rainy for the coming several days as far as we can see.

I append mots jotted for the most recent of days and hope to sort out more as we go. No editing, no serious critical reviews ... just blurbs. But when the internet is only available from time to time and we are in so many different types of places with so many different types of situations it is all a bit of a blur for us – sorry folks,

Your vagabonds or marching on their footsore way, thinking of you all....


The truffle ruffle (23/05/2010)

We arrived in Sorge to find cars everywhere, parked in difficult and impractical places. We expected to see a market in the square (there was a classic car fair in the previous village and it is/was Pentecost) but it was actually the boys and the girls having their First Holy Communion in the church. Everyone was dressed up and the children were beautifully attired too. The girls were in a variety of dresses that seem to flow and were made of off-white/cream silk. The boys seemed to be in varying get ups with stylish waistcoats and open necked shirts.

We passed them and headed for the Refuge which was open and looked really good. The temperature was at its highest level as we got here just after 12 noon so walking into the building was superb with its shade and cool. The floors are tiled and the ceiling is very high, supported by massive wooden beams. But we could not come in yet as they were preparing the place so we left our bags, took our lunch with us and went off to find somewhere in the shade.

Sorge is the capital of the truffle (yesterday Thiviers claimed to be the capital of Foie Gras) and it looks like this is where they hold regular sales of the stuff, etc. They also have a truffle museum and a hotel named the Auberge de la Truffe. We had lunch sitting on a bench in the shade, had beer in the truffle hotel (where the beer came with a dish of freshly shelled walnuts) and walked back to the refuge where we were warmly welcomed and found ourselves to be the only guests tonight as the other two people due to get here had ‘phoned up to say that they had been overcome by the heat and were making plans to stay elsewhere this night.

Today was the hottest day yet and we had set off early in order to get the walking done before the day got too hot and we had to spend too much time walking in the sun. There were lots of hills, walnut trees, some cherry trees (with sweet fruit on them) and we saw our first vineyard (Yeh!) and we even saw a farm’s-worth of pigs, too. The wildlife seems to get more exotic as we move further south but the countryside that we find it in does not seem to be changing much yet. So we have more lizards, the birds and especially the insects are getting more colourful and yet the landscape is straight out of an 18th Century painting by Constable or a Capability Brown scene manufactured for a large country estate in Buckinhamshire.

The best thing, though has been walking into the church next door to the refuge and discovering that the stations of the cross, the altar and all of the associated furniture and the tabernacle have all been designed by an amazing artist (who also did the stained glass windows) They are worth visiting this place if nothing else. Forget the truffles and get into the art of the place!!! They bare an inspiration to me and add to my conviction that I will produce at least one set of “Ways of the Cross” in wood on my return but now I will have to make all of the furniture for the altar in the same style, too!!!

I think the artist (M Riche) was also the person who designed the windows in the cathedral in Nevers, too (so similar in style and spirit).

Our Hospitalier has been wonderful, too, of course, feeding us and providing us with great accommodation. As I said, the building is ancient – probably part of the collection of buildings constructed next to the church to serve the large house located besides the church facing out onto the small square at its front. This building had been a garage in the past and I suspect it had been part of the stable yard as it has a large set of windows that fill the hole that used to be big enough to drive a large carriage into and the other door is big enough for a stable door.

Anyway, I must toodle off - perhaps tomorrow I will be able to send some of this stuff., Last night I put together some stuff at the campsite but the Wifi failed me. I will try again in Perigueux. More unstructured nonsense on its way at some time in the near future!

Night sounds on a camp site – crickets, toads, teenagers, wind chimes 22/05/2010

Typical sort of thing... we are in a campsite tonight sharing a tiny “cabin” with two Dutch pilgrims and everything is a bit cramped. We have wifi but only if I go down to a place next to the camp office but this has no night so I am typing by the light of the screen, feeling the mosquitoes nibbling at my legs.

The day was not long. We walked a slightly shorter day yesterday and added some distance to today but it was still only 24 km or so. The sun was pretty relentless and the route took us along old Napoleonic roads and through tiny hamlets which were all very nice except that there was nowhere to stop so we arrived in our night stop just after lunch time having no stop for lunch and little rest en route. We then ended up doing all of our organisational things (washing, etc) and shopping and then spent the evening having dinner with our new Dutch friends which leaves me here trying to catch up and Alison heading for bed. Ho hum...

I’m going to stop before my legs are eaten down to the bone and just add some very recent stuff. Will add more and so on when I am somewhere a bit more conducive to doing this sort of thing. Toodle pip! Oh, and on a personal note I just want to say that we are both thinking lots about Jim and Elizabeth – they know what I mean...

Love from a moonlit France and sorry this is all so ad hoc and with no time to check what I am putting up...

Piglets and poo 21/05/2010

Today we were walking towards our evening stop at St Pierre de Frugie and Alison had to stop because she had something in her boot – on rough tracks you often kick up twigs and stones that work their way down the back of your boots.

We were on a deeply rutted sunken path in the middle of a small forest with the trees towering over us on the high banks by the side of the path. As she leaned on me to get her shoe off we heard deep rumbling, grunting sounds from just a few feet away on the other side of the high bank. Something moved against the trees near us and more rumbling growling sounds kept emerging from the undergrowth. Alison finished sorting her boot and we moved on. As we did so I held the camera over the bank and took a few ‘photos. Looking at them later there is nothing to see but we were very close to a wild boar.

Then, an hour later, Alison and I were coming to a sharp turn in the forest path. Alison had slowed down because the thing in her shoe had just re-emerged at her heel and she was thinking of stopping to sort it. We were looking out for somewhere to stop when I turned the corner and there by the edge of the path, in a large pool of water, was a massive wild boar. It had been quietly wallowing in the water and mud but when it realised I was right next to it the thing just leaped out of the pool and crashed away through the undergrowth. As Alison gave out a scream of surprise it turned immediately and rushed off at right angles to her disappearing into the depths of the woods.

We were both shocked by this. The thing was big bodied, low and powerful with a very broad body and it moved so fast if it had decided to charge us we would not have had time to evade it. Later in the bar at St Pierre I started to tell the story and the bar man knew exactly what I was going to say as soon as I started. “It was a wild boar – yes, they are very common in this area and can be extremely dangerous. Just don’t corner them and never go near their young. There are stories of nursing mothers killing someone every year around here.”

So, if we see little piglets on the path in front of us as we walk along a forest path we will immediately turn and walk speedily in the other direction!

P is for Paella 21/05/2010

Sitting in the bar at St Pierre was interesting and full of things that will keep that place in my mind for a long time.

It is run by and English couple and there were several English people there when we first went in for a drink at the end of our walk and when we went in to have our dinner there in the evening. Eating there was our only real option as the shop in the village was a very posh shop of the sort that sells gourmet foods to a predominantly tourist market (cheapest wine was about 8 Euros, small jars of Bison Pate for 6 Euros, jam for 10, etc...) Even if we could afford such things we would never buy them from such a place given a choice. And our choice was paella at the English bar so that’s what we did. Makes a change from buying food and cooking it at the refugio (though that can be very nice too, see yesterday...).

Memories I will hold include: Alison wanting a Gin and Tonic so we both had one and they bumped up the price of the dinner by a considerable amount (they were GOOD); very good and copious amounts of paella – very nice and filling; the Kinks music continuously being played in the background squeezing out old memories and thoughts; lovely conversation with Alison as the sun went lower in the sky; overhearing weird bits of conversation between ex-pat Brits; hearing the sad news about Jim’s father dying and wishing him and Elizabeth all the best ... doubly sad because it may mean that Elizabeth will not be able to join us on this trip; considering the possibility of taking the band on a summer tour of the Dordogne, convinced that they would be very popular (a series of gigs at village fetes are being planned); walking back through the pretty village with Alison feeling tired, full, a bit sad and almost ready to think about tomorrow.

Look away now all vegetarians and squeamish peoples 20/05/2010

Flavignac has a great refuge across the road from the church. It is also a great little place with a good Boulangerie, a nice little general shop, a very odd Presse that sold everything as well as papers, and the usual pharmacy, flower shops, hairdressers, etc. It also has a great butchers!!!

We needed to have some food and went out to hunt it down. We knew we had some Puy lentils in the refuge and some mustard dressing in the fridge.... Went into the genral store and looked at things. Possible sausages or other meat but not particularly good and pricey. Some vegetables looked OK. We left and went down to the butchers. For some time we have been talking about having form liver for tea but when you share places with others it may not be possible to cook what you want so we have refrained from getting liver. In Flavignac we had the lovely little refuge all to our selves so when we saw the liver in the butchers we had to have some.

She said it was calves’ liver and we said OK we’ll have four slices. It came to over 8 Euros!!!! That is a small fortune to us for one ingredient in our tea but we paid it and left. We bought an onion and a tomato in the shop along with a bottle of plonk Corbiers), some bread and pain au raisin in the bakers and went home.

I cooked the lentils with a bit of garlic and parsley until they were tender then drained and put them to one side. I cut off a bit of the onion and roughly chopped it, chopped the tomato and mixed them together with dressing and extra vinegar, some pepper and parsley. I used this to dress the lentils and put them to one side again.
The rest of the onion was thinly sliced and a couple of cloves of garlic were added to this as I fried them, browning them off, then I added the liver and quickly cooked it, finishing it with a bit of pepper and red wine.

That all sounds good if you like liver but I must tell you now that the liver was not worth 8+ Euros.... It was worth much more than that. It was the best liver either of us have ever had. It really did just melt in the mouth. It was not mushy or in any way without texture. It had the lot - flavour, texture, character, colour smell and any other characteristic that makes a food good, it had it in shovelfuls! Move over goose liver, this beats the best hands down!

Of course, we have been walking through beef country for about two weeks and know that this is where calves are reared in the fields by their mothers and that the cattle are extremely well looked after. It is the place where we went for a meal with some other pilgrims, including a French man (Yves) and he got into a heated discussion about the colour and character of different types of French beef which ended in the waiter going away, using his I-phone to search the internet and come back with a photograph of the particular type of cattle they had been arguing about. We got our copious amounts of wine with the meal for free, by the way. And, yes, I had the best steak I have had in France (and for a long time) in that restaurant which was on an 11 Euro, 3 course menu.

So, when in France, buy local when you can and get your butcher to serve you what is best locally. Our butcher there (the butcher was a woman by the way) was very pleased that we were choosing her best liver and guaranteed that it was very fresh (I could tell that when I took it out of its wrappings and placed it in the pan.

Such culinary delights will draw me back to this place more than once in the future. Yes, folks, I am still a sad old carnivore but I’m sure that that gorgeous liver did me a power of good!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tout a l’heure

Exit Crozant (14.05.2010)

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

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

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

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

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

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

12/05/2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of the first phase (02 05 2010)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wet road walking (05/05/2010)

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

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

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

Music therapy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy days!

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

At the crossroads I sit, with your voice in my heart and your image burned into my soul

I offer you all my apologies for failing to be able to up-load things for the last few days.

Alison has, from time to time, been able to do Facebook things and once I might have been able to do something but the wifi facilities in some places are just terrible – do not buy those wifi services from Logis hotels (with little things like a credit card and a scratch-off password) and avoid the free versions(also with Logis) which involve going on to some second rate service brokered by an internet site to get access – they are awful and often don’t work when you try to do anything more than search or do basic emails on them.

Anyway, I will up load some other stuff later. For the moment, I just want to reflect on the weirdness and wonderful nature of this world.

We have been travelling through France without knowing where we would end up each night and without knowing what the day would bring.

So, we have arrived at so many places hoping to be able to stay in, for example, a camp site, only to find the campsite closed or we have expected to find a hotel only to discover that all of the hotels there closed long ago. Each time, we have had a different experience when trying to find our night stop.

Once, as you know, we ended up walking and walking until we were not able to walk anymore and then we ended up in a strange and quite scary situation where we set camp (illegally) in a wooded area between a sports hall, TGV main line track and a noisy road. Other times we have walked beyond our night stop to find campsites in other towns or where the campsite was in a strange farm (where we were kept awake all night by the singing of a nightingale) and then, on another occasion, we arrived at our night stop and, after searching and searching found there was no where for us to stay. The next place was about 14 km further on and so the tourist information place booked us a bed - but would not order us a taxi to take us there as it was too far away and she did not think a taxi would take us so far. So we ended up walking a further 9 kilometres to the place where we would meet the taxi. We then discovered that the taxi had driven all the way from the place we had walked from any way....? So we missed being able to have a meal in order to walk there for what reason????

Despite this, mostly, something both deeply interesting and something enlightening has occurred as a result of these detours/diversions.

I will write more about these anon, but just want to express our delight springing from our most recent experience.

Contrary to so many other nights, we actually booked this evening’s bed a few days before. We searched the internet for a place to stay on the night before walking into Vezelay because we expected to have been camping for the previous 3 nights and wanted somewhere to rest before doing the final stretch there. We also had to decide the final night’s location so we would have a reasonable day’s walk but wanted to try to avoid a very long last day. After much discussion we focused on Mailly le Chateau and found a Chambre d’Hote that fitted the bill there which, miraculously, was run by a person who had been inspired by the Camino and had named her establishment “el Camino” as a result.

Alison emailed her and said, “if there is a problem please text me". We received no text so assumed everything was OK.

Then we arrived at there to find it a lot quieter than we had expected and wandered around the place admiring it (the village is mainly set on the edge of the cliff looking down on the river valley) but failing to find the night stop. So, we went down to the lower part of the village nearest the river and almost immediately found it. The owner and her friend welcomed us with great fanfare and we settled in feeling very thankful that the place existed. Given our previous experiences, we had begun to wonder exactly where we were going to end up sleeping tonight. We had even considered the (not unlikely) possibility that the reason why we had not received any text was because there was no longer anywhere called the “el Camino” in the town.

So, it was wonderful to be greeted so well, to enjoy such good company and such good conversation with the people there (the owner and her two friends, husband and wife).

But it was even more extraordinary in the end.

Our hostess, during a discussion based on cheese and the accompaniments for it explained in an aside that her friend could speak Spanish because her parents had been Spanish and had escaped Franco’s regime during the Civil War. They had, she added, crossed the Pyrenees and remained in France. Alison, warming to the story said that we loved the Pyrenees, and added that we had been on holiday a few times to a house in the foothills of the Pyrenees in a place called... and I could see our hostess saying in French, “don’t say it’s called...” and Alison said “Chalabre” and everyone fell about in amazement as that is where the Spanish couple had settled and where the friend had been born and brought up.

I was deeply disappointed that I didn’t have the Chalabre pictures with me on the computer – I have the text of my book based there (called “Redemption Song”) but had not added the supporting files with all of the pictures, maps, etc. but it was just one of those wonderful moments when the world seems so ridiculously small and when we, as human beings discover that we are just a large family.

So, I will stop and leave you with the idea that we are all connected in some way, we are all part of a greater commune, there is more that binds us together than that keeps us apart and we should always seek to find those connections. It is what art and music often accomplish when they work, it is what literature expresses and explores and it is what we discover every time we share food, drink and company. So why is it so easy to forget this universal truth ... and why do some people seek to deny it or destroy our connections?

I will go to sleep now and ponder these questions..... good night world!