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Ending in a Blaze of Glory; Day 14 on the Chemin du Puy, Cajarc to Cahors (undetermined number of kilometers)

October 29, 2017

My last day on the Chemin du Puy had a bit of everything: Beautiful trails. Transportation snafus. Kind and helpful people. A couple of tears shed on the side of the road. Ice cream, to make up for those tears. A big dose of adventure.

It was my 14th day of walking. I was ending my Chemin in Cahors, which is roughly 250km from where I started in Le Puy en Velay.

I needed to end in Cahors because I had a reserved train ticket, one that would take me to my writer’s retreat a little further down in the south of France. So I’d needed to make it to Cahors by a specific date, but because of a decision to arrive in Conques when the rest of my friends did (still one of the best decisions of my Chemin), I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk all the way to Cahors.

This meant that I needed to come up with a Plan B. The day before, when I’d arrived in Cajarc, my very first stop was the tourism office. I propped my walking stick against the wall, leaned over the counter, and explained to the women working there that I needed to arrive in Cahors the next day, and wondered if there were any alternate routes that I might be able to take.

Maps were pulled out, discussions had, and finally we came up with a plan: I would take a bus to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (voted the most beautiful village in France, although I’m pretty sure that this was at least the 3rd village that seemed to have this distinction), from Saint-Cirq I would walk on an alternate route, the GR36, to Cahors. The woman pointed her finger along a wavy line on the map. “See,” she said, “It is only 22km. Easy.”

This seemed like a fabulous solution, and I was full of confidence and a renewed sense of adventure when I woke up in the morning. It was early and while everyone else slept, I quietly gathered my things, loaded them into my pack, and headed out into a still dark morning. I was catching an early bus, the 6:30 which would get me to Saint-Cirq before 7am. Once there, I reasoned that I could have a coffee and a little breakfast, and then enjoy my last day of walking.

Oh, the best laid plans.

First of all, the bus schedule had been changed the day before. The tourism office didn’t know this or have the most updated version of the bus schedule, so I missed the bus I’d intended to catch by only a couple minutes, and had to wait nearly 30 minutes for the next one.

Then, when I got on the bus, the driver spoke quickly and sternly, first making me stow my pack in the luggage compartments under the bus (which I thought was a bit unnecessary, given that my pack is on the small side, but who knows, maybe he wanted to keep his bus clean). Then, he rattled off something in French and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. Something about Saint-Cirq and when I should exit the bus.

Eventually I realized (only when he waved at me to get off the bus) that this bus for some reason didn’t actually go all the way to Saint-Cirq, and so I’d had to get off at a stop about a 4km walk away from the village.

No problem, I thought to myself. I’m a pilgrim after all, and I can certainly walk.

When I did arrive in Saint-Cirq, it was after 8am and while the village was beautiful, it was also a gray day and the place was deserted. Maybe it was too early, but I still can’t figure out why there were no people. I circled through the village, walking up and down, exploring the church and some ruins and snapping photos and I only saw one woman, who was outside watering the flowers in front of her house. This was a very touristy place but nothing was open, and finally I went inside a nice looking auberge (guest house) and asked if I would be able to get a cup of coffee.

If you’re new to this blog, let me briefly tell you how important coffee is to my walks. Coffee is… necessary. Usually getting my first cup isn’t too much of a problem on the Camino, though there have been a few mornings in the past that I’d had to wait several hours for that initial coffee. But the Chemin du Puy excels at the coffee conundrum; because nearly ever gîte offers breakfast, I always had a hot cup of coffee (or two, or three) before I started walking.

So coffee was never a problem on the Chemin until that very last morning. I’d stayed in the municipal gîte in Cajarc and no breakfast was offered. So after waiting 30 minutes for a bus, then walking an unexpected 4km to Saint-Cirq, I was not amused to see that there were no cafés open.

But luckily, the woman at the auberge must have seen the desperation in my eyes, because she told me that if I could wait a few minutes, she’d bring out some coffee.

A white ceramic pitcher of hot milk and a mug full of espresso, along with a half of sleeve of cookies pulled from my pack (no other breakfast available), and I was finally ready to get going.

The first couple of kilometers of the walk were great. I was walking on a canal towpath next to the River Lot that was carved directly into a cliff-face. It made a sort of half tunnel that snaked along the river and the walk was pleasant and quiet and the scenery dramatic.

I arrived in the next village, Bouziès, found a public bathroom in a park and then saw a sign for the GR36 route that I’d be following.

Cahors, it read. 34.2km.

Wait one minute. 34.2km? How could that be right? I pulled out the map that I’d gotten in the tourism office and studied it a little more closely. Somehow we’d made a mistake, or we’d added the wrong numbers or we’d followed a line for a road rather than a hiking trail. In any case, Saint-Cirq to Cahors was not a mere 22km.

I added the numbers in my head. I’d already walked 4km to get to Saint-Cirq, and then another 4km to Bouziès. If I could actually walk all the way to Cahors, it would make for a 42km day.

Now, readers of this blog know that I’ve done 40+km days before. I’ve done several, so I know it’s not out of my comfort zone. But the day that was unfurling before me was a bit out of my comfort zone. It was already 9:30 and I still had 34km to go. This wasn’t ideal, but it was a distance that still seemed do-able. No, the biggest problem was that I had no idea what the route was going to be like. I didn’t know if it would be flat, or hilly, or steep or rocky or if it would ascend or if it would descend. I had no idea.

I passed slowly through the town, mulling over what I wanted to do. I saw an open boulangerie and bought half of a baguette and a croissant and then I kept walking. And I started walking fast.

I decided that I would going to try to do it. I walked as fast as I could and then I started climbing a hill, and after awhile it felt like a small mountain. I huffed and puffed and finally made it to the top and then I began the descent and sometimes I was walking on small rocks and I had to be careful. I wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted. I felt more tired that I wanted to feel.

I walked and walked and I ascended a second very large hill and my legs and calves screamed at me and I walked slower, daring to only rest for 10 minutes at the top to eat some cheese and bread and dried apricots.

Eventually, I stopped walking and consulted the bus schedule I’d gotten the day before. Something in me knew that I didn’t want to walk all the way to Cahors. I wasn’t making good time, I felt stressed about not knowing what was ahead of me on the route. I hadn’t passed another pilgrim, I didn’t even know if I could make it to Cahors before dark. I suspected I could, but I just didn’t know, and that made me feel very unsettled.

So, finally, I decided to just take a bus. I looked at the bus schedule, I looked at my map, and I walked onto another GR route to get to the town of Vers, where I had about 90 minutes to wait for the 2:37 bus that would take me to Cahors.

I arrived in Vers, I confirmed the bus stop with some people in a hotel restaurant, and then I made my way to a bench outside of the church where I would wait for my bus. I took off my socks and shoes and filled my water bottle at a nearby fountain and I thought to myself, “This is the end of this year’s Camino. Not what I expected, but overall, not a bad walk.”

This would have been a decent ending, if only I had gotten on that bus.

The hour for my bus came and went, and every time I heard a vehicle I’d anxiously look and wait and hope it would be my bus but it never was. Five minutes passed. 10 minutes passed. Finally a bus turned onto my road and it was moving fast as it approached but I waved it down and the brakes screeched to a stop. I went over and the door opened and a woman looked down at me curiously. “Is this the bus to Cahors?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said. “That bus stops at the other side of the bridge. Down there.” She pointed.

My heart dropped and I thanked her and then without thinking I took off down the street, running to the bridge, fearful that I’d already missed my bus.

I stood at the side of a busy road and waited and I could feel in my gut that something was wrong. I didn’t know exactly where to stand. It was already 15 minutes past when the bus was supposed to arrive.

And then, coming down the road, having just passed the church where I’d been waiting for the past 90 minutes, came a bus. It was moving fast and turning onto the road where I was standing and I realized that the spot by the church had been right all along, the bus had just been late.

I waved my arms, I’d started waving as soon as I realized that this was my bus and the driver was looking straight at me. I waved wildly, I started jumping up and down but the bus turned and roared down the road and headed off to Cahors, leaving me in its dust.

The next bus wasn’t for another 4 hours, not until after 7pm.

I tried to hold it all in but I couldn’t help myself. Tears gathered in my eyes and a couple rolled down my cheeks and I was hot and tired and I felt like I was somewhere far off of the Chemin, in a small and empty village and the only way out- other than my own two feet- had just rolled out and left me behind.

I didn’t know what to do and in that moment, I just wanted to be done with the Chemin. I wished I were at La Muse, in my cozy room at the writer’s retreat, not having to worry about speaking French or going off route or having to eat broken cookies for breakfast or waving wildly at buses or any of it. I was done.

I brushed the tears off of my cheeks and tried to hold back the lump in my throat. Sometimes a Camino ends in a blaze of glory, arms lifted in victory… and sometimes it ends on the side of a road in a sleepy village that’s not even on the actual route, the tail lights of your ride out of town fading from sight as they leave you behind.

But, you know, sometimes that’s the just the way. I went back to the hotel’s restaurant and asked the staff if they could help me call a taxi. At first everyone was confused about what I was doing. They told me that they didn’t know if a taxi would drive out here. That the taxi would have to come from Cahors, that it would be expensive. They doubled checked the bus schedule, and it was confirmed that there wouldn’t be another one until that evening.

The manager asked all of her staff if anyone was going back to Cahors that afternoon. “It’s too bad,” she told me. “Someone just left for Cahors, but you missed him.” The staff ran around the hotel, seeing if they could find me a ride, but they came up empty. (Still, this was such a bright spot in the day, how willing they were to find a solution for me).

In the end, the manager called a taxi for me, and within 20 minutes I was picked up and whisked away to Cahors. The ride was at least 30 euros more than the bus would have been, but I suspect that the driver didn’t charge me as much as she could have. We chatted in French, I think I was so relieved to be in a moving vehicle that I didn’t worry about what I was saying or whether what I said made any sense.

And then, when I arrived in Cahors, I had a pretty special Chemin evening. My gîte, Le Papillon Vert (green butterfly), was a quirky place in a slim apartment building that spanned at least four floors. The first floor was a large entryway cluttered with bags and shoes and socks and a table covered in papers and books and half empty glasses of flavored water that Eden (our hospitalero) provided for pilgrims. Eden was a former pilgrim himself: in either his 30’s or early 40’s, with long dark hair and small glasses and a quiet and gentle manner. There was another group of women who’d just arrived to the gîte and we all spoke together and Eden told us where we’d sleep and when dinner would be served. As he stamped my credential and took my money for the night, he asked where I was from.

“Des Etats-Unis,” I said.

“Non,” he replied, shaking his head.

I wasn’t sure what to say to this, but he went on to tell me that he couldn’t believe I was an American. He complimented my French and my accent and thought that I must be European. It was a great compliment to me, that after two weeks of muscling my way through French conversation that I might have improved. In fact, I knew that my French was better than when I’d started. I could understand conversations more easily, and I wasn’t quite as timid when speaking. Eden even asked me to translate a bit throughout the night for a German pilgrim, a woman in her 20’s who I was sharing a room with.

It was a good evening. It was the kind of evening that redeems a pretty challenging day. Before dinner I wandered through the city; the sky had cleared to a perfect shade of blue, there were bustling markets and narrow roads and quiet corners.

And then dinner was one of the best meals of the trip: a salad with chunks of blood-red tomato and cucumber and thick slices of brie, a vegetable puréed soup, two different homemade tartes, boiled potatoes, a local wine, bread, and surely something wonderful for dessert that I’ve since forgotten.

And the conversation was good. There were 8 women at the table: a group of 4, a group of 2, the German girl, and me. The other women were French but they were friendly and jolly and make an effort to try to translate or speak slowly and there was so much laughter and happiness. As we were finishing our last bites of food and lingering over wine, Eden told us a few of his favorite pilgrim “lessons”, stories like parables, examples of Chemin magic, of long-lost friends and finding what you need.

Finding what you need, yes. I’d found what I needed in that gîte: community and laughter and the spirit of the Chemin. My pilgrimage hadn’t ended on the side of a dusty road with tears in my eyes. After all of these years, how could I have thought that my Chemin ended when the walking did? No, a Camino or a Chemin is about more than the walking, it’s always been about more than the walking.

It’s the journey, the villages I pass through and the cities I explore, the people by my side, the voices joining together in laughter, in song. This was the blaze of glory. This was what it was all about, all of it together, all of these pieces. It’s the walking, but more than that, it’s the spirit of everyone who is walking and everyone who has walked for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Will I walk again? Surely. There are so many paths to discover, there are more routes to Santiago, there may even be some footsteps to retrace. I will certainly walk again, and the only question that remains is- ‘where to next?’.

*****

Previous Post: Days 11, 12, 13 on the Chemin du Puy

Have you walked a Camino/Chemin, returned home and wondered ‘what comes next?’ If so, check out my e-book, ‘After the Camino’!

Nearing the End: Churches, Drying Machines, and ‘It Smells Like Feet in Here’; Days 11, 12, 13 on the Chemin du Puy

October 11, 2017

My last post on the Chemin du Puy left us in the magical village of Conques. I had four days of walking left, but in some ways, it felt like Conques was a sort of ending to my pilgrimage. I think it was because so many other people I’d met had ended their pilgrimages there. I was still walking, but I didn’t have many days left, either. The end felt very, very near.

I’m going to write about the next three days in this (one) post, and we’ll see how it goes. This is partly to get finished writing these recaps, but it’s also because these days seemed to blend together for me. There was a lot of rain, and when it was raining I wasn’t really enjoying the walk. I just wanted to get to my destination.

And I ended up sticking with the same small group of pilgrims, too. This was nice in some ways- I didn’t have to meet new people every day and struggle to communicate in French (well, I was still speaking French with the people I did stick with, but at least they knew that I wasn’t fluent so I didn’t feel much pressure). And, as it always is on the Camino or the Chemin, it’s so nice to arrive in a town and see familiar faces. I was included in the little group, and I never felt lonely.

But, also, I never really felt entirely comfortable in my group. I was with Paul Andre and Chantal, the French Canadian couple with the super strong accents that were really difficult for even the French to understand. Walking with them was Therese, a woman in her 60’s who could almost be considered as someone who lives on the Camino. I never got her full story, but others told me that she didn’t have a permanent home, and was walking big chunks of every year on some Camino route. She was very rough around the edges and I never quite warmed up to her, and I do think a lot of that was due to the fact that we couldn’t communicate easily. And rounding out the group was Marie-Lou, another woman in her 60’s who was walking solo and who sort of ended up in the group around the same time as I did.

I sort of haphazardly ended up with them, and part of this was because I was just tired. Not tired from the walking, but tired from the mental strain that communicating in French is for me. I can still be a little shy when meeting new people, but meeting new people and speaking in a foreign language can make me feel even more timid and drained. So staying in the same places with people I already knew felt like a relief.

But, you know, there were a lot of lessons in this for me. I’ll get to this in the next post, but my last day on the Chemin had me in an entirely new group of people and it was… really special. It made me wonder what would have happened if I had made my own plans after Conques instead of sticking with people I already knew because it was easy. And to that end, there were a few times I was a little disappointed in myself. There was a day where I’d had a particular gîte in mind that I wanted to stay in, but I ended up in a different one because I let Therese include me in a reservation she was making. Our gîte was just okay; the other ended up being pretty fantastic (from what other pilgrims told me). I was a little hard on myself for that decision- just because I didn’t like making phone calls in French, I let someone else do the work for me but it meant that I didn’t stay where I really wanted to.

Anyway, despite these days being just ‘okay’- not bad but not outstanding, either- there were some remarkable moments. Here they are:

Day 11: Conques to Livinhac, 23km

We all had breakfast in Conques: everyone from the day before gathered in the hall for another typical breakfast of coffee and bread and butter and jam and yogurt. It seemed like everyone was lingering, and maybe we were. Half of us were continuing on the Camino, half were ending their pilgrimage. The kind pair of French women, the kind pair of French men (I wish I had learned/remembered their names!), Jerome, Mario, they were all finished with their Chemin.

I got up and gave them all hugs and Jerome was sitting in the corner with tears falling down his cheeks. I turned to Mario, and he gave me a long look. “Remember to follow what’s in your heart.” I nodded, and then I headed out; out of the Abbaye, down the winding roads of the village, past stone houses covered in vines, into the valley and then back up the other side of the mountain.

It was raining. I had to watch my footing very carefully as I climbed up and over slick stones and that climb went on for what felt like a long time. Near the top of the hill was a small chapel and I ducked inside, a quick reprieve from the rain. Conques was across the valley, in the distance, blurred by the rain. Already I felt far away.

Rain, rain, and more rain. Taking cover in churches was a theme of the day; I’m not sure how many churches I ducked into, but it was at least three or four. Each time, I would take my pack off, then my rain jacket, shake them out, put on a long sleeved shirt or fleece, and spend 10 minutes trying to dry off and get warm. And then back on with my wet things that had never really dried out, back into the rain.

I took a small detour that day, following me were Pierre, Therese, and Babette (a French woman who had just started in Conques). The detour was just a quick alternate route and I can’t exactly remember why we all chose to take it- maybe it was a bit shorter? Or more scenic? Or easier? In any case, I’d let the others know that I wanted to walk alone but they were never that far behind me. Later, Pierre told me that he was impressed with my sense of direction and being able to figure out where to go. “I don’t know if I could have done it myself,” he said.

I liked hearing this because in my regular life, I wouldn’t exactly say that I have a really good sense of direction. It’s about average, and gets much worse when I’m in cities and am dealing with streets on a grid. Everything looks the same and I get turned around easily. But when I’m walking, it’s a different story. I’ve gotten off track a couple of times on all of these walks, but I almost always have the sense that I’m going the wrong way when this happens. And otherwise, I don’t know what it is, I guess I’m just always looking for arrows and markers. And after awhile, I just get a sense of which way I need to be heading (I say this now, and I’m probably going to get horribly lost on my next long walk. Famous last words…)

The four of us all ended up stopping in the same church, about an hour from our destination. It was raining hard at this point: really hard. We were probably in that church for at least an hour, waiting for the rain to stop or at least slow down. I got too restless and left before the others did, and I promptly got soaked.

The town of Livinhac was really small; I didn’t stay in the gîte where I really wanted to be, and I went to bed early. Overall… not the best day on the Chemin. But I was still feeling strong and healthy and had friends around me, so not the worst day, either. Plus, you couldn’t beat the view from my bed:

Day 12, Livinhac to Figeac, 24km

Another morning of rain, and this was the point where I just got so fed up with being wet. I must have left at a very different time from everyone else because I was totally alone for so much of the day. I didn’t see many people as I walked, I didn’t see others as I stopped for a rest, and I got to Figeac much, much sooner than everyone else.

The highlight of this day was, well, some sort of Chemin magic. Seriously, I’m half wondering if it was all a dream or an illusion.

Here’s what happened: I’d been walking all morning in the rain. The previous day it had been raining, the day before that it was raining, the day before that it was raining. My clothes were all wet. All of them. I didn’t have a dry pair of socks, and the rest of my clothes weren’t dry, either: I always wash stuff at the end of every day’s walk but because the weather was so damp and cold, nothing was drying out. I’d been thinking about this as I walked, wishing so much that I could just put on a dry pair of socks but knowing that all my socks were wet and wondering what would happen the next day, if things didn’t dry out.

So I arrived in a small village and my guidebook said that there was a little area designated for pilgrims. This typically means that there might be an outdoor shelter of some sort, or a grouping of picnic tables or something like that. But what I found was totally different: it was a room in a building. The door was unlocked, the entire area was deserted. But I went into the room to check it out and it was pretty empty other than a table and a few chairs. But then I saw it- against one of the walls was a washer and dryer.

I looked around a couple of times, not really believing my eyes. A washing machine and a dryer? For pilgrims? In some random room in a tiny and quiet village? Was this real?

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I took off my pack and dug through and found all of my wet clothing and threw it into the dryer. I took off my socks and my long-sleeved shirt that had gotten wet and I put in a few coins and for the next hour I sat there, eating my sandwich and waiting as my clothing dried.

Seriously, how does this kind of stuff happen on the Camino/Chemin? I don’t have answers, but I do know that things like this happen all the time. The thing I’d wanted most that morning was dry clothing, and it was like the Chemin said, “Okay, I get it, I’ll help you out.”

So I left my little rest stop with a big smile on my face. The rain had stopped and the clouds had parted and there I was, strolling along with warm, dry socks on my feet.

Figeac was okay: I stayed in a great gîte with a wonderful communal dinner, but I for some reason I didn’t like being in a larger city and the noise and the movement and all the people felt like it was too much for me. Nassim ended his Chemin here- we all met before dinner for goodbye drinks.

Day 13: Figeac to Cajarc, 32km

No rain (finally!), mostly gray skies. A really good and solid day of walking. I had my “Camino legs” that day, and I was moving fast and the 30+ kilometers felt easy. I bumped into people as I moved through the day: Marie Lou at a rest stop, later Pierre and Stephanie and a Swiss man at another rest stop, but mostly it was a solo day of good walking.

Cajarc was a small town and I stayed in the municipal gîte with Therese and Paul Andre and Chantal and Marie Lou. Pierre and Stephanie were there, too. The place was vey basic and didn’t offer a communal dinner, so a few of us went out to a pizza place. I was in a room with Therese and Marie Lou and despite there being only three of us, it smelled distinctly of dirty, wet clothing. And feet. The room smelled like feet. I fell asleep feeling like I was okay that my Chemin was going to be ending soon.

That’s the recap, but there’s still one day left, and it was definitely a day of adventure. Stay tuned.

Previous Post: Day 10 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Ending in a Blaze of Glory; Day 14 on the Chemin du Puy

In The Center Of It All; Day 10 on the Chemin du Puy, Sénergues to Conques, 9km

October 3, 2017

The day I walked to Conques was probably my favorite day on the Chemin du Puy (the favorite part of my post-Hilary time, anyway).

What made it so special? It certainly wasn’t the actual walking; I woke up to another day of gray, heavy clouds, and needed to don my raincoat from the moment I stepped out the gîte door in Sénergues. The rain pelted down, and sometimes the wind blew so fiercely that the rain drops came in sideways, splashing against my cheeks and my forehead and my nose and my lips. At one point, I started to walk backwards, just so that I could have a break from the wind and the rain against my face.

It was a short day, too, at only 9km. Typically I don’t love short days on the Camino or the Chemin, especially if I’m feeling strong and good. But with the rain and the promise of potentially meeting up with friends in Conques, I was relieved that I’d only have to walk for a couple of hours in the morning.

The descent into the village of Conques was tricky. It’s already a stretch of path that’s infamous for it’s steep, rocky downward slope, but it’s made infinitely harder when the rocks are slick and wet. I walked carefully, slowly, measuring each step, always looking for a spot to plant my foot before I made any movement.

In the middle of my descent, my concentration was broken by the sudden appearance of a large, black, angry barking dog. He seemed to appear out of nowhere but now, all at once, he was below me on the path, taking steady steps towards me, growling as he bared his teeth.

The rain continued to fall, water was now dripping from the hood of my coat onto the tip of my nose. My hand, gripping my walking stick, was slick with the rain. I was mid stride, one foot planted lower than the other and I wasn’t sure how to take my next step. The dog continued to bark, slowly advancing. My heart pounded and I did the only thing that I could think to do- I pushed my stick out towards him, keeping my voice stern. “Arrêt!” Stop, stop. I repeated the word and brandished my stick but the dog only barked louder.

Finally his owner appeared, yelling his name and eventually grabbing him by the collar. “He is afraid of your stick,” she told me. Hmm. I carry the stick to protect myself from angry dogs- not that there are ever all that many, but if makes me feel better to have some sort of protection, just in case. But meanwhile, maybe I’m making the dogs angry because I’m carrying a stick?

In any case, they walked past me, the dog giving me a side-eye the entire time, and I continued slowly down the path until I arrived at the entrance to the village of Conques.

Oh my. Even in the rain, this small village was stunning. I’d been here once before, when I studied in Toulouse during college, but I have almost no memories of the trip. It was likely that we had just passed through the village, stopping only briefly to see the cathedral.

But now, at 10am, my walking done, I had the entire day at my disposal. The rain had slowed and then stopped as I gingerly made my way down the wet cobblestones and into the village. I took my time, walking up and down the streets, snapping photos and getting my bearings (which wasn’t difficult; this truly is a small village, with only a few winding streets).

I knew that Conques was an important stop on the Chemin du Puy, and had been since the Middle Ages. The relics of Sainte Foy (Saint Faith) are located in the Church, and these have drawn pilgrims for centuries. In the second century, when Sainte Foy was only 12, she was decapitated for refusing to worship pagan gods. She became an extremely popular saint in Southern France, and her relics drew a great number of pilgrims to the small and very isolated village of Conques.

And Conques continues to be a popular site on the Chemin du Puy. I knew this from the bits of reading I’d done before setting off on my pilgrimage, but as I walked I kept hearing people mention Conques. “You need to stop there,” they told me. “And be sure to stay in the Abbaye.”

The Abbaye was just behind the Church, and even though I wouldn’t be able to check in until 2:00, I was greeted and instructed on where I could store my bag in the meantime. I pulled out my day bag and stuffed it full of things I might need for the next few hours: my bottle of water, a snack, a fleece, my journal.

And then I headed back into the village, wandering through the streets, into the cemetery, up and down and around and around until I decided that it was time to sit with a hot coffee.

And as I was walking down a road to find a café, I heard someone shout my name. Inside one of the cafés were the two French women I’d shared a room with back on the day when Hilary left. I’d been criss-crossing with them for awhile but it had been a few days since I’d seen them. I knew they were both ending their pilgrimage in Conques (and in fact, Conques is a stopping point for many pilgrims who are only able to do the Chemin du Puy in stages); so it made me happy to see that we’d arrived in the village on the same day.

They ushered me into the café and over to their table, paying for my coffee and asking me how my days had been. We spoke in French, but already I could tell that I was getting a little better, and even if the conversation was basic, I could mostly understand what they were saying. They hadn’t yet dropped their things off at the Abbaye, so I instructed them on where to go, and then set back out into the village. I walked through the Church and then went back outside into the square, and in the distance, walking down the street, was Mario.

I leaned against a stone wall and waited until he was closer to call out his name. When I did he looked at me, did a double take, and gave me a huge smile. “You’re here!!” he laughed. “I thought you might have walked past, or walked here yesterday.”

“No,” I shook my head. I couldn’t really say anything else then, I could only smile. I’d felt it so strongly the day before, the fact that I hadn’t said goodbye to Mario. He was the only real friend I made on this year’s Camino- there were others I considered my Camino friends, but Mario was a true friend. It hadn’t felt right to just walk away the day before, and I regretted the decision as soon as I’d realized what I’d done. There were many reasons for walking that short day to Conques, but the most important was to see Mario again, and to spend the last day of his pilgrimage with him.

We walked to the Abbaye together and on the way we saw Jerome and Nassim, hanging out at a nearby bar. We saw others, too- the kind French men, the French Canadian couple, and more. Mario stored his pack, and we headed back out- into the rain- to find a place to eat lunch. There was a restaurant just outside of the Church square, and inside we saw Pierre and his wife (who wasn’t on the pilgrimage but had arranged to meet him here for a rest day).

Mario and I ate a huge meal- I can’t remember what I had anymore, but I know that we lingered over several courses and I had ice cream and there was bread and wine (does the rest of the meal really matter, if I had those other things?).

And then the rest of the afternoon, the rest of the day, was Camino/Chemin perfection. It seems like at least once on every pilgrimage, I have a day like this. When everything just comes together. My friends are all in one place and we spend time together and we eat great food and see beautiful things and I’m just overwhelmed by a strong feeling of happiness.

Somehow I ended up in the quiet, mostly empty dorm room in the Abbaye. Everyone else was squeezed together in one of the large bunk rooms and I was in the other, with only three other people. I rested and wrote postcards and then headed back out with Mario to find something to drink. We saw Jerome and Nassim and we all walked together and somehow ended up on the upper, covered terrace of a bar, shielded from the rain. No one else was up there and we pushed two tables together and ordered a bottle of wine. From our perch we could look down onto the streets and it seemed like every 10 minutes, Nassim would see someone he knew, shout down to them, and our group grew larger, and larger. Paul Andre and Chantal, the French Canadian couple, joined us. So did Therese, and later Georges, and we talked and laughed and I sat in the center of it all, not completely understanding all the French that was swirling around me, but for maybe the first time, not really caring.

I was included in this group, the group that had somehow become my own. It didn’t matter to any of them that I couldn’t speak French very well, in fact, it seemed that they hardly thought twice about it. I had been folded into the mix or, maybe, I’d even folded myself into this mix and once again, for just this short time, I’d found myself a Camino family. My Chemin family.

There was a communal dinner back at the Abbaye and afterwards a service in the Church, followed by an explanation of the stunning Tympanum of the Last Judgement. And following all of that, an organ concert in the church with the chance to walk around the upper levels.

It was one of those evenings that I wished could last much longer. I thought about this as I walked around the upper corridor of the Romanesque church, Pierre Soulages’ stained glass glowing gray and blue and even orange, the organ pounding and filling the body of the church with a swelling, glorious sound. The music built and built and I walked out to the very center of the church and looked down and everything was glowing: the windows and the candles and the aisles and the faces of all the pilgrims: some in their seats, some in front of me and some behind me and all of us on the very same path.

It’s the sort of moment that rises above, quite literally, everything else. I felt full of something that night, full of so many things: of wine and bread and hearty French food, full of friendship and love and community, full of light and full of music and full of spirit and full of faith.

After the concert Mario and I stood outside for a few minutes, other pilgrims lingering as well, soaking up every bit of that soft night. The sky had grown dim, a dark blue, and a half moon hung, heavy, in the sky above us.

I breathed it all in, as deeply as I could. I knew that tomorrow everything would change but that night, I stayed rooted in the moment: in the center of it all, in the middle of France, in a small mountain village under the moonlight, music still in my ears, the love of my friends enveloping me. I wrapped myself in the warmth of it all, and breathed deep.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go? Day 9 on the Chemin du Puy, St-Génies des Ers to Sénergues, 22km

September 12, 2017

When I woke up on the morning of Day 9, it was raining.

It had started raining the evening before and continued through the night. There were puddles of mud in the yard. We’d forgotten to close the windows of the outer porch area where our clothes were drying, and I was dismayed to discover that my clothes were just as wet as they’d been the night before. I squinted at the sky, all I could see were dark clouds.

But the little kitchen of our gîte was warm, there was coffee, and bread, and leftover plums from the day before.

Mario and I looked through our guidebooks as we ate breakfast, and he told me his plan for the day. We were about 30km from Conques (it was hard to tell because we were on a variant, the GR-6, and the guidebook wasn’t specific), and it was a distance that Mario was going to split into two days. He was ending his pilgrimage in Conques (as were many other pilgrims), and there was no reason for him to cover the distance all in one day, especially in the rain.

I was undecided. A big part of me wanted to walk the 30km into Conques. I felt that I needed to reclaim my Chemin, break out on my own, walk a bigger stage, have my own adventure. I also knew that I needed to make up some kilometers if I wanted to arrive in Cahors in 5 day’s time (for my train reservation).

Mario was trying to talk me out of it. I knew that he wanted to have my company for the last few days of his pilgrimage, but he had other good points as well. “It’s raining,” he pointed out the window. “You’re going to walk all day in wet conditions, and arrive to Conques late in the afternoon. It’s an amazing village and you’ll wish you had more time to spend there.”

I nodded. Conques is a significant site along the Chemin du Puy; not only does it have the reputation as being the most beautiful village in France, but it has a rich history. I didn’t want my time there to be rushed, but I also knew that there was more rain in the forecast for the next day.

There was one other factor that I was weighing in my decision: if I walked the longer day, I’d not only be saying goodbye to Mario, but I would most likely be moving ahead of everyone else I’d met so far on the walk. I hadn’t seen any of them for the past few days, and it made me sad to think that I might never see them again.

I told Mario that I would make up my mind as I walked, and that I would surely see him somewhere on the path. And then I left, and he gave me a head start because he knew I wanted to walk alone.

The morning was… just okay. I don’t like walking in the rain. That’s no surprise, and I’m sure that most of you probably agree with me on this: rain just sort of dampens the whole day (haha). I just plodded along, the skies were gray, the path was muddy, rain spit at me on and off. My hood was up, I could only see the path in front of me, and I focused only on thoughts of a dry café and a hot cup of coffee. Because I was on a variant, my guidebook had no information on towns or services, so I knew that it could be a long time before I passed an open bar or café (if at all).

But to my surprise, I came upon a lovely village with signage for a café, a little grocery store, and a bakery. The place looked deserted, but I crossed my fingers as I walked through the empty square and headed towards the café. To my great delight, I saw a woman sitting inside at one of the tables, so I took off my pack, left it outside in the driest spot I could find, and went in for a café crème. The owner was kind and she asked me questions about my walk and where I was from. In turn, I asked her what she knew about the weather for the next few days, and if she had any opinions on whether I should walk all the way to Conques or not.

I still didn’t have an answer for myself, but I continued to linger over my coffee. It was nice to let my clothes dry out a little, but I was also sort of waiting for Mario. He eventually arrived (after the first 20 minutes of the morning’s walk he realized that he forgot to put money into the donation jar at our gîte, so he turned around and went back). We chatted for a few minutes, and he told me that he was definitely walking a shorter day and not going all the way to Conques.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I was leaning towards walking all the way to Conques, but I told him that I was sure I’d see him again at some point during the day. We’d only been walking for a couple hours, and I knew that I would probably stop again a few times. I was certain that Mario would catch up to me, even though he had a doubtful look on his face.

The rain had stopped and I felt anxious to keep moving, so I said goodbye to the café owner, waved to Mario, and headed out. Before leaving the village I found the boulangerie, and bought a fresh croissant. I ate it as I walked, flakes of pastry falling onto my white rain jacket, and I brushed them off and smiled. I was feeling energized by the coffee, comfortable now that my pants were no longer wet, satisfied with the fresh croissant, happy that I had seen my friend.

The rain continued on and off but it was never heavy, and I felt energized. I walked fast, barely taking note of the places I was passing through. After a few hours, I arrived in another small village just as the skies were beginning to clear and sunlight poured over the square. It was the perfect spot for a little lunch break, and I set up at a picnic table: my jacket and shoes and socks came off, and I positioned them in the sun so they could get a chance to dry. I filled up my water bottle at a nearby fountain, and took out my food: apricots and cheese, day old bread.

As I ate I looked at my guidebook, and when I saw where I was, I could feel my heart sink. I’d passed the place where Mario was planning to stop for the day, and I hadn’t realized it. I must have misjudged the distances or underestimated how fast I’d walked, but I knew that unless I walked backwards to find him, and if I did indeed continue on to Conques that day, I’d never see him again. We hadn’t exchanged contact info and I hadn’t even said goodbye- I’d just breezily waved at him when I left the café.

I sat at that picnic table for awhile, tilting my face up towards the sun and letting the warmth pour over me. I knew I wasn’t going to turn around, but I was hoping that Mario might decide to walk further than he planned. I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking I might see him on the path, but there was no one. In fact, I didn’t see a soul in the entire village.

I kept walking. It was just past 1:00 and the next village was less than 3km away, and it felt like I arrived in no time. It was the village of Sénergues: another small place, with a church and a bar that closed on Wednesday afternoons (guess which day it was??), a tiny cemetery and a park. There was a large gîte/inn at the entrance of town, with pale blue shutters and a beautiful terrace in the back. I circled through the town twice, and then sat down on a stoop in front of the gîte. I still hadn’t seen anyone, the village was empty, and it was barely 2:00pm.

Should I stay, or should I go? I sat there for what felt like a long time, not knowing what to do. I wanted to keep walking, I could feel it in my bones. The sky was a brilliant blue, the clouds were a shocking white, the sun was warm. There was more rain in the forecast for the afternoon- a chance of thunderstorms- but I wondered if I could beat the rain. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with an entire afternoon and evening in a deserted village with a closed bar.

But there was a lump in my throat. I hadn’t said goodbye.

And then a group of pilgrims arrived- two men and two women- and we all wondered if the gîte was open and suddenly I was walking inside with them, and inquiring about a room.

And I was given a bed in a room with no one else, in a small little private corner right next to a small little private bathroom. I took a shower and washed my clothes and hung them on the shutters in a small patch of sunlight. I walked through the town again, three more times, around and around in circles. I went to the small grocery store and bought a bag of chips and a banana and two postcards and a cold drink and took it back to the gîte, where I set up at a table on the beautiful terrace.

It began to rain after only 10 minutes, a heavy and lashing rain and I ran upstairs to my room and pulled my clothes from shutters, as the wind howled and tree branches whipped and lightening flashed through the sky.

Thank goodness I had decided to stop walking. I think I might have known, all along, that I wasn’t going to walk to Conques. I think I just needed to feel like I was making my own decisions. I’d enjoyed Mario’s company, but I needed a little time on my own, and I’d given it to myself that day. And even though I was feeling a little lonely, and a little restless, even though I wished I were still walking, I felt good about my decision.

The evening was quiet: I wrote in my journal and tried to plan out the next few days of walking. At 7:00 I went downstairs to dinner, and met other pilgrims. They were all walking in groups or pairs, all of them from France, and it was hard to understand the conversation but the food was good. There was quiche and salad, sausage and mashed potatoes, and some delicious pudding-like thing for dessert. (And bread, of course, always bread).

I went to bed early, by 9:30, tucked under the covers and with a cool breeze blowing through the room. The next day would be a short one- only 9km to Conques- and I wondered what I would find there. A beautiful village? Familiar faces? Mario? The rest of my friends? I hoped so.

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Sprigs of lavender and a bowl of fresh plums; Day 8 on the Chemin du Puy, St-Côme d’Olt to St-Genies des-Ers, 26km

September 5, 2017

I woke up in the gîte in St-Côme d’Olt feeling like I had gotten a really good, refreshing sleep. In fact, it was probably the best sleep that I’d gotten so far on the trip, and I could feel the effects of that throughout the day: I was energized, happy, and able to walk and walk and walk.

And that’s what I did- or, at least, that’s what it felt like I did.

I suppose the 26km distance wasn’t incredibly long, not compared to what I’ve done before, but Day 8’s walk wasn’t flat; in fact, it was anything but flat.

Mario and I decided to opt out of taking the morning detour that would lead pilgrims along a rather flat path bordering the Lot river. This detour was supposed to be pretty, but it was no comparison to the main route of the Chemin, which would climb steeply for several kilometers (and then descend almost as steeply). Why climb unnecessarily? For the views, of course!

The morning was perfect: blue skies, warm but not-yet-hot sunshine, low humidity. I felt strong on the ascent to the Vierge de Vernus (the statue pictured above), and then just as good on the walk back down. It also helped that things moved a little more slowly with a walking companion. Mario’s pace was similar to mine, but whenever you’re walking with someone, the journey always seems to take a little longer. He would stop for a photo, then I would stop for a photo. He would point out a large cobweb, I would stop to admire the view. With a lot more stopping and starting, it was like I had little breaks built in (when I walk alone I always take photos, but I usually just slow my walk down to a ‘pause’, and begin again just as quickly).

But by the time we got to Espalion, I was feeling a little restless. Maybe that’s not the right word, I’m not sure what the right word is. I’d had fun walking with Mario, but I was also craving a walk to myself. I know, I know, I’d been walking alone ever since Hilary left, but these walks are completely different when you’re with someone vs when you’re alone. At least, the feeling changes completely for me; it’s a different experience. I knew that Mario would respect whatever I wanted to do- continue walking with him or continue on alone- but I also sensed that he liked my company, and maybe that he expected that we’d continue on together.

So it was back to the drawing board for me- isn’t this always the case? I continue to come back to the Camino, in part, for the camaraderie and to make strong connections with like-minded people, and some of my very best moments have been in the company of the friends I’ve made. And yet, and yet, I lose my sense of freedom and that pure feeling of adventure when I’m with someone else. I don’t have time to crawl into my head, to think my big thoughts, to write essays and books in my imagination, to go wherever I please.

The truth is, I want both of these experiences, and that can sometimes leave me conflicted.

So, on this day, I tried to have a little of both. When we were in the small town of Espalion, I turned to Mario and said, “I think I’m going to find a coffee somewhere and then continue on a bit by myself.”

We were going to stay in the same place again that night so I knew I’d be seeing him later anyway- but that, too, was leaving me feeling conflicted. He’d found a gîte that was similar to the one we’d stayed in the night before, and I was beginning to wonder whose Chemin I’d decided to walk that day. Where did I want to go, where did I want to stay? I wasn’t really sure.

In any case, I had a coffee, I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and then I left town, alone.

And it felt really good. After a few kilometers there was an unexpected (to me) REALLY steep climb, it felt like the most difficult part of the Chemin so far. I don’t think the climb was actually all that long but it felt like it stretched on forever, and I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t yet arrived to the top.

But finally I did, and there was a cooling wind and a wide landscape and I could feel the energy returning to my legs. I walked fast, eating my sandwich as I went, smiling as I passed other pilgrims.

Before long I ran into Mario and a few others, resting at a church. I stopped there too, to douse my buff in cold water and to use the bathroom and to eat a juicy peach. From here, Mario and I continued walking together and once again the day shifted and, finally, I let go of trying to control the experience I was having.

And as soon as I did, I could feel myself relax. We told jokes and laughed, we plucked sprigs of lavender from a bush along the path and tucked them behind our ears. We passed through gorgeous little villages and chatted with other pilgrims.

In Estaing, we stopped for a break and I saw two pilgrims who I’d met on the 2nd and 3rd day of my walk, and who I hadn’t seen since. They were two men from Nantes, both were kind but one always seemed to want to make sure that I was having a good time, that I was understanding things, that I was finding the walk through France to be beautiful. (I sometimes think that, as Americans, we’ve generalized the French as being cold or haughty or unfriendly… or maybe just disinterested. But walking the Chemin proves just the opposite: I met some of the warmest, most generous people on the Chemin du Puy, the Man from Nantes being one of them).

Estaing was another beautiful, charming and completely idyllic town, but Mario and I weren’t staying there. Once again, just as I had the day before, I felt a pang of regret when I saw how nice the town was. I’d agreed to continue walking, and to take a detour away from the main path of the Camino, so while most of the people I’d gotten to know were stopping in Estaing, Mario and I were continuing on.

We were hit with yet another steep climb. The day had grown hot, it was 4:00pm and I should have been tired… but I wasn’t. Looking back, this might have been the strongest I felt on any day on the Chemin, and when Mario and I finally made it to our destination, overall I felt good. Did it matter that I was still conflicted on whether I wanted to walk alone or with a friend, did it matter that I’d chosen not to stay in every idyllic village that I passed along the way?

Maybe it only mattered that I was healthy, and strong, and walking in good company.

Back in Estaing, Mario had picked up grocery supplies because the place we were staying in didn’t provide dinner, and when we arrived we found a large house with a small addition where we’d be sleeping. There was a well equipped kitchen and the owner of the house, Caro, made sure we had everything we needed, and brought over a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread for the morning. There was a friendly dog, a plum tree, and a large tent in the backyard (which would have been a pretty cool place to spend the night but a storm blew in and I was happy to have chosen to sleep indoors).

Mario had picked up four bottles of beer while we were in Estaing (he chose a kind that he thought I would like, noticing that I’d mentioned I wasn’t much of a beer drinker. Once again, more proof of the kindness and generosity of the French!), and we shared it with Caro while he and Mario talked about their philosophies of life. I didn’t feel quite as frustrated that I couldn’t completely follow the conversation- and it might have been because Caro’s accent was easier for me to understand (or maybe my French was improving??)- and if anything I really enjoyed listening to the guys talk. After Caro left we made a late dinner- I chopped veggies while Mario threw together a stir fry, and we talked about the reasons that we were walking, the questions in our lives, the things we believed in.

At the end of the night I felt like I had made a friend. A real, true friend and even though it didn’t solve my ‘walk alone/walk with others’ dilemma (oh just wait for the next post), it only reaffirmed my feeling that I didn’t need to figure everything out. How would I spend the rest of my walk? In that moment, it didn’t matter.

Because I had spent my day well.

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On the Outskirts; Day 7 on the Chemin du Puy, Aubrac to St-Côme-d’Olt, 24km

August 26, 2017

And we’re back on the Chemin du Puy! These blog posts sure are rolling out slowly (is anyone still reading? Wait, forget I asked, because the answer doesn’t really matter; I think I’d probably write out these recaps even if no one read them. I love revisiting my walks!).

But already the Chemin feels awfully long ago, and the details are becoming a little hazy. That became really clear when I started to think about how to write this post, and what to say about Day 7. Sometimes I use my journal entries to trigger memories from the day, but there’s no journal entry for Day 7. I looked at my photos, and while this helped, nothing really jumped out at me. It was a mostly gray day, there were some nice looking trees, and at one point I had a decent view of a town I’d passed through from across the valley.

Not really exciting stuff for a blog post.

Was the walk easy or hard, did I encounter anyone interesting, did I have any conversations, what did I eat? How was my mood- was I feeling energized and happy, or was I feeling a little off and a little slow?

Selfie with pilgrim statue; Chemin du Puy

I met this interesting guy…

I look through the photos again: ah, parts are coming back now. I remember that as I walked into a town, I saw a small rainbow in the sky, and it made me so happy. I had a coffee in that town, too, a café crème and I must have been in a café on the outer edge of town because there were no other pilgrims there, and no one passed by.

Later in the day, I stopped at a small shelter, this little covered space that had a round wooden table filled with the types of things that pilgrims might want in the middle of a long day. A carafe of coffee, a jug of orange juice. There was a register to sign our names, and benches and chairs to rest our feet. Jerome was here, the French man who’d been at our table last night, and again he was smiling and laughing and talking to everyone. There was a group of French women, and then another solo French woman and I said hi but kept pretty quiet. I remember that I’d wanted a break, but also that I felt like being alone.

There’s a small story that goes along with this photo (I told it over on the Instagram account for Nadine Walks, and if you follow that link you can get there and see other photos from my walks). So, I was snapping a few photos of the shelter area when one of the French women motioned for my camera and told me that she was going to take my photo. I didn’t protest, and stood sort of awkwardly by the table. But as soon as the others saw me getting my photo taken, they began to get out of the way. “No!” the French woman called out. “It will look sad if she’s in the photo all alone!” I said something in French, I think I was trying to say that I didn’t want anyone to be bothered or feel like they had to move, but I think what I’d actually said must have been something along the lines of: “Yes, please, I want to be all alone and sad in this photo” because everyone continued to move out and wait until the photo shoot was done so they could move back in.

I’m laughing a little at this now, but I remember at the time feeling frustrated that I couldn’t communicate as well as I wanted to, and just not feeling at ease around the other pilgrims I was meeting that day.

But this has been a pattern over all of these walks, hasn’t it? Some days I know that I want to be alone, and after hours of walking solo, it’s hard for me to readjust and be back around other people.

Speaking of being back with other people, towards the very end of the day I ran into Mario. I saw him from a bit of a distance, sitting with an older man at a table of another little pilgrim rest stop. He was wearing his bright orange shirt- that, along with his dark beard, made me recognize him. I hadn’t seen him since the morning of Day 2, and I assumed that I’d never see him again. He was walking big days, and I imagined that he would have been far ahead at that point.

I hesitated just a moment before going over- I was still feeling a little off and not exactly in the mood to do much talking- but I shook the feeling away and went over with a big smile. To this day, running into friends unexpectedly is one of my very favorite things about the Camino. I think sometimes we are meant to meet people again.

When Mario saw me he sat up with a start, and soon a big smile of his own was covering his face. “I didn’t think I’d see you again!” he said, his voice both happy and a bit incredulous.

It turns out that we’d both booked beds in the same place that night- Gîte L’Antidote. I took a closer look at my guidebook and realized that our Gîte was actually on the outskirts of Saint-Côme-d’Olt, and that I wouldn’t get to stay in the town at all. And once we arrived in the town, I could feel my heart sink a bit. It was such a beautiful place, with winding cobble-stoned roads, charming squares, fountains, the works. I saw Nassim and a few others from the day before and they were all staying in the municipal Gîte, and suddenly I was sad that I wasn’t there, too. I was missing out on a great town, and I worried that- even with Mario- I was going to feel a little isolated at our Gîte on the outskirts.

In the end, it was yet another very different kind of Chemin experience. We had a little trouble finding the Gîte- it was in a residential area and we must have come from the wrong side because we completely missed the signage. And soon I realized it was in a residential area for a reason: we were in someone’s residence. I suppose it was a little like the place where I’d last seen Mario, the Gîte on the outskirts of Saint-Privat-d’Allier, where we stayed in a lofted attic area of someone’s home.

It was a similar thing here; Laurent welcomed us and after nearly an hour sitting outside and drinking syrup water (all I wanted to do was go inside and take a shower but the other two seemed content to sit and talk), we got the tour. He pointed out his son’s room and asked that we not go inside, showed us the bathroom that I can only assume was also used by his family, and then we went upstairs to the attic, where there were 8 beds spread across the room.

It turns out that Mario and I were the only ones staying there that night, and dinner was the two of us plus Laurent and his wife. We were all in our 30’s, sitting around a table outside, eating salad, and stew, and drinking wine and talking and I didn’t feel like I was on the Chemin at all. Or, maybe, it was a different kind of Chemin, maybe it was even more in the spirit of what the Camino used to be like, hundreds of years ago, when pilgrims would knock on a door and hope to find a bed for the night, maybe a little food, too.

But, as usual, I couldn’t appreciate the situation fully because of my French skills. Mario was really good at sometimes translating things for me and making sure I wasn’t totally in the dark about what was going on, but it was still a little frustrating. I wanted to understand everything, I wanted to talk more, I wanted to understand more about these people and why they have opened their home to strangers. I wanted to know more about their son, a three-year old boy with fine hair that curled against his neck, who was running around the yard, shouting and waving his water gun and getting dangerously close to our clothes that were drying on the line.

That night, as Mario and I sprawled on beds on opposite sides of the room, we started air-dropping photos to each other. “Here’s a good one!” Mario said, and ping! A photo of the lake he’d swam in yesterday appeared on my phone. “And here’s a photo of sunrise on the morning when I’d last seen you,” I said, and for the next 20 minutes, photos zinged back and forth across the room. We started laughing- Mario accidentally sent me a photo that I’d sent to him a few minutes earlier, and then we started laughing harder as we realized that our heads were sinking into the plastic covering of our pillows and that it was actually the most uncomfortable thing ever.

We giggled in the dark and all I could think was how strange it is to walk a Chemin, or a Camino. I could walk alone all day and feel a little out of place- the sad girl alone in a photo- but then find myself in the attic of someone’s home in the middle of France, laughing with a new friend, joking like we were children.

So, Day 7 was complete, I was halfway through my adventure on the Chemin du Puy. (What does the next half bring? Hopefully I’ll get these posts out a little more quickly, but here’s a sneak peek: RAIN).

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Why is it so hot? Why are we still going up? Day 2 on the Chemin du Puy, Combriaux to Saugues, 17km

July 9, 2017

Even though I’ve done this walking thing many times before, it still takes a few days to get into the rhythm of the pilgrim life. I woke up on Day 2 feeling a little disoriented; our room had been hot during the night, and at some point in the night I had flipped myself so that my head was at the foot of the bed, and closer to the window. Once we woke up, we had to tiptoe through the other rooms with sleeping pilgrims in order to get to the bathroom, and we packed our things as silently as possible

And then downstairs to another pilgrim breakfast in France. These breakfasts would all look the same: coffee or tea or hot chocolate, bread and butter and usually at least 3 flavors of jam (many of them homemade), yogurt and sometimes fruit. Once I had a fresh croissant brought over from the boulangerie two doors down (this wouldn’t happen until nearly the end of my trip, and oh what a good morning that was!). I really loved the breakfasts on the Chemin, bread and butter and coffee are my preferred breakfasts at home, too, and it was such a treat to come downstairs every moring and have a spread laid out for us. Unlike on other Caminos, I never had to walk before my morning cup of coffee (well, actually, I had to do this on my very last day but you’ll have to wait for that story).

So after fueling up and rearranging things in our packs, Hilary and I headed out for Day 2. The morning was soft and beautiful, and the beginning of the walk was stunning: we were headed into the hills, climbing above the clouds and looking out onto views that stretched over the countryside.

There was another beautiful view that I loved seeing France, but one of a different sort than the sweeping landscape: the WC. France nails it with their public bathrooms; not only would you sometimes come upon a little shack in the middle of the trail (usually not much more than a toilet, but it’s still a good option), but in so many of the small villages and towns you would always see a sign pointing you towards the nearest WC. Some of these toilets were, ah, quite adventurous, but I appreciated them all.

Our morning was wonderful, and despite the increasing heat, Hilary and I were both in really good spirits. After about 5 or 6km we stopped in the small village of Monistrol-d’Allier for a coffee and a snack; this would be just before starting a long and diffficult ascent and fueling up seemed like a good idea.

We ran into Mario, our French translator and fellow pilgrim from the night before, and he told us about the amazing sandwiches the cafe could prepare for us to take along. He held up a wrapped sandwich that was roughly the size of his head. “Local goat cheese with a carmalized onion and fig compote,” he said. “You don’t want to miss this.”

Hilary and I were both already a bit loaded down with food; we’d picked up Babel cheeses wrapped in wax that could last the journey, as well as little sausages and a loaf of day old bread. Suddenly, our lunch options didn’t seem so appetizing, and we made what I think might have been one of the best decisions of the trip: to buy the sandwiches with fresh and local ingredients. (Later, we spread out on the grass for a long picnic lunch and those sandwiches were, indeed, the best sandwiches I’d ever tasted. It helped that we’d walked a long day and were hungry, but then again we were also in France, where the food truly is top notch).

Our packs now even more weighed down, we began our ascent. The guidebook we were using (along with all the French) was the Miam Miam Dodo. It breaks down each stage into detailed sections and shows either a green, orange, or red line (going up, down, or flat) to illustrate the difficulty of the grade of the route. Green is easy, orange is tougher, red is difficult. And very quickly, we came to regard the red line (especially a red line going up), as the enemy.

We began a nearly 4km stretch of ‘red up’, and remember, this was during the European heat wave. We were drenched in sweat within minutes. We criss-crossed on the trail in order to find tiny sections of shade. Water breaks were only taken in the shade. The buffs came out, and for the first time on any Camino, I discovered the momentary delight of running the buff under a cool stream of fountain water, then wrapping it around my head.

But despite the heat this continued to be a good day. Other highlights included: stopping in a chapel carved into the rock of a hillside, our first walk alongside a line of cows, a kind man resting in the shade of a tree who gave us cherries, the wooden carvings lining the entrance to Saugues- our destination for the evening. The day’s walk was only about 17km (but with the ascents and heat I wouldn’t call it an easy day), but it meant that we had time for long, leisurely breaks, and still arrrived to our gîte an hour before it opened.

But once we did get inside, we discovered that there was only one shower for 8 pilgrims (this, too, would become a theme of the trip). There was a lot of waiting around in our sweaty clothes, a storm rolled in and cooled off the air a bit, and once we were finally cleaned up we headed into town to explore and find some ice cream.

Dinner that night was, in a word, awkward. I don’t even know if it would have helped much if my French were stronger; the combination of people around the table was not a good one, and there were a lot of long silences. Then, when dinner was over and the owner of the gîte was trying to arrange a breakfast time, there seemed to be a tense moment. The group of 4 pilgrims staying in our room were pretty insistent on ther 5:30am start time (the only time I would see anyone leave this early on this Camino), and the owner of the gîte didn’t want to serve breakfast that early. There was a lot of back and forth that I didn’t completely understand, but it was finally understood that we’d all help ourselves to breakfast, whenever we decided to get up. (All the while, in the background a radio played 90’s soft rock and sometimes I’d just disengage from trying to understand the conversation and instead tune into Whitney Houston and Celine Dion).

Hilary and I escaped once dinner was over and headed back into town for a pre-bedtime glass of wine, and when we returned to the gîte we sat outside with the kind dog, watching the day’s light fade to black, strains of soft rock drifting through the air.