Conques

 

Day 11 - Conques 

       After finishing our bowls of coffee (yes, bowls - to dip your toast) and saying goodbye, we headed down the hill and then up the hill and then down the hill, etc.  We are looking forward to some flatter landscape in a few days.  

     The village of Conques is very popular and famous.  They say that it was the model for Disney’s Beauty and the beast.  The steep hillside village streets have no vehicles.  You almost expect Bellle or Guston to pop out a door.  The medieval architecture is well preserved.  We were lucky to find a private room that overlooks the town. A bit of a splurge for pilgrim, but very reasonable by US prices.  The town has many tourists as well as occasional pilgrims.

     The room did not offer dinner so we had or second restaurant meal of the trip - excellent wild boar stir fry and sausage and mashed potatoes.  You can guess who had what.  We ended the evening with a light show at the church that highlighted a very famous sculpted mural above the door of the church depicting the eternal states of humanity with Christ the Judge.  The evening was so much different than our usual night as it was a romantic setting with just the two of us.

Sandals to the Rescue

 

Day 10 - Le Soulie

   In the coolness of the morning, the fairy town was even more magical.  We picked up our lunch sandwich from the local butcher and headed out. Esther developed another blister and our host suggested wearing sandals as she had walked the entire Camino in sandals.  With some trepidation, Esther donned her sandals 

and started walking.  She ended up walking the entire 13 miles in sandals and her blisters did not hurt.  PTL! 

   The heat of day was pretty overwhelming, especially in the afternoon.  There were only a few spots of rugged terrain.  Most of the way was quiet countryside road or path. The gite tonight was very unusual.  It is a roadside guesthouse with scattered buildings amongst overgrown vegetation.  Our first impression was of a hippie commune.  A few scattered buildings hidden in thick overgrowth, restroom facilities 30 yards from our room, an outside eating area covered with tarp.  

     Several of the guests were pilgrims from previous stops.  A new young man who teaches English here in France jumped in to help translate.  It ended up being a very memorable evening with the older gentleman host facilitating a share time for everyone at the table to share their Camino story.

Estaing Castle

 

Day  9 - Estaing

    We began our day with renewed optimism for our 13 mile day.  We are still in a mountainous region so there is a lot of up and down.  We seem to go over a hill each time we go from one town to another.  By noon we made it to Espallion, a small city that was filled with tourists.  We are getting good at sidewalk lunches, we can both get filled up for less than 10 Euros. We saw Claire walk by so we yelled at her.  She is the only one we have met that is going all the way to Santiago. Her English is very limited and our French is none existent, yet we have formed a strong connection.  She is a devout Catholic and stops at all the chapels and churches.  We sometimes walk in close proximity but she prefers to walk alone, as do most of the single pilgrims. Our gite tonight is in another old city with lots of character.  There is a castle in the center of town that was built for a child of Louis XVI, who went under the guillotine during the French Revolution.  A group of nuns used it for a school until recently, when a former French president bought it.  Our host speaks very good English and has walked the full Camino from Le Puy, so we flooded her with questions.  Dinner was vegetarian and very tasty. We ended dinner a little earlier so we were able to browse the town in twilight. Esther is developing another blister. so our host is offering assistance in dressing it.

Emotional Roller Coaster

 Day 8 - St. Come D’olt

     Because of lodging availability we had a short day’s walk. After an hour of dealing with bills and forms through texting with Calvin back home, we started our descent towards our day’s destination.  Esther’s blister was hurting and we began to get a little discouraged about things.  Did we bite off more than we can chew?  Will our bodies hold up?  Can we finish in time?  We were looking forward to staying at a convent tonight but were anxious about the next few nights.  The town of Conques is coming up and it has its yearly festival on Tuesday.  (Kind of like Octoberfest in Leavenworth) 

   We arrived at the convent and were able to stash our packs and explore the medieval town of Saint-Come-d’Olt.  It felt like walking through a medieval movie set.  The town was eerily quiet in the middle of the day.  Aside from a couple of lively restaurants, the town was shut down. (typical of French towns shut down from 12:30 pm until 3 or 4 pm). After lunch at a sidewalk sandwich shop, we headed back to the convent on the outskirts for an early check in.  We were surprised to find that they could not find our reservation though I know I had made it.  I was able to show them their number on my phone history, but they couldn’t find anything.  They gave us the last room available-a private room!  

    We spent the remainder of the afternoon, frantically trying to reserve a room for Sunday night.  We went to what we thought was evening vespers that turned out to be mass.  In the middle of the service my phone went off and I rushed out in hopes of a possible reservation.  Unfortunately, it was to no avail and I let Esther finish mass without me.  I kept trying to make reservations, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated.  Right before dinner we were able to make a reservation.  Things started looking up! 

   Dinner was cafeteria style and we found seats by ourselves, thinking we were in for a‘lonely dinner’ listening to French.  Suddenly,  Father Patrick who had presided over the mass and had been interrupted by a rude American with a cell phone, sat down next to us, and in very good English started engaging us in conversation. We had a delightful conversation.  He is a theology professor who specializes in the history of St. Ignatius.  After I told him that we were using ‘Spiritual Exercises’ by Ignatius for our daily meditation, I was able to pick his brain.  It turns out that he has written books on the‘Spiritual Exercises’ and will be teaching at Oxford for the next couple of years.  Needless to say I was on cloud nine tonight.  I am grateful to the Lord for reassuring us of his love and care for us.  Thank you Father Patrick!

The Aubrac Plateau

 

Day 7 - Lastrade

We had breakfast at the hotel across from the gite.  A loaf of bread, an assortment of jelly, great coffee and an apple fuel us up for the morning.  Our morning walk took us across the summit of the Aubrac plateau.  The trail is a popular hiking destination for many vacationing French families, sometimes using rented donkeys to carry the camping gear. Open hillsides were dotted with cows and granite rocks.  Lunch found us in Saint Chely d’ Aubrac on the western edge of the plateau.  Since we had a long afternoon ahead of us we found a sandwich shop and enjoyed quiche and pizza.  The afternoon was difficult as Esther’s blister was hurting and there were some rugged uphill sections.  The gite was in a remote hamlet but is strictly run by a high energy matron.  Thanks to my lack of French in making reservations, the matron was only expecting one person.  As a result Esther and I are sharing a room with Tomas.  Dinner in the Gites is an all evening affair with many courses that last from seven until well after nine.  Tonight there weren’t any English speakers, or at least none that wanted to engage us in conversation.  You can’t imagine how awkward it was for Esther to not engage but listen to lively discussion without a clue of what is being said.

Morning Vespers on the Camino

 

Day 6 - Nasbinals

This morning we were treated with a private morning vespers by the two sisters who shared the gite with us.  They are on holiday from their work in inner city Paris where they serve the homeless by building relationships.  Our walk today was through the Aubrac Plateau, famous for its beef cows and unique stone houses. There were many more people on the trail today, many who were day hiking.  We are usually not enticed by a sandwich stand in a farm hamlet, but today’s opportunity was such a contrast to the remote surroundings.  The omelette and cheese plate we shared powered us with enough protein to finish our 12 mile journey.  Tonight’s gite is in a larger town and offered no dinner, so we enjoyed our first hamburger and FRENCH fries at a cafe practically in the middle of the street, in fact a small street did go right through the seating and the waitress had to dodge traffic.  One thing this Dutchman can get used to France is no tipping.  After 5 days of lively dinner company, it was a nice break to eat alone.

Food and Friends

 Day 5 - Lasbros

We said goodbye to a few pilgrims who will be ending their planned Camino ‘leg’  for the year.  Two of the experiences of the Camino which we read about were the food and the relationships that you make on the trail.  We are thoroughly enjoying both of these dimensions of Camino life.  By eating meals in the gites you share a table with complete strangers from around the world.  Conversations last long into the evening.  Though we walk by ourselves at our pace, we constantly meet with up with familiar people and strike up conversation. While the locals don’t speak much English, about half of the pilgrims can speak a little English. The majority of pilgrims are French but there are a surprising number of other Europeans and hardly any Americans. We quickly get attached to these friends and been able to lend assistance and receive assistance. We have even had the opportunity to pray with a couple of pilgrims that have had injuries.  The food is wonderful as each gite features some of the best local dishes.  Today we walked mostly through deserted forests and a few small villages.  The weather has gotten warmer and we are putting a bigger dent in our 4 liters of water (8 lbs !!) that we carry.  After 14 miles we settled into another small hamlet gite with two nuns. We enjoyed listening to their afternoon vespers as we enjoyed a late afternoon nap. At dinner we met some more people.  One couple was from Kenya with a daughter who lives in Vancouver BC. Their English helped us converse the evening away.  Our dinner was beef stew from local beef, the most prized inFrance.

Surviving the forest of the beast

Day 4 - St. Albon sur Limagnol

Last night we had the best bed yet.  Nestled in the cozy micro chalet was a soft bed with real sheets and fluffy comforter.  The nights have been chilly, so we soaked up the comfort.  Breakfast was toast, granola and coffee.  We are starting to take advantage of the dinners and breakfasts that are offered at the gites as they usually feature local food.  Our walk today was almost entirely in protected land, very few farms or houses. We only walked about 10 miles since we are walking through a sparsely populated area with few towns and fewer opportunities for lodging.  We traveled through a forest that is famous for a mysterious, blood-thirsty beast that killed or injured more than 200 people, mostly women and children between 1764 and 1767. Fortunately, there has been no recent sighting and we made it through the forest in one piece. We also passed by a church and monument to St. Roch, the patron saint of pilgrims. We are staying tonight in the village of St. Alban-sur-Limagnol, and we have a private room over looking the town and country. At dinner we had pasta and pork chops in a cream sauce.  The conversation was very lively and mostly in English.  A German family who started from their town near Munich have been doing it in stages.  So far we have not seen any Americans on the trail.  We picked up a new guide book which is helping us find reservations more easily.

Getting Our Trail Legs

Day 3 - Chazeauz

Andre served up the standard breakfast of coffee and bread; and packing up early, we were walking by 8 o’clock.  It was a very steep climb out of the canyon which gave us spectacular views.  There was an old chapel that was carved into a cave along side of the trail.  We had another long day on account of the reservation issue, which is becoming a daily concern. The weather is still very cool which helped with the strenuous start of the day.  The trail led up to a plateau of rolling hills dotted with farms and small quiet hamlets.  We lunched at a bakery in the town of Sauges. The afternoon was long and tiring. The highlight was meeting a family with six boys, ages 1 - 11. The youngest was in a stroller.  They spend a week each summer doing a portion of the Camino having started when they had just 2 boys. We made it to our Gite shortly before 5pm.  Our room is a cozy pocket chalet.  Dinner was an excellent pork stew with rice.  We visited with two French women who spoke good English and learned a lot more about French culture and attitudes.

Our First Full Day of Walking

 

Day 2 - Monistrol D’Allier          

We had a simple but nice breakfast (toast and coffee) with Bruno and Lionel’s family.  We left the gite at 8:30 and headed out on our first fifteen mile day.  The weather was cool but sunny and we soaked in the landscape of rolling hills and old country hamlets. Since we were out of sync with the bulk of pilgrims, we basically had the trail to ourselves. We met Lionel and his children a couple of times, and Unella who was hurting with a sore heal. The trail was extremely varied today with deserted paved roads to steep mountain trails; wooded forests to river canyon towns.  We ate lunch after 10 miles in Saint-Private-d’Allier and had a strenuous 5 miles to our evening destination in the canyon village of Monistrol-d’Allier.  The highlights of the day were stopping at millennial old chapels that were still operational.  The lowlight was missing a trail marking and adding a mile to our already long walk. We stayed at a small gite right on the river.  Andre is the older gentleman who runs it.  There was only one other guest so we ended up with a nice private room. Dinner was some very good spaghetti. 

The Journey Begins

 

Day 1 -  Le Puey to Tallode

Let the journey begin!!  After a bit of a harrowing trip from Seattle to France, we are finally embarking on our long awaited walking adventure. We left the hostel Friday morning to catch the 7am Pilgrim’s Mass at the Cathedral.  A couple of hundred pilgrims gathered to celebrate mass and receive a blessing on their trip.  It was frustrating not understanding the words, but we thoroughly appreciated the awesome surroundings and mood.  After getting our credentials stamped, we descended the iconic stairs in the center of the cathedral and were ushered into our new world.  Stopping back at the hostel to pack up the last of our belongings brought an unfortunate start to our day.  Other pilgrims were warning about the need to book lodging ahead of time, so I frantically booked a cheap hotel in what I thought was a town on the Camino.  After booking it, I realized it was actually a town in the opposite direction. This sent me into a panic of trying to cancel the reservation, which was proving very frustrating due to my lack French language skills. Fortunately, a fellow bilingual pilgrim was able to help.  It was only fitting that a couple of Washingtonians start their Camino in a drizzle.  Our rain parkas got broken in as we climbed our way through city streets to the surrounding plateau. The scenery was amazing and we quickly entered the pastoral French countryside.  Because of our late start, our lack of sleep and our apprehension of our evening lodging, we decided to get room at a nearby village.  Though the owner of a farmhouse gite appeared to be unwilling to rent us beds, we were eventually given a private room.  After a nice jet lag nap, we enjoyed a good dinner in the company of Bruno and Lionel who kindly
introduced us to French culture and politics.

A Dream Realized

 

Tomorrow Esther and I will embark on an adventure which we have been dreaming about for five years.  We will be walking a thousand miles through France and Spain on the Camino de Santiago.  The walk is an ancient Catholic pilgrimage from starting points around Europe to the cathedral in Santiago where the bones of James the apostle are enshrined.  The adventure provides an appropriate translation experience as we both retired from our jobs this summer and launch into 'retirement.'  We chose the route that begins in Le Puy, France because we want to enjoy the pastoral landscape of southern France before joining the well travelled Spanish portion of the Camino.  Stay tuned for details.