Day 32. Roquefort a Mont-de-Marsan (31 kms)

30 June, 2012

And may there be no moaning of the bar

I left the gite at seven-fifteen and took the key back to the Cafe de la Paix. A cat was sitting on the bar sipping milk and a parrot was emitting ear-piercing shrieks. I had a coffee and asked for some croissants. "Il s'en fout," said the woman behind the bar. "Il s'en fout?" I replied. "Non," she said. "Ils sont dans le four." They're in the oven. I often have exchanges like that. Then the croissants arrived and I ate them with my coffee. Half a dozen other customers were bantering with the woman as I left. I had a long way to go.

Tennyson was the rock of Victorian faith and optimism. "Crossing the Bar" would have been heard at funerals as often as "Ulysses" at school graduations. In fact, it isn't quite forgotten yet. I saw it myself in the order of service at a funeral as recently as ten years ago. There is no greater affirmation of faith than that poem:

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I put out to sea

But it also lends itself to parody.

As I left town I faced a typical dilemma: the path or the highway? I yielded unto temptation. Then I redeemed myself. And then I was tempted again.

A road sign said: Mont-de-Marsan 21 kms. I would save up to ten kilometres by walking along the road. Walking along the road is soul-destroying. But ten is a lot of kilometres! I took off along the road. Zoom, zoom, zoom, went the cars. About a kilometre further on, the path rejoined the road. I had a chance to change my mind. I did. I followed the path into the woods. (See picture below.)

I stopped at the little hamlet of Corbleu and sat on a bench on the common. Doves were cooing. It was so peaceful and still I could have stayed there forever. But I had only covered six kilometres. I pressed on.

And then a jarring note. A man was spraying the ditch outside his property with insecticide. Rather than have a weed in his ditch, he was drenching the soil with cancer-causing chemicals. I tried not to breathe in the noxious fumes as I went past.

Then I passed a dog sign even more threatening than those I had seen before, which ranged in intensity from
"Attention au chien" to "Chien mechant" to "Attention chien de guarde". This one showed a fierce dog above the inscription:

Je veille pour mon maitre. Entrez a vos risques et perils

I stopped for a coffee at the pleasant little village of GailIeres. I asked the barman how far it was to my destination. Eighteen, he said, by the path. Thirteen, by the highway, but very dangerous. Lots of trucks. After a little hesitation, I took the long but safe route.

For the last two days I have been walking in the Departement of Les Landes (the Moors). The aren't rocky and rugged like the English moors, but they are covered with bracken and heather. And pine trees. The only terrain I have seen in France that reminds me of the Yorkshire moors is around Aubrac on the Chemin du Puy.

It was a very long day. I arrived at Mont-de-Marsan late in the afternoon and found the gite. Daniel had kindly saved a bed for me. Anxious to get to Spain, the Dutch are doing a double step tomorrow. They have been good company and I wish them well.

Tips for walkers in France

Here are some tips for prospective walkers in France. You probably won't find them in your guide book. Some of them may seem a little basic, but they are all based on personal, even painful, experience.

1. If you are using a Eurail Pass, book well in advance to make sure that you get one of the limited number of Eurail seats allocated to that train.

2. When you've finished charging your North American phone or device, make sure that the adapter hasn't stuck in the socket when you've pulled the rest of it out.

3. Make sure that there is somewhere to eat or somewhere to buy food at the town where you are staying the night. If there isn't, you will have to buy it in the morning before you go, or the night before and take it with you.

4. Make allowances for weekends, holidays and jours de fermeture when you are planning your accommodation and your provisions. The place where you would normally pick up the key - the mairie or the Office de Tourisme, for example - may be closed when you arrive.

5. Walk on the left side of the road. It's better to see the cars in front, than not to hear them behind you.

6. Stop to get the stones or seeds out of your shoe. These can cause nasty blisters.

7. If you are following the signs, and get lost, go back to where you last saw one. This is hard to do, but it's safer and shorter in the long run.

8. If you are following the GR, remember that there is more than one of them, and that they cross from time to time. So make sure that you are on the right one.

9. Pee in the bush before you arrive in town rather than have a coffee you don't want, just to use the toilet, or be caught short when you can't find one.

10. Always carry backup toilet paper. You never know when you'll need it.

11. If you're on the loo, note the location of the light switch. It may be timed, in which case it will switch off when you're in medias res and leave you in the dark. You will have to find it to turn it back on. Or it may be motion sensitive, and you'll have to wave your arms around to activate it.

12. Eat prunishly. I don't want to go into details here, but if you're not careful, with all the bread you're eating - how can I put this delicately - it will be like the Biblical camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle, with very painful consequences.

13. Have a beer when you arrive at your destination. Not only is it one of the great pleasures of the day, but I have found that it settles an uneasy stomach that may result from walking in the heat. Perhaps it restores the electrolytes that you lose through sweating.

14. Take lots of moleskin with you. The Compedes, which you buy in France, are very good at healing blisters even if they gum up your socks, but moleskin will form an extra layer and protect you if you have a hot spot.

15. Go at your own pace. You can meet up with someone who is faster or slower than you at coffee, lunch, or the end of the day. But when the climb is interminable, or there's forever to go, that, in my opinion, is the time to draw on reserves and go like the clappers. Otherwise, you can fall into the pit of despair.

16. Watch out for electric fences. They are intended to keep humans out as well as animals in.

17. Create some kind of mnemonic or checklist for remembering your vital possessions.

Day 31. Le Billion a Roquefort (27 kms)

29 June, 2012

Lady in carriage: Sir, you smell.
Dr. Johnson: Madame, you smell. I stink.

The gite last night wasn't exactly a "Gite de France", as one of the French put it. Neither the plumbing nor the wiring would have passed an inspection. The lights dimmed whenever you plugged in an appliance. And there was a lingering odour from the septic field. We were all bitten by mosquitos. One of the French ladies was stung by nettles and pulled off a couple of ticks.

It was run by a very old woman, who, bent double, fussed around, dealing out her supplies very carefully. She was a shrewd businesswoman doing very well out of the pilgrim trade at 20 euros apiece. "Who hasn't paid," she said, after counting her money.

But we made the most of it. The French were kind enough to invite me to dine with them. We ate outside, ham, pasta, fruit salad, a la bonne franquette.

This morning we left just after seven, and made very good time along a sandy track. The only jarring note was the thundering sound of the French air force flying overhead. Apparently we were near a base. I was lucky enough to find a coffee at Bourriot-Bergonce. Thence, it was a steady slog into Roquefort, which, I was disappointed to learn, has nothing to do with the cheese.

The French are taking a taxi tonight to the station to get a train home. Next year they will take up where they left off and walk for another week. They are in no hurry to get to Santiago. More important is the pleasure they take in each other's company and the experiences along the way. I wish them well.

Tonight, together with the Dutch lads, I am in a gite run by the pilgrims' association. No meal provided, but there's a bar up the street offering a pilgrim's menu.

I was unable to see inside the Romanesque chapel at Ligaut, which, I read, has some magnificent frescoes.(See picture below.)

Day 30. Bazas au Billon (28 kms)

28 June, 2012

Berryman and Baxter,
Prettiboy and Penn,
And old Farmer Middleton
Are five big men.
And all of them were after
The Little Black Hen.

Yesterday, I visited the cathedral at Bazas. On the outside, it is rather unappealing. A tower on one side throws it off balance. But inside it is magnificent. It is not in the form of the Latin cross, but a simple basilica, the nave leading to the altar and ending in chapels around the chevet. Some cathedrals move me, others don't. I sat in solemn stillness for half an hour and marvelled at its simple beauty - the columns, the stained glass, the vaulting. How could I be alone in this great work of art for such a long time? Could one do this in front of the Mona Lisa?

I spent the night with a very religious couple, and I think they expected a very religious pilgrim. Patrick the Belge had given me their number without telling me this. Catholic mags were stacked on the desk in my room. I could have read them till kingdom come. And they were in the loo as well. At dinner I felt like Holden Caulfield when Catholics would ask him about mass to find out if he was a Catholic. "Are they mainly Protestants in British Columbia?" they asked me.

They lived out of town and were very surprised when I asked to be taken back to the cathedral where they had picked me up. Was I sure?" they asked at least three times. And I was surprised to find that this was unusual. I mean, how can you say to yourself, "I walked to Santiago except for the three kilometres where I rode in a car?"

After leaving Bazas by a main road, I walked for many miles along a discontinued railway line. France had its Beeching too.

As I walked over the buried sleepers and lengths of rail, and kicked the rusty old plates and bolts, I imagined a steam train chugging towards me. I remembered that great film with a sooty Burt Lancaster switching a train onto a different track to save the art treasures the Germans had stolen from the Louvre. One to watch again when I get home.

Then I came upon some chooks scratching happily in the sand. They had wandered over from a neighbouring farm yard, and were scratching for grubs in the dirt.

Ode to a Chook

O happy, happy chook!
Thou peckest, thou scratchest, thou diggest, thou cluckest
In full contentment:
Pook-erk, pook, pook, pook, pook.
Bliss it is to be a chook in the sun in the sand.

Chooks in sand are as happy as pigs in muck. And chooks, like pigs, should enjoy this freedom until it's time for the chop. It is evil to keep them in cages.

I met the French group at lunchtime at Captieux. They were sitting at a bar, having a beer, and about to eat lunch. I asked if they had visited the church. First things first, they said. I said I had met very few people on this route. Ah, they said, but the people you have met "sont les gens de qualite".

We still had about nine kilometres to go in the afternoon sun before we reached our gite. There was no way I would eat a heavy lunch with that ahead of me. But the French are French. First things first.

Tonight the seven of us are at a gite quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

In the picture below, the disrespectful gent in the back row of the cathedral who has not removed his hat is not me. My Tilley is perched on top of my sack.

Day 29. La Reole a Bazas (25 kms)

27 June, 2012

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

There's a bird perched on Rod's pole

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines

I crossed the Garonne at eight o'clock this morning. My hostess came with me to me to send me off in the right direction. That's her thumb in the top right corner of the picture below. That's me on the left.

She was a garrulous soul who hadn't accepted the inevitability of change. As she watched the news on television, she would launch into a tirade at every item - against les arabes, les anglais, les jeunes, les sans-emplois, les manifestants, les politiciens, le President - and then wait for me to agree with her. Eh? Then she would mutter and mumble until provoked by the next irritant. But she was kind and generous, did my washing, fed me well, and gave me a comfortable bed.

Gone are the vineyards. I walked across the plain between fields of corn and barley. I passed a sign warning me of low-flying aircraft. What was I supposed to do? Dodge them? I passed a fisherman on the bank of a canal. He had four rods propped up doing the fishing for him while he rested in a deck chair.

I had lunch at Auros in the shade of a tree. It was 33 degrees.

I walked the remaining ten kilometres along the road into Bazas. It was hot, but with a clear sky, it was a bit like Aussie heat, eased a little with a "sea breeze". It's a heat we don't experience in Canada, searing in the sun, and in the shade, enervating in an almost pleasant way, as if the energy is draining out of you and with it the cares of the world.

I rested in the shade, not of an old gum tree, but a grove of poplars. And the breeze blew against me, cooling like a Coolgardie safe. Then it was time to face the sun again.

An air-conditioned coach whizzed by. I imagined the passengers looking out the window and saying, "You silly bugger!" Or in a Peter Sellers French accent, "Vous stupide bougeur!"

At three-fifteen I arrived at la Place de la Cathedrale in Balzas. I sat down and had a beer.

Day 28. Saint-Ferme a La Reole (20 kms)

26 June, 2012

I am too much in the sun

Until now, it has been cool in the mornings when I set out, but today it was overcast and muggy as I left the gite, and it got hotter as the day advanced. It was a comparative short step, but as I walked the last few kilometres along the road into La Reole, the heat was coming up through the ever-thinner soles of my Keens.

Last night the hospitalier produced a superb vin de pays. When I asked where he'd got it, he tapped his nose and said he had a source. Later, the French agreed it was a very fine petit vin. I asked them whether it was a vin de or a vin du pays, and they became very excited and launched into a lengthy discussion about the nuances of the language. In short, it was both.

They are moving slowly from their home in Charente to Santiago, one week at a time. As usual, there are the connections: one has a nephew in Perth; another, a friend in Nelson, BC. Today, at lunchtime, they made a detour to a chateau for a wine tasting. They invited me to go with them, but I declined. I knew that I wouldn't want to continue afterwards. They arrived in town about five-thirty, so they must have had a good day.

This morning, I saw someone on a tractor clipping off the tops of his vines so that more of the growth goes into the grapes. I didn't want to mention it yesterday while I was waxing poetic about the vines, but I noticed that a farmer was spraying with some sort of pesticide that I tried to avoid breathing. I remember Patrick, the former mayor of a commune near Toulouse, telling me last year that we would be horrified if we knew what noxious chemicals went into the making of wine.

On the way out of the little village of Coutures, I passed the ruins of the 12th century castle of Caze. (See picture below.)

Tonight, I'm in La Reole, a town on the bank of the Garonne, which is, after the Loire and the Dordogne, the third of the great rivers to cross.

Day 27. Port-Sainte-Foy a Saint-Ferme (25 kms)

25 June, 2012

Some work of noble note may yet be done.

All day long I walked through vineyards. At times, they stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. I saw vines of every age and size, from fresh, young shoots to the old and gnarled.

As I walked beside the old vines, I was struck by the contrast between the twisted, withered old stumps and the flourish of green above, with grapes already forming on the stems. Young heads on old shoulders! A few of the veterans stood forlorn, bereft of foliage. Others had fallen, to be replaced by new recruits, reaching up to the supporting wires, there to join their venerable elders. All to produce our daily plonk!

At Les Leves I passed a winery, more like a refinery really, with 40 or 50 cylindrical tanks for processing and storing the wine. I recalled the time, 25 years ago in France, when we took our empty containers to be filled with wine by a petrol bowser.

A party of sIx arrived at the gite last night, straight from the train. They could pose a problem for individuals like me, for they fill up the gites, and they've booked ahead all the way. But they are very pleasant company.

Consequently, the gite tonight, with six beds, was full, but the Dutchmen and I had been promised mattresses on the floor. However, they decided to stay at Pellegrue, five kilometres before Saint-Ferme. I pressed on to find that I'm sleeping on a camp stretcher in a storage room, a private room, in fact. This is a gite run by the pilgrims' association, the third I've stayed in: the food is good, and at 20 euros, the price is very reasonable. I didn't want to miss it.

In the picture below, you can see the abbey church of Saint-Ferme in the background.