My Camino

It's now more than 3 months since I returned from Santiago, Spain, at the end of my Camino. But in many ways I feel I'm just at the beginning of my journey. Its significance hasn't revealed itself in a blinding flash. Its true meaning will perhaps only come to me slowly over the next months or even years. All I know is that I think about the pilgrimage I made every night before I go to sleep, I dream about it, and it's never far from my thoughts during the day.

Many have written about the Camino - it's spiritual connotations, its promise of companionship, the intimate conversations with fellow pilgrims, the gaining of an intense self-awareness. The Internet is full of such stuff. There are books by Paulo Coelho and Shirley MacLaine, and other writers famous and not so famous. Fables, stories, histories abound, some of them bordering on the mystical, the transcendental and the just plain crazy. How to find a still centre, a personal meaning which makes sense to you amidst all this madness?

When I started the walk I just lived from day to day. I wasn't even sure I would finish it until I was half-way across northern Spain. Sometimes I was lonely, sometimes I was in company (certainly most evenings), often I was alone but not lonely. I adjusted quickly into a simple routine of sleeping in a strange bed, getting up, walking 25 - 30 km through often beautiful and remote landscapes, having a picnic lunch in the early or mid- afternoon, finding a simple hostel or refuge to stay in overnight, eating a cheap, hot evening meal either prepared by myself or the warden of the hostel, wriggling into my sleeping bag at an early hour. Doing this all over for 60 days. For me there was a perfect, mindless balance of freedom and discipline in this lifestyle I found immensely appealing. But I'm still struggling with such questions as: Was this a selfish thing to do? Was I just trying to escape the 'real world'? Was the whole experience nothing more than a glorified, extended holiday which I had the good fortune to enjoy because I had some free time? My heart keeps insisting on the answer 'no' to these questions.

What I've found is this. I scratched a spiritual, wanderlust itch. But now the itch is even more insistent. The thirst I had, far from being assuaged, is even greater. This is why pilgrims return again and again to the Camino, or variations of it - twice, three times. a dozen times. To top up their spiritual reservoir. To scratch again at that everlasting itch. An itch that will not go away.

The photo shows a polychrome wooden sculpture in the abbey church at Moissac.

Sharing Bread (And Chocolate)

Yesterday's photo was taken in the cool, simple interior of the chapel of Saint-Jean-le-Froid (see pic) which is situated on the Chemin de Saint-Jacques above the village of Lascanbanes - about half-way between Cahors and Moissac. It's hauntingly numinous there. It lies in the old French province of Quercy. See how the simple and beautiful altar resembles a pre-Christian dolmen - I've written about this subject before here.

I suppose the figure in the chapel's stained glass window represents Saint-Jean-le-Froid himself. I don't know much about this saint - except that his name translates as 'Saint John the Cold' - which I saw translated on some French website once as 'Saint James the Refrigeration'!

There's a pilgrim register in the chapel where you can read hundreds of comments pilgrims have entered, alongside their names and nationalities.

The chapel was renovated in 1982. Next to the chapel there's a miraculous fountain. At summer solstice each year people would drink water from it just before sunrise in the hope of curing eye diseases and rheumatism.

Earlier that day, I remember, before the sun had burned off the mist, I met a French schoolteacher and her daughter who were walking part of the Chemin together. So nice for a mother and daughter to be doing this, I thought. Sadly I can't recall their names now. I should have noted down the names of everyone I met. I think it's important. We chatted easily for half-an-hour. They were lovely people - très sympa, as they say in French. They offered me some of their late breakfast - bread and chocolate!

God Help Us

The Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago catalogues the full range of catastrophes which could overcome the traveller on the roads in the twelfth century... The pilgrim is warned that the eight-mile ascent of the Port de Cize, the principal pass over the Pyrenees, is a steep climb; that in Galicia there are thick forests and few towns; that mosquitoes infest the marshy plain south of Bordeaux where the traveller who strays from the road can sink up to his knees in mud. Some of the rivers are impassable. Several pilgrims had been drowned at Sorde, where travellers and their horses were ferried across the river on hollowed-out tree trunks. Other rivers were undrinkable, like the salt stream at Lorca, where the authors of the Guide found two Basques earning their living by skinning the horses who had died after drinking from it. Pilgrims were in theory exempt from the payment of tolls, but nevertheless the Guide reports that the local lords exacted payment from every traveller in the Béarn. At the foot of the Port de Cize, pilgrims were searched and beaten with sticks if they could not pay the toll...

From Jonathan Sumption's book Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (1975)

My photo was taken in the abbey church of Saint-Pierre, Moissac.

In A Little Hilltop Village

In 1930 the Tarn burst its banks and flooded Moissac, destroying 617 houses and drowning 120 people. I left Moissac on 3 November and my morning's walk continued this watery theme. I followed the Canal de Garonne for 12 km. This canal runs from Bordeaux to Toulouse where it joins the Canal du Midi, thereby connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea. (The complete stretch is known as the Canal des Deux Mers.) At one point I knew I passed the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne rivers. But it was quite misty and I couldn't make out anything very much except for the occasional lone cyclist or jogger who ghosted by. From the canalside village of Pommevic (there's a nuclear power station here but I didn't see it) I headed on a quiet country road across flat farmland towards the hilltop village of Auvillar.

Auvillar was the 1st of many bastide towns and villages I would either see distantly or visit throughout the rest of the département of Tarn-et-Garonne and in the next département of the Gers. Bastides were fortified settlements built in south-west France, in medieval Languedoc, Gascony and Aquitaine, during the 13th and 14th centuries. They were normally built to a grid pattern, and situated on hilltops for defensive reasons. The photo shows the beautifully restored medieval market hall in Auvillar's central square.

At Auvillar I encountered an artist painting, in the style of Van Gogh, a large and colourful mural for the local school. As was my custom I approached him for a chat. We talked about the big influx of English people to the area. "10% of the population of Auvillar is now English," he commented. I asked if that caused any problems (we often hear the French blaming incomers for the property price hikes affecting the whole of France). "Well, house prices have gone up, it's true," he said. "But there are many reasons for that. We have nothing against the English living here. As long as they mix in and join village society. However there are some English cliques which keep themselves to themselves and won't even attempt to learn French or take part in communal village life..."

Moissac

From Cahors to Moissac it's a further 70 km along the pilgrim route. I walked this in 3 days. The 1st night I spent at the highly recommended private gîte, Le Souleillou, near Montcuq, run by the welcoming Jacques and his wife Simone. The evening meal was exceptional as Simone was an excellent cook. I passed a most relaxing and entertaining evening in the company of Théa and Béat, a Swiss couple, and their gorgeous husky dog; and Jean-Pierre Jorres, the French actor, and his charming wife Arlette. The 2nd night was spent in unusual luxury at the Auberge de l'Aube Nouvelle (another superb dinner - I was spoiling myself!) The 3rd night I arrived at Moissac and slept there in a spotless gîte d'étape which was a former Carmelite monastery situated on a hill above the town.

Moissac is a major stopover on the pilgrimage trail, well known for its Benedictine monastery, the Abbey of Saint-Pierre. In the abbey church I was most impressed by the medieval Romanesque sculpture (1st photo shows a polychrome Holy Family carved from wood), the 12th century tympanum over the south porch (2nd photo shows a detail from this) and the 15th century cloister enclosing a garden with an enormous cedar tree at its centre. The capitals of the cloister's marble columns are composed of extraordinarily delicate carvings of animals, plants, saints and Biblical characters (3rd photo).