Pilgrimage Pt.5.
Bonjour I've just walked 15 km in 3 hrs carrying a 15kilo rucksack. One last hill until Montbonnet.
No one has overtaken me but I have passed dozens. My dog taught me well. Arrogance?
I left Les Capucin this morning around eight and began the steep and steady route Saint Jacques as it rises straight behind Le Pu(y) to the south west. I was huffing and puffing with that first exertion beyond compote and café. I was able to stop and look back at the cathedral and statue this morning without having walked to death yesterday beyond a couple of significantly inexpensive tourist attractions: four euro. It is a great vista to view the terracotta tiled roofs and the bell tower rising towards the nineteenth centuries crowning glory in this town. By now I am sweating happily into my stride. The tempo of my exerting is soon over as I hit the smooth rhythm that always defines my stamina, once the initial assault is complete. We pass a number of quite facinating natural monuments as we hit du Pays and there isn't any longer the buzz of le motor or the mindbending drill that is digging up the GR65 from Le Pu(y) up to Les Capucin. This noise prevents me from ever loving modernity; you cannot negoiate with nature when you can no longer witness its existence.
To my right we pass a wall of massive stones worked from black basalt. Mightier than even the largest back in York but this might be for a farm building that would withstand armegeddon. This structure is a surprise to my English eyes. We own no construction material quite so common yet mighty.
On the left sits Deves the remains of a volcano and a surge of lava frozen for millenia pointing at me arrow like. Questioning me why I took so long to pass this revelation?
I heard Patric of Fountainbleau mention niege vendredi. It is meant to snow where I am staying tonight; the leaves on the trees have hardly shot yet and l'herb is frequently green and we're heading for June. The season might still be Winter although the sun arises boldly. Should we be ready for another bad harvest of stunted grasses, lentil, legumes, fruit and vegetables?
The two French travelers I leave behind. I enjoyed the teaching along the way with Dominique as we each names path side plants in each other's language; nettles become hortie and cow parsley I reinvent as la vache h'erb verte: moo as bounding over the right come cows to investigate; stampede!
I walked between Dominique and Patric for a while after our café stop, where they both order pain au saussion from Le petit marche, we refill our water containers, I observe my first rural memorial to le Guerre Monde Une.
Once we set off towards Lic/Liac I decide Patric talks too much. I also want to push on and he might be very much slower than either Dominique or I but more likely to walk the same pace as him, at fifty-seven and sixty respectively. So I decide to press on alone for a while.
The first challenge of the way so far is a leg towards Montbonnet where the route is liable to flood; a stream runs pursuasively towards me. Most hop over a wall to continue along in a field to the left/right. I consider this other route mote marshy so stick to the main current. A field test for my GORE-TEX lined walking boots. I tramp through mud and various crossing rolling threads of water until I meet the road, flying past Belgian smoking his thirtieth day since starting out from Flemish stronds. I talk shortly before I set off towards Montbonnet for a break fifteen kilometers in three hours. From nowhere comes a bespeckled and short trousered Francá who I worry will actually overtake me if I hang around. We begin walking the same rate to Montbonnet: Joelle.
We exchange pleasentaries and his wife was in York for ten years. He says his English is terrible in French which I understand well when he explains his wife does all the talking when they have English guests. We pop into a café and both eat a croix jambon pain and I have a verbana tea, banana and compote le pomme. Off we set having discussed the joke on the wall in some depth. The yellow water/ le jaune l'eau is pastis time a la beer o'clock. The last leg is coming, but the most dramatic by a considerable way. With 7.5 kilometer to cover until we stop.
Up the pine covered hill side we plunged on. Again, after our break, I puff and sweat up the stiff incline. The Chemin demands resiliance. There is another stream clogging our path as we bridge the summit amidst spruce to our left away from the true path which is treacherous in the extreme; a couple of attempts make wallow too close to a tipping point. Then once we come out onto a metaled road the beauty of the plateau from the horizon makes all the previous hours worthy of the challenge.
Coming down the three kilometres to Saint-Privat we drop into a crevass; all along the route today I have felt a dejavue but this puts me quite clearly some six years ago when walking from Elterwater to Grassmere via Chapel Stile during September 2007. The same erroded boulder strewn muddy twisty path which suggests a torrent during a deluge.
We arrive at 1430 in Saint-Privat d'Allier, we split him leaving to the left and I go straight ahead. I joked with him, as he found my walking rate/tempo suitable to himself, that we become a fellowship/compaigne known simply a la compaigne au tombler.
Once I change into shorts and sandles I take to a wall overlooking the valley where we pilgrims continue tomorrow, consume some biscuits and comote with le chien a Labrador; what a glorious view.
As I am writing my journal two other pilgrimages from Germany/Switzerland whom I met at the original Gite Relais Saint Jacques: Christian of Halle and Patric of Basel, arrive. Christian, who walked over one thousand kilometres so far, has an ice pack on his knee. I say hi, they commence a conversation in German so I decide to exeunt to collect a pain.
Tomorrow we set off for Sauges.
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