August 25: Mountains

 

Walking through Les Landes was a mental strain.  For six days, from Bordeaux to Dax, I walked through a dead flat land of timber, which resembled at most times more a desert than a forest.  When I read I would be walking through the forest, I was excited for a change of scenery, and a little tree cover in the 30 degree heat.  I love forest!  However, the economy in Les Landes revolves around timber, and you can see it in every mile.  Miles and miles of evenly spaced out pines, devoid of undergrowth, permeated by wide, white sand roads.  Sometimes the rows of trees turn into rows of cut down trees, and more miles of clear cut squares.  Around some of the towns I saw some more natural looking forest, but only in thin buffer zones around towns.  If somewhere else beautiful trails wind through Les Landes, unfortunately all I will remember is a long, straight, flat walk.

The effect of this flat, straight walking is that it is easy to feel like you aren’t even walking towards anything.  Like on a treadmill.  I lost the sensation that I was even hiking.  I was just going.  A few mornings the trail would wind merrily through a natural wooded area and I’d regain hope, but it wasn’t enough to redeem its blah-ness.  Other than that, there were a few hours of thrilling highway walking.  These 6 days I was going through the motions physically, but mentally I had to occupy myself in other ways.   I probably recalled every single moment that has ever happened in my life.  I probably thought about every person I’ve ever met, too.  If you’re reading this and we’ve met before, I’ve probably thought about you too.  There’s a lot of time for thinking.

This is why on the morning I set off from Dax my mind was probably already in another place, I was probably calculating the kilometers until the next town and converting them into miles and into time, when I rounded a corner and suddenly there were mountains.  Great big ones, barely visible in the distance through grey layers of clouds and haze.  But they were there.  I was so surprised, and so grateful, I nearly cried.  I smiled and clapped my hands and said, “yay!”.  I stopped and stared, and although they were far away I was utterly happy.  I felt a wave of joy like nothing I had experienced.  Suddenly it had hit me that I had actually walked towards something, and the Pyrenees were proof of that.  After hundreds of miles of sunflower fields, and vineyards, and flat fake-forest, there they were, the most perfect thing I had seen in a long time.

That day rolled out towards Sorde l’Abbaye along winding country roads, creeping towards the Basque Country, a landscape of green hills, and white houses with red shutters.

Today I went up and down for 21 miles, but I always had my head up, waiting to catch the next glimpse of the mountains which crept more clearly into sight.    I was also consciously aware that these are my last days in France, as well as the last days of the solitude I’ve grown accustomed to.  I’ve had three months of being a lone traveler, one which most people I’ve met consider “brave” to be walking all these miles alone.  Soon I’ll just be someone who is doing what everyone else is doing.  I’ve been looking forward to arriving in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, but now that I’m so close I’m sad my solo adventure is coming to a close.   Tonight over dinner I was anxiously worrying to myself about whether I should have taken the less traveled Camino del Norte over the popular Camino Frances, and then I was like, “Hey!  Stop worrying and go make friends!”

Because three months is enough time to be alone, and now it’s time for a different adventure.  And besides, my Camino is still my own, even if I share the road with others.

Pays Basque

5:30 wake up calls are harsh, but at least I get a sunrise.

Picking out my future houses along the way

solitude and meditation in a village church

St. Jacques de Compostelle

Love you boots, but after 1000 miles you have been replaced.

inside of my beloved, and retired, boots

 

 

 

So early, walking by moonlight.

 

August 20: Flat and Straight

I went to Bordeaux, and here is what I saw!  I wandered around and around and finally headed on to Cardingan.

 

Since Bordeaux I have taken two photos.  One is this one:

Almost there, right?

I haven’t taken photos honestly because there really isn’t anything to show you.  I could pick out some details of the refuges or campsites I’ve stayed in, or take a photo of the long, straight, flat road through plantations of rows and rows of pine trees, but in the heat of southwest France, reaching for my camera is too sweaty an endeavor.

Having nothing to take a photo of doesn’t make it an unworthy place though.  A lot of us, myself included, are always looking for the next thing to photograph, especially now that every man, woman, and child has a camera phone.

I’ll remember this section of Camino as the Meditative Phase.  With hours of flat, straight walking my mind enters an almost trancelike place.  It’s a very relaxing place.  Some people may only see boredom.  I never really feel bored though.  I feel hot and tired, but not bored.  I think after days and days of walking my mind very easily falls into a tranquil state, where I forget about walking and start working out problems that I’ve been thinking about, or things I never knew was a problem in the first place.  Memories from long ago, and that I haven’t thought about since, pop into my head.  It’s like my mind is searching for something to occupy all this time, and so it sends me memories to amuse myself with.  I also talk to myself a lot, admittedly, not usually in full voice, but in mouthed whispers, so if you see me I probably very much look crazy.  And then when I need a little bit of energy I sing loudly to the trees.  It’s hard to sing and walk with a big pack on, so sometimes I just stop so I can sing a verse or two, and then I move on.  In a week I’ll be in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, with many, many other pilgrims, so I should sing now while I have the chance.

 

 

 

 

 

August 16: Wine Country and a Chateau Detour

Vineyards are now in site, acres and acres of them.  Much of the Camino has been through the fields, which are mercilessly free of shade.  The southwest of France is getting hotter and hotter, and I will soon have to do something that is very hard for me, which is get up earlier.  I am already getting up by 6:30 every day, (and my earliest waking was a record 4:15), but it takes me about an hour to get packed up, especially if I’m camping.  By 7:30 or 8:00 the sun is already up, and the temperature is already rising.  If I was wise I’d start walking by 6.  I’m not that wise.

Vineyards in all directions

Last night I camped in Blaye, in the coolest campsite I have seen yet.  It was a hot, long day of 35 km, and I had just powered through the last two hours at a brisk 3 miles per hour.  I arrived into a shuttered town, searching for the campsite sign, which I found eventually.  It pointed towards the citadelle.

One of the entrances to the citadelle

The citadel in Blaye is a fully intact walled fort, with a beautiful view of the sun setting over the Gironde estuary, and a small “medieval”, pedestrian-only village inside.  Through the fort walls is also the entrance to the campground, and I was enthralled at the idea that the city of Blaye was forward-thinking enough to designate part of the citadel as the municipal campground, instead of renting it out to a more commercialized campsite.  My night there was an affordable 5.50 euros.    Since it is literally surrounded by a moat, it was completely free from traffic noise-pollution, though not so much by my neighbor’s crying child.

Citadelle Entrance

The camping office– literally inside an old fort

Another eventful thing that happened in Blaye was that I ate a whole pizza.  I don’t usually eat at restaurants, but I decided that that night was a pizza kind of night,  and I walked around until I found a pizza place, and even had to wait an hour and a half for the restaurant to open, but I HAD PIZZA!!.  And I was the first one sitting down at a table, until the entire patio was full.  Then I was a little self-conscious about all the people watching me eat a table-sized pizza alone.  Eh, who cares.  Pizza is amazing.

Then this morning, somehow to my surprise, (my guide book finished in Mirambau, that’s how), I got to take a boat!  In order to cross the estuary, that is. It was fun.

Here’s a photo of me, alone in the “Grand Salon” of the ferry, if you’re wondering what I look like these days.

Then I walked through woods and the vineyards.  The sun was particularly scorching when a man on a motorcycle drove by one of the gravel vineyard paths.  A little while later he came back the other way and stopped besides me to chat.  We had the usually Pilgrim-Curious person conversation, and I asked if he lived there in the little house up the path, and he said no, he was at the chateau a couple of kilometers away, and would I like to go visit the chateau?  And, yeah, since I always say yes, I said yes.  Of course.

So I awkwardly climbed on the back of his BMW, and the three of us (him, me, and my pack “Pit Stains”) rode off to Chateau Lascombes, in the village of Margaux.

Now jealously view my private trip to a chateau, in which I drank a beer and pretended I was rich, and my private tour of the wine cellars. (I even saw the four remaining bottles of an 1881 vintage.  It sounds cool, but I don’t know how I’d feel drinking something that old).

Chateau Lascombes

wine cellars!

So, thanks Dominique, for the chateau visit!

Unfortunately, the day was far from over, and I still had to make it to Le Bouscat, on the outskirts of Bordeaux.  Thankfully, the refuge “housekeeper” was there when I arrived, (after a happy English speaker on a bike stopped for a chat and gave me directions), and took me in like a mother hen nursing her tired and heat-stroking chick.  Seriously though, the volunteers at these halte jacquaires are saintes.  Not a lot of pilgrims pass through this route, but the refuges have been so nice and welcoming.

Anyway, she gave me the advice, and pretty much made me swear that I’d follow it, to take my time tomorrow, and SEE Bordeaux.  She very much emphasized that I was to wander around Bordeaux happily, eat breakfast in the city center, take in all the sights, and then leisurely make my way to the next refuge, a measley 17 km away.  That’s fine with me.  Bordeaux is supposed to be beautiful, so tomorrow I will unleash the tourist side.  Bon Nuit!