WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago: Day 10

Berchères-Saint-Germain to Saint-Loup: 32km

My reason for leaving late today is my unexpected love affair with one of Floriane’s chickens. The big, white, non-exotic one has been following me around all morning as I pack up the tent. I feed it a few oats and from then on it just stands there, gazing at me.

I’d like to think it’s me it’s interested in, but I fear my love for the chicken is as one-sided as her staring. With a heavy heart, I drag myself away, while my new friend starts pecking at the cat litter

The first three hours of the walk takes me to Chartres, whose distant immense spires guide the way. But I feel my arrival needs to be prefaced with a little homage to Lèves, the small town on the northern edge of the Chartres conurbation.

The first suburb you come to, especially after a day when you’ve set off too late and already walked in the heat across the plain and through the residential outskirts, the first proper suburban centre deserves a special place. And Lèves offers two bar-tabacs facing each other, as beautiful a sight as any twin spires of a cathedral. I choose the one on the left, in the shade, where I’m welcomed by the clients outside before standing at the bar for my first coffee of the day.

What makes the arrival in Lèves particularly important is that I have lost my emergency coffee. This is what happens when you spend a classy night or two in a room that’s bigger than you are. You can’t really lose anything when you just empty your tent into your rucksack of a morning.

So I stand at the bar with my coffee, next to a man who barely acknowledges my bonjour and won’t make eye contact as he drinks his beer. But even he, as I leave, calls out a reproachful au revoir, which I return delightedly.

The walk from Lèves into Chartres is a very pleasant one, away from the traffic, along the banks of the Eure, which is very shallow, barely a river at this point. Old villas back onto it, now put to different uses. Two men navigate it in a two-man canoe. They’re having a lovely time, but I get the feeling from the way they’re handling the situation that it’s been a good few decades since they last tried. Their laughter is infectious.

And now, before the supposedly main event, I’ve finally found a bench in the shade, with a cold Orangina and my new favourite boxed salad. I am rather doubtful that a cathedral could have anything on this.

However, Chartres, when you get there, is undeniably beautiful. Not only can it be seen from miles away, but as you approach on the Camino route, you come through the quiet back streets, pass through a closed gate to enter the old city walls, continue past the medieval battlements, crumbling into the river, of an ancient huge church that would be the main event anywhere else, and finally you are led in through the official gate to the Cathedral grounds.

I appear to have come in at the side of the cathedral, with the best-preserved statues, and groups of people sitting on the steps in the shade. After seeing the outside statues inside at Rouen, outside statues have become my favourite part of a cathedral. My particular favourite here, the women, just having a chat, while the men stand in lines again, trying to look important.

Inside, the famous stained glass windows are beautiful set pieces, but with Rouen Cathedral still in my head, the cathedral’s interior feels like a huge, cavernous building, made to impress with its height rather than its detail, with the exception of the extensive intricate carvings in the stonework around the chancel. These alone would make it worth a visit. Real people, whatever they’re representing, in the clothes of the time, with the expressions of the time, depicted as if caught in the middle of their day-to-day tasks and conversations.

I find a seat and take a pause in the sunny main square, on one of the shady benches at the edge. Almost everyone is squeezed into this sheltered slither, out of the sun. A young man apologetically moves his bag out of the way to make room for me before continuing an intense conversation with himself. Too long on the plains, I think.

I then have the good fortune to get talking to Danielle and Ron, two Americans on the last day of their French river cruise. They’re spending a little time escaping the group and the itinerary to just enjoy sitting in the shade for a bit. I support such choices. We get talking after I ask Danielle to take my photograph in front of the cathedral.

“Do you want the whole cathedral? You won’t be able to see you very well” She’s got the idea.

Walking out of Chartres is simple. There are plenty of people out, just having nice days by the river. As I take a photograph on my way out of town, I notice a plume of smoke and report it via my ‘feus de forêt’ app. This one, I later discover is a lorry on fire, but when I see the fire has already been reported, I am comforted by the efficiency of the reporting process.

Of course, I stop at the hypermarket on the edge of town. I shouldn’t, I’m late already, but they’ve got cold drinks in there, and air conditioning, and they let me leave my bag at the door while I shop. Happy days.

I arrive over an hour late for my accommodation and dinner, booked with Flo and Frédéric yesterday. For the last 10 km I walk at full power. I even run at times. My legs are wobbly, but with the walking poles I can somehow keep pushing forwards. It’s like gaining an extra pair of legs at the end of the day. It’s still hot, but by now the worst of the afternoon heat has passed.

When I get there, Frédéric is waiting at the gate with Pepsi, the dog rescued from Réunion. Flo comes out to welcome me. Dinner can wait until I shower. A kindness to me, or to them, I don’t know. My bed for tonight is in a cabin at the end of the large garden, where Flo and newly-retired Frédéric are in the process of building a guest shower and loo. I have a beautiful temporary compost loo and get to shower in ‘the big house’

Finally, we all sit down together at the long table in the garden for one a meal of salad, tomatoes fresh from the garden, cheese, pâtés, bread, beer, and wine. They tell me about the local hedgehogs they look after, while in the field next door you can hear the donkey, the chickens and the rescue goat. Again it occurs to, that there is a correlation between the people who take in pilgrims and the people who take in strays.

At 10 I retire, ready for the early start negotiated earlier. I feel my early start is nothing to them.