WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 13

Cloyes-sur-le-Loir to Vendôme: 36km

I love this morning already. All it takes is a pharmacy.

After coffee in the corner café, I go in to the pharmacy to get some antihistamines to stop my legs swelling up from the bites, and the lovely lady makes every effort to understand me. She even asks whether those little black flies are a problem and finds me something that will deter anything that might approach me in the forest.

But more than that, she asks me about the route, she estimates the weight of my rucksack (spot on), she gives me free creams for my feet. Her colleague, the chief pharmacist, stands to one side listening, despite the shop full of customers, before joining the conversation. She’s walked the camino in Spain and wants to share.

And just as I’m about to leave Troyes, another little act of friendliness. A gentleman stops in his tracks in front of me, smiling and ready to talk and ask me about the route. He says he sees so many cyclists going past, but you can’t talk to them. I tell him, we walkers may be few, but we’re always happy for a chat..

A friendly shop deserves recognition. Everyone who says hello on the street deserves recognition. The world becomes a happy place.

A few hours later, I’m sitting on a concrete bench on the main road outside Morée, just a few steps from the out-of-town Carrefour supermarket, eating my lunch. I’d worked out it was a 15-minute walk into town to sit outside the historically significant Chapelle Saint-Jacques in Morée itself. But 15 minutes is a long way when it’s hot and humid.

The walk here has been pleasant enough, through small fields and villages, though quite exposed. At one point I spot some garden furniture standing by a patch of grass near a row of houses. I don’t think it’s been left there for walkers, but it’s on my side of the hedge, so I sit down and have a rest. I wonder if the owners realise how important this little corner they’ve set up has been.

But back to the lunch on the bench. I’m hardly making the most glamorous advertisement for the Camino. I’m adjusting the socks hanging off the back of my rucksack to see if they’re dry, sorting the rubbish from my lunch, pouring water into the little Orangina bottles tucked into the side pockets of my bag, unkempt as usual.

A woman I’d seen earlier on her way to Carrefour, who had looked oddly nervous of me as she passed, walks back and passes me again. I see her hesitate for a moment, with that sudden stop you make when you realise you’ve forgotten something, before turning round again. I wonder if she’ll acknowledge me this time.

But she doesn’t just acknowledge me. She walks straight up to me. It seems her awkwardness had simply been the effort of holding back the questions she wanted to ask.

“Are you walking the Chemin de Saint-Jacques? Are you walking it on your own? What’s the accommodation like? How do you do it? How long do you walk each day? Is it difficult?”

It turns out she’s been carrying around the idea of walking it herself, and had been wrestling with her embarrassment about asking me. But the fact that she stopped, and more importantly, that she stopped, turned back, and asked anyway, makes me think she’s exactly the sort of person who’ll do it one day.

And if me sitting there, hot and tired, with my little bags strewn around me, didn’t put her off, she’s an elegant, sensible-looking woman. I don’t think anything will.

The last part of the day is mentally and physically exhausting. The skies are mainly grey and the humidity is uncomfortable. After a pleasant lakeside walk out of Morée, the walk is mainly on small tarmacked roads through small towns and agricultural land, roughly parallel to the river.

When I arrive at the Youth Hostel in Vendôme, I am done in. I am shown to my small dormitory room, which I have to myself, and immediately give up on the idea of going to the shop, when I see the breakfast set up ready for the morning. It is gone in minutes of being left in the room.