WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 26

Brioux-sur-Boutonne to Aulnay-de-Saintonge: 23km

I see the dawn. It’s a miracle. For once I managed to get up early and leave early. Twenty minutes later than I’d planned, but even so, twenty minutes before seven means I have just over three hours of walking before the temperatures go over 30 degrees. Great start to the day.

As I’m having breakfast, a brief hello with Jean-Baptiste, who has come in to use the facilities. He and Matthias were too hot in the house last night, and so took their camping mats and are sleeping out in the garden. Clever boys.

Last night I lay in bed with a towel next to me, mopping my brow until the temperatures finally went down. But even this morning, I woke up too hot.

The landscape is different in the dawn light. It is lovely to be walking in a cooler part of the day, with no wish to get anywhere quickly. But I know I mustn’t dawdle. This won’t last for long.

So I walk out along the paths which are almost autumnal. It is all wrong for this time of year, but I do love autumn. And as I turn a corner, I see, sitting in a field, having his breakfast, or second breakfast perhaps, Jean-Charles last seen in Poitiers, who has been camping nearby.

We have a brief chat, but he is not an early bird, un lève-tôt, as I have learned from the boys, and I can see he’s still in the process of waking up. I leave him in peace.

I’m feeling quite smug about the progress I’ve made today. So easy walking when it’s cooler, although still warmer than an old-school summer’s day in England, even at seven o’clock. There’s shade where you need it to be, and the occasional place to sit down. And villages which don’t distract you with their facilities, but offer you a church to break the day down.

The first church is in the roadside village of Ville de Dieu, modern but simple. L’Église de la Magdelene. I’m surprised when I enter the church that Mary Magdalene’s nowhere to be seen. But then I see a door open to a little vestry area to the right. I see what I think is her statue put to one side. I wonder why she’s been sequestered here, when the whole church is named in her honour.

When you enter the churches, you are immediately hit by the lovely coolness kept inside the shady stone walls. And yet, after a few minutes, the breezeless closeness starts to make you sweat and it’s a relief to leave. Again, a very useful way to ensure that just the right amount of time is spent on distractions.

Then after another stretch through tree-covered lanes between the fields, I reach Aurigny-lès-Salles on the outskirts of my destination. And I’m glad to make the detour of a few minutes to visit the Church of Saint Peter. This is an ancient one, with some carvings still in place, and ancient carved slabs reused for the floor.

I’m going to be arriving close to midday, as planned, and I’m very much looking forward to meeting Madame Benoit, who, on me saying I was English, spoke French to me in exactly the way that the English try to make themselves understood when abroad, slowly emphasising every word a little bit louder. But it works. I know exactly where to go, I know exactly what to do. So good old Madame Benoit.

And when I get to Aulnay, Madame Benoit is all I could hope for. She’s formidable. She bustles out of her house opposite and shows me into the Halte Jacquaire. She’s put four bottles of cold water in the fridge for us. The rest is just noise.

I find that walking from outside to inside anywhere, however cool, and this place has got thick walls at least, makes you break you out into a sweat. The only way to avoid it is to stay completely still. However, the mere act of nodding as Madame Benoit signs me in is enough to reduce me to a puddle.

A little later, as I hear her checking in the next arrival, Jean-Charles, despite the fact the co-op around the corner is opening at three o’clock, I decide to do an extra twenty minutes walk each way to the out-of-town Intermarché. It is 38° and rising.

The shade, what little there is of it, runs out halfway there, but the air conditioning at the supermarket is like jumping into a swimming pool. When I walk back out the heat hits me again, and I stop under every tree to drink the many drinks I’ve bought.

I settle down to rest and stay very still for the rest of the afternoon on my little bunk by the window. I descend briefly for a short chat with Jean-Charles, who’s cleverly waited until the co-op’s open before he goes out for shopping.

And then a little later, around six o’clock, Matthias and Jean-Baptiste arrive. I don’t know how, they don’t know how, but they walked in 39 degrees, and they’ve made it.

They both tell me with absolute delight about a tiny Bora Bora style restaurant just outside Ville de Dieu, which had no signpost but they’d just come across by accident when wandering down the road. They’d been the only guests there and had stayed there for three pints.

I don’t know if it saved them or nearly killed them, but it definitely made them very, very happy.

When the temperature drops one degree to 38, I decide to venture out again, as I’ve been lying still for longer than I wish now.

As I walk past the co-op and the little restaurant and the fish and chip stand opening up in the middle of the square, I see Marie sat at a little table with a drink, looking very happy.

She’s had a longer day than the rest of us, having started just before Brioux. She has checked in to a family welcome with two English guys (it turns out 40% of the residents of Aulnay are British). She couldn’t stand the idea of being hot in another halte jacquaire.

I see her point, but she’s walking for less time than me. She has the luxury of a budget. I know I probably do too, but I also have the luxury of very fixed ideas.

Church of St. Peter of Aulnay is worth the second trip out into the heat. At some point, the medieval stonemasons were clearly given free rein by an indulgent abbot.

They’ve done everything, at the tops of the columns and on the arches over the doors, bestiaries, monsters, representations of hell, the Garden of Eden. They just let their imaginations go, these thousand-year-old dead men.

I turn back, back through the village square, where some English residents are putting on a concert of sorts. Back home, he boys are eating, Jean-Charles is reading. At the end of the evening, when I start to lock up, the boys say, no, don’t lock the door, we’re going out.

Oh, there are some perks to being 22 years old.