WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago: Day 34

Bordeaux to Gradignan: 10km

I have all the time in the world to leave Bordeaux, and I take advantage of this. I can’t arrive at Gradignan until three o’clock, and the walk to Gradignan is a mere ten kilometres. This is a luxury I very rarely have, and I’m glad I have it in Bordeaux.

So I have a leisurely breakfast, provided by the hospitaliers, and chat with them and the pilgrim, whose name I will never know. However, I know everything else about her, particularly that she comes from Cherbourg, which she loves, and she has never seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The jam is homemade fig jam, as it has been at almost every stop.

Also at breakfast, I manage to form a conditional sentence perfectly. I believe the next stage in my voyage towards speaking convincing French will be to do this without looking around for confirmation and then clapping my hands together in joy.

Bernard, the young American Irish pilgrim, is woken up at half past eight, told, “You have to have this breakfast and leave by nine.” I leave at nine on the dot and make my way through the town.

I’ve got a bit more time to see the cathedral now, and I get my stamp from the lady selling rosaries and sit there for a bit, just because I can.

I then decide an excellent way to spend the next half hour is to find some canelé, the local cake, buy them and find a spot to eat them. It seems the shop I come to sells them in three different sizes, and I’ve had enough of decisions in the last few days, and I buy all three.

Wandering through the streets of Bordeaux, I wish I was braver in taking photographs, but I’m shy of taking pictures of non-pilgrims or of sharing stories without permission. So I try to connect the three canelé in my hand with the three biggest impressions I get from the milling streets of Bordeaux.

One: the woman standing on a corner, a very young woman and a very young man opposite, with two signs: one, “Jesus loves you,” and the other one, “May I pray for you?” The second: a busking troubadour singing traditional songs of the Landes. And third, a man sitting in the shade of his umbrella, feeding sparrows from his hand. The rest of us are tourists, but I feel very much as though they belong to this place.

I enjoy every step through Bordeaux. I follow the metal shell waymarkers set in the pavement and get to the wonderful Basilique Saint Michel with its separate belltower, La Flèche, dominating the busy square in front of it.

A man on the bench tells me there are people buried under this square, points at his feet. “You go in that little door there” he says pointing to the side of the tower. So I do as I’m told.

A young man behind a cramped desk at the base of the tower gives me my ticket. “First, go down to the crypts to see where the mummies were found. And then go up and up and up to the top of the spire”. I do.

It’s incredible to be inside the building, looking at the bells close up, and then looking out over the gargoyles to the city and to the roof of the church below, seeing that the detail continues even when no one can see.

I come back down to the ground, sit in the square at the edge, to eat my canelés, until, like everyone else, I’m caught by a sudden shower and run into the basilica itself.

It’s another stunner. They keep the lights down a little in Bordeaux, which helps with both the atmosphere and the stained glass. The glass in this church is mainly modern but as beautiful as any ancient glass I’ve seen. I sit a while, sheltering, and when I return to the square, the sun is out once more.

I enjoy every step out of Bordeaux, right up to the edges, where I must head for next. I am at a crossroads near the university, with cafés all around. But as it’s a city, I decide to take advantage of what only a city can do, and I go for a Georgian/Armenian lunch with enough protein and vegetables to keep me satisfied for the day.

The little green that I pass is in the form of the park at Talence, which is filled with people beneath the shady trees, almost a co-working space: people reading, people working on laptops, people chatting. I’m not the only person who’s found this little oasis in the outskirts.

Out in the full suburbs, a woman on a bike pulls over for a chat. I sometimes think that’s what my purpose is, with this pilgrim uniform, the rucksack acting as beacon, I’m just a walking chatbot for anyone who wants to stop. A role I enjoy.

However, I get a sense sometimes, that they feel they have got through to just that at first, a chatbot, and not the real person who can chatter away to them in meaningful French as they had hoped. But because I answer in a way that mimics a real person quite convincingly, they respond in kind and soon forget. I respond well to prompts and have a list of prepared answers to the FAQs.

It’s funny how the seven kilometres left out of Bordeaux to Gradignan feels exactly the same as a thirty-kilometre day. I think I’m past Gradignan when I’m only three-quarters of the way there.

But the village takes me by surprise. Here I am now, and it’s pretty and well-equipped. I can’t quite be bothered to stop as I’m so near the abbey where I’m going to stop for the night. And I’m just calculating where my can’t-be-bothered-to-stop is outweighed by my can’t-be-bothered-to-come-back-later.

When I arrive at the abbey of Gradignan, it’s one of those grand entrances that brings the day to a proper conclusion. Those arches with the carvings over them, which I’ve admired all along the way, will usher me into my home for tonight, and sitting at the table are Françoise and another member of the association. They offer me water and syrup and a piece of cake, take my details and have a chat. François has recently taken over as the president of the association, and she is very keen to do her job well.

I go out to get some shopping and see a pilgrim trotting along with sticks. This will be François, a pilgrim from the Vendée, but at this point he just sees a random woman trying to talk to him in the street. He smiles and says thank you and walks on.

When I get back, Chantal and Gérard are there, and I couldn’t ask for nicer roommates. We sit around for dinner, my confidence in French slightly undermined when it’s a conversation of three French people and me, but they’re all so accommodating. Chantal and Gérard will direct specific questions to me to keep me in the conversation. François illustrates journeys he’s been on and where he lives, by pointing to the maps on the wall. It’s a very considerate dinner-time talk.

The bits I do understand, or I think I understand, I love, especially the story of Gérard and Chantal and how they met. He was either working in or running a bistro in Paris. She came in as a young woman alone in Paris from Brittany. He fell in love, and eventually she followed suit. And to this day (“and that was fifty years ago!” Gérard likes to repeat as they tell the story) and to this day they seem as happy to be together as ever.

Finally, before I go to bed, I receive a message from Brigitte, back down the line, who has found my earphones in the boot of her car. I tell her not to worry and realise for the first time in years I shall go to sleep without anything to listen to. I wonder if I can still do it. I try to remember each stage of my journey so far until I fall asleep.

I forgot Draché.