WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 36

Le Barp to Mons: 20km

After breakfast, François sets off a little earlier than me. He too has an appointment to meet with his family, and as his is a little ahead of mine, I don’t think we’re likely to meet again. I suggest a photo and he whips out his camera and takes a selfie of us both so quickly that he almost manages to catch me with a natural smile.

“Technology is my second language,” he tells me. Having long arms also helps.

On receiving the photo, I also get some advice on the reasonably priced Savoyard baguette, which I can have made up at the boulangerie across the road. As I wander over, wondering if a breakfast cake might also be in order, I see a figure outside waving at me: a woman with her husband; the lovely Chantal. It is wonderful to know people in these strange places, where by rights you should know no one at all.

They leave and I enter the excellent boulangerie. The woman greets everyone by name, and our name is always ‘pilgrim’. But as such, we too are greeted as part of the community. And it does look like a very good sandwich, although that’s not foremost in my mind right now.

Once more onto the long forest paths. I end up stalking Chantal and Gerard. Chantal has heard me and turns round to wave hello. We chat for a while before I shoot them, then stomp on ahead, determined to get to the supermarket before it closes.

At the supermarket, I hear a little “coucou!” And then, “you didn’t recognise me!” And Chantal is there in the aisle, pulling her rucksack around in a little trolley.

After leaving the supermarket, the places to stop and have lunch are limited in the little village of Belin like this. So when I go to find a bench beneath the trees, all are taken. But there are Chantal and Gerard again having their little bench picnic. They shift up and let me sit with them for lunch, squeezed up together, baguettes on knees.

It occurs to me, I’m not quite walking alone.

Setting off in the afternoon, it’s suddenly become overwhelmingly hot again. I zigzag along the lane, going from tree shade to tree shade. But other than that, it’s another good woodland walk, and at the end I’m rewarded by the sight of a perfect little Romanesque church, which I know is right next door to my destination.

I phone the woman in charge of this place to get the code and let myself into this huge, cool, barn-like beamed building.

When Chantal and Gérard arrive an hour and a half later, I go to visit the church. Apparently, the remains of the legendary Roland and his comrades are interred inside, but the door is locked, so I make do with the people in the cheap seats. On so many of the graves are strange little messages asking those responsible to make themselves known. I wonder how this record has been lost, and why the council needs to know.

After a nap back in the gîte, at seven o’clock by chance I start to get my dinner ready, to be met by Gérard and Chantal coming out of their room, who say approvingly. “Ah yes, it’s seven o’clock, the hour of dinner!” I’ve inadvertently got something very right.

We have dinner together and then while they take calls from their various children outside the gîte, I walk to visit the tiny little holy well just beside the church. I put my hand in the cold water. This doesn’t protect me from the insects flying around, although maybe it reduces them to a manageable number.

Finally, as I’m settling in for an early night, Chantal comes over to me and asks if she can disturb me and shares with me photos of her beautiful home south of Paris, which has beams, like the place we’re staying in. I tell her how beautiful it is, and she says, “Yes, a German couple came walking past, and we could see they were looking at the house and admiring it, so we ran out into the garden and invited them in for a glass of wine.”

I think I have been adopted.