WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 39

Labouheyre to Onesse-Laharie: 24km

I have breakfast with Ulrike this morning. I have my porridge made from the night before, my demi-baguette with jam and butter, a yogurt, a banana, a bowl of coffee. She has a potato from last night’s dinner and is off while I am still digesting.

It is a late start, and Jacques and Jacqueline are waiting outside to say goodbye. I do wonder how long they have been waiting, but it feels good to be seen off. In my bag, I have an excellent sandwich and canelé from the boulangerie next door. I am prepared for a good morning’s walk along the motorway.

Before I even reach the edge of town, I’m stopped and given specific instructions on how to follow the cycle path to the motorway. And as I’m working my way along the path, I get signs from cyclists pointing me to which exit to take on each roundabout. It is an excellent service.

As well as a beautiful centre, and possibly the best boulangerie in France, Labouheyre also has an industrial zone which the cycle path negotiates on its way to the motorway and I see the hidden workings that allow this pretty village to thrive. Life is not bypassed here.

Walking the motorway is oddly enjoyable. The noise as I walk along my parallel path means I have to attach my phone next to my ear to listen to my podcast. Podcasts are necessary for stretches like this, but earphones are not allowed in my personal rule book. And with them I might have missed my first big beep of encouragement from a Spanish lorry going past. I presume it’s for encouragement, I don’t really care. Alongside the motorway, beauty is still to be found, and after a while the traffic just becomes a companionable buzz.

After a couple of hours, the path leaves the motorway via a service station. I am very tempted to approach it on foot for my lunch. Instead I carry on and sit down to have lunch at a much welcome bench beneath the shade of some young oak trees. This place isn’t marked as anywhere on the map. I can see there are a few houses, but that’s all it takes. A few houses means a break in the plantations, and in this case, a little bench.

I’m interested in the people who live out here. Maybe the houses are holiday homes. But these seem like people who choose to live on an island or on a remote mountain. These are islands in the vast forests, refuges.

Sitting at my bench, I have an excellent exchange with the Mairie at the next village. After having the same conversation dozens of times, I should be perfect by now. But still, I felt as though this time I got it spot on. It’s a real shame that my fluency in bad French will soon be of no use to me. I wonder how long it will take for me to pick up my old level of fluency in bad Spanish when I cross the border. I feel I should start practising, but it took me as far as Poitiers to stop saying ‘por favor’ in every shop, and I don’t want to backslide in my last two weeks in France.

For the last stretch, like everyone else today, I ignore the pointless arc to the left and walk straight on down the road to the village. We know by now that there will be no great view or monument to miss on the alternative official route. A little way down the shortcut, I see Chantal and Gérard having a picnic in a shady ditch. The bench was too well hidden.

At the Mairie of Onesse-Laharie, the lady at the town hall is waiting for me. When she gets my stamp all wrong, she stamps again on a piece of paper, which she carefully cuts out and glues into my credencial over the offending first attempt. I find this strangely touching.

At the gîte is Ulrike, already onto her hand washing, and Arnaud, a young man walking from home in Bordeaux. Together, we walk to find the local bar-tabac and tour the village while we wait for it to open. I comment to Arnaud that I’m impressed with the rare phenomenon of Ulrike walking from home for her first Camino. “But I am doing that too!” he reminds me, half joking. Hamburg, Bordeaux – home is home.

Back at the gîte, Gérard is quite horrified at the ingredients I have bought for my panaché. I had to make do with Orangina and a can of Desperado beer. He’s probably quite right, but it’s cold, and it’s fizzy, and it’s as close as I can get. I am not French, so am allowed to debase such traditions.

As there is no internet in the gîte, each of us is positioned around the village, me on a bench down the road under a tree, Arnaud up in the town square lying down on a bench outside the mairie, and Gérard and Chantal wandering up the hill to the church. Only Ulrike, with her magic German internet coverage, lies comfortably in her bed.

At seven o’clock we all come together back at the gîte. From his prime position on the Mairie bench, Arnaud has seen a pizza van up in the village and he hands around the menu. So half an hour later the five of us share our meal, proper pilgrim style, just off the crossroads on the edge of Onesse, sitting around the table outside our tiny hut of a gîte.

The weather turns shortly after we finish, with a sudden strong wind and quickly gathering clouds.

We get ready to settle down for the night and turn off the light, leaving the windows and the shutters wide open on our room to let in some air. Suddenly Ulrike starts from her bed.

“Oh my God!”

I go over to see what’s the matter, and then she points at the window. Ulrike, Arnaud and I stand together, looking up at the sky, lit with constant flashes of lightning.

The storm has come early. We hope it will pass by dawn.