WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 40

Onesse-Laharie to Taller: 26km

Travelling in a group gives the day a slightly different tempo.

First thing in the morning, Ulrike leaves on her own path to the coast. I hear her saying goodbye to Chantal. “Maybe we’ll meet again.” Arnaud translates into French, to which Chantal replies, “No, no, we won’t.” It’s strange that Chantal has become the German in this conversation. I give Ulrike a hug.

And then, as I leave, Arnaud is waiting outside, so we walk together for the first few hours to L’Esperon and the perfectly placed café I spotted on the map.

With Arnaud I can speak at length in English for the first time in weeks. I ask him how he learnt to speak so well, and he tells me the stories of his various experiences in English-speaking countried, but the first trip to Ireland trumps them all.

He tells me that at twelve years old, he was part of a programme that placed children with host families in Dublin. When they arrived, all the host families were waiting with the names of their children written on pieces of paper.

As the children each got taken by their hosts, Arnaud found himself unclaimed. A group leader took him to sit down, have a drink and something to eat, and then told him he had a bit of news for him. Arnaud’s host family was two hours away from Dublin and he was to take the bus to meet them.

So, he was put on a bus with almost no knowledge of English and absolutely no knowledge of Ireland, given the name of the stop, and sent off alone.

When the two hours was nearly up, he woke and pointed at the address to the driver, rather worried, as this was the middle of nowhere as far as he could see. The driver indicated that he would show him the correct stop. And when he got there, a family was indeed waiting to take him away.

He spent the next two weeks in a place he still couldn’t identify. He’s trying to explain what the local kids were like. “They wore their caps at a funny angle and hung around in groups in the common spaces between the houses. The houses were grey and all looked the same”. I get an idea of what he’s trying to describe, but he struggles, not because he lacks the language, but just because I think this was something a nice middle-class boy from Bordeaux has ever had a reference for.

But the second week was good, he said. “We all went camping”.

Eventually, as we’re approaching the perfectly placed village of Lesperon, we see Gérard and Chantal, and we all go to the perfectly placed Bar Tabac for our second petit déjeuner.

Gérard gives it his stamp of approval and tells me something about the history of the bureaucracy of bar-tabacs and how they’ve changed over the last fifty years. After that, we all move on to the equally marvellously placed, friendly little Proxy supermarket, where we get our supplies.

Taller, we discover, has nothing but a pizzeria.

At one point we discuss heights. It turns out that Arnaud is six foot five, and I can’t help but remark, “I hadn’t noticed.” And it’s true. He doesn’t have the personality of someone who is that tall. But when he’s walking next to Chantal, who is a good ten centimetres shorter than me, I notice.

And we set off again, eventually splitting up into two parties of two, Arnaud and I having developed a pace of occasional chat and silent, companionable silence. I am also very pleased that the insects prefer him to me. He teaches me the french for ‘lightning rod’

We stop at a bench where the famous Battle of Taller, which apparently created the region of Gascony in the 900s, was fought. There’s a little box on a tree asking people to leave a poem. I write my two lines of poetry I learnt at school and pass the book to Arnaud, who looks a bit confused, writes a poem and gives it back to me.

When I place it in the box in the tree, he seems relieved. He hadn’t seen the box and had thought the poetry-writing exercise was simply my caprice.

And so we continue to the village of Taller, where nothing but pizza awaits us.

It lives up to our expectations. It really does have nothing else. Well, it has a gîte with four beds and a microwave and a bathroom-cum-kitchen and a shower, and we can hang our washing out in the town square. It is a nice town square, with a mairie and everything. But the Bar Tabac Epicerie is undergoing renovations. Quel horreur.

At six o’clock we all troop over to the pizza hut directly behind the gîte. I tell the others I’m going to get a taco. Arnaud asks me if I realise it’s a French taco. I say yes, because it’s called a French taco on the menu.

“But do you know what a French taco is? It’s not what you imagine”.

Well, I do know what a French taco is, because I can see the picture, and it looks quite nice, meat and chips in a wrap. But I decide, after the Orangina panaché incident yesterday, I don’t want to disgrace myself. I choose a burger. It is an excellent pizza place.

Gérard is very disappointed that there is no opportunity to provide the fine French wine he’s been talking about for three days. But, to be honest, I’m quite happy with my unsophisticated paper cup of rosé for €1.25.

“It’s your last day with us”, says Chantal. “Will you miss us?”

“I will.”