WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 41

Taller to Messanges: 32km

This morning, after I don’t know how many hundred miles, I leave the Voie de Tours to head across to the seaside and my family.

I say goodbye to the path that brought me Denis, Peter — I don’t know where he disappeared to — Fabrice, Marie, Anemi, Matthias and Jean-Baptiste, Claire, Suliac, Evelyn, Alain, Ulrike, Arnaud, and, last but not least, Gérard and Chantal.

I’ve learned about Merovingian and Frankish history. I’ve seen some of the greatest architectural wonders of the Western medieval world. I’ve discovered France, or at least this little strip of it. Most importantly, I know the difference between la mure and l’amour,

I part from Chantal and Gérard at the church and make my way across country, along a beautiful cycle path in the woods. This region is made for cycling.

I’m really not expecting to see any pilgrims today as I walk off route. But, outside the toilets in the foyer of Lidl on the outskirts of Castets, a place where I’d gone to check out if they had the €40 rucksack that Ulrike had shown me (they didn’t), I’m approached by a gentleman with a big “Buen Camino!”

When I reply, he immediately comes over and starts talking. Joseph from Stuttgart has just finished his Camino, and he is radiant and desperate to talk about it. I recognise that desperation.

After a while, he takes me to his car and shows me his many credenciales and his certificates. He’s German with a Spanish mother and an Italian father. And when I say, “Oh, so you speak four languages?” he says, “No, no, no, English just a little bit,” although he is more fluent than I would ever hope to be in any language other than my own. “Oh yes, and French, of course,” he says.

We walk back through the car park as he gives me a few tips for my journey ahead, and we part with another Buen Camino. Some days decisions taken on the Camino feel like a trust fall, and so far I’ve always been caught.

After quite a longish stretch on the main road, I’m back on woodland paths again, just for the variety. And without human or animal company, I now realise I’ve started anthropomorphising the trees, in particular the small saplings growing up all of their own accord. I presume next to their parent tree. I congratulate them on this, tell them how glad they got to stay with their family, and tell them there’s actually plenty of others like them as I’ve walked through the wood.

At this point, I suddenly think, why so few? Surely all the trees have got cones, and there should be lots of little ones here. Why only these few I see? I stop in my tracks and I realise this way madness lies. I stop anthropomorphising the vegetation and decide to pick up my survival Japanese lessons instead.

Konnichiwa.

Finally, along a long old railway track, I come out to a different sort of Landes to what I’ve seen before. This is what Arnaud was talking about: the Landes of the English, the Dutch and the Germans and the camper vans. I don’t hear a word of French in the village of Azur.

But then, as I leave the village, I see four shells on a well and a placard.

Bonjour!

It is the site of an old hospital which took in pilgrims and the fountain where they cleaned themselves. I thought today was completely off the pilgrim path, but it seems they too came any which way they could.

Then from Azur, the walk finishes pretty much as it began, back on beautiful cycle paths through slightly undulating woodland as we get closer to the coast. Holiday cyclists coming by in pairs and groups pretty constantly.

Almost at my destination. I stop at the Bistro de la Gare for my first ice cream of the whole holiday: lemon sorbet, and of course a panache. An English couple and their teenage son come with their bikes and sit at the table behind me. They’re very worried that they’re not doing things right. I want to say to them, “But it’s okay. Everyone’s lovely.” But I leave them in peace.

At Messanges it’s a proper traditional campsite, and for the first time on this trip, soil that’s so soft, a peg goes straight in. I have a slight suspicion it may also come straight out if I move too much or if there’s a breeze. But so far so good.

Two pitches away, outside a camper van, a couple are singing and playing guitar. I could be grumpy. In fact, that’s my first reaction, but then I think, no, they’re actually singing quite nicely, and I won’t need to waste my battery listening to a podcast to send me too sleep. So I decide to enjoy the music.

They do a fair attempt at Jolene, which is fitting, and also makes you realise, there’s only one Dolly.

And as I turn off my lamp, I place a little bet with myself that “Imagine” will be sung within the next five songs. It’s sung within the next two. And even then, it’s hard not to enjoy it when, from all around my area of the campsite, different voices pipe up to the “o-oh-o-o-oh!” part of the song.

Sometimes I know I can be a bit of a dreamer, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one.