Over hills but not under hill

So that's it, I set off this morning, keen to get to Figeac in time for the local train that would take me to Brive-La-Gaillarde and then on to Paris.  As usual for the past few days the weather was sunny but with occasional cold gusts of wind.  As I walked I reflected on the whole experience.  I'm not sure I have gained many insights but there are a few things that come to mind.  First, doing it alone was definitely the right thing.  It was an interesting experience spending day after day with nothing to do but walk and think.  When you walk with someone, even if you often don't talk you always feel their presence.  I think I would find it difficult to do another 50 days alone (to get to Compostelle ).  I do feel that 25 to 30 kms a day was a good distance for me, it meant I arrived between 3:30 and 5PM at each gite which gave me a bit of down time before socialising or writing! Before I pause this blog, a final little anecdote to finish off m...

  I got up to a cold gite this morning and quickly got ready to go.  Having checked out my breakfast (which had been given to me in a bag the night before) I decided to share it with the chickens outside my door.  I'm afraid this is a reflection on the quality of the breakfast rather than a newfound love of barnyard animals. I left Noillhac and headed off towards Decazeville (see photo) in what turned out to be a sunny but chilly day.  When you are up on the hills there is still an occasional chilly wind. This stage was a little dissapointing, the landscapes are not as impressive as in the Aubrac and there is a lot more evidence of human activity.  Houses and farms crop up regularly and I was often walking on asphalt. However, my final chambre d'hote (an upgrade from the gites I have been in so far) makes up for the day.  A 300 year old house with a nice fire and proper insulation allowed me to relax after my last full day of hiking (tomorrow is a short ...

I left my gite aroud 8 in what was to be a sunny but bracing morning.  I quickly realised that the stage was going to be harder than I thought.  First my right knee started hurting, not badly but uncomfortable in descents, then the terrain turned out to be a lot more up and down then I expected.  Finally, as I walked through  Campuac, Campaniac, Golinhac,  Champignac and Eysperac there were no open bars or cafés to give me an excuse to stop and have a coffee. I did get to see 2 of Julien's balckboards though.  Julien is a hospitalier (which I as far as I can gather is someone who helps in a gite for practically no pay) for a Gite called l'Alchimiste situated at St Jean Pied de Port (the last stage of the chemin in France).  The owner has asked Julien to walk the path for a month and hang these blackboards with cryptic thoughts written on them.  Thats 8kgs of these blackboards, plus his own things! I also walked through Conques, which is definitel...

  I feel I have gone down the wrong path (blog wise not physically).  Shouldn't a walking blog be about places and culture and stuff? As I leave Bessuéjouls * (pop. 202 not counting cats and donkeys) I can see on my right the beautiful little medieval church of St Peters.  This church is a lovely example of Romanesque architecture and possesses a rare feature.  The church has an elevated chapel (that's the bit where priests  pray or say mass for those of you not well versed in christian religion).  You go up a few flights of narrow hidden stairs and find yourself in a small room of 6 x 7 m with a stone altar and a variety of sculpted religious figures.  A most satisfying experience!   Leaving the village you will immediately take a narrow winding path through a forest of er, um, ... trees (sorry I can't tell an Elm from a Birch)!  The path takes you up into the hills and after a few hours (of slogging up an down) to the charming hamlet o...

  I left Saint-Chely d'Aubrac this morning and took this photo as I left.  The village of the dead opposite the village of the living.  I wonder if it makes it easier to think of dying as just moving from one side of the valley to the other.   There is also a river in between the two "villages" to clearly show the transition (no 3 headed dog though).   More forests, more hills, more rivers, more cows yada, yada, yada.  I can see you're getting bored with all these descriptions so I thought I would talk about communication. Until this evening (where I had a proper conversation with my hosts, more on this tomorrow) the talk has been very one sided.  All I need to do is ask a simple question like how long have you been here or where are you from and off they go giving me their life story.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I'm just surprised because a lot of people come through these gites during the season, which means a lot of re...

Having taken my obligatory photo I left bright and early this morning ready for my biggest stage (30Km).  For most of the morning it was cold and windy as I walked through bare hilltops with very little cover.  This is why my thoughts turned to literature (see title).  Historically, as some of my readers may know I have been considered an avid reader.  However, over the last few years my consumption of books has suffered from the competition of Netflix.  I don't want to knock films and series (although that is exactly what I'm doing) but I can't think of a film that I have appreciated as much as any one of my top ten favorite books. As with many things in life (but not all) the easier they are the less satisfying they end up being. My musings on literature were interrupted by the arrival of a new companion.  An amicable dog decided to show me the way.  We walked together for a few miles into and out of the next village.  I was begining to think th...

This is the lovely village of Saint-Alban-de-Limagnole where i stayed last night (as Felicity guessed correctly).  A typical example of many of the villages I have walked though, picturesque sounding name but a little the worse for wear. Today was an active social day, I said hello to 2 old ladies out walking their dogs, I apologised to a series of horses and mules for not having any apples with me and I scared a hare                                                                  into running across a field. When I wasn't socialising, my observation of the countryside brought back different memories of my childhood.  First I walked through relatively bare and peaty terrain which reminded me of my time in York and in particular of walking or playing on the moors with Giles my childhoo...

  This morning I used a tip that I had read in a pilgrim's blog recently and took a photo of my gite as I was leaving. My main challenge of the day was making sure I did not slip and twist my ankle on one of the many icy patches which had appeared over night after a night of snow. Today was another day of solitude and yet it was completely different from yesterday. Yesterday the grey clouds, the empty hamlets and the cold winds and sleet  made for an ominous, nearly post-apocalyptic world, whereas today walking through a countryside layered with a thick coat of fresh snow I felt closer to Narnia.  First a deer's track appeared on the path ahead of me then a little further on the deer was joined by a rabbit.  The two of them walked side by side (on the way to compostelle?) for a long time.  Finally the deer and rabbit tracks disappeared to be replaced by a young wolf's tracks.  I'm not sure what that story was... Finally half way through the day the wolf tr...

  Advise for hikers: When you leave a gite in the morning always take a photo of the view before leaving.  This will avoid you discovering you forgot your phone after walking for half an hour and having to go back for it! I walked for 8 hours with a few short breaks and did not see a soul unless deer and owls have souls.  As today is a Sunday I was expecting to see at least some random hikers if not pilgrims but no one was out.  To be fair as I walked up and down hills, through forests, across plateaus and through empty villages the weather was certainly not enticing.  I went from a cold wind, to wind and rain, to sleet and finally to snow.  I'm guessing the weather gods didn't want me to have brought a rain poncho in my backpack for nothing and I'm hoping they realise I also brought sunglasses. I finally arrived at my destination in a small hamlet (26km from my departure point for those tracking me) the gite that I am staying in reminds me of Beorn's cabi...

  I left le Puy at 7:45 this morning.   If you walk through Le Puy with a backpack you will probably be accosted (as I was) by the self appointed Pilgrim guide who proceeded to explain to me that (like 90% of pilgrims) I was going the wrong way. He then proceeded to tell me in great detail how I should get back on the trail.  I thanked him profusely and then having checked my map realised he had just told me to go exactly the way I was planing on going!   Half an hour out of Le Puy I come across Alain (77 years old)  another self appointed Camino guide.  Alain proceeds to tell about the "real" pilgrim's way as opposed to the one I'm following.  It seems that in the late nineties the mayor of a village 5 kms south of the original route decided his café needed more customers and so lobbied for the GR65 (which is the official route) to be rerouted through his village.  This adds time to the journey and means you have to take tarmac road...

  Today I took a TGV and two regional trains to get to my departure point Le Puy-en-Velay (somewhere in the macif central south of Clermont-Ferrand).  This 6 hour trip allowed me to get a third of the way through Illusions Perdues  by Honoré de Balzac. I'm reading it because last night Fianna, my Dad, some friends and I went to see the recent film of the book which we all enjoyed.  I was particularly struck by the description of the press and journalism of the time (early 19th century) which were confronted to many of the issues we worry about today around unreliable news.   I'm reminded of the esoteric tour of Strasbourg Cathedral that I attended for my sister's birthday a few year ago in which the guide explained that the signs on the cathedral indicated that we were in the process of transitioning to the age of aquarius which brings us closer to our humanity and rationality (my interpretation). At the time it made me feel quite optimistic about the futur...

Oyez, Oyez!  Let it be known throughout the land that Fabien-The-Pilgrim was born today!  Yes after hiking in the Pyrenees for 3 days, taking cold showers for 3 years, fasting for 30 days and blogging for 365 days I have decided to combine all of my activities into a 60 day Pilgrimmage from Le Puy-en-Velay to St Jacques de Compostelle.  However, as my wife would like us to spend our 10th wedding anniversary together and preferably not in a cold dormitory in a gite  on the Aubrac plateau (she's clearly very difficult), I will be interrupting my journey after 10 days. For those of you who don't know me I am undertaking this pilgramage as a spiritual voyage to a higher plane which will allow me to become a better person through a greater understanding of my core purpose and connection my my soul... For those of you who know me I foolishly announced that I was going to do this and I might as well try to lose weight in the process. I have spent the last 2 days...