Category: Journeys

Camino 17: No water no food shops and no campsies for 40 Km

Limogne en Quercy

2nd June 2010

Getting used to the routine now.  Campsites tend to be at the bottoms of valleys – next to the river – so the first task of the day is invariably a long climb uphill to the ridge – which we follow to the next destination (sometimes crossing several valleys on the way).  

Raining when we woke up but sky soon cleared for a lovely sunny day.  Up on to the Causse – mostly shaded with small trees.  Lovely walking and only 18K so we were very relaxed about reaching Limogne en Quercy. Once again stumbled on improvised refreshments and an improvised exhibition about the area hilariously translated into English using Google, we thought. Arrived at Limogne to find campsite not only closed but almost derelict.  Back to Tourist Office who suggested we might be able to pitch our tent at the Stade (town football pitch) where there was at least a water supply.  Sent us to the Mairie and hinted we might even get them to lend us a key to the toilets.  You must be joking. Much Gallic shrugging of shoulders so in the end we just stuck the tent up without permission, much to the agitation of a group of teenage boys whom we considered bribing to look after our stuff while we went to find food.  The only food shop in town was closed for an annual stocktake so we had no alternative but the local pizza takeaway – which deserved a chapter all to itself.  The owner had managed to integrate his social life (drinking) with his business.

Found a lovely local café with a clientele who all seemed to know each other.  Beautiful and very aloof young (30’s) woman dressed in black in charge.  Two east London wide-boy builders having a coded conversation about some deal or other.  We sat there for a couple of hours with Alain and his wife going through all the books and maps we had.  There seemed to be a complete absence of campsites/food/water on the next 40K stretch – bit of a pattern emerging – so we decided the only alternative was to catch a bus down to Cahors.

Journal

Des Causses du Quercy, in any other circumstances might have been the very best part of our walk; high limestone plateau – like the Mendip hills but ten times as large – and all the wildlife, all the caves and potholes; everything I love about limestone. Forget the lovely waiter, I called her Sophie but that was just a fantasy name and I wouldn’t have been worthy of a second glance in any case. After nearly 3 weeks on the path my blistered feet stank. There was a moment when I would have sold my soul for a single breath of her – infused (I assumed) with something other than M’s cigarettes and yesterday’s wine, mixed up with sweaty T shirts and socks. Our tent sometimes seemed oppressively small. But I also knew that the sole cause of my sudden horniness was that I was missing Madame.

But today as I pore over the map with a bright orange highlighter line following the GR65 I realize that this 40 Km stretch of impossible terrain for an overloaded pilgrim was the biggest experience I didn’t know I was missing. Two years later Madame and I drove back following most of the route in reverse, but we drove north of the GR65 towards Albi. I’d dearly love to go back there to the Causses with Madame and wander the paths and tracks in Spring. It would probably rival the Aubrac Plateau for wildlife.

It’s strange how sometimes you entirely miss or fail to notice something that under other circumstances might have changed your life. A couple of seasons ago we were down on the Lizard, walking towards Kynance cove and looking for plants. It was fun and we had some success, but in the back of my mind was the possibility that we might find something a bit rarer – Isoetes histrix, Land Quillwort – which, I’d read somewhere, was in the area and likely to be found in one of the pools which dot the landscape. It was prime yomping terrain and I found a pool that was strewn with what looked like the debris from a strimmer, floating on the surface. It occurred to me that it was the oddest place to use a strimmer – especially since I couldn’t see any part of the surrounding vegetation that had actually been strimmed. So without taking a single blade of floating whatever for reference, or even taking a photo for the album I struggled back to the track and we went on our way. Much later I discovered that the mysterious floating material could easily have been the fronds of Isoetes histrix, complete with their spore carrying bases, disturbed and detached by the recent stormy weather.

I’m sure there’s a lesson there about jumping to conclusions. Des Causses – the day we sat in the cafe in Limogne en Quercy – had become a frightening place of deprivation; hot; featureless and dangerous. We just didn’t know enough about it to make a better decision – maybe we could have just dipped a toe in the water with a circular walk. And equally I was expecting a rare plant to announce itself with at least a small fanfare and so because it didn’t assert itself I didn’t bother to take enough notice. I am a ram stamped idiot! It’s known as eisegesis: reading your ignorance and prejudices into a situation; rather than exegesis which is soberly examining the facts/maps/text or whatever and making your mind up only when the evidence comes together.

This revisiting of the Camino walk has frequently suggested that there are times when doggedly refusing to change the plan is plain stupid. For the sake of an extra day’s walking – out and back – we might have ended our Camino with a greater sense of achievement. Who knows? The next morning, with Alain and Daniele, we caught the bus down to Cahors. From memory it took about 40 minutes rather than 2 days. We arrived safely.

Camino 14: Conques

Conques 2010 – the path out is opposite.

29th May 2010

Well [the school party] didn’t quite stay up all night but the DJ had them singing all their favourite pop songs at the tops of their voices until quite late.  I’d gone to bed at about 8.00pm leaving M to finish off his (2nd) bottle of wine. I always feel very anxious when he starts drinking.  Slept all but 11 hours with a few interruptions.  M unzipped the tent several times and told me he’d spent £40 on a [phone] call …… in the night. That’ll teach him!

Woke in the morning to the sound of 50 suitcases and accompanying children being herded right past the tent.  Daren’t get up for a piss even, as they were overrunning all the facilities. When calm was restored 2 hours later I went to the toilets only to have myself photographed several times by children on the coach which I hadn’t noticed was overlooking me.  Left M sleeping and went for breakfast – better than last nights dreadful pizza and chips.  2 coffees, fruit juice, pain au chocolat bread and preserves.  Did all the washing in the morning  and left it to dry in the sun.  Dozed by the swimming pool.  After minimal lunch – picnic –  went to Conques.

All very picturesque but the abbey was cold and, for me, spiritually meaningless.  The town itself is overwhelming but ultimately a gift shop. If you came here looking for faith I’ve no idea how you would find it.  Resting again now. Meal booked at the auberge along the road for 7.30.  Owner looks just like the one of the *Two Fat Ladies who died. As the days go past we just walk, sleep, eat and search for toilets.  That’s about it really. What a strange way to spend a summer. Not very religious and not remotely what most people imagine we’re doing.

* well known TV chefs of the time

Journal

Thirteen years is a long time; long enough to change perspectives, long enough to be led out of Europe by a bunch of liars; long enough to see poisonous and cruel ideologies strip away our security and dignity; long enough to see our civil rights taken away; long enough to see the poisonous fruits of environmental degradation set fire to the atmosphere forcing the thought that my memories of a pristine landscape and historic culture may have already been erased; long enough to know that I’d never be able to undertake such a long walk again. In truth it’s likely me who’s disappearing and I’m finding it hard to adjust to the loss. The sense of morbidity grips like winter – grips my joints; grips my hearing and my eyes; grips my heart which is always liable to go off on a cadenza of its own devising.

This week, on the television we watched “Partygate” – the horrifying documentary that chronicles the carousing and lawbreaking in Downing Street, going on while thousands of people died of Covid. We watched Tory Party conference speeches that were psychotically detached from reality, and we watched the David Olusoga documentary “Union” which dealt with the bloodshed, greed and corruption that fuelled the union of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Any residual faith I once had in our human capacity for compassion, generosity and communal life is being slowly crushed. I was born in Bristol and raised on the horror stories told by my father and grandfathers of the Bristol riots; how the middle classes allowed the miners of Kingswood and South Bristol to fight for the reform acts knowing that their sacrifice would only benefit a couple of thousand wealthy property owners. I was fascinated by Rolinda Sharples’ painting of the trial of Colonel Brereton which still hangs in the Museum. Brereton was court martialed for losing control of the riots, but had been made a scapegoat and committed suicide before his trial ended. Nobody knows how many rioters were killed by the Dragoon Guards.

History and its relics makes fools of us all. I wonder if the only way to conduct a real pilgrimage today is to start with the pot of fools’ gold bought in the cathedral gift shop and then walk away with it into the reality of twenty first century suffering. Who knows? the alchemical work of walking might transmute it into real gold; spiritual gold.

In my twenties I went into a prolonged period of anxiety and depression and so I curse this mood as if it were an estranged acquaintance turning up out of the blue. The doctor diagnosed morbid anxiety and assured me that I would get better with a bit of human company. “Go down to the pub!” he advised. “Pills are no good”. I took him at his word, and months later I met him at a party. I was standing at the top of a rather ornate Georgian staircase. He climbed towards me clutching a large glass of wine. “Ah, I see you took my advice” – he said – and then toppled drunkenly backwards down the stairs in a well practiced cartwheel. Months later it suddenly dawned on me that – of course – I was going to die; but not yet!” Those few imagined words were what you might call a performative utterance and I got better. Ever since, but mercifully rarely, winter trees take on the appearance of blackened lungs and the feeling returns but I’m reasonably hopeful it won’t last

So possibly this wasn’t the best time of year to start remembering the Camino. On the allotment, autumn is my least favourite season because the crops are harvested and all our energy is directed towards clearing up weeds and dead plants. The Camino has always felt like a comprehensive personal failure – so much so that I can only manage writing about it for a couple of days at a time. And yet I go on writing because there’s a tiny part of me that knows the only way to move on is to turn and face the black dog. When faith becomes fetid and blocked with the debris of false belief, the clearing out has to begin. I have to drag the bindweed out of my heart.

My photographs of Conques were enough to set me off on this gloomy excursus. We came down from the Aubrac Plateau exhausted but buoyed up by the landscape we’d been walking through, and were then thrown into Disneyland; the relic of a town, dusted with cobblestones, and rolled into a preserved, boned, rolled and stuffed religious experience.

If you’ll allow me a small biblical moment, some may be familiar with the Gospel story of the Transfiguration – when Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter James and John they see him transfigured – glowing – and talking to Moses and Elijah ( a heap of theology there!). Peter, as always, gets over excited and offers to build three shelters so that (presumably) later pilgrims can return to the place. Jesus (and I’m translating roughly from the Aramaic) shouts at Peter and says don’t you effing well dare you moron – that would be an epochal piece of misdirection. Sadly, ever since then, generations of Peters have been throwing up more and more effigies, buildings and reliquaries in complete defiance of the instruction to remain silent. Now I realize that this is a very loose interpretation of some greatly loved and important verses and that some will think it’s heretical but the central idea is that God can’t be trapped in a location or a building or relic. The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao.

So there’s a sense in which Conques was a kind of turning point for me. The coldness and emptiness of the Abbey exactly mirrored my feelings of coldness and emptiness. The rest was gift shops, bars and bakeries specializing in sweet treats baked with chestnut flour. We got our pilgrim passports stamped and wandered down to the bottom of the valley, knowing that we’d have to sweat it out up the other side in the morning – see the photograph at the top. The untouched beauty of the small town was rather undermined by its chocolate box alleyways and streets and oddly (to most people who don’t know me) I became fascinated by the leadwork gutters and downpipes and took any number of photographs – which I’ll spare you.

This was where the idea of walking away from the iconic place was born. Next time I’ll write about the phone call that changed everything.

Postscript

My friend Rose reproaches me mildly by sending some photographs of Fontenay Abbey which she says is “scoured free of crap” – and I agree entirely. Getting rid of the clutter, the explanatory material and all the accumulated cultus at least allows the buildings to speak. But it still seems to me that occasionally the still small voice can speak through the carnival of distraction – however I think those occasions are determined by grace and not design. So here are a couple of pieces from the past that – I hope – paint a more nuanced picture.

St Thomas a Becket and St Francis of the boot rack

Camino 12: which way? – the dance goes on

Celtic wayside cross – now outside the door of Gerrans church

This Celtic cross in Gerrans churchyard, (in Cornwall where we are at the moment) spent at least a part of its life on its side as a coping stone on the wall; which is a fairly ignominious fate for what must be the oldest Christian relic in the village. I have to remind myself that although we like to think that artistic, spiritual or historical value is intrinsic to the objects we treasure, it’s clear that what it’s worth is what we think it’s worth. So there were obviously times when this cross was valued more highly than it is today – and what’s more, by the 19th century it was no more than a handy lump of stone.

But hold on; what goes around comes around. What if objects, like words, accumulate meaning, and like words, also shed them. For instance while we were walking the Camino we found several enormous stone frames standing outside old farm buildings. One of them had an immensely strong looking set of straps, but I had to read some history to discover that these frames were used to restrain oxen while they were being shod by the local blacksmith. I’m perfectly content for the frames to be both redundant for practical use – because there’s not much call for oxen with shoes these days (perhaps there should be but that’s another argument); but now they are charged with meaning and resonate as object metaphors for a lost age.

Looked at in this way, the Celtic cross still resonates meanings from the past and still, if we choose to allow it, carries a kind of accumulated spiritual meaning for us. But it’s important to stress that whatever that meaning is, it will take the form of a dialogue. We take questions to these powerful objects; questions such as “what is your name?” “what was in the mind of your maker?” “what kind of world did they live in? and what were their beliefs? “What is your purpose?” Happily we know the answers to some of those questions; this stone began its life as a wayside cross, perhaps in the so-called Dark Ages after the Romans had left, taking their form of Christianity with them – whilst the Celtic church of an earlier – perhaps 3rd century – period which had been most powerful in the westernmost fringes, continued as before. The two spiritualities were very different and so too were the forms of organisation. The reason I think the wayside cross is significant is because the Celtic church was monastic and its monks were great travellers; setting up cells and monasteries wherever they could. In an age where people travelled on foot or by horse on more or less unmarked tracks and footpaths, waymarkers were vital, and continue to be so on pilgrimage routes.

So much then for their accumulated meanings, but could it be possible that the questioning I just mentioned is, in fact, a two way conversation? Would, or could the stone and other treasured artifacts speak back to us? I don’t think that’s a step too far towards some kind of wooly, ill defined spirituality. It would depend on the quality of the question of course, and the intensity of any meditation on the reply. This can sound a bit religious, but for me, the answers to good questions are almost never concrete but – let’s say – Delphic. The symbolism of the crossroads is crucial, because it involves choosing – the ultimate derivation of the word crisis is the Greek crino – to choose. So instead of answering the question where now? the function of the Celtic waymarking cross is to ask it – where now? All I know is that once I’d seen the 7′ high stone I felt compelled to go close to it and see. The stone called me.

Inside Gerrans church there are other speaking objects. A 14th century font carved from granite – Cornish stone; 15th century pew ends bearing the pineapple crest of Katherine of Aragon; the remains of candleholders from the early 20th century, Victorian floor tiles – and so it goes on. But the church is on its knees. The systematic withdrawal of support from these little parishes towards the centre exactly mirrors the social depredations of successive governments. Oblivious to the cultural and social significance of village churches they are being allowed to close.

As we went into the church I read the notices and after we left, I googled up their web page and it was enough to break your heart. These parishes with their 1500+ years of history are being abandoned. Here there are three voluntary churchwardens, but no licensed lay minister and no priest helping to keep them alive. You might think it seems as if the Romans are leaving all over again – which could, just could, lead to a rediscovery of Celtic spirituality. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our tired and bankrupt churches gave up trailing thirty years behind secular fashions and arguing about challenges long-since settled by the rest of us; gay marriage stops being a “problem” when marriage stops being a property relation; women as priests and bishops stop being a “problem” when women stop being a problem.

So there’s a huge opportunity to rediscover the hospitality, the creativity and the profound love of nature exemplified by a Celtic spirituality that’s open to all and most importantly refuses to define itself in a series of attempts to imprison God into a linguistic cage. There is no theology beyond poetry, song and music.

So where does this all lead me?

18th March 2017 – the Wye in flood at Hay on Wye
This is going to be a hard one to explain ..

I had to give up my futile search for some kind of overarching meaning on 18th March 2017. I know it was that moment because I’d taken this photograph and I just knew it was over. We turned our backs to the river and then I turned back for a moment and said goodbye to God. Then I waited for some kind of catastrophic reaction – the full Kübler Ross experience; anger, denial, bargaining and depression followed at a decent interval by acceptance. No such thing happened because I went straight to acceptance, feeling nothing but a sense of relief that at last I could stop trying to hold the tectonic plates together. What I didn’t realize until this week was that the flooding river wasn’t moving away from me; it was offering me an object metaphor which I could return to six years later with a second piece of the jigsaw – the Celtic wayside cross – with which I could continue the journey in the right direction. The river flows, which is the state of everything in nature. I could go on for ever embellishing and working up the idea but that won’t do because it’s the dreary job of theology to explain, when what the river demands is wonder, that’s all. I filled the ensuing years with the allotment and with learning the plants, and intellectually as well as physically it was absorbing and rewarding – but there was no music in my life; I wasn’t singing any more. My sense of wonder couldn’t tolerate being spread so thinly.

Which was certainly why, on walking into Gerrans church I felt the most extraordinary sense of peace. How strange and how unexpected?

The way inclines but never compels. (To steal a phrase from the astrologers)

Writing up my notes on the Camino we walked in 2010 has led to some provisional insights among which is the understanding that the full Damascus Road experience isn’t really what it’s about, and also that that once you’ve signed up and set foot on the path, you’ll always be on it whatever happens on the way and however far you ranged in search of an easier route.

The initial landscape on the Aubrac plateau before it morphed into woods.

For a long while I’ve had a set of photographs taken in Estaing that I couldn’t place anywhere in the walk, and so finally I’ve gone back to the map and figured out that it’s a fairly short walk beyond Espalion, and so we didn’t hang around apart from a coffee, I think, somewhere down near the bridge and the river. Then we pushed on. So having finally got this piece into the jigsaw I could see that – far from leaving the hill country behind we were still in the thick of it. Unlike the Aubrac Mountains, this landscape was heavily wooded and the footpath – marked all the way, I’ve never mentioned before, by white and red posts- balises was mostly easy to follow.

And there we are – I’ve probably tried to say everything and actually said nothing.

27th May 2010 ctd:

Bed at 9.00pm.  It rained at night and it was raining when we set off so M was pissed of with the extra weight [the tent weighs half as much again when it’s wet].  Turned out to be a monster day again. Following the River Lot but crossing 3 tributary valleys so climbing maybe 1000 metres.  27K in all. M a bit hypo and cross.  Found campsite in Golinhac (650m) very good.  Pitched tent and had a couple of coffees before walking down to the shop to buy picnic tea.  Sadly I’m too tired to eat so we’ll have to make up in Conques tomorrow.  Easier day I very much hope.

Journal

Camino 10: Nasbinals

24th May 2010

Slept late and wandered off to the post office only to discover that today is a bank holiday in France so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to post stuff off.  Dined on cold tinned cassoulet but by then I’d got the raging shits from too much rich food so I’m glad we’re not walking today. PO at 9.00 tomorrow meanwhile we did some washing and lazed about charging phones and cameras.  Supper at same restaurant tonight but cheaper menu I think.

“Supper at same restaurant”!  Les Sentiers d’Aubrac – remember never to eat there.  Andrew found 3 hairs in his salad.  The manager was running the service without a waitress so everything was appallingly slow.  The pièce de résistance was a bluebottle roasted and sauced on top of my stuffed chicken thigh (along with some tiny mushrooms).  I suddenly understood why I had been ill all day.  We left refusing to pay for anything except for a bottle of Pellegrino which we gave him 5€ for. Our journey across France is turning us into Bonny and Clyde.  We half expected him to get stroppy but he didn’t even apologise.  [Later, I] – had a wonderfully surreal conversation with a very old Frenchman who was obviously lonely.  I was washing out my water bag and it became clear, when he smiled and tapped his thigh, that he had mistaken it for a catheter and storage bag.  So we shared this precious moment of fellow feeling and he went on his way presumably encouraged that there was someone else on the site who shared his problem

Journal

There are several missing pieces from this part of the journal. My memory has muddled up several bits in places, but since I mentioned sending off any redundant equipment we had discovered we didn’t need or couldn’t carry any further, I’m clear that this is the place where we saw a market stall dedicated entirely to foraged wild mushrooms. In a better ordered narrative we would have brought a selection of them back to the campsite and cooked the kind of dish you see fêted in the Sunday supplements. However with no cooker and feeling a bit disillusioned we passed by in search of the closed post office and wandered back to the tent. Clearly, by finally crossing the Aubrac Mountains, we were about to reach something of a turning point on our walk and from this point onwards the villages – with their temptations – were closer together but the opportunities for wild camping greatly reduced. I celebrated my grasp of French by successfully buying some Imodium and I managed rather better than I did in Nîmes when I had attracted a small crowd of helpful locals whilst attempting to buy some hemorrhoid treatment for another member of our group. Madame’s helpful suggestion of “little balls” had to be courteously rejected. This was also the place where we came across a bizarre shop that sold stuffed wild animals set in eccentric poses; an extremely creepy shopfront that never made it into the journal.

25th May 2010

Up early.  I’d been listening to a nightjar I the trees near the tent.  The wildlife here is exquisite – flowers orchids and the happiest and healthiest cattle I’ve ever seen.  Post was very helpful (we were sitting on the doorstep when it opened).  The surplus gear was packed into 2 boxes and dispatched to Harry’s daughter in Le Houga.

Then we set out to cross the last and the highest part of the Aubrac Plateau at 1300 metres.  Dropped down through wooded landscape to St Chély at about 3.00pm. Best day’s walking yet ‘though only 17K.

Journal

I think all of my happiest memories of the camino were contained in the walk from Le Puy en Velay to St Chély; around 88 miles in all. It was admittedly gruelling going at times with our heavy loads – but that was more than compensated for by the variety of mountain landscapes, wildflowers and the kind of connection with the traditional ways that you could taste. Where else would you find the towable milking sheds which could be taken to huge flocks of goats and sheep? where else is the huge variety of local unpasteurized cheeses made and sold on the farms we were passing through? I don’t think I ever felt more like a stranger passing through and yet never so happy to be so because here were people whose roots went back many generations and whose stoicism, cynicism towards authority and lack of pretension made our own studiously cultivated freedoms look pathetic. Here is where less was more and the past was written everywhere in the landscape and where the present generation thought there was nothing odd about living amongst the relics of the past – a million miles from the Banlieues of the big cities. I don’t romanticise this kind of life because it’s written in sweat, failure and loss in a way we could never fully embrace; but I celebrate it because it’s a way of being completely human that concedes nothing to the money changers at the temple of neoliberalism.

To get the distance between Le Puy en Velay and St Chély I googled up one of the companies who offer fully organised Caminos with pre-booked lodgings, food and transport. The full route to St Jean Pied de Port would have cost us – this year – £8,400 minimum but you could pay more for more comfort. The question then is this. Is then the modern Camino the 21st century equivalent of buying an indulgence, or building a chantry chapel and funding a priest to say masses for you? and if there is, perhaps, a chance for a lucky few to leapfrog hoi polloi into advanced spirituality level five – what could you do with it? and how could you redeem it?

Next time – with a bit of luck – a reflection on creeks, tidal rivers and their mill pools and for my friend Rose a bit of lyrical thinking about how the nightjar, the nightingale and the curlew can undo us so completely.

Camino 8 – on being an unreliable narrator.

Looking down on Aumont Aubrac at dawn

23rd May 2010

Left Aumont Aubrac early. We set the alarms for 4.45 and it was dark when we woke.  I had an extremely restless night – hardly slept.  We were right next to a main road and the transhumance festival parties didn’t begin until 11.30pm so all night there were drunks outside the campsite shouting and banging the railings.  I was praying they wouldn’t see our 2 little tents.  We didn’t want to wake Alain and his wife so we breakfasted at the camp gate on dried apricots and yesterday’s apricot pasties + water.  When we left – way before sunrise – there was a thick mist over the valley bottom.  We climbed and climbed for several hours knowing that this was the last day we would have the heavy (35lb) loads because we had agreed (long haggling session) to shed lots of stuff the previous night.

Big dream during my restless night.  I dreamed I was at Severn Bridge railway station* except it looked exactly like an SNCF station like the ones you see in French films (and in France of course). Suddenly this strange and sinister man dressed like the Sandeman sherry label logo comes towards me.  He’s all grey, very large with no face.  I start to tear at his clothes and in a kind of fast-forward sequence I tear all these clothes, disguises and appearances off one after another – he’s everyone, everything, and all these flash past in front of me until at last I’m left holding a plucked chicken!

After a stiff climb we reached Les Quatre Chemins which was just a bare road junction such as you might find on High Mendip.  Gloriously there was a café (Chez Regine) perched on the corner.  It was a proper French bar/café with Regine – if it was her – looking as if she had been hot smoked with tobacco. 

Previously in Lasbros we’d fond an immaculately clean toilet complete with paper, which made up for the lack of overnight facilities.

Due to the early start we crossed the Aubrac Plateau before the sun got too hot.  Unbelievably beautiful wildflowers – including [this is a misidentification I now realize] gentians which I’d never seen before.  Untouched pasture and some of the healthiest and happiest cattle I’ve ever seen.  In Lasbros we saw a foal that could only have been born an hour before – just standing up all knock-kneed.  It was a hard and hilly day and very very hot.  Even I drank 3 litres of water but fortunately there were many taps. Finally staggered into Nasbinals mid-afternoon.  Andrew had pulled a muscle and was getting grumpy.  Found campsite at other end of town, as always, so probably walked 27K.  Put up tent, slept , had a shower and walked back into town at 6.00pm passing a restaurant on the way in.  So we booked a table or 7.00 and had a couple of panachés in the local bar.  Meal was excellent and shared with 2 Germans and 2 French.  Young Frenchman reminded us it was Pentecost.

Journal

*Incidentally, although the Severn Tunnel (not the bridge) does have a railway station, on the Welsh side, I’ve never set foot on it – so its role in my dream is just one of life’s imponderables.

This afternoon I realized that I’d already mentioned, out of sequence, an evening shared with a nightjar as well as the worst meal ever. Having laboriously checked the previous seven posts on the Camino I thankfully discovered that neither incident was claimed as a component of the walk we’d already done and so I’ll continue gracefully along the Way but very aware of the fact that even with the aid of exif data from photos, a handwritten journal and a pretty reasonable memory it’s incredibly easy to slip up and transpose experiences from one day to another. Why it should be so important to me to get it exactly right is a question I can’t answer except for the fact that as I write this I’m constantly trying to answer a crop of my own questions. I hesitate to describe this exercise as therapeutic but I would love to think that when I press the last publish button on this group of posts, I might be just a touch wiser. Of course, 30 years as a parish priest taught me that life is irredeemably complicated and is very rarely understood by the people having to put up with it, and even less so by the people trying to explain it. That’s why psychoanalysis is so expensive. Not many caring professionals can resist explanations and keep quiet for as long as it takes for the client to hack their own way through the undergrowth.

The day was, as I’ve described it previously, full of wonders. Watching a transhumance take place is like watching a thousand years of history roll back. On a more mundane level, my mention of the newly born foal took me back to the day and the place so vividly I was able to revisit Lasbros in my mind as if it were yesterday.

Camino 6:

According to the Cicerone guide there’s a campsite where we stayed next to the river but I can’t remember anything about it.

Journal

Well the reason I can’t remember anything about camping in Monistrol d’Allier is because after looking more carefully at the journal, we didn’t stop there but pressed on to Saugues. The photo was taken on the endless hill coming out of Monistrol where we were passed by quite an elderly man who was admittedly travelling light but making rapid progress. I said something about it being steep, and he replied- “no, Mont Blanc – that’s steep!” So here’s the day in full from the journal. It includes a stretch I’ve already written about.

20th May 2010

Monster monster day.  Crossed over a big ridge to Monistrol d’Allier where we found an unlikely Englishman called Peter running a restaurant.  Couldn’t stop him chatting. Had a coffee and a triangular toasted sandwich – the machine for which he hopes to sell in Korea (!) –filling was made from last night’s leftovers gratin dauphinoise, bits of dry cured ham and cheese sealed in a kind of crêpe.

After that the going got more and more tough.  We laboured up the side of a gorge and climbed upwards and upwards into a new landscape.  Dairy cattle, sheep for milking (with bells) and goats too.  Very like high Mendip.  Pastures completely untouched and covered with spring flowers. Dandelions seem to be at their peak here – a month later than at home.  Lady’s’ Mantle and all sorts of stunning wildflowers.  We fell in with three women from Nice who were totally shocked at the appearance f a peasant farmer’s wife.  One of them said to me with a horrified look – “This is DEEP DEEP France!”

Eventually we reached the top and down into Saugues.  Found a good campsite next to the river and in the middle of a sports ground.  Walked back into town and found a brilliant restaurant – 4 courses 12€.  Met up with Serbian woman called Jacqueline  and two Germans.  Miss Serbia spoke about 5 languages and just loved organizing us..  Cold night.  Slept well and woke up at 6.30.  Bananas and orange juice for breakfast. 

This part of the journey – aside from being very arduous, as the Cicerone Guide warned – gave us a first glimpse of some of the most lovely countryside I’d ever visited as we approached the Aubrac Plateau. The weather was fine and clear and – being pretty high at approaching 1,100 metres – it was cool enough to enjoy the walk once we’d levelled out. The campsite at Saugues held one further surprise because when we stretched out for a rest alongside the river, M’s bivvy mat was punctured by a sharp stone and we had a frantic time hunting for the repair kit. We had a bit of a barney about the fact that I had a long gossip with Jacqueline which evidently touched a raw nerve with M in the shadow of his ex wife’s infidelity. Anger was constantly simmering not far under the surface and was always inclined to break out without warning.

Camino 5 with suggestions about choosing kit and some reflections on the difference between a walk and a pilgrimage.

I wrote earlier about some of the kit we assembled to take on the Camino and you’ll know – if you’ve been following this thread so far – that it was far too much and far too heavy. No complaints, though, about the little Hilleberg tent which was super light, stormproof and very comfortable; nor the Thermarest inflatable bivvy mats which were brilliant too, and the Mountain Hardware down filled sleeping bag. There’s nothing more cheering in the world than feeling safe, dry and warm when you’ve finally found somewhere to pitch up and you’re cold, tired and hungry. I love the sleeping bag so much that when I was driven back sedated from an endoscope exam I preferred to sleep it off in the sleeping bag. As I looked at the kit just now I thought to myself – why on earth didn’t we do the South West Coast Path? or the Coast to Coast?

With a little time for reflection, that turns out to be a pretty serviceable question. What, if anything, is the difference between a pilgrimage and a long walk? I’ve already said that before we left I felt I’d lost my way and that any sense of vocation that I once enjoyed was worn down by conflict and self doubt. I think that, at the time, I just hoped that I might find some kind of illumination by walking the Camino.

But there’s absolutely nothing about going for a long walk that prevents anyone, religious or not, from experiencing numinous moments that could fairly be categorised as spiritual without buying into the whole supernatural apparatus. The sense of the spiritual could derive from the emergent quality of a random conjunction of material factors – the sound of cowbells on a distant pasture, the smell of the spring air, the wild profusion of spring flowers experienced in a strange place that makes us feel how beautiful the earth is, or how small and vulnerable we are; or it could also be explained as a reassuring hug from an immaterial universal force. Does Gaia do hugs? Maybe it’s our attitude to those experiences that frames alternative answers, and perhaps on reflection a walk can turn into a pilgrimage or a pilgrimage into a walk. In the end; does it even matter?

There’s another possible answer to the question what’s the difference between a walk and a pilgrimage? when we look at it through the lens of some sort of virtue ethic. Going for a long and possibly arduous walk might call into play some or all of – let’s say – the Buddhist virtues; generosity; proper conduct; renunciation; wisdom; energy; patience; honesty; determination; goodwill and finally equanimity – but that wouldn’t be the objective of the walk. However reflecting on those virtues as the walk unfolds and deliberately putting them to use, frames the walking differently, allowing us to reflect on bigger questions such as what does it mean to be fully human? how do I distinguish between flourishing and just getting by? Maybe the objective of the walk is not so much simply to arrive at some kind of holy place – although that certainly adds a layer of meaning – and it should never be an opportunity for suffering for the sake of it because that would be a display of ego and self importance, but perhaps it’s the manner of the journey that matters. Perhaps it would be better to keep quiet about it. The one thing I am quite sure about is that pilgrimage in order to gain posthumous benefits – a get out of jail free card to be traded in against today’s willfulness, is just wrong! A pilgrimage, then, pays more attention to inner change and that’s why it’s hard to do well and easy to get wrong.

My first and finest lesson in equanimity came while we were at art school; Madame studying sculpture and I was studying ceramics. Quite in alignment with my personality I took up two ceramic disciplines that demanded spontaneity and risk – raku and salt glaze. I had made a kiln load of pots to fire in a self built salt glaze kiln, and spent 36 hours firing them in the corner of the sports field. When the kiln was opened it was dramatically overfired and everything had sintered together in a lump that could only be removed with a crowbar. I knew, as I stood in front of a month’s ruined work. that this was a critical moment. I could walk away and try something less risky or embrace the failure as a profoundly important life lesson. I chose the second option and ate it up -and it’s fed me well.

But back on the Camino, did we really need the lean-back chairs? No, of course we didn’t and they – along with most of the redundant or unusable kit – were sent later on to a friend in Bordeaux where we hoped to pick them up later. The improvised clothes pegs are free and available underneath most conifers. The giant scallop shell is the symbol of the pilgrimage for complicated reasons accompanied by pretty far-fetched yarns but it serves as a badge of sorts. Oh and the cheese comes later in the walk but it’s a reminder that if you’re actually taking part in a pilgrimage rather than a mobile supper club, you have to eat when you can, and put up with being hungry when you can’t: it’s all part of the process. Our worst ever meal was a shared tin of cold (we had no stove) cassoulet complete with the layer of fat on the top, but if you look at the top left photo you’ll see the two trees above us in which a Nightjar sang (or rather churred) gently all that night. I had never heard it before or since. When it all boils down, the biggest load you carry on a pilgrimage in any case, is the mental baggage.

Camino 3 – why then? why now? and why me?

I had a stroke of luck today when I found my original notebooks among a box of old files. I still use the boots on the allotment so they’ve lasted around 14 years of hard work. Still waterproof too!

Three questions, then – but not all questions have the same dangerous forensic quality or indeed the same capacity to disturb a night’s sleep. When I formulated them it seemed likely that – at this distance in time – they’d be easy to answer but – well, it seems not. You’d think, wouldn’t you, why then? would be simple; I was due a sabbatical, so who wouldn’t?

Why then?

The Church can be the devil, and when it thinks it can’t be it is!

Canon Francis Palmer in an ordination sermon.

On the one hand, I was an enthusiastic walker and I’d become fascinated by the idea of pilgrimages. I’d even invented and done a two day, forty mile walk from Malmesbury Abbey to Littleton on Severn, following the most likely route to be taken by monks travelling to one of my churches. An old legend told the story of one of my predecessors being murdered on the way to take a communion service, and having the chalice he was carrying stolen by robbers. It was said that a nearby spring turned red every year to commemorate his death. An alternative legend claimed it was the Saxon anchorite St Arilda who was murdered by a Roman officer called Nuncius when she refused to submit to him. I designed the walk to pass both churches dedicated to her as well as my own, and also the spring named after her – which involved a bit of mild off-route trespass. It is thought that the occasional red colouration of the water is due to a micro-organism.

Much earlier in my life I’d managed to include St Ann’s well in Syston into a cross country run which I invented to keep a sadistic PE teacher off my back. It’s difficult for much younger people to understand that we boomers – apart from all the good things like education – also had to put up with a significant percentage of our teachers suffering from PTSD after war service.

Anyway, aside from my interest in pilgrimage and the availability of the sabbatical there was something else. As Francis Palmer warned on the day I was ordained, the church is a dangerous institution. Bullying is endemic. Both congregations and senior clergy are all too willing to destroy, or encourage the destruction – physically, psychologically and spiritually – of anyone who challenges their authority or orthodoxies. I had to cope with a group inside the church who constantly belittled and challenged me; but also a local head teacher who attempted to destroy my career by making false accusations against me. The accusations were easily disproved but the church legal authorities refused to intervene on the grounds that he was clearly mad. We had church members on the doorstep shouting abuse at me or whoever answered the door. We were about to begin a major refurbishment of the church which was overwhelmingly supported by all but a handful of vocal diehards. Yet I was very close to burning out after approaching twenty years of constant headwind in spite of which we increased the congregation, built up a vibrant music group and extended our outreach into the village. Francis Palmer was right, and so was Dom Edmund Wheat who once said to me “always remember that availability is an ascetic discipline”. I no longer knew what, if anything, I believed in any more – apart from believing in the congregation who had stuck with me. I may have thought, without ever articulating it to anyone, that I might, just possibly, find God again out there in the wilderness.

So I filled in an airily optimistic proposal for some funding without mentioning any of what I’ve just written, and it was approved. I was awarded a few hundred pounds most of which I spent on an amazing Hilleberg two person lightweight tent because I thought that was how everybody else conducted long pilgrimages. Then came the maps, the guidebooks and spreadsheets and time ticked on as I bought essential boots and equipment and carried out long training walks.

Why now?

So why am I writing this after so many years? I can think of two possible answers. Firstly, and without any provocation from me, the thought that I might try and walk to St David’s Cathedral popped into my head last time we were in Pembrokeshire. To be clear, I would walk to St Non’s Well not the Cathedral which is 3/4 hour walk further on but far too noisy and full of tourists – and I would do it in short sections, over a period of time and preferably with Madame somewhere close.

The other reason is because I’ve been worrying that the wheels are increasingly wobbly and may fall off before I’ve accomplished a couple of goals. Nothing immediately life threatening is happening but I seem to be taking a lot of medication and visiting the hospital more and more. Bless them, they’ve done wonders, but it seems to me that it’s time – and this is a lovely euphemism – to get things straight; and the Camino is one of those life events that I need to straighten out while I can still put one foot reliably in front of the other. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I’m still post-Christian and I’m still hoping, still looking for an answer.

The second goal – and this is pure hubris – is to finish writing a million words in this blog, about being human, or being virtuous I’m 80% there now.

Why me?

Well why not? However most of my life has felt as if I was being called to do or be something but I never found out what it was! Vocation is exactly that kind of thing which happens when you go for a job interview and protest that you haven’t seen a job description. At the risk of sounding psychotic, words sometimes land in my heart that are incapable of doubt. There’s a form of utterance in grammar that’s called performative. So these performative statements land without warning and because of their nature, what is spoken just happens. Mercifully they’re vanishingly rare in my experience, but it’s odd when the words “It’s alright” plop into your heart and immediately everything is alright and all melancholy and doubt fly away. There was another one – a bit cryptic but I knew instantly what “clear the decks” meant for me.

So moving on we’ll come to day one of the actual walk:

20th May 2010
Yesterday – bit of a slog (that’s an understatement).  We seemed to be climbing all day – could only get a coffee in St Christophe because the (food) service was finished.  Got to Montbonnet and decided to push on to St Privat d’Allier – which turned out to be all uphill. Arrived at the Camping Municipal (very good) at 6.30pm.  Feasted on the weirdest and thinnest cheese omelette ever + chips and lettuce leaves.  Bed at 8.30pm.  Up at 6.00 and faffed about until 8.00 so we could stock up on pain au chocolat at the boulangerie.

Journal.

Camino 2. Setting out – the devil’s in the detail!

This is a detail of the tympanum of the abbey in Conques – much further down the path

19th May 2010
Leaving Le Puy now.  Cleaner at the cathedral asked me if my water bottle was a respirator!

Journal

The preparations for the Camino took months. I was overdue a sabbatical in any case – I’d missed the previous opportunity because I could foresee that any progress we’d made in moving forward would be utterly undermined by a small conservative faction in the congregation who still thought my job was to chaplain the status quo.

Looking back, I was preparing for a pilgrimage that never was, never would be on offer. Pilgrimages were the package tours of the middle ages. They were fuelled by the fear of hell and the sheer difficulty of forgiveness; and the USP was the odd idea that kissing or touching a gold reliquary containing a dubiously authentic body part – let’s say the foreskin of the martyred St Superfluous – would confer bankable spiritual benefits. The early church must have been populated with a great number of genetically strange saints with a dozen hearts, twenty five fingers and innumerable other dangly and easily removed bits for sale on the open relic market. I’ll come back to what my motivation was further down the road; but rest assured that relic reverencing wasn’t part of the plan.

Anyway, moving on rapidly, the 21st century pilgrim can call upon a well resourced network of comfortable overnight stops and small cafes, not to mention the Transit vans which – for a tidy sum – will carry your luggage; transport you over the hard bits and even meet you with a picnic lunch.

Our budget, on the other hand, was 30 euros a day to cover everything – and as the journey unfolded we quickly realized that this wasn’t remotely enough. We had planned to carry everything we needed; tent, sleeping bags, bivvy mats, clothes, cooker – kitchen sink etc. Being completely self contained would mean we could wild camp with occasional nights in a campsite to grab a shower. Having spent the night at the youth hostel in Le Puy en Velay we set out to buy gas for our hideously expensive skeletal titanium cooker. I’d been assured by the good folk at Snow and Rock that suitable gas canisters were universally available across Europe. It seemed, after a fruitless trudge around Le Puy, that this was not the case. Before we had taken a single step along the Camino we had to accept that there would be no cooker; no warmed-up tins of soup or early morning brew ups. That was the first disappointment.

At the cathedral, where we needed to get our pilgrim records stamped, a friendly nun asked my companion if he was my carer and the cleaner expressed interest in my respirator (drinking water bladder). With that cursory medical out of the way, we staggered down the long flight of steps with much heavier rucksacks than were sustainable for some of the days we had planned. If that was a portent we ignored it, fiddled about with the straps – as if that made any difference – and set off, followed with quizzical regard by the locals who obviously thought we were rather odd. Within a couple of hundred yards we were slogging up a steep hill having learned our first pilgrim lessons. France is not wild; you shouldn’t believe everything they tell you in camping shops; and this was going to be painfully hard. Our first glimpse of La France Profonde was a small industrial estate where one of the units made paté. It smelt like Brain’s pie factory from my childhood.

Tomorrow I’ll perhaps write a bit more about the kit as we tackle our first really hard day.

Camino – the long haul

Reconnecting – 13 years later.

It’s two weeks since we got back from France.  At first I was just confused, feeling terribly guilty and carrying a huge sense of failure.  Of course everybody made the right kind of noises, being very affirming and saying they’d have done the same thing under the circumstances but it’s been very hard to shake off the feeling that I somehow wimped out.  Since then I’ve been suffering from elective agoraphobia – not wanting to meet or talk to people, and skulking in and out of the village taking the quick way out onto the A38.  I kept myself busy at home, installing a mobile phone repeater amp and helping the boys to decorate a bedroom, but I knew I was avoiding the issue.  The fact is, my sabbatical project has gone down in an ignominious defeat, I’ve been sponsored for something I couldn’t finish, and I’ve got two months off with zero sense of what to do with it.  
On the other hand I can’t sit around forever feeling sorry for myself – and I did learn a lot even from the shorter walk.  On the plus side we walked 350K and across the 4000 foot high Aubrac Plateau in really tough conditions and carrying everything we needed – so we walked further than Offa’s Dyke Path (283K) The Coast to Coast (307K) and the vast majority of other UK trails.  The problems we encountered were mostly our own fault – not least a hubristic view of our capabilities and a failure to look carefully enough at the facilities we needed.  This led us into some mammoth 35K walks carrying far too much weight.  We also failed to realize that many French campsites only open during the school holidays – and many of the ones we stayed in that were open had not finished their winter refits – restricting facilities greatly.  
The one factor we couldn’t have foreseen was the exponential growth of assisted and guided walks along the route.  We were constantly surprised at the number of people who seemed to be carrying next to nothing.  It took several weeks to realize that their belongings were being shipped from place to place by transit van.  Sometimes we would find a large group sitting in the middle of nowhere eating a picnic that had been driven out to them.  On one occasion one such group took over the only restaurant in a small village in its entirety.  Naturally the infrastructure has followed the money, and so the facilities (which are expanding rapidly) are not for solo walkers and campers but for paying groups.  Consequently many of the gîtes d’etape were being swamped by large groups – a problem which could only get bigger as we approached Spain.  
If I was ever to attempt such an ambitious project again, I’d calculate the ratio between load and distance more carefully.  To do the whole Camino carrying the loads we had – i.e. carrying tent etc. would ideally break down into daily walks of 20K maximum – 17K would be better.  That would not be possible due to the uneven distribution of suitable campsites.  Wild camping gets less and less possible as you move into more populated areas and it’s illegal in Spain.  That inescapable limitation means that the only way to do it in less than 4 months (allowing one day off a week) is to ditch the tent and stay in gîtes d’Etap or B&B.  This would increase the daily budget dramatically – from 30€ to as much as 100€.  Even taking into account the shorter time it would still be twice as expensive and wildly more than I could afford. 
Looking back on my notes now they seem unbelievably brief, often missing out great chunks of stuff that seem far more important on reflection. I’ll be adding to them and matching them with photos over the coming weeks.  Watch this space.

From my notebook

Well that was then – 13 years ago, since when the photographs were gradually dispersed over three incompatible laptops, the original notebooks (which fortunately I transcribed soon afterwards) are somewhere buried in the strata that constitute my filing system and I’ve done everything I can to forget the whole thing. The sense of failure never left me and cast a long shadow over the following years. But gradually – and then suddenly in the last few weeks – I began to see a way to reconnect the threads.

Of course writing history, even the memoir of an event in which I was a participant, is a dangerous game. The temptation to gloss the hard parts; fill in the missing bits with fiction; to inflate or deflate those aspects of the narrative that suit purposes which I don’t even fully understand myself; or just to self-justify; blame someone else and whinge on about the blood, sweat, tears and blisters; all of which happened but all of which were mitigated by unexpected moments of grace.

So having spent a week organising all the written material I could find and united the photographs into a single and accessible library I’ve also got an idea (untested until today) of how to proceed. I’ll use the contemporary and unedited written notes and photographs to evoke some sense of our failed 1000 mile walk; then I’ll add some reflections on how we got to where we found ourselves; what we learned from it, how it’s played out in subsequent years; and to start at the beginning, the very first note which absolutely nails our unpreparedness :

18th May 2010 
Couldn’t sleep so up at 4.00am. Stella drove us to Parkway.  Saying goodbye was unbearable – I was praying she wouldn’t cry but she did anyway!  Then it was just endless trains all day.  We only just got to Paris Gâre de Lyon in time because I misread the tickets and forgot to advance my watch by an hour so we had to run up the stairs with our rucksacks on. People must have thought we were mad. Two hours wait and a grotty pizza at Lyon then the most beautiful train journey up the Loire valley: (I only worked out it was the Loire Valley when the conductor gave us a map).  The first conductor out of Lyon was a beautiful black guy with a lovely smile.  SNCF staff seem to wear whatever they like with one badge of office – often a cap.  Spent night at a youth hostel in Le Puy after arriving at 9.30.

WTF did I think I was doing? Subsequently Madame has wasted no opportunity to tell me how completely out of character it was for me to just clear off for three months, and she’s right. I don’t think I gave a moment to imagine how lonely and distressed she would be. I was just obsessed with this batshit crazy plan to walk across France and Spain to Finisterre – the end of the earth. My companion (Modestine? – he often carried part of my load) was someone very close to us whose marriage had just broken down and who was compensating by drinking far, far too much. I asked him along because I wanted (needed) to stay close and look after him. It certainly added another layer of madness to the adventure.

Much more to follow, including a reflection on this whole pilgrimage business – what it’s about and whether some sort of immaterial and supernatural God has any part in it at all. I’ve never felt so nervous about pushing the publish button before!

Taking a break.