Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare

This was a day to forget but an evening to remember.

Sleeping in a one man tent is an almost guaranteed recipe for a disjointed night’s sleep. I was woken at around 2am by something (or things!) nosing around the rucksack which I had left outside the tent. It or they were probsbly after the remains of tinned mackerel which I had foolishly wedged into an outside pocket of the rucksack. I switched on my torch, exited the tent and tried to intercept the intrepid intruders. I was seconds too late – I saw a couple of creatures disappearing into the undergrowth at a rate of knots. Pine martens maybe after nocturnal grub? Who knows.

Most of the day was walking on pine strewn paths through forests. I did come across a menhir by the side of the path. It was discovered during land clearing in 1990, is made of local granite and depicts a male figure wearing a baldric.

I reached the little village of Anglès at midday. Like many villages in this part of France, it seemed to be in decline. The café in the centre of town was up for sale, the tourist office appeared deserted.

The afternoon passed by uneventfully much like the morning. Apart from a logging truck in the woods I didn’t see a soul all day until I reached Boissezon.

Mireille. the proprietor of the gite ‘La Rêverie’ had warned me that accommodation in the village would be hard to come by as there was an exposition of water colour paintings taking place for a fortnight.

I wasn’t entirely sure where Mireille’s gite was located so I clambered up the hill to the church which overlooked the village. As I staggered up the hill I met a lady with short cropped hair and a kindly smile who hailed me with the greeting “You must be Jonathan!” It turned out she was staying at the same gite and leaning over a wall pointed out where it was – at the bottom of the hill I had just struggled up.

There was no sign of life at the gite when I arrived apart from an array of walking boots, walking poles and drying socks and underwear. The pretty cobbled courtyard was surrounded by an array of granite containers planted with flowering shrubs.

Eventually the other pilgrims artived – Daniel, an American from Wisconsin, the lady I’d met by the church who lived in Toulouse and another French pilgrim with a long straggly grey beard and a look of benign bohemianism.

Shortly afterwards Mireille appeared – a warm, welcoming, mischievous gap toothed bundle of energy. Over supper she told us her story.

All the ingredients in the soup and main dish had been sourced from her vegetable plot beside the gite. As the wine flowed, Mireille explained why she gone on a pilgrimmage to Compostella and why she had subsequently decided to move from Narbonne to open a gite catering to pilgrims on the Chemin d’Arles.

It was untimely death of her partner, a journalist who had been a prominent proponent of Occitan culture, that had prompted Mireille to hit the pilgrim trail and walk from Le Puy en Velay to Compostella.

Setting off from Le Puy on the 15th August (the feast of the Annunciation, important because Mireille is the Provencal form of Mary) the walk had been part of the grieving process. Indeed such had been the transformational impact on her life, that Mireille had decided to dedicate her life to entertaining and accommodating pilgrims on the road to Compostella.

And her other passions? Gardening, playing the Celtic harp and dancing the tango! A more entertaining, welcoming and warm hearted hostess you couldn’t have asked for. Take a bow, marvellous Mireille!