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

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!

Shakespeare – King Lear

The night in the dormitory with 5 other people proved surprisingly peaceful. Nobody snored or went to the loo in the middle of the night. I gathered my stuff together the next morning in preparation for setting off on my way only for the guests to offer me some of their breakfast and give me something to take with me for lunch. It was a very generous gesture as I hadn’t spotted a boulagerie in Saint- Guilhem-le-Désert (a beautiful village but a bit of a tourist trap where shops sold stuff like bubble tea and handmade fabrics)

The walk out from Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert was a bit of a gut buster involving the rapid ascent of a narrow path which snaked its way up the rock face to the summit.

In the distance to the north the dark clouds looked increasingly menacing. The lady in the tourist office at Saint-Guilhem had warned me to take care as a red warning had been issued for heavy thunderstorms in the area the next day. At the time I thought it was just a storm in a teacup – everwhere I had passed during the previous few days from Arles had been parched to the bone.

When I reached the village of Saint-Jean-de-la-Blaquière at around 2pm I spotted another pilgrim emerging from a café and walking in the opposite direction. He wasn’t even wearing any wet weather gear so the warnings of heavy rain in the area were probably wide of the mark. However, as I left the village I noticed the clouds looking increasingly dark and before long thunder could be heard in the distance.

When I reached the little village of Usclas-du-bosc some thirty minutes later, things got really interesting. Thunder and lightning occurred with alarming regularity and from what I could judge, the storm was passing directly overhead. The rain started to lash down so I decided to duck into a covered alley way and wait for the storm to pass through.

Within a few minutes the narrow alleyway had turned into a deluge. There was nowhere else to shelter so I stood my ground as the water gurgled around my leggings.Over the years I have been in quite a few tropical downpours from the streets of Colombo in Ceylon to the Barrier Reef in Australia to the New Territories in Hong Kong. But the downpour I was experiencing seemed to exceed them all in its violent intensity.

After an hour in the covered alleyway, the rain and wind seemed to be easing off, so I decided to break cover and head off towards Lodève. It was already nearly 4pm and time wasn’t on my side. As I made my way up the path I was faced with a torrent of water flowing down the hill. It seemed prudent to make my way to the summit and take a small road down to Lodève The guidebook (which was drenched by this point) warned walkers to be aware of a particularly slippery stretch of the path down to Lodève where the path was covered in slate.

It was a shame that I didn’t have the time to see the Priory of Saint Michel de Grandmont which was on the path. The priory was founded at the end of the 10th century and is the best preserved example of a monastery of the Grandmontian order based on a highly ascetic monastic life.

The order was considered to be one of the strictest and most austere order of the Middle Ages. There was no hierarchy, no archives, and no heating. The monks walked with bare feet, in perpetual silence. They ate no meat, and fasted regularly. As they worked, they engaged in silent prayer. Theirs was the first order to be permitted to beg for food.

I eventually reached Lodève where the river was in full spate and several locals were peering over the bridge watching the swirling torrent. The proprietor of the gite where I was staying later told me that a month’s rain had fallen in a couple of hours and a car had been swept off the road!

A couple of other walkers were staying in the gite – a 69 year old msn with a pacemaker and a handlebar moustache and a dimunitive tousled hair lady from Toulouse. Initially I’d assumed they were husband and wife but aparrently not. The tousled haired lady told me that they’d met up on the path and decided to walk together because they shared the same ‘rhythm’. They kindly invited me to join them and a third pilgrim for supper at a local Vietnamese restaurant in town. It was a tempting offer but I didn’t want to spoil their party. In view of the dire weather forecast it seemed prudent to try and organie my accommodation for the next few days, recharge my batteries and have an early night!