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

Get into the Carmichael car, Michael Carmichael.

Stephen Fry – Moab is my washpot.

Walking the best part of 30 miles in 10 hours, attending pre-prandial vespers at a praemonstrian abbey, sharing a 2 hour meal with 10 french people you’ve never met before and then attempting to write an amusing and informative blog of the day’s activities while ensconsced on the top bunk of a dormitory full of snoring pilgrims isn’t a recipe for fluent prose and witty anecdotes – but here goes anyway!

The previous evening at the Gite Halte St Jacques had been a convivial all male occasion. The excellent soup and pasta ( which I managed second helpings of) hsd been accompanied by some local vino.

Before supper I had got chatting to Jean-Marc who had been bemoaning the state of the French medical system. His wife had died of cancer which had been completely midiagnosed whilst he was going to have to wait 6 months to see an optician and get his specs changed!

Sebastian, the bearded chap with glasses kindly helped me to second helpings of soup and pasta. He looked in his mid 2ps but was in fact in his mid 40s. He lived in the Correze. It was his first pilgrimmage. He was an ex military musician who now helped handicapped children with musical psychotherapy. His specialisation was metal balls which he used to place on people with mental problems and women who were pregnant to alleviate tension. Apparently his techniques worked wonders.

I left the gite in Espalion at 6.20am only to realise that French bakeries don’t open until 7am! After 40 minutes of bimbling around, I eventually got my 2 pain au chocolats and headed out of Espalion.

Estaing was a beautiful village on the banks of the Lot which was an obvious tourist magnet.

Thankfully it wasn’t raining as I headed along the banks of the River Lot towards Golinhac.

I’d hoped to get to Golinhac by 12.30am. My guidebook suggested it had a village shop. Having turned on tbe afterburners, I managed by tge skin of my teeth to get to the village shop by 12.29am. Imagine my disappointment when I read the sign in the window that the shop was exceptionally closed today from 12am! From the long line of people dressed in black trooping through the village, it seemed that a funeral had just taken place and that this might be the reason for the ‘fermeture exceptionelle’ of the village shop.

Disappointed, I headed off towards Espéyrac, which apparently had a shop which served food. All being well, I would arrive there around 2.30pm and able to appease my rumbling tummy.

When I arrived bang on schedule at 2.30pm, there were a couple of other pilgrims hovering outside the village shop in Espéyrac which offered all sorts of goodies ranging from sandwiches to tempting looking ice lollies. When I looked at the sigb on the door, I couldn’y quite  believe my eyes – shop closed from 1.30-3.30pm! It obviously wasn’t my day. I headed off towards Conques, swearing quietly to myself about the vagaries of French opening hours!

On the vertiginous descent into Conques (which I remembered in 1989!) I met a couple of pilgrims gingerly descending. One of them looked at me and exclaimed ‘I think you are crazy!’ as he looked at my hat. Taken aback I smiled sweetly, slightly bemused. Then the penny dropped – what he had said was that there is a spider on your hat but it is dead now. I thought he’d said ‘ vous avez les araignées dans la tête’ which means in French, you are bonkers!

I arrived in Conques bang on 5pm, having walked 30 miles in 10 hours. Quietly chuffed I took a quick look around the magnificent Abbey Church of Le Foy (about which more tomorrow) and checked into the Abbey hostelry for the night.

It had been a long day and after supper with 90 other pilgrims in the refectory, I conked for the night!

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