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

Variety is the spice of life

Anon

As I was waiting at Cahors for my train to Montauban this morning I saw a chap with a beard and a rucksack. Apart from the fact that he was wearing a cap emblazoned with the words ‘Stihl’ he could have stepped out of ‘Lord of the Rings’.

We got chatting as there was an hour to kill before my train left. Arnaud was getting a minibus to Conques from where he planned to walk back to Cahors where he had left his car. The walk would take him a week, 20 or so kilometres a day. He had a tent with him and planned to bivouac (wild camp) most of the time.

He worked as a forester in Normady near Falaise. We chatted about many things including the impact of global warming on the forests he managed in Normandy. Heat and water shortages meant that it was no longer practical to plant oaks. Instead they would increasingly be replaced with conifers. A depressing prospect but something that was inevitable in Arnaud’s opinion.

One of the great joys of walking the pilgrim routes of France is that you meet such a variety of interesting people from all walks of life from all corners of France and indeed the world.

That for me is the magic of the chemin. You never quite know what is around the next corner!

The day before yesterday I chatted to one of the fellow pilgrims in the gite at Saint Jean-de-Laur. He had travelled widely in Asia. We swapped stories about the places we had visited in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Married with a couple of children, he confided that he always walked on his own in France. “As a solo traveller, you always meet more people” he opined. “If you travel with somebody else, people are much less receptive to you”.

Walking on your own can sometimes be lonely and there are many times that you’d love to share a view or an encounter with somebody else. On the other hand you have only yourself to blame if you get lost and sleeping in crowded and, often noisy dormitories isn’t everybody’s cup of tea let alone walking up to 50km a day!

Walking up to 12 hours a day gives you time to think. About life, death and luck.

I’d originally planned to celebrate my 60th birthday by walking LEJOG ( Land’s End to John O’Groats) in 60 days. Whether I would have been up to walking the best part of 2,000km in two months is anybody’s guess. But it proved a sensible decision to stick to walking in France which gave me the flexibility to curtail my walk should ‘circumstances’ dictate and the opportunity to practise my French on a daily basis.

650km in 16 days was my final tally. During that time I can only remember being passed by one other pilgrim whom I subsequently overtook the next day! The walk wasn’t a race but it was good to know that at the age of 60 I was able to walk further and faster than I could 35 years ago.

It just goes to prove that you can teach new tricks to an old dog and that there is still life in this old dog!