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

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it’s dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a psyched Lone Ranger
Everyone

That’s why I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so

Turning Japanese – The Vapors

In 2002/3 I lived in Japan. It wasn’t the greatest time in my life. I’d just been thrown out of South Korea, where I’d lived happily for 15 years, and  narrowly avoided a lengthy jail sentence. None of my Japanese colleagues in the Tokyo office wanted to talk to me –  possibly because they thought I was a crook. And to cap it all I ended up in a hospital in Tokyo for a couple of weeks at the time of the Asian SARS epidemic. It’s fair to say, my memories of the time spent in Japan weren’t the happiest!

So when a gawky twenty something Japanese lad came into the dormitory and laid out his kit in the bed next to mine, and then proceeded reluctantly to occupy the last free place next to me in the gite restaurant for supper, I was somewhat apprehensive to put it mildly!

His name was Hilo. He wore a pair of thick black spectacles, sported a tiny tuft of fluffy black hair which protruded from his chin like a billy goat’s beard and was clearly painfully shy. Over supper, it also transpired that Hilo barely spoke a word of English, let alone French!

But these were minor obstacles. Hilo had flown all the way from Tokyo to the South of France and was spending the next two months walking the pilgrim trail from Le Puy-en-Velay to Compostella. Hilo was either mad or in the process of transforming homself into a Hero!

There were 32 walkers staying in the gite. 31 of them were heading south on the pilgrim trail and one was heading to the most northerly point on the Contentin peninsula. I had the curious sensation of swimming against the current.

There were eight of us at our table for supper. As we tried to divine the methodology which had led the gite management to seat us all together on the same table away from the other 24 walkers, the proverbial penny dropped. We had clearly been segregated, for health and safety reasons, because none of us were French! We comprised four Belgians, two Poles living in Germany, a Brit and Hilo from Japan.

Pretty soon there was only one question on everybody’s lips. Why the heck was Hilo walking 1,500km to Compostella? The answer, it turned out, was a 1,200 km pilgrimage on the Japanese island of Shikoku, visiting 88 temples, called the Shikoku Pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage is associated with the revered 9th-century monk Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi), founder of Shingon Buddhism. Pilgrims wear traditional garb called henro – white coats, sedge hats, and carrying wooden staves.

Hilo had completed the Shikoku Temple Pilgrimage attired in traditional pilgrim’s garb. He proudly showed me a photo on his phone of him leaping for joy after completing the pilgrimage.

The trip had whetted his appetite for another pilgrimage, hence his decision to walk to Compostella. What a plucky chap I thought to myself as well as mentally making a note to add the Shikoku Temple trek to my pilgrimage bucket list!

I was sorry to leave the gite. It had been good to share the company of other kindred spirits from all corners of the world. I would probably never meet any of them again but it had been great to shoot the breeze, crack some jokes and hear their pilgrim tales. It was the stuff of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales!

At the little hamlet of Lajo I met a local couple out for  a walk. They lamented the dry weather which made it impossible to enjoy their favourite pasttime at this time of year – harvesting mushrooms.

A sign indicated that I was in the commune of Saint Alban-sur-Limagnole. Was there an English connection I wondered with Saint Alban? Yes there was! The church there commemorated England’s first martyr, Saint Alban, a Roman legionary who died for his faith in the early 4th century AD in Verulamium, modern day St Alban’s.

I reached Le Malzieu-Ville shortly after midday and settled into a local restaurant for an early lunch.

Le Malzieu-Ville is yet another of those picture postcard French towns but beneath it’s beautiful exterior lies a tragic history.

In the 17th century Malzieu was ravaged by the plague which killed 80% of its population. In order to sanitize the city, an apothecary called Jean Conché set fire to the houses affected by the plague, which sparked a fire which ravaged a large part of the city. Le Malzieu was then rebuilt with the help of Italian masons, giving a unique character to the city.

Before the plague hit Malzieu there were fairies immortalised at The Fairy Gate just outside the town.

Legend says that if a young girl crosses this threshold at midnight on a full moon, she will be married within the year. Like all legends, this rite of passage seems magical and from another universe, belonging to the hidden world of fairies. A somewhat sadder story lies hidden behind the Fairy Gate: Long ago, an old shepherd was tending his sheep. During his walk, he lost one of them. Going to look for it, he saw three fairies bathing in the Truyère River. Surprised to be seen, they approached the old shepherd and promised him love and riches if the secret was kept. So, he told the fairies he would keep his word. But alas, when he arrived in the town of Malzieu, he told everyone what had happened to him. No one believed him, and he was mocked. He died alone, in utter poverty.

Well I didn’t meet any fairies today unless you count a very camp chap from French West Africa who was staying in the gite at Les Faux and looked like he was kitted out for a tennis match rather than a pilgrimage across the south of France!

It was a day that was Easy Peasy Japanesey. I wonder what tomorrow will bring – 35km to Saint Flour, the final stage of this year’s walk across France.