pocket-full-of-seaglass

-Livinhac le Haut-

When I woke, it was,, quiet. The rain had stopped, and the campground was still. It felt strange, after the havoc of yesterday, and when I stood up, you could see the evidence. Signs on the floor, letters bleeding onto the gravel, motorhomes folded in on themselves.

The French couple in the one beside me come over, ask me something I can’t understand. He translates;

“Had a fun night?”

They joke a little, him as mediator. At one point I say something and laugh, and he chuckles.

“Hard life, huh?”

Yeah okay fair play Frenchman.

I pack up in the cold – Livinhac’s fog has nothing on Espalion, but it’s still icey – then unpack. Then repack, and then – where is it? I can’t locate one of my film roll canisters which is a Big problem, because that particular one houses all of the Scotland pictures, all of the Germany pictures, all of the soft small ones that would remind me of things already forgotten. Photos and words could pin my recollections down somewhere, and I hadn’t written anything down in Scotland. Shit.

Hoping and praying it’s somewhere in a tiny place I can’t see yet, I choose to leave. It’s clearly not here, and I can’t pinpoint the last time I definitively saw it – I couldn’t backtrack for days for photos that might not be there. It was a tense morning – every step felt like a mistake. But, with the promise of an in-depth check at the first water fountain, I’m on my way by 9.05am. Killing the whole timing thing, but as long as I get to Figeac by 7.00pm, we’ll be fine. I cross the bridge over the Lot, finally actually enter Livinhac le Haut.

It’s very cool, with winding streets full of art. I’m taking expos, galleries, painting classes, on the benches, on the road, on the sides of houses. It’s also full of other pilgrims starting their day. I get stuck in a little blob of them, smack-bang in the middle. Me and another lady start to overtake, step around the others. She’s ahead, and she’s almost at Speed Demon’s level; no matter what I do, I can’t seem to catch up.

I follow her silhouette through the fog as we wind up the mountainside; both of us pause for photos at every other turn. It’s hard not to – it’s incredible. As the sun comes up over the clouds, houses appear out of nowhere – we’re already in a new town. Or settlement, whichever you prefer. They’re all dead, but why would you expect anything less. A few more winds, one last uphill then you’re drifting down on into Montredon.

-Montredon-

It’s also quiet, but there are signs of life from other pilgrims, which is nice. Montredon’s welcome sign and mini rest-stop is still a good 800m from the actual town, but we’ll start here. A few waves from other walkers sitting down to enjoy breakfast, and you’ll push on. You’re real goddamn hungry, and your new habit of waiting till the first stop to eat breakfast is not making a lot of sense right now.

Sitting higher than the surrounding areas, Montredon is lucky in that it is currently doused in sunlight, not fog. I’m drinking in the warmth; I don’t do well in the cold. Resisting the urge to photosynthesise for the next few hours instead of walking, I refill my water, have my in-depth search. And I find it. Thank God. It’s tucked away in a tiny little bundle of fabric on the inside of the back pocket – not a clue how it got there, but I’m glad it did.

It has the bonus of positively skyrocketing my mood, too. It’s warm, and I didn’t lose my memories, and I’ve got the lame cute little photos, and I’ve got cold water, and everything is good and great and fine. All I need now is food. Or a fully stocked pilgrim rest stop, that’ll work. I grab a stamp (my first in five days – I am terrible at this), and a little treat or two. Okay, maybe three; I’m hungry, shh. It’s donation-based so I make mine, move on. There’s allegedly an épicerie here, although it does end up being a minipicerie that’s kinda just a shelf in this guy’s house, which feels a little too intimate for me, so I don’t stop. I’ll get food when I arrive, it’ll motivate me more.

Speaking of; I decide not to eat till I get to Chapel de Guirande, another hour from here. I need some kind of push – I’m walking really slowly today. I pass towns and villages, miss a turn because I’m too busy daydreaming and don’t realise for another 500m, not until I come to a cattle fence on every side, and a poorly hidden caravan. Riiight okay. Backtrack, find the turn. Slip almost immediately, but not badly. Wibble-wobble down the rocky descent, emerge to find,,,, baby donkeys??

I don’t think I’ve ever seen non-adult donkeys, but I’m happy to report they’re even cuter than they sound, and yes, their heads are still massively disproportionate when they’re young. Also, they share their little field with a llama, which is not important, I just wanted you to know.

The donkeys and the llama are directly aside from the church, which is nice. I dodge the very chatty looking pilgrims at the actual rest area (sorry), and head to the tables on the other side of the road. They’d be terrible to sleep on, far too thin and weirdly shaped. But they’ll do for their intended purpose, I suppose. A meal for kings; my stale baguette end, the last of a jar of pesto and about six loose pringles. Yum. Now I’ve got motivation; I’m fresh out of shops till Figeac.

I’m still only 9km out of Livinhac – I’ve got just under 14km to go. Ohh boy. As I start packing up, I’m joined by two French women, who pull out synchronised cans of tuna. I love them. The next few kilometres are actually,,, quite nice? There’s something in the air today – I don’t feel so shitty. The lightning blitzed it all away; for the first time in a few days I look up from the gravel. Turns out it’s still beautiful?

It’s a different kind of beauty, the understated kind. It’s just dirt roads and empty fields, cattle grazing and a few abandoned buildings, but the sky is so blue and the grass so green and the wind so soft. Everyday beauty, if that made sense. I’m smiling (crazy) as I weave downhill. I pass a few gîtes that offer camping and a shower for €5 and it takes every bone in my body to keep walking. Next time.

A lake that must have surely at some point been vast and impressive, but was now just a muddy puddle. You could really tell the drought wad rough here; the ground was parched, the mud cracking. That was more like the drought I knew. I followed the footsteps in front of me, left some of mine in case anyone needed the direction. Never the first pilgrim, never the last. How many had the people in these houses seen?

-Saint-Felix-

Six kilometres later, Saint-Felix comes into view. It’s got toilets, and water, and free wifi for the first time ever. I’m wrecked, so it’s break time – I take off my shoes, stretch out in the grass, sit back up and put on a jumper then re-stretch out. I reply to a few messages, apologise for being so late with blogs. If I’m honest, I’m maybe writing this a day later,,,, oops.

I watch the other pilgrims come and go, watch the groups form and split. Eventually, it’s my turn to continue the walk, to shoulder my pack and hobble for my first few meters. It’s just nine more, just nine more. Constant loop, just nine more. I am feeling very cheery now; lovely comments have made me forget how tired I am. The final nine are,, not much to report.

The last down towards Figeac is a little rough at times, and takes a few kilometres, but hey, luckily for me, the campsite is right on the way, before the actual town. Sweet :] I’m feeling good, feeling like I can walk way longer. Take that, body. Listen to you?? As if.

-Figeac-

The campsite does scare me for a split second though – the prices listed on the signs leading up to it end at the first of September, and it’s currently more than two weeks later. But, good news, it is open. And cheaper than both of the prices listed. Sweet. I get a pitch for the night for €9.45, which is not bad at all.

There are two lines in this place, and I’m behind an older trans woman. The man opposite me takes one look at her and nudges his wife, and they laugh, and he looks at me and raises his eyebrows in a ‘get a load of this’ kind of way. What a fucking arsehole. I try to look at him in a ‘get fucked you absolute wanker’ sort of way, hope that it translates universally. He looks away.

Set up and realising there’s public park benches right near the river I definitely could have slept on instead, I headed into town. I needed food. And I wanted to figure out a new SIM card – this one was just not cutting it. I should have time for both, I’m only a half hour away. I wander in, and dear God, I can’t explain the feeling. This is going to shock a few people, but turns out walking without eighteen kilos strapped to your back is actually easier!?!?! Who knew !!

You also walk at the speed of light, apparently, my pace jumping up by a few decimals. I was in the middle of the city in a flash, and I have a confession; I liked it. I mean, the cars and noise was hell, but Figeac seemed,,,, cool. That wasn’t the right word, but neither were any of my other synonyms. It was bright, and old, and I walked past amateur painting hour and pottery classes, and the streets didn’t smell like shit, and yeah I walked super casually through a police blockade because I didn’t understand what was happening, but other than that it was great.

I slipped into Carrefour, finally not needing to take my pack on and off four times in a row to put everything away while proving I didn’t steal anything. I was still stepping in wide circles around everything though, so I didn’t knock things off shelves. Except, naturally, I didn’t, I just looked very strange and mildly off-putting, if I was reading my fellow shoppers’ facial expressions right. Armed with Orangina (of course), cherry tomatoes, pesto, bread, some more of the beetroot thing, and a muffin, I left.

Now, SIM time. Google Maps leads me down some very dead, dodgy looking streets that eventually spit me out in front of an SFR. Now, here’s where my social brilliance strikes; I decide, rather than ask if anyone speaks English, I’m going to assume they don’t, write a very long passage in Google Translate, and just sort of,,, shove my phone in their general direction. And then, when they respond, in English, I will respond with more Google Translate. And then, when they say, to my face,

“You know you can just speak in English, right?”

I will go, “Oh!” and promptly forget why I’m here.

They explain that they have some plans, and would I like to see them? But alas, my brain is an empty void, until someone blurts out, “No thanks, I don’t need a plan, just a SIM”.

And they look at each other, and look at me, and I promptly say “Okay! Bye!” and walk out of the store, cringing myself into oblivion and trying to wipe all memory of the event from my mind. The cruelty of this blog is now I’m never going to forget that. Jesus Christ.

But still, my Optimist has the reigns to my empty rattling head at the moment, so I’m seeing that as a half success – I can get an SFR plan. Just,,, not from this one. I can never go near this SFR again in my life. I’m running away, back to the campsite. The next one is in Cahors, and I should be there in the next few days, so I’ll have time to research and be less of a social planecrash <33

I pay €2 for internet that doesn’t work, try to figure out where I can spend my rest day. There’s a campsite about a day away, in Cajarc, that has camping for €5.50 a night – currently top choice. I’m not ever really sure where ‘pain is growth’ ends and ‘listen to your body’ starts, but I’m fairly certain a day to do nothing is never a bad thing so! Rest day it is.

Later, while I’m eating dinner, the same woman from earlier walks past. She’s got dogs – two of them – and they follow her as she walks alone under waning streetlamps, all orange glow and swishing skirts. I want to call out to her, show her the scars, that we’re kind of almost the same. That I’m sorry I didn’t out loud tell that guy to get fucked. That I’m glad she’s here because sometimes it’s so easy to forget we can reach old age. But I don’t. That part of me stays curled up behind closed doors – I can’t risk the alternatives. So I let her go. Too many almosts.

I shower, and it’s good because it’s warm water, but it’s so shit because I’ve been spoilt by last night, and now all water is lukewarm again. Noooo. Eventually I’ll find a place that perfect again, I have to believe it. Maybe even in Cajarc,,,

So I’ll say goodnight and goodbye now – not that you’ll get this for a few days. Sorry! My phone will probably explode if I try to upload these without internet at the moment, but I hope the wait is worth it :] And hey, still haven’t been eaten by a bear! So I would say that’s a success. I hope you sleep well, like me, with the sounds of the massive trucks roaring past on the highway not fifty metres from your tent. They sure do know how to nail the relaxation in municipal campgrounds <33

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Day 29 – September 18th

Livinhac le Haut to Figeac

27.3km

~ 256.6km total

€30.98

~ €373.96 total

(621.3km combined)

(€903.19 combined)