We rose early enough to do some more exploring of Cajarc before we left. The church is in the middle of the old section of the town, which is now like a small island surrounded by the main road.
Roads, some too narrow for a vehicle, wind their way between buildings which were once the 14th Century consular house, or the tower from an 11th Century building.
Many are deserted and in need of repair, but many are still used as homes. Smoke curled from some chimneys and through one window the view of an old couple at breakfast with their antique grandfather clock behind them could have been from another century. A street called Rue de Tic Tac, seemed like a joke in this context and it must have a meaning in French beyond being a game or a lolly. The stone buildings here and in every village are draped with climbing plants, with the glorious red of the Virginia Creeper having inspired every home owner to plant one.
One of the endearing features of Cajarc is that, for a town with no locational problems, it has the most signs pointing to everywhere of any place we have ever seen. The same place can be signposted from every angle, with more directions to it only a hundred metres away. Provision for crossing a comparatively quiet main road consists of crossings every fifty metres. In France, zebra crossings without lights are respected, and provide pedestrians with the option to cross the road simply by stepping out onto it. It would have to be the most pedestrian-friendly place you could possibly find yourself in.We strolled over to the Lot River, where the suspension bridge had a maintenance frame clinging to its underside, like a baby monkey. The smell of baking bread from a boulangerie, where the oven had no door and it was possible to see the rising baguettes in the steady glow from the oven, reminded us that it was breakfast time.
At last we were off, with no problems about finding the right path, since it was thoughtfully signposted by the Commune. We were intrigued by an unharvested cornfield that had a pattern of three rows cut to the ground and four rows still standing. The ones standing had the spires from the pollen producing male flowers still there, so that ruled out the standing lines being for hybrid seed production. The path led behind a farm house and then steeply up the cliff to the top of the stone plateaus that are characteristic of this area.
A chapel overlooking the Lot River was from the 11th Century, and had been much altered over the years. Originally a chapel in the Leprosarium, it was supported by the public and attracted donations from wealthy men. In the 1950s a statue of Notre Dame de la Paix was brought here from Figeac. The chapel is visited by many pilgrims annually.
The views were spectacular, and a little picnic spot was thoughtfully provided under the trees overlooking the river. Tempting as that was, we had eighteen kilometres to walk so we plodded on.
For the first hour and a half or so we wound along roads and lanes that led us ever upward, through forests and along idyllic stretches of moss covered walls and trees. Pale green lichen contrasted with the darker green of the moss, and branches arched overhead so that we always seemed to be in tunnels.
We met a hunter in a bright orange cap, who wished us well, and later as we passed through a village, we could tell that it was Saturday because people were out and about gardening and working on their homes. At one point two couples, with drive ways only metres apart, had both mixed up concrete for minor jobs, and I thought that they could have saved trouble and had more fun if they had slopped it about together.The walking was becoming much easier, with good surfaces and rarely an incline. We were powering along when we met a lady pruning a shrub at her drive way end, a fair way from a village. Her husband was using a backhoe to dig a hole to put in a water tank and they were converting the ancient pigeon tower on their land into a gite.
Pigeon towers here bear no relationship to an aviary. Built of stone, they are several storeys high and look as if Rapunzal could have been kept in one of them. They also had the ruins of a church as well as a charming house. She told us that the walk to Limogne from here on was all of the ‘dream’ variety, and that the gite there was simple but clean.It wasn’t long before we reached an open area where water gushed from the ground in a natural fountain, which filled a small stone reservoir, and then was piped underground to an enormous stone pond that looked as if it could be for swimming in. On closer examination, we saw that there were quite large fish already swimming in it, and it looked as if you would have to be very hot to want to join them. We filled our water bottles at the source, where it said that the water was drinkable.
Nearby a group of about seven walkers was having lunch. We were surprised by the lack of friendly response when we greeted them, having become accustomed to everyone we meet exchanging a few words with us. We walked on and, after about another hour, we stopped for our lunch. The other group passed us in dribs and drabs, with one man telling us that his son was in Australia on a ship somewhere, having done the two year working visa thing, and a couple of others wished us ‘Bon Apetit’, so maybe when we saw them first, they had just made it to the agreed lunch spot and were exhausted.
We were about four kilometres from Limogne when we rang the gite to book in, and when we were told it was full, we rang another. That one was closed, exhausting all the cheap options in that district. We had walked fourteen delightful kilometres, and it was only about half past two in the afternoon, so we tried for a gite fifteen kilometres away. It was open and we could go, but the lady asked me if I had tried any closer options, given that we had already walked so far. She offered to pick us up at Limogne, or at Variare, the town four kilometres before her gite. We said that we would try to walk there and would ring her later if it was not possible.
Now we were not strolling through delightful lanes, we were power walking to make the deadline of darkness, since once we could not see the red and white markers of the trail, we could be lost in the forest.
A stop in Limogne to buy the most basic and lightest of supplies took up valuable time, but we didn’t dare leave our shopping until the next town in case we arrived after the shops were shut. On we plunged, cursing the village for having taken us down a hill that we now had to climb back up, and fruit and cheese for being so heavy. It was as if our feet had wings for the first nine kilometres, we walked so fast along the leaf strewn tracks. My strides were longer than I would have thought possible and my hip joints felt a little as if they had opened out. Keith had gone up a notch in speed without his Achilles tendon playing up. We were on fire.It was when we came out onto the roads again, and we had to stop to check the direction of the path in the book, that fatigue came crashing down on me. Keith probably could have made it all the way to the gite, still five kilometres away, but I had had it, and wanted to stop. As if a switch had turned in my mind and body, with the dropping of the sun and the sight of the village of Variare just ahead, I could hardly drag myself the last kilometre. Pride made me walk in a reasonable way past some people out for a stroll, and then curiosity to reach an old man who was watching from his gate as we passed. He talked to us in French with the strongest accent that I have ever heard, and it sounded almost Italian to me. Luckily we understood most of the things he said, about how to go through the town and to walk on four more kilometres to the gite. It was possible, of course, since now we weren’t on the trail and we would have been following a road. But we weren’t even in the village and it was now cold and only the last of the light remained.
A man called to us to go to the accommodation in the town, but it was of the expensive type and we had already made our reservations. He called from his home, separated from the road we walked on by another road and a very large stone public swimming pool with stone diving blocks and steps. It was in a perfect spot, surrounded by grass, and must have been wonderful in the summer when it was clean. Now it was awash with autumn leaves and slime, and quite a few geese. We didn’t visit the church; it would have required us to have had more energy than we did. We dragged ourselves to the shop, and Keith rang the gite owner. Meanwhile, I was inside looking for chocolate milk, a substance I had been obsessed with, but had not had, for many months and which I now could not live without. There was none, so we bought an enormous container of chocolate drink powder and a litre of milk - a possibility now since our packs were going in the back of a car.
By the time Michele arrived, we had had a bit of a rest and felt a bit foolish about needing to be picked up. Nevertheless, we were both glad to be stepping into her beautifully decorated warm gite five minutes later, to sink into the chairs and to have some hot chocolate milk, which Michele prepared. Michele had walked the chemin for more than a month, and understood perfectly the needs of walkers. During her pilgrimage, she had reflected on herself and her life, and she had found her place in life and in the world. And this was it, in a gite with the art works of her friends over the walls, where she shared a living and cooking space with travellers and pilgrims, but could retreat to her own attached apartment, and where her personality and her taste made her gite her home.
Gites sometimes have the option of buying dinner and breakfast, but we never buy them because of the expense and we always have food with us. On the phone I had said that we would not have meals. After a while of chatting, and finding that Michele was a very interesting person and very easy to get along with, she asked me if we would like to share her soup with her. I said that we could contribute bread and fruit, and so we slipped out of the business arrangement, into a visit with a friend. We chatted while she made some French onion soup, we tasted her sister’s prize winning goat cheese, we sipped wine and showed her some of our photos of Tanzania and our family. We discussed all sorts of aspects of life, and then looked at photos of her stable gradually changing into a double storey gite, her children and, finally, a very mysterious photo indeed. It was taken on a foggy morning when Michele had come in and discovered what appeared to be a man peering in the window. It really looked like a man, without requiring imagination at all, so much so that I would be able to pick him out on a police line-up by the dimple in his chin and the shape of his nose. Michele’s dog, CC, had belonged to neighbours, but bit by bit she had infiltrated first the garden, then the house and finally Michele’s heart. The dog had chosen her and she was very happy with her companion.
It was a great pity that the wifi internet connection wouldn’t work with our computer, but there was no time for computers anyway, by the time our pleasant evening ended. We rang Mum for her ninety-third birthday, and she knew who Keith was but thought that I might be her daughter, Joy. The different country was also very confusing, and she was repeating our greetings to her. We realised that an out of context phone call was very difficult for her now. Still, to be 93 and to be going out for the day for birthday celebrations with the family was very good going.
We had selected the mauve room to sleep in, with its decorations of lilacs and lavenders. A small window framed the moonlit garden below.
The red and white trail markers are occasionally supplemented with a shell, the symbol of St James.
Crosses of stone or steel are encountered frequently when walking the chemin. They usually have a large number of pebbles around their base, apparently deposited there by passing pilgrims.
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