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We woke early, packed and were joyfully marching out of Moissac when we passed the other pilgrim coming back the other way. Clearly he was not leaving just yet. Our fellow pilgrims at the gite had thought that he was probably a garden variety beggar with a pilgrim twist to cash in on the respect that is felt for pilgrims here. We had been the recipients along the way of the general interest in, and respect for, people making pilgrimages. At Figeac two busy doctors had left their streams of patients to tend to me, not because I was an emergency case but because I was a pilgrim.
The path led through the car park of the railway station, a handy place to know about, and then down stairs onto the road level. It was at this point that we should have noticed the signs to cross the bridge to the other side of the canal, and to the quiet leafy walk beside it. Instead we continued around the curve of the road and out through much shorter suburbs and into the countryside again, all beside a major traffic route. The lack of GR65 signage did force us to look at our old guidebook, where we presumed a dotted line indicated the start of the route from Moissac to Auvillar which was only, we estimated, about 21 km away. We had missed the turn but if we kept going, we would eventually meet the path where it crossed this road, so we continued on.
Once back following the signs, we were climbing up into the hills again and passed the first caravan park that we had seen. We have read about camping options in many areas but they were always off the trail and probably near road access. We looked down from a hilltop, over vistas of orchards to a vast expanse of water where we thought that maybe the Tarn and the Garonne met. This was the region of the two rivers.
Even in areas where there is a lot of cultivation, stretches of woodland survive, so it wasn’t long before we were in a tunnel of trees again.At the end of one forest lane, we saw that we would be descending steeply into a valley, and that there was the line of a path in the distance seeming to climb virtually vertically out of it. That had to be our path, since we had not done much ‘penance’ walking lately. It was, and we could gauge the changes in our walking and thinking over the two weeks as we made our way up the other side. Firstly, we were so much fitter that no parts of the body, other than Keith’s feet, complained. Secondly, we took it very slowly and steadily, and almost in our stride. Two weeks ago I would have steamed up it and needed to rest to recover.
A ‘boulodrome’ was the venue for petanque tournaments at the little village of Boudou but none was in progress as we passed.
At the end of a lane, a hundred pigeons took to the air at our approach and disappeared behind a fold in the hills. The whirring of their wings had sounded so loud before I saw them that I thought many bicycles were speeding down upon us, and jumped to the side. We enjoyed a snack on the side of the road, in a ditch where there was less cold wind effect, and then walked on.
High on the plateau we visited the cemetery of the church of St Rose, bedecked in flowers. The church, enclosed on three sides by the cemetery, was closed.
It is always a disappointment when a church is closed, since it is the one accessible link to the people and religion in the district that is usually available to us as we pass by, but it can also be a relief in terms of saving time for walking. This time we walked on and on, past the village of Malause, where they had kindly set up a sign telling of the village facilities for pilgrims. It was ten past one and we were in fine walking form. We now followed the canal under plane trees, with leaves spiralling, floating and plummeting to the ground all around us.
The walking was completely flat so we could go at greater speed. We passed a lock with an abandoned lock keeper’s house and a few narrow boats were moored along the banks. It was restful walking but had none of the excitement of not knowing what was around the next corner or over the next hill.
At the end of the canal stretch, we followed more flat roads between industrial sites and then between ploughed fields, with the view of a nuclear power plant.
The wind was strong and icy, so stopping for lunch in an open area was not attractive. At last we came to a culvert under the road so we climbed down into the ditch and ate our picnic in one of the least salubrious venues of our whole walk.
We didn’t linger and soon we were off again, heading towards Espalais, where there were so many espaliered fruit trees that we wondered if the word ‘espalier’ had been invented here. It was the tidiest town we had ever been in, with not a thing out of place and all the road surfaces impeccable.
The post office was open so we sent off a couple of post cards. A sign said that the post office was closed on Wednesday afternoons, when primary schools close, and it was a reminder that there are many idiosyncrasies in the opening hours here in Southern France. The church was closed, which was a surprise in such a large village. Across the river we could see our destination, Auvillar, high on its hill above the river.
The ancient chapel of St Catherine is being restored.
It had played an important part in the blessing of sailing endeavours and in responding to the many sailing disasters over the centuries. There were the remains of a once very active port and a lower village where fishermen and sailors and their families once lived. We wound our way up to the hilltop, past many ancient buildings and the city walls to the old centre. It was striking because the village square was in the shape of a triangle, with arches on all sides and a circular market building in the middle.
There were little statues on the market building which looked more like gnomes than religious figures. It was very much like arriving at a film set and waiting for some fantastical creatures to emerge.
A lady indicated the direction to the gite, but it was not the right way. Another lady came out to assist us, and told us that she was a landscape artist from Boston, who worked for six months of the year here and six months in the States. She also told us where the only open shop would be, since it was Monday and everything else is shut on Mondays. She added that, if they had no bread, she could give us some of hers. We went back to the square and tried the Mairie, under one of the arches. In the accommodation book their gite was listed as being open all year, but the blank faced woman who spoke to us from her computer desk at the back of the room, said that it was closed. It was a long way to the next gite, at least ten kilometres, and we could have booked into a hotel here, but that would have been much more expensive. A man in the office, who had been dealt with and was leaving as we arrived, had lingered and was listening. Under the pressure of his and another worker’s gaze, she relented and said that the gite was open but that there was no heating. We said that we didn’t care about the heating, and the lady was forced to put on her jacket and come out into the cold to show us where it was. The weather was cold but the atmosphere was colder as we were marched to the gite and shown our room. After she had left, I found two pillow cases on an undercover clothes line for our bed. We also discovered that the gite was excellent, with a lovely kitchen with a mezzanine floor with an electric heater in it. We dumped out bags and set off to explore Auvillar.
The city was walled, with very literal street names like ‘Palace Street’ and ‘Church Street’, so we simply had to follow ‘Obscure Street’ to see where it led.
It actually led to the old consular building but had a bend in it so that the destination would have been obscure to walkers. We passed under the clock tower to another realm, one of much more modern making with rows of three storey buildings and some shops. The Tabac was open so we were able to buy bread. Back in the old city, we visited the church of St Pierre, which was a castle-like, with a high tower. It was originally a Benedictine priory, attached to the abbey at Moissac, which had fallen into ruins and was restored in the 19th Century. It was a large and peaceful building and featured a statue of St Jacques dressed as a pilgrim, beautiful stain glass windows and also chandeliers. Steps led down to the treasury, where robes and chalices were behind bars in a little room.
A man was tending a grave and praying in the cemetery attached to the church, and feeling like out of place tourists in the face of his sadness, we quietly left. The open church and the man removed the sense that we were in a ghost town, an impression that all the stone and arches, the silence of the empty streets and the cold had given us.
Back in the gite, we ate some chocolate by the heater and generally lived it up, which means that I read the book on the villages of France there and Keith worked on choosing photos and reading through the pages that I had written for the blog. It is always interesting when he reads something that he was not aware of on one of the days, and if he was writing, I am sure that his perspective would give the blog a slant that would give me surprises too.
I was worried about Katya, who would have started out late and there were no signs to direct her to the gite if she arrived in the dark. I wrote a letter telling her where to come and to shout ‘Bonjour’ at the locked gate of the gite, and Keith drew a little map. He took it down to the first lamp post past the city walls with a red and white marker on it, a lamp post she would be sure to notice, and attached it with blister binding tape. On the front it said in French, ‘Katya, from Germany’. We had seen other little notes such as this along the way, telling friends of intentions or meeting places.
We woke early, packed and were joyfully marching out of Moissac when we passed the other pilgrim coming back the other way. Clearly he was not leaving just yet. Our fellow pilgrims at the gite had thought that he was probably a garden variety beggar with a pilgrim twist to cash in on the respect that is felt for pilgrims here. We had been the recipients along the way of the general interest in, and respect for, people making pilgrimages. At Figeac two busy doctors had left their streams of patients to tend to me, not because I was an emergency case but because I was a pilgrim.
The path led through the car park of the railway station, a handy place to know about, and then down stairs onto the road level. It was at this point that we should have noticed the signs to cross the bridge to the other side of the canal, and to the quiet leafy walk beside it. Instead we continued around the curve of the road and out through much shorter suburbs and into the countryside again, all beside a major traffic route. The lack of GR65 signage did force us to look at our old guidebook, where we presumed a dotted line indicated the start of the route from Moissac to Auvillar which was only, we estimated, about 21 km away. We had missed the turn but if we kept going, we would eventually meet the path where it crossed this road, so we continued on.
Once back following the signs, we were climbing up into the hills again and passed the first caravan park that we had seen. We have read about camping options in many areas but they were always off the trail and probably near road access. We looked down from a hilltop, over vistas of orchards to a vast expanse of water where we thought that maybe the Tarn and the Garonne met. This was the region of the two rivers.
Even in areas where there is a lot of cultivation, stretches of woodland survive, so it wasn’t long before we were in a tunnel of trees again.At the end of one forest lane, we saw that we would be descending steeply into a valley, and that there was the line of a path in the distance seeming to climb virtually vertically out of it. That had to be our path, since we had not done much ‘penance’ walking lately. It was, and we could gauge the changes in our walking and thinking over the two weeks as we made our way up the other side. Firstly, we were so much fitter that no parts of the body, other than Keith’s feet, complained. Secondly, we took it very slowly and steadily, and almost in our stride. Two weeks ago I would have steamed up it and needed to rest to recover.A ‘boulodrome’ was the venue for petanque tournaments at the little village of Boudou but none was in progress as we passed.
At the end of a lane, a hundred pigeons took to the air at our approach and disappeared behind a fold in the hills. The whirring of their wings had sounded so loud before I saw them that I thought many bicycles were speeding down upon us, and jumped to the side. We enjoyed a snack on the side of the road, in a ditch where there was less cold wind effect, and then walked on.High on the plateau we visited the cemetery of the church of St Rose, bedecked in flowers. The church, enclosed on three sides by the cemetery, was closed.
It is always a disappointment when a church is closed, since it is the one accessible link to the people and religion in the district that is usually available to us as we pass by, but it can also be a relief in terms of saving time for walking. This time we walked on and on, past the village of Malause, where they had kindly set up a sign telling of the village facilities for pilgrims. It was ten past one and we were in fine walking form. We now followed the canal under plane trees, with leaves spiralling, floating and plummeting to the ground all around us.
The walking was completely flat so we could go at greater speed. We passed a lock with an abandoned lock keeper’s house and a few narrow boats were moored along the banks. It was restful walking but had none of the excitement of not knowing what was around the next corner or over the next hill.At the end of the canal stretch, we followed more flat roads between industrial sites and then between ploughed fields, with the view of a nuclear power plant.
The wind was strong and icy, so stopping for lunch in an open area was not attractive. At last we came to a culvert under the road so we climbed down into the ditch and ate our picnic in one of the least salubrious venues of our whole walk.
We didn’t linger and soon we were off again, heading towards Espalais, where there were so many espaliered fruit trees that we wondered if the word ‘espalier’ had been invented here. It was the tidiest town we had ever been in, with not a thing out of place and all the road surfaces impeccable.
The post office was open so we sent off a couple of post cards. A sign said that the post office was closed on Wednesday afternoons, when primary schools close, and it was a reminder that there are many idiosyncrasies in the opening hours here in Southern France. The church was closed, which was a surprise in such a large village. Across the river we could see our destination, Auvillar, high on its hill above the river.The ancient chapel of St Catherine is being restored.
It had played an important part in the blessing of sailing endeavours and in responding to the many sailing disasters over the centuries. There were the remains of a once very active port and a lower village where fishermen and sailors and their families once lived. We wound our way up to the hilltop, past many ancient buildings and the city walls to the old centre. It was striking because the village square was in the shape of a triangle, with arches on all sides and a circular market building in the middle.
There were little statues on the market building which looked more like gnomes than religious figures. It was very much like arriving at a film set and waiting for some fantastical creatures to emerge.A lady indicated the direction to the gite, but it was not the right way. Another lady came out to assist us, and told us that she was a landscape artist from Boston, who worked for six months of the year here and six months in the States. She also told us where the only open shop would be, since it was Monday and everything else is shut on Mondays. She added that, if they had no bread, she could give us some of hers. We went back to the square and tried the Mairie, under one of the arches. In the accommodation book their gite was listed as being open all year, but the blank faced woman who spoke to us from her computer desk at the back of the room, said that it was closed. It was a long way to the next gite, at least ten kilometres, and we could have booked into a hotel here, but that would have been much more expensive. A man in the office, who had been dealt with and was leaving as we arrived, had lingered and was listening. Under the pressure of his and another worker’s gaze, she relented and said that the gite was open but that there was no heating. We said that we didn’t care about the heating, and the lady was forced to put on her jacket and come out into the cold to show us where it was. The weather was cold but the atmosphere was colder as we were marched to the gite and shown our room. After she had left, I found two pillow cases on an undercover clothes line for our bed. We also discovered that the gite was excellent, with a lovely kitchen with a mezzanine floor with an electric heater in it. We dumped out bags and set off to explore Auvillar.
The city was walled, with very literal street names like ‘Palace Street’ and ‘Church Street’, so we simply had to follow ‘Obscure Street’ to see where it led.
It actually led to the old consular building but had a bend in it so that the destination would have been obscure to walkers. We passed under the clock tower to another realm, one of much more modern making with rows of three storey buildings and some shops. The Tabac was open so we were able to buy bread. Back in the old city, we visited the church of St Pierre, which was a castle-like, with a high tower. It was originally a Benedictine priory, attached to the abbey at Moissac, which had fallen into ruins and was restored in the 19th Century. It was a large and peaceful building and featured a statue of St Jacques dressed as a pilgrim, beautiful stain glass windows and also chandeliers. Steps led down to the treasury, where robes and chalices were behind bars in a little room.
A man was tending a grave and praying in the cemetery attached to the church, and feeling like out of place tourists in the face of his sadness, we quietly left. The open church and the man removed the sense that we were in a ghost town, an impression that all the stone and arches, the silence of the empty streets and the cold had given us.Back in the gite, we ate some chocolate by the heater and generally lived it up, which means that I read the book on the villages of France there and Keith worked on choosing photos and reading through the pages that I had written for the blog. It is always interesting when he reads something that he was not aware of on one of the days, and if he was writing, I am sure that his perspective would give the blog a slant that would give me surprises too.
I was worried about Katya, who would have started out late and there were no signs to direct her to the gite if she arrived in the dark. I wrote a letter telling her where to come and to shout ‘Bonjour’ at the locked gate of the gite, and Keith drew a little map. He took it down to the first lamp post past the city walls with a red and white marker on it, a lamp post she would be sure to notice, and attached it with blister binding tape. On the front it said in French, ‘Katya, from Germany’. We had seen other little notes such as this along the way, telling friends of intentions or meeting places.
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