Day 5: Aumont-Aubrac to Nasbinals
- Simon Pollack
- May 1, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 26
The godfather runs the show in this town, his meter repeating its name
What pity it is with pitiful limits this town must his power constrain
And ’tis God that runs the snow in this town, must never forget about that
The pilgrims who grease the godfather’s coin will only follow God’s track
1 May 2024, Wednesday
Distance hiked 26.8km (16.7m) | Ascent 738m |
This is getting a little boring. It was like walking through a stream. Wading through a swamp. It wasn’t 40,000 steps, it was 30,000 squelches and 10,000 splashes. Another day of ups and downs (literally, and I suppose, as the morale gets pounded into the wash of climate-induced misery, figuratively). Each path a river. Every step a jump or hop to the next dry stone or sod. Thank God for walking poles in this environment (I heard later of a hospital-inducing fall from someone without poles).
I didn’t really walk with anyone today but passed a fair bit of time with another couple from Rachel’s table two days ago. I felt a little guilty: the big story this morning was the official Facebook people recommending (not commanding) a diversion of 3km extra along roadsides rather than go through the field-paths. This was because of flooding. When at breakfast it was raised to the hotel staff they checked and said the official information was no diversion. Well, 27 km of normal walking (in challenging enough ups and downs under normal climatic conditions) was going to be made at least doubly horrible for me by becoming 30km mostly on the road, so I took the non-diverted route. So when Joël and Marie-Noëlle followed my lead (my having recounted the breakfast direction) I felt a little responsible.
And so ankle-deep in water often, and working as a team to jump from a raised path to a wobbly stone to duck under a barbed wire fence to avoid thigh-deep conditions, we faced the challenges the “official” view said didn’t exist. Arriving at Nasbinals tired, shakingly frozen (I’ve discovered you mustn’t ever take wet gloves off and put them on again 10 minutess later, even for a delicious chocolate offered by a kindly pilgrim) and utterly drenched, I sploshed into my room. The floor was still wet the following morning even though I immediately disrobed. 16 hours of my shoes upturned on a radiator dried only the outside so it remained deeply wet to put them on the next day.
I took the decision to shorten the next day with a taxi. My blisters were awful, my knee hurt like hell, my muscle aches were getting better but still existed, and it was forecast to snow. To snow! In May!
I had dinner in the hotel, joining the four girls (Hélène et al) from Sauges and then Chez Camillou.
Hotel Route d’Argent is a nice hotel. Clean, functional. The restaurant / bar is full of life. But unfortunately the family that run it, the Bastides, is rude. They run the town, actually: several hotels and restaurants, the mayorship, etc. There’s nothing like not needing to attract customers, with Nasbinals square on the Chemin route, to allow disdain to prevail. As I asked for my Credential to be stamped, rude brother no. 2 (who’s actually the mayor, too) made a show of trying to find his stamp and after he’d done it I asked him to date it as everyone else had done. “My job ends there” said he as he put the stamp away. Fuck you, thought I, as I reflected on the hundred-plus euros I’d just dropped into his privileged, arrogant and ungrateful pocket. I wrote the date on myself (a slight deterioration in authenticity) and resolved to publish a blog expressing my opinion of his attitude. That will show him.
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