Day 6: Nasbinals to St Côme d’Olt (taxi)

A long march averted in cold and damp, but conscience twinges away

Do I offend the great hiker above, whose purity should hold sway?

But nay, there’s a G in Gillian’s name, for “Great lumps shall I cut from my path”

And I, with a modest day’s cheat under me, shall hold my head up steadfast

2 May 2024, Thursday

Distance hiked: zero

Cheat day (snow / wet shoes)

I cheated today, but I’m not going to beat myself up too badly.

While some of my clothes dried overnight, my shoes, upturned on the radiator (which was on, but low), didn’t.

Snow-swept pilgrims leaning into the wind at 8am on a May day in Nasbinals

Et puis, le déluge – but not of rain this time, of snow.

Now on reflection I’d misremembered just how hard this first week (or so) is. It is really challenging with the distances and the ups and downs and the quality of scree-like paths in narrow descents. And then everything is twice as hard when the wind blows you almost over or the clouds drench you like you’ve been in the ocean for an hour.

So in planning, the trip today was going to be a big one: 33 km of mostly downhill stuff. I thought 5 days to get my mojo going then the 6th I’d do a challenge. What the 5 days got me was wet, blisters and miserable. I was already thinking of modifying the day but when the snow came I threw in the towel. TAXI!

And so the taxi took me the 33km to St Côme d’Olt, where I arrived refreshed and, praise be, took an offered massage. Les Jardins d’Éliane, run by a delightful couple Élodie and Jean-Raymond, is a wonderful chambres d’hôtes and table d’hôtes. Just the place to put a much-needed smile on my face.

Waiting for dinner and using my time to book some accommodation for next week, I also browsed my photos. There are not many! I have my phone tucked into a sealed plastic bag in my pocket (it shares the bag with a moisture-absorbing silica pouch). I also wear gloves in weather like this. Gloves, sealed phones, and utterly drenching water in an environment with little shelter do not combine to deliver many photos. Besides, photos in the rain are hardly that inspiring, though I would wish for more for the record. And on the times I have pulled out my phone I discovered that in such weather the phone itself gets confused as to what is a finger sliding across the screen and what is a water droplet dripping down it.

I had my first encounter at dinner with people who had booked the trip with an organised company.  I hadn’t heard of this before, and it probably reflects the growing popularity of the pilgrimage. I’d guess this phenomenon has played a part in getting thousands more people on the Chemin than before (it’s certainly more crowded than my last time 5 years back), which puts a strain on accommodation options.

One of the diners was a woman called Jilliang (“My name is Jillian with a G”). She was a late middle-aged Canadian, and seems well meaning but talks a lot more than she thinks. She has done very little walking to date due to the weather. And is taking a bus tomorrow to Figeac (wow! That’s about 6 days cut out) where she will kick her heels till the trip joins up with her. She intends to go, like me, to St Jean, and all I could think of was: what a waste. I lost a day, she is losing a couple of weeks. My conscience is a little twinged, and hers should be beating her with knotted ropes of shame. I also met a couple from Canada, Margaret and David, and a French solo traveller called Brigitte, whom I would later meet again.

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