Day 9: Sénergues to La Bessayrie
- Simon Pollack
- May 5, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2024
The grind of the climb plays hard on the limbs, as breathless you reach the top
Where the sound of a perfect angel-like voice does lift the spirit aloft
And then with a newfound spring in your step you reach your day’s-end goal
The angels look down on last night’s frown, refreshing the pilgrim’s soul
5 May 2024, Sunday
Distance hiked 18.2km (11.3m) | Ascent 672m |
That’s more like it. A sunny day. A departure from the grim gîte. A shortish dozen kilometres to Conques, a very well-known centre of religiousness in France.
It is lovely in the town. But to get there you have the last mile of absolutely knee-punishing steep descending paths. I really can’t quite describe how steep they are. You need walking poles otherwise you’d fall over or you’d pull every ligament in your legs as your joints strain you down towards the town.
But once in, knowing what’s coming, I find a nice little cafe and have a 90 minute break with water, one of those well composed French salads with smoked duck, roquefort, walnuts and pears, and a nice coffee to wash it down. In fact I also had a rather nice ice cream too as a pre-event reward.
And what was this event? Well, the climb out of Conques is even steeper, and longer, than the descent into it. This is definitely the steepest bit of the walk to St Jean. Conques is a perfect illustration of what I came to call the hiker’s reverse law of gravity: what goes down must come back up! A very common pattern of this walk is that towns are typically located in valleys on rivers for obvious reasons, yet the walking is best on ridges and plateaux above these valleys for the views. And so each significant town (one or two per day) is usually accompanied by steep entries and exits. Later there is a reverse-reverse law of hiker’s gravity, when a town is a fortified citadel atop of hill and it’s a steep climb in and a steep descent out (Lauzerte, Auvillar and Lectoure spring to mind).
I averaged 2km per hour for about an hour and a half to climb out of Conques! But eventually I hit the plateau and heard an ethereal female voice singing either serious opera or beautiful religious choral music. As I approached the end of a path through the woods the singing got louder and I emerged to a rest-spot where a young woman was arranging her rucksack. “Was that you singing?” I asked and she replied in the affirmative: she’s a trainee professional singer and I thanked her for the 5 minutes of aural beauty after a tough walk!
A couple of hours later I arrived at La Bessayrie. This is a complete hamlet that used to house 9 families in four barn-like buildings. They must have been the epitome of French rural poverty back in the day (no heating, water ingress, cold on the side of a hill), but have been lovingly restored by the Belgian couple Steven and Mira who bought the whole lot 6 years ago out of a decade’s neglect and decline.
Again a slight confusion that I wanted a room to myself but there was a dormitory. They have a range of options and because I was arriving on foot I think they assumed that was what I wanted. Anyhoo, there was no other option available by then and apparently only one other guest. Well, what they’ve done is the best dorm-style accommodation you could imagine. Suffice it to say I wasn’t dreading the sharing experience this time, once I’d seen how they had arranged things. A huge room with the beds (separated with curtains) at one end, a kitchen area with table in the middle, and a cosy snug around a fire at the other end. Downstairs high quality shower, loo and sink facilities. And it got even better: the other person cancelled, so all this was just for me.
Outside the sun was still shining and the location showed itself to me. Good gracious it is gorgeous, perched atop a jutting cliff overlooking valleys on three sides and wonderful views of equivalent hills across said valleys. It later rained hard but fleetingly and the rainbow that resulted seemed a perfect framing of this spot. This is a true idyll.
Even better, it is a table d’hôtes. One of the barns is the refectory. Steven is the chef, a really excellent one, and I found out after my stay they had a Michelin-starred restaurant in Belgium before opening La Bessayrie. He and Mira, me, a couple of friends they know from Belgium, and a very friendly French couple, ate a stunning meal of pork (flavoured with wood smoke) and roast potatoes. This was something else entirely and put the previous night’s experience to shame. It was worth 10 times Domaine de Sénos yet cost close to the same. Money extremely well spent, and bravo to these Belgians who spent 5 or 6 years of hard slog getting this place to this quality.
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