Day 18: Lauzerte to Moissac
- Simon Pollack
- May 14, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 26
The Way reminds us of Flanders: the fields, not songster with Swann
(Though they wrote a glorious ditty of blood-cooling, wallowing fun)
The fun we had in the evening surpassed a hippo’s delight
Music and words next’ The Virgin, at Annie’s own Little Light
14 May 2024, Tuesday
Distance hiked 29.3km (18.2m) | Ascent 921m |
Today the mud became a big deal. This endured for about a week and had quite profound psychological effects on the pilgrims. After the experiences we went through today and in subsequent days I noticed that for the rest of the Chemin people would actively divert their routes from fields and woods to roads. I was guilty of this on a couple of occasions but overall it’s terribly misguided. Road walking is, basically, bad. They don’t stick roads on ridges with great views, they stick them down lower for convenience. The tarmac is very bad for the joints, as I was later to learn. The vehicles are dangerous. And the brute monotony of pounding the blacktop numbs the mind, having the opposite effect of the somehow refreshing results of challenging scree, mud or tree-root routes.
That said, pure mud mile after mile isn’t fun either. It slows you down as you worry about losing a shoe in the sticky stuff or sliding and falling. Most people I met around this time fell at least once (as did I), some falling 5 times in a day, some breaking equipment and some needing medical treatment. The slipperiness is stressful. You inevitably get splattered with the brown stuff, and your socks and shoes become both mud-caked and soaking wet (oh, for some gaiters, though those with them told me there’s a limit to their effectiveness in such turbid conditions).
I didn’t encounter this effect at all in the four previous trips on the Chemin. These trips occurred in Septembers, Octobers and Aprils. But all of Europe has known the wettest Autumn and Winter in most people’s memory, and this Spring is seeing the results with a far damper starting point and then continued buckets of rain. Earlier on in the Chemin, my first week or two, the effects of the water were, basically, water: streams where there shouldn’t be streams, flooding where a path should be passable, and the like. But that was a rockier walking experience, and one of the interesting aspects of the Chemin is that it takes you not only through different cultural environments but different fundamental geographies and geologies too. Here, in the Tarn-et-Garonne region, the geology (I speak as a non-geologist) is less rocky and more soily. And thus, the mud.
This was first noticeable immediately on departing Lauzerte. You wander down some steep roads, and past a school, and the exit of the town is then slip-roaded by a few hundred meters of a steep-downhill muddy track. And I do mean slip-roaded: this is your first opportunity to fall over, for it is closer to ice skating than walking.
After some pleasant miles of (slightly muddy!) tracks and field-paths, there’s a couple of klicks on a main road. It shouldn’t be on a main road, as they’ve created a parallel path a couple of meters off the road. But it’s reclaimed field, and in these conditions far too muddy to walk on. So we pound the tarmac, and eventually it turns left into the countryside, to some relief. Over the road a willowy sinewy figure was getting closer to me from behind, and after I climbed a hill off the road she (for it was a she) caught up with me. It was Frederica, a German HR professional who was briefly introduced to me last night by Pat and Deb. I would guess she is 5 or 10 years older than me, but she has that demeanour of someone for whom outdoor activities and sportiness are just a regular part of life. That said, she slowed down a little so we could walk together and I found her company very interesting – she’d studied comparative literature which I’d never thought of before but it seems fascinating to think of, a blend of social history, literature and psychology I’d imagine. As well as linguistics. But this was just a backdrop to the splattering we got from standing water in fields through which our path seemed deliberately to wind its way.
At Durfort-Lacapalette we stopped at the only café in town. By recollection it was called “Relais de St Jacques” so they know their customer. Here we caught up with Deb and Pat (they always seem to leave early and stop for a good coffee break, where I always seem to reach them). Also, a blast from a two-week past, David and Margaret from Canada were here, and it was nice to see them going strong. And Benedicte, again, who seems to be on the same rhythm as me. The talk of the café was the weather and the mud. I took advantage of the fact they sold pains-au-chocolat, my favourite guilty secret of French cuisine, and beefed up on sugar with a full fat coke. I never drink full fat anything in the UK but the expenditure of energy on the Chemin seems to demand calories in all forms.
Frederica and I left at the same time and continued our conversation. Intelligent and interesting people (and there’s an interesting bone in you if you want to vary your life enough to spend weeks walking The Way) are always good company. I like talking about pretty much any topic: science, philosophy, politics, culture, films, literature, life. So long as someone’s there to contribute equally to the synaptic sparking; and in fact the stranger with whom you find a spark is, in the instant, even more interesting than an old and comfortable friend with whom you’ve conversed a hundred times.
I saw the earliest signs of PMAS in the café: Pilgrims’ Mud-Avoidance Syndrome. People were out with their mapping apps, working out when the Chemin would take us through fields and woods and what tarmacked alternatives existed. I paid rather little attention and after a few klicks with Frederica she decided to stay on a road that was a little bit traffic-busy for my liking while I turned off and followed the true Chemin.
But Frederica was smart. After a kilometre of tough going, it got tougher yet for 500m and then nigh on impassable for another 200m. You’re clinging on to vegetation to stand upright with one hand, the walking poles in the other, hoping your rucksack doesn’t get torn to shreds in the briars, and using all your leg muscles to avoid the feet sliding into the deep muddy water in the middle of the path. A flat level path is bad enough in the mud, but one that slopes either up or down becomes slip-slide lottery. And one that has a lateral slope, as many do, is enormously difficult to navigate. This path had both a steep upwards incline and plenty of lateral sloping, and wall-to-wall mud with impenetrable vegetation either side. I threw in the towel and retraced my steps to rejoin the road where Frederica had made a better decision than me. Along the way I gathered some followers to whom I recounted the difficulties, while also passing others who decided to stick with it. Later I learned I’d nearly completed the worst bit of it, but I still don’t know whether my turning back gained or lost time.
Some kilometres later I had a serendipitous reunion with Frederica and, guess what, Pat and Deb. She’d caught up with them and they’d all stopped for another break – this is where the time I’d lost came back and I was able to walk the rest of the way to Moissac very pleasantly with these three for company.
I say “very pleasantly” but one thing I didn’t yet mention was the rain. It was one of those “wet all day” days. But there were 20 minutes about an hour short of Moissac where it eased to a drizzle and we four took advantage of a merely damp bench to take a late lunch. We dragged out of our rucksacks, and shared, what provisions we had, and it was nice with some bread, cheese, saucisson (cured pork sausage, hard and sliceable) and of course the rest of my fougasse. It gave us a boost to bring us into Moissac with a spiring in our step.
One of the funnier moments occurred on the way into Moissac. It’s a pretty big town and the Chemin brings you along a couple of kilometres of town-centre walking, which isn’t attractive for pilgrims. So there’s an alternative way in which climbs high but avoids the centre. Pat, Deb and I decided to take it while Frederica walked off to her town-centre gîte. All well and good save part of the climb is – guess what – a very steep mud track and it felt like every step you take leads to two slid backwards. The fencepoles of the adjacent field were in places damaged as, evidently, pilgrims had reached out to steady themselves. A very challenging half kilometre, and Deb and I, burdened with lighter packs than Pat’s, scrambled our way to the top. But while we waited, instead of just trying to get to the top, Pat (out of sight but within earshot) decided to give us five-secondly readings of his heart rate. “110”. “Down to 107”. “Hitting 100”. “Below 100!”. I seriously thought with his hands occupied reading his watch he’d hit the deck and slide all the way to the bottom, the anaconda moment of snakes and ladders. Deb and I were in stitches! The only moment where I laughed more, and which still brings me days later to tears, is “Charles de Gaulle” with Josse on my last night in France. But you will have to read on for that.
And so to La Petite Lumière. Anne Vittot has owned this place for 15 years or so. It’s perched up high near The Virgin (I think French people would understand this to be a statue rather than a place of unique chasteness). She is now in her 60s I think and this is my third time staying here. She is a hoot and a holler, a woman of great intelligence and cultural awareness, and of spirituality; and she is the friendliest, warmest possible host(ess) of any accommodation on the Chemin. While Deb and Pat went downtown to the cloisters and Abbey, where a pilgrims’ mass was to take place, I, having been there on a previous trip, just tinkled on the piano while waiting. It’s that kind of place.
We gathered together under Anne’s tent-like terrace (and the canvass was needed: it continued to rain) for dinner. The Australians returned from the mass and several others turned up. Dominque, a woman in her 60s whom I would meet several more times over two weeks, arrived to start her walk. Three friends (a married couple plus one) from Toulouse arrived for a few days’ hiking. Anne-Laure, a young Belgian living in Switzerland, again travelling on her own, was with us too, and she had started from home and intended to go to Santiago. And finally Bertile and Hannah whom I’d seen yesterday at the tiny chapel on the way to Lauzerte. We introduced ourselves around the table and talked about what had been the best part of today so far. Bertile, whose name is very unusual, described it “C’est comme fertile, mais avec un B” – it’s like fertile but with a B – to deep merriment. We all had our different motivations and although most people’s “best part of the day” varied – mine, like Pat and Deb’s, had been the impromptu shared late lunch under the drizzly sky – by the end of the night it had been supplanted all round I think by the evening Anne hosted for us.
We laughed and we talked deeply about spirituality and the meaning of the Chemin. We talked about Anne’s finding this house which had been an example of unearthly serendipity: she’d decided she wanted to live in Moissac having been a pilgrim and searched all over for a place to buy, and when nothing materialised in desperation she’d come up to The Virgin to express her disappointment to whatever Being may be listening; whereupon she saw the perfect house that she wished had been for sale. A gentleman, taking a break from a dinner party in a nearby house, wandered over and engaged her in conversation. She told him she was looking for a house and he said “well my brother is going to sell that one over there but it’s not on the market yet”. And guess which house that was… Owing to what appeared to be direct divine intervention Anne decided she needed to run the house as a pilgrims’ gîte and the rest is history.
We talked about Maud Ankaoua, a French writer of increasing renown whose most recent book “Plus jamais sans moi” is a novel whose protagonist undertakes the Chemin de St Jacques pilgrimage. While fictional the locations and characters are sometimes not, and guess what: Anne and La Petite Lumière are featured! She remembers Maud staying but didn’t realise she’d be in a book. So Dominique had just read it and was astounded to find her first night’s accommodation was a place she’d read about. The Toulouse trio were starting here because of the book. And Anne-Laure was in the middle reading the book and irked at the plot spoiler!
After dinner we cracked out Anne’s guitar and I played a few songs, which rounded off the evening nicely and everyone was engaged. I did a couple in English and a couple in French (including one by Jacques Brel, a Belgian, for Anne-Laure).
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