Day 29: Maslacq to Navarrenx
- Simon Pollack
- May 25, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 2, 2024
The fortress is a bastion of culture, food and sport
A place where pilgrims congregate, their journey to report
And meetings serendipitous take place among the bars
And evening meals delicious are partaken ’neath the stars
25 May 2024, Saturday
Distance hiked 22.7km (14.1m) | Ascent 708m |
I had, I knew, around 5½ hours’ walking ahead of me to get to Navarrenx, one of my favourite memories of the Chemin from 5 years ago. A walled fortified town with a profound history spanning the Spanish frontier, it’s worth a visit in its own right (ancient gunpowder store, tunnels, ramparts). But also I remembered the lunch I had back then at the Hotel de Commerce. It’s a Logis de France, which if you remember is sometimes noted for its food, and I had arrived hot and sweaty (again from Maslacq) at 1.15pm and plonked myself down ready for some refreshment and nourishment. The crisp white wine and perfect “boudin noir aux pommes” (a kind of refined black pudding made like a sausage, with cooked apples) had been my culinary zenith five years ago. This time I set off at 7.30am and arrived at 1pm, having booked this very hotel for my stay, and licked my lips in anticipation. I sat outside and despaired that the menu no longer included boudin noir! Not to worry – the pork belly was simply divine, and the beer followed by fresh dry white wine really brought a smile to my face.
The day’s walk was lovely. It had far more ascent in it that I’d anticipated, and in fact we must be in the early foothills now of the Pyrenees for after a fair few days of largely flat stuff this and the subsequent walks had far more hilly terrain. The one gripe, and it’s common in this second half of the walk, is that there’s a fair bit more road work than before. It’s well mixed with off-road trails, which are happily largely mud-free, but it’s still more than is ideal. But this is mitigated by the fact the roads are very quiet, the views are beautiful, and the mountains continue to beckon us with snow-peaked sirenic allure.
But 5 kilometres short of Navarrenx I encountered a situation that distressed me somewhat. I was the only pilgrim at this stage, having left so early and walked so rapidly to get to Navarrenx inspired by my gastronomic urges. On the side of a minor road with no traffic, just after a sleepy farm, I saw two dogs sitting on the grass verge. They seemed to belong to nobody. It’s possible they were farm dogs, but didn’t seem to be as they were a little way past it and farm dogs usually guard their yards. The larger dog, sporting a collar (that I was able, carefully, to tell had no phone number on it) while sitting placidly appeared to be injured for there was a sign of wet and slightly red fur on his hind leg, as if he’d been licking a wound. I put down my walking poles and approached: the smaller dog, white with no collar, barked at me as if protecting his friend.
But I’m OK with dogs and I was able to approach, and caress, both of them. Really concerned, but not having a car or any connections in this area, I didn’t really know what to do. I noted where they were (it was midday at this point) and walked on to the next house. A guy in wellies was just throwing some kibble down for his dog, chained up to an outside kennel which unfortunately isn’t a good sign. “Do you know there are two dogs up the road, and who they belong to?”; “They’re not the farm’s, they must be hunting dogs that have got lost”; “One appears to be injured!”; [shrugs] “Must have been hit by a car”; “Is there anything you can do to help?”; “They’ll probably find their way home”. How can an injured hunting dog find his way home? Besides they didn’t look like hunting dogs to me. “Can you at least bring them a little water?” (for it was hot) – no he couldn’t as he shrugged like the utter arse he was and went back inside. I wanted to rescue his dog too, from his uncaring hand, but that would be illegal unfortunately. There being simply nothing I could do at that stage I resolved to get to Navarrenx and seek help.
Fortuitously right next to my hotel where I had lunch was a vet’s practice, and they were due to reopen after the lunch break at 2pm (everything in France, maybe except large supermarkets and restaurants, shuts for a couple of hours in the middle of the day). So when I had finished mine, I went over and explained to the receptionist the situation. The vet wasn’t terribly helpful, saying there’s nothing he could do in law, even if he had an injured dog in front of him, without the owner’s permission. I was willing to adopt a discarded or lost dog there and then and pay for any treatment it needed. But happily their first client of the afternoon was a wonderful woman, older than me, called Valérie, who was part of a local association that looks after deprived animals. She has a dozen cats, several dogs (all rescues) and fosters several too. The world really, really needs Valéries as animals even in the west get a rough deal on average. Even loving owners are often incapable of raising a mentally balanced pet, and I’ve learned a huge amount from my wife Cat about these things as she is both expert and caring when it comes to animals. Valérie was able to leave her dog with the receptionist for a while, and she borrowed a chip reader from the vet. I went off with her in her car and explained the situation, taking her to the location of the dogs.
They were gone, which I sincerely hope is good news: either that they were lost and had been retrieved by their owner, or that they were the farm’s dogs after all, or that at a minimum the larger one with the collar wasn’t in fact injured. I later worked out that Vincent and Marie-Pierre, one hour behind me, had seen the dogs (and thought they belonged to the farm) and another pilgrim who arrived fifteen minutes later hadn’t. They therefore left or were collected between 1pm and 1.15, and so were long gone by the time I got there with Valérie around half-past two.
On my return to Navarrenx I toured the ramparts and soaked up the atmosphere, and saw a game of Basque Pelota, a squash-like game against a wall played by two teams with wooden bats. I’m not sure why I deferred my shower (normally I’d have been very keen to get washed, but I guess events had prioritised my afternoon differently). But as I was wandering back to check in to the hotel I got chatting to a few pilgrims I had met and one mentioned Josse was having a drink on his own in the square round the corner.
So I went to find him and shared a terribly enjoyable couple of beers with him. I determined that he was arriving in St Jean they day after me, and I was planning to spend two days there, the second of which I was staying in the town’s top hotel with a gastronomic restaurant, Hôtel des Pyrénées. I’d already worked out that the same was true of the Australians Richard and Cathy of a few days ago, and I’d asked if they’d like to join me for dinner that night. Josse was someone whose company I also enjoyed so I asked him too – and then there were four! My final night was shaping up to be quite the party.
Josse has an image in his mind of an accordion to explain how pilgrims criss-cross one another on the Chemin, as one does a longer stretch, or leaves earlier, than another, but then the reverse might happen the following day and they meet again. So it seems with Josse and me, for I’d been well ahead of him but in my resting, exploring and pausing, he’d caught up. And bang, Hans sat down! The accordion in action. We had a two-day-later reunion for twenty minutes, and by then it was nearly time for me to meet Vincent and Marie-Pierre for a pre-agreed aperitif (they were in a chambres d’hôtes with fixed meal time, while I wasn’t). It being a hot day I rapidly checked in and had a much-needed shower, before rushing back down to meet them, happily at my hotel (or the terrace outside, it still being sunny). We talked about the walk, and the dogs, got to know each other a little better, and bang, got a WhatsApp from Richard. “You’re looking well” he wrote, and sure enough there they were two tables over. And so this day of daisy-chain encounters continued. I didn’t go back up to my room, just sidled over within the table area and had an immensely enjoyable dinner with my new-found Australian friends who happened, like me, to be staying there too. I told them about Josse and they would, in their different meanderings from mine over the following few days, spend a couple of evenings sharing the same accommodation locations as him and they got to like each other too.
Needless to say, after an afternoon and evening of pretty much continuous drinking (save the hour I spent at the vet’s and with Valérie) I was a little sozzled as I hit the sack and slept the sound sleep of the guiltless drunk.
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