To get to the "garden room" above, all you had to do was exit from the side door off the passage way to the loos or from a door out of the rear dining room (the glass walled section partly seen through the gap where the gate is), then cross a muddy "garden" with some randomly strewn flag stones as stepping stones up to the steps leading to the little conservatory entrance to the rooms....
The hotel looks pretty good and presents well on the few websites featuring it.... You can see that it used to be a coaching inn. The large windows to the left below the sign actually fill the space that used to be the passage way through to the rear court yard for the coaches and horses.
The church opposite is also good to visit.
Staying in the “garden room” of the hotel was odd for many reasons but the most particular aspect of the experience was the feeling that we had just been placed in someone’s mother’s old place some time after she had passed away. With most of the personal belongings removed and just the basic furniture left, the place felt abandoned with us slightly adrift there.
In the morning, after eating some breakfast we took our leave and headed down the road. My feet felt raw but the weather kept looking like it might start to improve.
At lunch time we were in another strange town that had seen better days but had some very interesting medieval features including a gate tower entrance to the old town and a lovely church perched on a promontory above the river with some interesting buildings, gardens a remnants of fortifications. I have a confession to make, too. This is the town with the big old map on a wall. The two lunch stops mix together after a year away but looking closer at my notes and the photos it becomes obvious what I did wrong. I am only looking one day at a time. I am not trying to look beyond that day, so if I make a mistake, I will either change it on the day or admit the mistake when I discover it at a later date.
It is all part of the intention to keep this as spontaneous as possible.
Even so, again this area feels like it holds mysteries and lots of promise and will be worth returning to at some point to find out exactly what it is really like. It is no longer a tourist stronghold, that seems clear, but it has some strong character to it. Perhaps the ancient forests are still making their presence felt. It is a country worth walking through.
Gradually, the weather got worse rather than better and we ended up walking along some pretty wet paths. The canal-side route was a wonderful way to go through the countryside and an great way to enter the town we were aiming for. But the rain and the long grass were completely unforgiving when you have stupid, leaky boots and even more stupid feet like mine.
After a couple of false starts, D and I eventually found the convent and rang the door bell. A tough little opened the door, saw that we were pilgrims and immediately told us off for coming to the front door. We needed to go to the side entrance (the one with no signs, no address, etc, of course). How silly of us. She obviously gets annoyed with lots of silly pilgrims who do the same. One of these days the guide book will tell us what to do and all will be well.
I think I was in shock by the time we found the convent and was so grateful that we had friends to help make sure we were all right. Everything was closing down by the time D went out foraging and he even went into a bar, bought a bottle of wine and asked them to remove the cork for him because he didn’t think we had a bottle opener!
What a star!
The convent refugio is on the other side of a small courtyard in an out-house detached from the Convent. It could have been a small infirmary. You entered into a small living area with a table, some chairs and a set of cupboards, one with a small two plate electric stove. There was also a sink and taps. Off this was a small shower/toilet facility and, beyond the living area was a corridor with some rooms off of it, each with a set of beds of different sizes, ages and styles but mainly all looking like very old hospital beds. There were also some beds along the end of the corridor, too. The whole place was vaguely clean in places but there were massive cobwebs above about the six feet range, dust and dirt abounded in corners, on walls and ceilings and the loos and showers were not notably clean, either. It was as if a small, semi-infirm old person with poor eye sight and limited reach had been doing the cleaning for some time.
In fact, I think this was actually the case.
Relevant Placemarkers on the map for this stage are numbers 97 – 99.
Alison’s Log - Camino Day 36 dimanche 9/5/10 - Valigny to Saint Amand de Montrond
The cost for last night turned out to be E71 all in – everything except the wine with dinner – so not such bad value as we’d thought.
We set off around 8.15 and took advantage of it being Sunday to stick to the road to begin with. We turned onto a grassy path that led us up between fields and over the hill into the next valley. Before that we stopped for coffee in Ainay le Chateau – including pastries and radishes. We came down off the hill/fields for lunch but, by then nothing was open so ate on a park bench. The weather was grey and misty to begin but promised to improve and the sun did come out a bit so that I walked the bit between coffee and lunch without my jacket. However, it began to spot with rain before lunch and then to drizzle as we walked by the canal. Then the rain began properly for the last few Kms into St Armand. We found the town and the church (open) no problem but spent quite a while wandering in the rain trying to find the night stop – Franciscan sisters. Ian’s feet got very wet (along with clothes and rucksacks) so we are hoping he doesn’t have any blisters and that everything dries out.
Again there is only us here – although we met another pelerin on the canal and saw his companion in the distance. Dougald made food from what we had, what was in the store cupboard plus things from the only open baker in town (plus wine from a bar!). And now we are gathering as much info from Betty and Dougald before they leave us tomorrow morning – they have been good, generous friends and we are so grateful for their company and help!!!
The canal as we approached it
The condition of the path was grim.
I at first thought that the pilgrim we met was German. He was walking on the other side of the canal from us and, when we came to a bridge he had stopped and he called to us. I said hello and he said he was waiting for his friend, who was German. He made a joke about how slow his friend was and, actually, he was just waiting until his friend came back into view before he set off again.
At this point I was not impressed. We had walked a lot on pilgrimages and shared this view that when you walk together you actually stay together. He seemed to think that you didn’t need to keep together. I had not walked the Camino or even walked with any other pilgrims on this route apart from D&B so I had no way to measure his approach properly. As a result, as I said, I was not impressed.....
Oddly, after more time on the camino it didn’t seem anything like the problem it felt today. We found lots of different ways that people walked the way “together”. Needles to say, B&D were much more relaxed about it than we were.
Apart from this issue the one thing that we did have lengthy discussions about that these new pilgrims highlighted was the sorts of clothing that people on the camino seemed to be wearing.
As UK-based pilgrims we wore what UK walkers tend to wear. We had light weight waterproof jackets then our rucksacks. To keep the rucksack’s contents dry D&B had waterproof rucksack covers they pulled over their bags when it rained. We had Bivvy bags inside our sacks and everything went into the bag before we closed it up.
In Europe many walkers go for different versions of the poncho. This device provides cover for bothe the walker and the different things they are carrying.
Monique wore quite a heavy duty one that went down below her waist. The new pilgrims had ones that seemed lighter but still were quite low-slung. We also saw others with shorter ones. In all cases, the wind seemed to be a major factor on how good these things performed., A well designed one was usually relatively OK but the cheaper ones just blew off the sack and the person in certain winds.
Having discussed their pros and cons it did seem like a good idea to have something that was outside your sack and other stuff, was easy to put on and take off and was light easy, dry and relatively well aired, too. One of these days we will even try one....
Here is the canal just before we left it to enter the town.
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