Ready to start a new day's walking, waiting in the courtyard of the convent:
And the door we should have used when we approached the Refugio:
OK, so this is not the best picture of the statue of Brel but it is of the moment... there are better photos you can check out on the internet.
Our first stage out of the town was on empty, open roads with lots more rain. It looked like it would never stop!
Bull and calf looking happy in the morning rain...
Morning paths and roads led us to more forest cover and gradually the rain diminished.
After lunch we began to see what the countryside was like without the grey curtain of rain blurring and obscuring the views.
The paths were going to take some drying out, though.
The afternoon become more and more sunny, which disoriented us somewhat...
More of this "almost English" countryside with deep sunken lanes curving through the landscape:
and walking along them was a bit like going through a time warp..
St Amand was wet and lively as we headed off through the town. The covered market was busy and the shops were all opening, traffic was heavy on the main roads and people pushed past us as we found our way through towards Orval, the neighbouring town and the direction we were all headed towards, Betty and Dugald for the station and us on our way to the next place. I almost bumped into a statue of Jacque Brel as we trudged along – I was just focusing on walking properly while avoiding the people on the busy streets.
I tried to find out why Brel’s statue is there. It is not very clear and I am sad that my photo does not let me read the plaque by his feet.
I have found that Brel was closely linked with a French singer who called herself Barbara and that she wrote a song called, “Au bois de St Amand” and that there is a lot of discussion regarding which woods she was referring to in the song – some make it closer to Vierzon and others near here. Brel and Barbara sang together and sang each others songs for a long time but I cannot find him doing a cover of that song. In the early seventies she starred in a film that Brel wrote, acted in and directed (called Franz) but it was based in a coastal town, not here.
Perhaps I am just rubbish at researching such things....
Any way, we walked virtually through the whole of the town before sadly bidding B&D farewell. We won’t see them again until Spain. We will miss their companionship, wisdom and sense of humour. I will also miss having a singing partner as Dugald and I often burst into song as we trudged through the mud and rain.
After crossing a bridge we escaped the town and headed along quiet roads and paths going deeper into the country again, encountering more woods and fields of cattle – the beef in this area must be extraordinary. We noticed that calves stayed with their mothers until quite old and that herds seemed to be less industrially bred and kept than in the rural areas of England we have passed through. More land? Less intense farming? Better farm subsidies for a different sort of farming?
We walked and talked and Alison expressed dismay that her waterproof jacked was letting in water at her shoulders. Obviously, the rucksack straps were affecting the waterproofing there. I sympathised – my waterproof top had never been much use anyway as its totally waterproof skin keeps the water from leaking through but creates a great environment for my sweat to condense on, so I end up with the inside being almost as wet as the outside anyway. Thank you Berghaus AQ 2.5.....
Camino Day 37 Lundi 10/5/10 - Saint Amand de Montrond to Le Chatelet
All got us as usual and headed out together because our way out of town went in the direction of the station. Said goodbye to B&D on a very wet street corner and then headed off to follow the map and arrows on our own. The rain slowed (slowly) and then petered out as we made our way on minor roads and paths across the countryside. Our lunch stop – the only commercially active village on the route, had an open cafe/bar/restaurant so we had a pression before our picnic lunch.
The 2 male pilgrims were already there eating a cooked meal.... in the afternoon we lost the way briefly, almost got attacked by a dog (turned out to be friendly if free ranging) and walked through beautiful forests and over bridges and in deep lanes. When we emerged there was another pilgrim also seeking the gite we had emailed last night. He is a young (26 yr old) German train driver walking from St Jean to Vezelay. We searched together and, with the help of a kindly local French woman we eventually found the gite.... not sure we would have found it on our own!
The man who owned the gite let us all stay ... but at an inflated price.... we (the German called Christian and me) bought food from the supermarket while Ian did washing and sorted out how to get the heating working and then we ate together and sat watching a violent electrical storm rage around us – hope it means less rain tomorrow!
And back home the coalition negotiations continue as Gordon Brown’s resignation is announced!....
At lunch we met the two pilgrims we had been encountering since the canal outside St Amand.
Just as we were engaging them in conversation we had a call from our good friend Mike Lagrue. I had messaged him because our middle daughter (Dominique) was panicking about the arrangements for our brief trip back to the UK to attend her graduation at the end of June. She had discovered that the “Teach First” project she was going to be part of began the week before her graduation and that they would only let her off the programme for one day to accept her degree. This made everything that bit more complicated and Mike was very generously (as is his wonderful nature) providing us with the transport during our visit. His message was simple “What ever you need... you have it.” For someone like us so far from normal life now as we walked on through France, his words were wonderful.
We said a prayer of thanks in the church before having our lunch.
You can see the gite at placemark number 101. The rest of the route can be checked out on the map at placemarks 99-101 and 100 is the location of our conversations – the large building is the church and, to the right of this on the other side of the road is the bar/restaurant.
The gite was a holiday home attached to the owner’s house. You entered it through his courtyard and inside, there was a door he could use to enter the gite from his hall.
The front door of the gite opened into the kitchen/dining area on the ground floor. There was a bathroom off this and then some stairs up to a large lounge. Another flight of stairs brought you to two large bedrooms.
The owner showed us briefly around and promised to come back to turn on the heating/hot water later but he definitely looked disinclined to actually do this as he stomped off to his own home – We could never really fathom what the problem was – he was charging us over the odds for using his precious place basically out of season and so what did he have to complain about? We even provided our own bedding etc.
I eventually found the instructions for the boiler in a drawer by the sink and put everything on full blast as we needed to do washing and have showers, etc.
I washed Alison’s waterproof jacket by hand using (obviously) the hand wash soap which looked like the best option. The rest of our stuff (and Christian’s) went into the washing machine. By the time they both got back from the shops I had the washing out and on airers/backs of chairs etc. using the direct sunlight that was now streaming in through the windows of the first floor lounge (once I had opened all of the shutters, of course).
In the gite we made our meals – I made a pasta sauce with lardons (you don’t need oil to start things off this way) onion, garlic, tinned tomatoes and some herbs from a jar I was carrying – I also had Tabasco. Christian basically added loads of grated cheese to a bit pot of vermicelli pasta and wolfed it down.
He gave us lots of information on the paths to come, talked lyrically about some of the remnants of railway lines that we would be walking, including an amazing viaduct further south of here. He was a keen and fit walker whose commitment to long distance walking was only surpassed by his passion for railways. He bemoaned the loss of so many lines in France and talked with great enthusiasm about his job as a rail driver.
We also compared notes on Monty Python – did the German translations do the original justice/were they valid translations? Etc.
The boots he was wearing were German Army issue ones which he swore by and he also swore by a cream which he used on his feet (called Nok cream) which, he explained, is used in hospitals in Europe to stop bed sores and other contact damage in long term patients. We met many others who swore by it and I think that I will have to find some of this stuff.
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