I leave the Ferme Gaineko Etxea before 8. There is heavy fog below us in the valleys and the tops of the trees are just above the fog, making for a surreal and quite beautiful image. I am heading for Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, just about five years and one month later than planned. This was where I intended to start my pilgrimage walk in 2007. It didn’t happen because the airline lost my backpack and I waited in Pamplona for five days until I realised that their promise of; “It will be there in the morning” was nothing more than empty air. By the time I came to this realisation I did not have enough time to get to Saint Jean Pied-de-Port and walk back to Pamplona, so I started from where I was.

This is beginning to feel like closing the circle. I have walked from Pamplona to Santiago, from Le Puy en Velay to Saint Chely d’Aubrac and from Saint Chely to here. From Saint Jean, Pamplona is only four days away and will complete the 1500 kilometres from Le Puy to Santiago.

After about an hour’s walk, the young German cyclist whose name is Dietmar, pulls up beside me and starts to walk his bike. We end up walking together all the way into Saint Jean, another four hours. The walk is mostly level between hills that get higher and higher – but still no mountains. Although we are not very high, the tree line is just below the top of most of the hills. They are green on top and often I can see cattle grazing in the high pastures. It would be nasty up there in a cold rain or with wind.

Dietmar wants to talk. He has been riding for three weeks from somewhere north of Bordeaux and today is his last day. He has a train out of Saint Jean late this afternoon. He is from Minden and he is pleasantly surprised that I know where Minden is. Not far from where I was stationed in northern Germany, there is a place which is a natural focal point for any invasion force from the east. It is called the Minden gap. He wants to know if most Canadians know about Minden. I have to break it to him gently that only Canadian soldiers of a certain age who served in the north of Germany would know Minden.

He is a very young-looking 35. I guessed him at 20 to 26. And his is a depressingly familiar story. He was in architectural school, then dropped out because of family illness. First his mother, then his father got ill and eventually died. By this time he had a job running a machine making cigarillos. He tells me that it’s a good job, although his interests are history and geography. Seems like an awful waste to have someone like this making cigarillos.

He talks about how he sees parallels between the chemin and life. I agree completely. Every day on the chemin is a miniature slice of life. At one point he asks me if I would prefer to walk alone. It’s a very caring gesture, because sometimes people really do need to walk by themselves. But I don’t at the moment and I get a strong sense that he wants to talk. Part of this, I recognise, is that this is his last day and he doesn’t want it to end. I know exactly how that feels.

When we finally arrive at Saint-Jean I drop my backpack at my gite and walk down with him to a crossroads where we sit and have a beer. He still has to find the station and take his bike there, so we hug each other and he heads off to the train station. I meet Francois near the church and we hug each other. Hard to believe I ever called him weird Harold. He seems to be less sad and quite willing to talk with people.

Saint Jean is named because it is at the entry to the pass to Spain. It was heavily fortified with a still-standing wall because it stood between the country to the north and all potential invaders from the south – and there were many. There are dates like 1527 and 1620 on some of the tiny buildings lining the main street in the old town inside the wall.

I go back to my gite, L’Esprit du Chemin. It is a very different operation from the many more commercial gites. With the exception of the owners, everyone here is a volunteer
from elsewhere. At the moment, there are three; Katherina from Germany, Wilhelmyne from Holland and Judy Gayford, the president of the Calgary chapter of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims. All three speak excellent English, as does Huberta, the gite owner, which makes my life a little easier. Today is Judy’s last day as a volunteer here.

I have picked this gite on purpose. Five years ago when I was planning my first trip on the camino, I intended to walk from Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, I booked a bed here in this gite for the first day of the trip. The the airline lost my backpack and everything I had, including where I was staying, the phone number – everything. So I guess the bed went empty. Anyway, they were very upset and sent an email to my address at home, telling me, correctly, that this was not the act of a pilgrim. So for five years I have waited to get back here, explain what happened and offer to pay for the missed night. Huberta tells me that I can put a donation in the box, only if I like, for the missed night. Which is what happens and all is forgiven.

I ask if I can spend another day here, but they are already fully booked for tomorrow. My name goes in the book if there is a cancellation. At dinner they have a lovely ceremony. Huberta asks that each of us say who we are, where we are from and something about our own experience on the chemin. We are one from Ireland, one Northern Ireland, two Americans, five French, two Dutch, two German, one Dane about my age, one Canadian. When it’s my turn, I tell my story, then read that little passage from my book and ask another pilgrim to tell it again in French.

Dinner is lovely, all cooked and served by the volunteers, who join us at the table. Later that night, I am lying in bed in the room shared by the Irishman and the Dane. The Dane, Erik, mentions doing UN duty in Somalia, I mention doing UN duty in Cyprus. He asks when I was there. I tell him the summer of 1968. He was there at the same time as a platoon leader in the Danish battalion while I was the Deputy Commanding Officer of the armoured reconnaissance squadron. He remembers – I find this astonishing – that my unit’s name was the Fort Garry Horse.

So we served together 44 years ago, we never met, and now we are here sharing a room in a gite in Saint Jean Pied-de-Porte. Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

If I can stay here tomorrow, I will. This is a lovely gite, very special. If not, then I have to decide to either go to another gite if I can get a bed or head out to Roncevalles by one of two routes. I don’t have to decide until morning.

Last evening while sitting in the church just prior to the pilgrim service, Jean-Pierre (the big Belgian) quietly asked me; “Is religion important to you?” I answered; “No. How about you?” He said; “Not now so much. It used to be very important.” And I wonder, of all the people walking this path, for how many is religion important? Certainly based on the numbers at the service last evening (about 40) and on the numbers who crossed themselves at the appropriate moments (2) there are not many Catholics here.

And many at the service were there because there was a little welcome with refreshments – that always gets people out – afterward. The church, we found out, was originally catholic, then Calvinist – they would not have approved of all the gilt and colourful statues, then Catholic again.

I had mentioned the Scots couple last evening. This morning at breakfast in the place I am staying there they are. They are Kevin and Linda Clarke of Stirling and they are riding from Le Puy to Santiago for a charity for Motor Neuron Disease, of which the best known in North America is ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. If you are interested their website is www.justgiving.com/Kevin-Clarke6.

I have a little experience with this disease. At the Hospice at May Court I had a patient with ALS, a delightful man able to speak only with his eyes and with the help of his wife, a sheet with all the letters arranged. She would point to a row. When she had the right row he would blink, then she would scroll across until the right letter when he would blink again. Primitive but effective.

They have lost two friends of their own age, just turning 60, in the past two years. They left Le Puy on what would have been the 60th birthday of one of the friends. We exchange contact information and off they go. I wish them; “Bon chemin.”

I am out of Navarrenx about 8:30 on a cool but promising morning. It’s overcast but the forecast is for partly cloudy, no rain. Just on the outskirts – which doesn’t take long – I overtake a young couple taking off their rain gear, which is too hot and unnecessary at the moment. I recognise them from the really nasty rainy day a few days ago. We speak and I can’t place her accent, so I ask where she’s from. “Nashville, Tennessee”. Well that explains the accent.

She is Genah (pronounced Gina) Loger and she is walking to Santiago with her French husband of almost two years, Jean-Francois. I ask where they met, expecting it to be here on the chemin or something akin. No, they met in Korea at a small remote Buddhist temple. He was there to learn and then teach martial arts. At one point he was a junior monk for about 18 months, then realised it wasn’t for him. She went there for a few days to relax. She was asked if she would stay and teach English to the monks. She stayed five years.

They were there together for two months before they spoke to each other, both of them very shy. He was no longer training to be a monk. Once they spoke she says that it was only days before she knew they would be together. They married in Nashville about 20 months ago. I asked her whether they had considered marrying in Korea and she laughs and says; “No, I wanted the whole white wedding dress thing.”

So that’s what happened. And today is his 30th birthday! I guessed her age but luckily I was wrong by four years on the good side. Always risky, guessing a woman’s age. Just a few days ago I did the same thing but guessed on the wrong side by four years. I think that I have been forgiven.

Today I walk on the road all the time. The chemin goes off into the woods but the word coming back from people ahead of us is that the trail is very muddy and they strongly recommend taking the road. Where the chemin crosses the road and I rejoin it, there is a little roofed structure with tables and benches and stacked cans of various kinds of pâté. There are my five French friends and while I am sitting there along comes Remi! We greet each other enthusiastically and compare notes. He walked the chemin this morning and is mud to his knees.

Out of Navarrenx the road is flat through farmland and rises lowly to a crest. On the crest the view is magnificent. Can’t see the Pyrenees, too much distant haze but the land drops away steeply into a huge flat valley, dotted with farmsteads and stands of trees. I walk down the road into the valley, talking to the cows and birds and horses – with bells on. That’s got to be annoying.

I am heading for a gite just short of Aroue. It is called the Ferme Bohoteguia. No, I can’t pronounce it either, but we are in Basque country now. We will see lots of ‘X’s and ‘K’s in the names. For example, tomorrow I will be staying just outside Ostabat at thhe Ferme Gaineko Etxea. Try pronouncing that. I am going to have to ask when I get there.

When I crested the hill just back, I looked at the extremely hilly country ahead and thought; “This looks like the Afghan hill country with trees” and the people are just as fiercely independent as those pesky hill tribes. The Basques speak a language which has some similarities to Finnish and Hungarian, but is not Indo-European in origin. There are lots of local languages, including Occitan and Béarnese, but these are variants of Indo-European languages.

When I am about half an hour from my destination I spot a little roadside restaurant, which is advertising to pilgrims. Finding a place like this is uncommon in France, unlike Spain, where the locals have figured out that the pilgrim traffic isn’t all destitute. Here I think that they are about 10 years behind, but they will figure it out … or they won’t. The French are pretty set on their style of life which, frankly, is pretty good as a lifestyle. They don’t take commerce too seriously, at least not here in the country.

I go in, order a beer and a sandwich and frites. While I wait, along come Genah and Jean-Francois. I thought that they were way ahead of me. They sit down and next here comes Remi. I realised after I said goodbye to him at the roadside stop that I didn’t have a photo of him, so I take this opportunity to remedy that fault.

While we are eating along comes the Japanese girl, Kieko, who is a friend of Genah and Jean-Francois. In she comes with her tin flute and immediately starts to play … and she doesn’t stop until the couple get up to leave. It is a little unnerving to have a conversation with a background, actually a foreground, of mostly Irish reels on a tin flute. I begin to understand how the Pied Piper got into so much trouble.

Kieko speaks English, very little French and plays her flute – I am speculating here – as a way to keep from having to converse too much. She does say that if she weren’t Japanese, she wouldn’t learn Japanese. It is too difficult with too many rules. She wants to walk to Santiago, but doesn’t think she has enough time on her visa and, if she doesn’t make it now, she won’t be able, financially, to come back for 10 years.

We three leave and I last see Keiko, playing her flute, walking slowly along a winding French country road. Remi walks with me as far as the ferme which is my gite, then walks on with a big; “See you in Saint Jean Pied-de-Port”. He will be there tomorrow, I on the next day, so we may well overlap. I hope so.

The gite is wonderful. It really is a working farm and the lady there is renowned for her hospitality. She is tiny, well vertically challenged, not lean and when her face is in repose it is stern. But it is a mask, behind which lives a wonderful sense of humour and when she starts to laugh, her face scrunches up like a paper bag. I have a photo of her close up when she can’t help smiling.

At dinner I sit with a dozen French and one Belgian, who has walked from his home. There is a lot of good humour and quite a lot of talk about what the chemin means. During the evening, I decide to get out my book and ask if someone can translate a short passage, which goes as follows: “I feel different from when I started this in mid-April, more at peace with myself. I know and accept who I am. Is there anything else? I still don’t know. Does it matter? I still don’t know that, either. The physical camino is over, but I think that the real camino is inside me, and it has just begun.”

Two people at the table take on the task and, when they have agreed and finished, I ask if one of them will read it out to the assembled people. They do so and I get a lot of enthusiastic agreement about what I have written. So it seems to strike a chord in these pilgrims … and I like that.

Then it’s off to bed in the dortoir, because it is going to be a longer walk tomorrow, about 25 kilometres.

Since I went to bed at 9, I cannot stay in bed until 7, so I am up and dressed before the rest of the people have left. I ask if the French couple who will be in Ottawa in September are still here. They are, so I issue them a formal invitation to join me in Ottawa for a pilgrim’s welcome when they are there. They are just delighted with this and assure me that they will come. We exchange email addresses to make sure this can happen. Then they are off. We plan to share a beer – ‘un demi’, I have learned – later today in Navarrenx. It is only 14 kilometres, a short walk and likely about three hours.

Oh yes, yesterday I crossed over the major multilane highway in this area, the one that links Bordeaux to Pau.

The weather forecast for today has changed from raining to just overcast, so when I leave, I have my rain jacket packed at the back of my backpack. When did I start trusting the weatherman? In France they have the same abysmal track record as in Canada. So within 15 minutes it’s raining and I have to stop and recover the jacket to put it on – which almost immediately stops the rain.

The walk today is all on roads, very narrow, paved, grass to the pavement. The country is very hilly and the roads here have been laid out by the same folks who do the GR. I am on the top of more crests than ever. By now I have been walking for more than a month – it’s the 22nd of May and I started on the 22nd of April, so I figure that I can climb anything and evidently that needs to be tested. So I go up and down steep winding hills. The good news is that the roads wind so much that I can’t see how high I have to climb, so it always looks just on the edge of possible.

Because it has rained so much there are puddles standing on the road and I drag my pole tips through them for fun. And I recall a moment 50 years ago when I was reassured that I had married the right person. (I was already certain, but there is no such thing as too much reassurance). We had our first child, a son Francis and he was just walking. We three went out for a walk in the rain and Carroll not only permitted, she encouraged Francis to jump in the puddles – and I knew that I had a partner for life. She wanted this little boy to get the most fun out of being a child as he could.

Perhaps it is because it is a shorter day today that it seems much longer. I look at my watch, as if that would shorten the time, and note than 15 minutes have gone by. And there are frequent markers telling me how much longer in time it will be to get to Navarrenx. Subjective time is very deceptive, I am finding. On longer distance days the time seems to go by more quickly. Perhaps that is because the destination is far enough away that I am not measuring time to it.

The woods here are dense and I think about Robin Hood, only here it isn’t Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, it’s Robin de Béarn who is the local hero. I have been in Béarn for a few days and am discovering how, for many French, their local political entity is really important. For example when The Three Muskeeteers was written by Alexandre Dumas in the 1840s and set 200 years earlier, all three of the musketeers are from Béarn. By the way, D’Artagnan is NOT one of the three musketeers. Did you know that? I didn’t. And a pertinent question: since these guys were all musketeers, how come every image of them has each of them holding an épée? How come they’re not holding muskets? No-one can answer me. I think the French have a lot to answer for on this topic.

As I walk alone I feel a need to scratch my butt and, to my amusement, realise that before I do, I look back to see that no-one is following me. Can’t be seen scratching my butt by a complete stranger, can I? I wonder what that’s about. English prudery? I was going to write British, but a Scotsman or an Irishman or a Welshman would just scratch, wouldn’t he?

As I come into Navarrenx there is a plaque explaining that the town was fortified in 1316 and later in the 16th century, a wall was built protecting the town square. It was the first bastioned city in France. Béarn was Protestant at the time and the Catholics planned to change that. It was Protestant because Jeanne d’Albret, the queen of Navarre (1555-1572) and the mother of Henri IV, converted to Protestantism and in the custom of the time converted all her subjects at the same time. The Catholic church was understandably perturbed. The town was besieged as soon as the wall was built – bad timing for the Catholics – but withstood the 3-month siege. The wall is still intact today. I am going to go have a look at it. And see if I can find the French folks for that demi.

I don’t find the French folks, but I do find Jean-Pierre, the Belgian sitting outside a little cafe. I have a hot chocolate (anything hot) and go off to explore the town. It doesn’t take long. It is about the size of Fort Henry in Kingston.

The wall is interesting but once you’ve seen it you have pretty well done the town. There is a cigar factory using Cuban workers in a 15th century barracks but watching people roll cigars is much like watching paint dry. It doesn’t help that it is quite cold and still rainy, so sitting outside watching the pretty girls walk by is not an option. Any moment now, spring should spring out.

There is a big fast river here, the Gave d’Oloron, reputedly the best salmon fishing in France. Gave is Béarnaise for river. There is a bridge over it here and the fortress is situated to cover and protect the bridge.

I have walked now over 560 kilometres and the end is starting to be significant. Up until now it has just been a vague idea, way out there. Now it is starting to feel close.

At 6 PM there is a service for pilgrims in the large and ornate church. The service is brief, done by a layman who then follows with a history of Navarrenx which takes at least as long to tell as it did to happen. In subjective time it is about 500 years. This is followed by a little reception in the welcome centre, and who is there but two young German girls whom I have not seen since the first day at Saint Chely d’Aubrac!

At the reception there is a young Japanese woman pilgrim who plays a little recorder-like instrument. The first song is an Irish reel, the second a Japanese lullaby and the third is Ultreia, a pilgrim’s hymn. Very moving. I meet here a Scottish couple who are cycling from Le Puy to Santiago. My first Scots pilgrims. More about them later.

Afterwards I have dinner with 10 French pilgrims in a restaurant. We have the pilgrim’s menu, which is lots of good food for 12 Euros. After dinner the owner’s wife gives us, without prompting, a fascinating history of Navarrenx and Béarn. Basque country starts just south of here and it’s pretty clear that the Béarnese feel that this is the outer edge of civilization.

I am tired before she is finished, but I wait until the end before I pay my bill, say goodnight to my fellow pilgrims and head back to my room. The weather for tomorrow is promising. At least rain is not forecast.

I wake up during the night to the sound of rain and it is still raining when I get up. The forecast is for several more days of this. The high today will be 12, so I don’t have to worry about overheating. The plan today is for Laurent to take me back to Pomps, from where I will promptly walk back to Arthez.

This is one of those moments when I could wish to have a little less of that authenticity thing going on. The place where I will stay tonight is just two kilometres from here. I could just walk out the door, take the chemin for about half an hour and present myself at the next gite. No-one would know except me. The trouble is, I would know. And I am the only person whom I have to face every morning in the mirror.

Laurent still thinks I’m crazy. Before I get out of the vehicle he tells me that if I have any problem on the chemin, just call him and he will come pick me up. It is a very gracious offer which I hope not to have to accept.

So it’s back to Pomps and walk, wearing all of my rain gear, for about three hours in the cold and wet. I wanted the experience, I’m having the experience that all the other pilgrims go through. Except for those who get a ride.

The rain is steady though light most of the time. Occasionally very heavy. There won’t be any view of the Pyrenees today. I start with my fleece on but have to take it off after half an hour. The weather isn’t hot but I am just too hot with it on. Almost all of the way today is on road, for which I am quite grateful. The only part off road is downhill and slippery with surface mud. At least it’s not deep.

I stop in Arthez to have a coffee and there in the little cafe is Francois, eating a pastry and having coffee. We talk very briefly, I have my grande creme and walk on. The place I am going, the Lawrenson’s, is about 2 kilometres farther down the road. Eddy is a school classmate of Les Foster’s at whose home I stayed in Victoria when I was there April a year ago to speak to the Victoria chapter of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims.

I arrive, quite soaked, about 12:30 and am greeted with a warm welcome. Eddy and Irene are gracious hosts … and they speak English. This is the most English that I have heard or spoken in a month. I get off my really wet rain gear and change into dry clothes. Everything gets hung up to dry. I also stuff my boots with newspaper so they will dry by morning.

I am offered hot coffee which I accept with alacrity and hot milk. Irene asks me if I would like to have lunch with them – paella. I cannot think of anything I’d rather do, so she makes their regular Sunday – this is how I find out it’s Sunday – paella, but more than normal to account for the extra place at the table.

While we have lunch, the rain really starts to come down and it pours intermittently for about half an hour. Folks still out walking will find it difficult and I am extremely glad that I am watching it pour from inside a dry warm space.

We talk about the history of this area. There is lots of it. For example, in a nearby town called Orthez, in February 1914, Wellington fought and beat French Marshall Soult in the Napoleonic wars. It was the beginning of the end for Napoleon. This is also the area of the Cathars, who were the subject of the first crusade by Christians against other Christians and people who suffered dreadfully at the hands of the inquisition. More about that later.

Two other wet pilgrims arrive, a Quebecoise and a Swiss. I am hoping that it will be Joimie and Fanny. but it’s not. They are likely way ahead of me. It’s Sylvie from the Montreal area and another woman from Switzerland.

The first thing I ask Sylvie after the introductions, is if her last name is Parent. She is a dead ringer for Ginette Parent, a dear long time friend, Quebecoise, who now lives just north of Berlin, and Sylvie is about a generation younger. But it’s not.

I sit and talk with Eddy and Irene through the afternoon. We talk about the history of the area, man’s inhumanity to man, religion and spirituality, how they love to walk in France and Spain, our families, our children and how we are all fans of Bill Bryson and the Flashman books. They tell me how they got into the gite business. The French family next door, who were very kind when the Lawrensons moved in 10 years ago, run a small gite with four beds.

After they got to know each other better, they asked if the Lawrensons could occasionally take an overflow person or two, just provide an extra bed once in while. Eventually it got so Irene and Eddy set up a four bed, two room operation of their own. I have a room to myself with two beds and the other pilgrims share a room. It works out very well.

I have dinner with the two ladies and I get complimented on my French by Sylvie. This I don’t expect but I am very happy to hear it. She also suggest that I should make my book known to the Quebec equivalent of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims. They have over 10,000 members, which is a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the English group. She also says that many of them in the Montreal area speak and read English.

The weather clears up and it looks quite lovely although the weather forecast for the next two days remains wet and cool. We shall see what the morning brings. I am off to a place called the Abbaye de Sauvelade, where there is apparently a gite called Le P’tit Laa. I say apparently because Eddy tells me that there is nothing there but the ruined abbey. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. It is only about 12-14 kilometres, ought to be an easy walk. I should know better than to tempt fate by thinking like this.

He also confirms something that I have been suspecting for some time. When they moved here 10 years ago, the GR65 passed by their door on a quiet paved road, the D275. Several years ago it got changed so that now the pilgrim path heads off into the hills, adding about four kilometres and a lot of off-road hill climbing. Two possibilities spring to mind. One is that the municipality asked for the change to get the pilgrim traffic off the road for safety reasons.

The other, and in my mind more likely, reason is that hikers want to walk in the woods, not on roads, so the route was changed to accommodate them and, by accident or intention, inconvenience the pilgrims. While we pilgrims are happy to see the woods and hills, we also want a direct route to our next bed. Roads are good, too.

I have a really good sleep in my double bed with comforter. I wake up just before 7 and am dressed and in the farmhouse kitchen by 7:15. The two French couples are already there, almost finished breakfast and ready to go. I have a short walk today, less than 10 kilometres to a fairly large town. I say goodbye to my hosts, strap on the backpack – it is like an old friend by now. It is fairly heavy to lift but once it is on my back and cinched down, the weight disappears.

I have a couple of kilometres to walk to get me back on the chemin. It’s a left out of the farmhouse and another left 10 minutes away. Can’t see the Pyrenees today though. Too much haze . That takes me into Pimbo, which is on the edge of a high escarpment, wonderful view to the south.

Funny name for a quiet little town, but it has been here for a very long time. It was here before Charlemagne took his troops south to consolidate the southern borders of his kingdom and to try to stem the relentless northward push of the Muslims. The myth about Charlemagne making this pilgrimage is just that – a myth. The bones that were found and declared to be those of St. James the Elder had not yet been found, so there was no pilgrimage destination and no pilgrimage, at least not a Christian one.

Here in Pimbo I encounter Francois at the church. I would prefer to walk alone, but he clearly wants to walk with me. I do not know what is going on, but I walk with him. Over the next hour he tells me a little bit about himself. He is from a village in the Ardennes, from which he has already walked 1,600 kilometres with just under 1,000 left to go. Then he intends to walk home, although he doesn’t know if he will be able to make it. He has a hernia which is giving him some grief and he finds his pack too heavy and the belt aggravates the hernia.

As we walk he talks about the plants on the side of the road. We pass what appears to be a huge young orchard but he says that the trees, only about three or four feet high inside the protective sleeves are oaks, so this is a tree nursery, not an orchard. Then he tells me about some of the small wildflowers that we see. I ask him if he is a biologist. He looks at me, laughs and says no, but his older son loved plants and knew all about them. Then he says, sadly; “But he is no more.” I repeat this as a question, although I already know a bit of the story.

We stand together at the side of the road at an intersection with traffic going by on the busier road and it all comes out. His wife of many years developed cancer. By the time it was diagnosed it was inoperable and had spread throughout her body, including into her spine. She was in agony and the medical profession did what they could but nothing worked. The elder son in desperation shot his mother as a mercy killing, then himself. Francois had already lost a younger son in a car accident, so he is quite alone. I listen as hard as I have ever listened in my life. He needs someone to hear his story and to help him understand. I can listen – that is all I can do. He needs to talk through it until makes some kind of sense for him. So I guess this is why he wanted to walk with me today.

He tells me that he no longer believes in the benevolent God of his youth. It is not clear whether he still believes at all or just does not understand what has happened in his life. He decided to walk to Santiago but so far he has not had any breakthrough. In Le Puy he had a long talk with the bishop. He tells me that many people on the chemin have been very kind to him, but like me, all they can do is listen. He talks about a Sufi mystic of some centuries ago who said that you could not find God in the heavens or in the churches, that God is found only within the self. It seems to resonate with him and it sounds a lot like my theory of the human spirit.

My left ring finger continues to give me a little grief. The last section goes partially numb and pale or bluish at the slightest excuse. When I mentioned it to Andre at the gite in Aire-sur-l’Adour he immediately said; “That’s Raynaud’s Syndrome.” When I got Internet access today and looked it up, it certainly fits. That would also explain why the infection on the side of the finger has taken so long to heal. Everything is good now, the finger isn’t in any danger of falling off or, worse, rotting in place, but I have to continue to be aware of it.

I am sitting at a table outside La Vieille Auberge, a little restaurant/hotel in Arzacq. It’s 1 and the communal gite doesn’t open until 2. They have 77 beds … and they have WiFi, if I sit very close to the gite’s welcome centre. It is overcast, just warm enough to sit without a fleece. I have an eye out if any pilgrims whom I recognise come along. So far none that I know.

And then who walks up but Remi, the young guy who sang the Occitan lullaby a week or so ago in Espalais? I saw him yesterday in the churchyard at Miramont but don’t know where he went after that. I find it fascinating how individuals keep popping up in the most unexpected places. Francois and Remi are both staying here in the communal gite tonight.

I recall that a couple of days ago at Monciel I noted that the women – at least two of them – were stunning and I thought that it might be a trend. Today at the gite here, the Centre d’Accueil, the woman staffing the front desk is stunning. Karine is young, lean, tall, blond and has an engaging smile that makes me weak in the knees. She is chewing gum, which takes the edge off just a bit. She is also engaged. So it’s more than a trend and I am going to work out a hypothesis to support my thoughts. It might take a lot of research.

I am in a small room, the Salle Angleterre, with six beds, very close together, but it is indoors and the toilet is just down the hall. I have taken the bed closest to the door. And Francois is in the bed next to mine.

I ask Karine about helping me book rooms ahead of me. She tells me that she can book one, for more than that I need to go to the Office de Tourisme. So she books me for the 21st and I go the Office de Tourisme – turns out it’s part of my research – where the quite lovely young woman (who is married) wants to practice her English and gets me a bed for the 22nd through the 25th. So I am good for seven days out. That takes me as far as St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where I will have to get a guidebook for the Spanish portion. It is very reassuring to have accommodation booked in advance when there is so little of it.

When I was in Aire a couple of days ago, Andre, the host and a 9 times veteran of the chemin, had what sounded to me like really good advice for the pilgrims going beyond Saint Jean Pied-de-Port over or through the Pyrenees towards Pamplona.

His first bit of advice is to go over the high route only if the weather is good and your pack is light. He points out, correctly, that the ancient pilgrims walked the easiest route, not the most photogenic one, so the valley route is more closely aligned with the ancient route.

Secondly, if you really want to see the far vistas, pack a light bag, climb about 8 kilometres up the path, take your photos, come back down and next day walk the valley route.

Thirdly, don’t stay in Roncevalles. It is like a herd of animals leaving there every morning, hundreds of people together. He suggests taking the valley route, staying in Valcarlos overnight, then walking through Roncevalles and staying in, I think, Espalion the next night. In the morning it puts you hours ahead of the Roncevalles crowd.

At dinner, seated at one long table for 30, I sit with a woman, Christine, who tells me that she is from Normandy, near Caen. I tell he that I am familiar with Caen because during the Normandy invasion in 1944, my regiment came ashore near there (I wasn’t there, I was just 7 years old and my military days were years in the future). She gets quite excited and says; “The Canadians came ashore at Bernieres-sur-Mer. I know this because that is where I live and every year there is a ceremony honouring the Canadians.”

I am going to have an early – even earlier – night tonight because I expect a long day tomorrow.

Well, not a good night’s sleep. We are three in a room and the other two guys are fine, but I have a sodium street lamp about 15 metres from the window and it glares all night. It isn’t until the morning when someone asks how I slept – the universal question in the morning is; “Avez-vous bien dormir?” – and I say poorly and why, they ask me why I didn’t close the shutters. Because I don’t remember shutters in the usual course of events. It does, however mean that I can get up at night – twice – and head to the john without my trusty little LED flashlight.

After breakfast most of the others leave and I sit with Andre and Odile a few minutes. He tells me that one of the pilgrims asked him this morning why they don’t have any children. He refused to answer because he finds that type of question both personal and intrusive. He says and I agree that people need to respect each other’s privacy, and that includes the privacy of the people who have chosen to operate gites for the pilgrims. It is a matter of reciprocal respect for privacy. For many people this is a deeply moving experience and personal questions may be quite damaging.

I walk up the long hill out of Aire-sur-l’Adour and at the crest I see the Pyrenees on the southern horizon for the first time. They are big and there is a lot of snow on the slopes and summits. I will be seeing them for the next two weeks as I walk south and west.

I expect an easy walk of 18 kilometres and it is, flat farm land, cultivated fields, tractors doing their thing. I meet the four ladies from Lyon and we share a coffee by the side of the trail. I note that they carry small testaments with them – with 26 children among them, I am pretty sure they are all Catholic, which they turn out to be.

I walk with Valérie for an hour or two and we have a long talk about her first husband.. They were stationed in Germany and he had been gone for two months for an extended exercise in the Mediterranean. His aircraft was performing the safety role for night carrier operations, standing off to one side and something failed catastrophically in the helicopter. It really did fall into the sea and the crew was lost. It was 1998 or 1999. She was 30, with three children, four, three and 20 months. It was a terrible blow and yet at the same time, as the wife of a military helicopter pilot, she had conditioned herself to be able to handle it if the impossible happened.

That didn’t change the grief or the horror of facing life without her husband, but she tells me, in retrospect, it became one of the happiest periods of her life. She said to God; “Well, it is all in Your hands now. I don’t know what You have in mind, but there is nothing I can do to change it.” And that was the way it worked for a long time. She put her absolute trust in God and, for her, it worked and continues to work. After some years she found another man, also with three children and they have three more children between them for a total of 9, ranging in age from 18 to 20 months.

This annual walk for four days with her friends is, for them, total liberty. Andre back at the gite told me that he doesn’t approve of this 4-day pilgrimage and that when they walk together it is not a pilgrimage. In fact they don’t walk together, they walk mostly alone and the four days is the most that they are able to pull out of their busy lives. They are walking from their homes near Lyon to Santiago, four days each year. It is a multi-year commitment. They tell me that they understand that Andre doesn’t understand and that it is just his point of view.

We arrive together in Miramont , a tiny village, about 1 PM. We stop in the churchyard and I go off to find my gite and get rid of my backpack. It doesn’t open until 2:30 so I leave my pack there and go back to the churchyard where the ladies prepare their lunch. I sit with them and for a while lie back on the grass and almost drop off to sleep. About 2 they get organised, because they have another 14 kilometres to go and we say goodbye – another bittersweet goodbye.

I sit in the little courtyard of the gite, Maison Helene, until 2:30 when a woman, black-haired, opens the door. I tell her my name and she looks a little nonplussed. She checks her sheet, I am not on it. And she has no beds, not one. I know that a few days ago one of the hospitaliers called ahead for me, but something has gone haywire here. She calls the other possibilities in town. No-one has my name and no-one has a bed.

Now I start to get a little concerned. I know that beds right now on the chemin are a scarce commodity and not having a reservation could be catastrophic. My plans do not include sleeping out under the stars of which there will be few tonight. Possibility of rain. She asks if she could get me a ride back to Aire-sur-l’Adour and bring me back here tomorrow to continue. I actually don’t care, I just want to have a bed for the night. Finally she calls a place not in my guidebook, the 2010 Miam Mian Dodo. It is a farm gite a couple of kilometres off the chemin. Do I care? She calls, they have one bed left and it is mine.

Then she pours me an aperatif, gratuit, and her husband brings up the vehicle and he drives me a couple of kilometres on winding roads to my next spot.

Except he doesn’t. He drops me in the middle of nowhere at an attractive farmhouse that he says is the gite, bids me; “Bon chemin” and drives away. He is happy that he has been able to help a pilgrim. I schlepp my backpack into the farmyard and put it by the door. I try the door, it’s locked, I make friends with the dog and I sit down to wait. I find it strange that a gite would be locked at this time of day, especially since the phone had been answered earlier. I find it even stranger that there is no sign for a gite at the entry to the yard. That is a first. There is always a sign. As I sit here I get more and more suspicious that I am not where I am supposed to be.

So after some minutes I leave my pack and I walk down and then up the road – it is winding and hilly – for a few hundred yards until I see two men working in a barnyard. I ask them if there is a gite on this road. One of them – I find out later that he is Gilbert, a duck farmer and the owner of the gite – says; “Yes, it’s a little farther along, my wife is waiting for you, you will see the scallop shell at the entry”. What a relief! So back I go, pick up my pack and head for my gite. There on the right is the building, a woman is standing in front and I am here.

It’s a miracle. This is my bed of last resort. I have a double bed in a private room, glass patio doors looking out on a rural landscape, with an ensuite shower and beer in the communal fridge. The place is modern and spotless. There are four more people coming but they have not yet arrived. A shower, a quick wash of some clothes and I am ready for the rest of the day – which is what I am doing now.

The other four people have arrived. Two men retired from the French military, Guy and Christian and their wives, Agnes and Christina. Christian commanded an infantry battalion, Guy was a military engineer. They met at St. Cyr, the French equivalent of the Royal Military College, as young cadets. Christian is very tall and imposing, which reaffirms my belief that it is easier for a tall man to assume a leadership position.

Christine has tried to find me accommodation farther down the chemin based on available accommodation. My walk for tomorrow is less than 9 kilometres but more than 30 the next day. She tries a number of places but everything is ‘complet’. There are large numbers of walkers. They think it is because the 26 consecutive days of rain – of which I only got the last half – delayed the plans of a lot of people and they are all playing catch-up. Also yesterday was Ascension Thursday and another French holiday. A lot of gites are closed because of family events.

Dinner is at 7 at the farmhouse, just up the road 100 metres. Gilbert and Christine welcome us into their house, where dinner is set for all seven of us. We start with an aperitif, Floc de Gascogne, then foie gras with toast, several courses – and end with 30-year-old Armagnac. Now this is country living. And to think I could have been in a room in Miramont with several other people, one of whom would snore and no light of my own.

Today I walk 25 kilometres from Arblade to Aire-sur-l’Adour. It is an easy walk, gentle rolling hills in farmland. At first the crops are mostly vines and barley but it changes to mostly corn as I get nearer to Aire-sur-l’Adour. The last 7 or 8 kilometres are dead flat, almost dead straight on an old railway right-of-way.

And I have to admit an embarrassment. That Roman road that I walked on the other day? I was out by about 1600 years. I mistranslated “ancienne” as ‘ancient’ rather than ‘old’ and I failed to translate ‘voie ferrée’ at all. A voie ferrée is a railroad and an ancienne voie ferrée is an old railway right of way. I still think it would have made a great Roman road.

As I walk today, alone again – this is the third consecutive day of walking alone – I think about helicopters and sex and about the three stages of being.

The helicopters are perhaps because yesterday – I think it was yesterday – as I walked out of Monciel a French military recce helicopter flew overhead at less than 40 metres above the village. As well, I saw then and again today a small helicopter flying circuits. It turns out that there is a military flight training base near here. So that is what triggered the thoughts about helicopters.

What I think about is a story I was told years ago at a party at the home of an American helicopter pilot in Germany. All of the Americans at the party were guys who had completed and survived at least one tour in Vietnam. One of them was a young guy who by any reasonable standard should not have been alive. He should have been one of the more than 55,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.

With a big smile, he showed me a picture on the front cover of a Hughes Aircraft brochure. It was a photo of a Hughes OH5A, universally known as the Loach (LOH, Light Observation Helicopter). It was battered almost beyond recognition. The blades were twisted and bent with chunks out of them. He was flying the aircraft when it sustained the damage.

Here is his story: He was flying low-level, just above the jungle along a road where the Americans were advancing. His job was to reconnoitre the road to keep the American column from being surprised or ambushed.

He flew around a bend in the road and suddenly he was directly above a large unit, hundreds of men, of North Vietnamese or Viet Cong. Either way it was a very, very bad place to be. The aircraft and it crew had no effective protection from small-arms fire and the Vietnamese had learned how to deal with aircraft overhead. Rather than everyone try to shoot at the aircraft, which didn’t work – almost everyone would shoot behind the aircraft – everyone simply pointed his weapon straight up and fired. The pilot had to fly through a hail of bullets and the odds of getting away without many hits was remote.

So he used one of the peculiarities of the Loach. When you pulled up hard on the collective control, the helicopter had a strong tendency to turn hard to the left. He pulled up very hard in desperation, and the helicopter turned hard left – directly into and through the top of a large tree. He was pretty sure that he was dead, but the aircraft flew clear of the tree, shuddering and shaking – but still flying. He looked for a place to land, then realised that the shuddering and shaking had stabilised. It wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse either. Landing here was likely going to result in a very unpleasant encounter with the guys on the ground.

He declared a “Mayday” but continued flying and he was able to fly about 40 kilometres to a friendly airfield, where he landed and shut down the engine. He and other member of the crew were unhurt. The aircraft was not even salvageable, but the Hughes Company recognised the marketing possibilities of using the photos of this terribly damaged aircraft as an example of the survivability of their product.

So what is this story doing running around in my head? I haven’t thought about it for years. Perhaps it is the idea of the possibility of life changing in an instant, which happens to people all the time. And perhaps I am thinking about that poor desperate pilgrim who had lost his entire family.

The sex part is easier to explain. There is a big difference in young men thinking about sex and old men thinking about sex. Young men think about sex about 100 times every day. Then they act on the thought as often as possible. Old men think about sex about 100 times every day. Then they act on the thought as often as possible. The difference is in the definition of “as often as possible”.

I am reminded of a wonderful scene from “The Bucket List” in which Jack Nicholson’s character explains his three most important rules for getting old:
Never waste a hard-on,
Never trust a fart, and
Never pass up a toilet

Anyone else out there recognise these truths?

You know that survival and the urge to reproduce the species are two of the most fundamental biological needs for every species. But I don’t think young men sit around and think; “Say, I think that I’ll go out this evening, find a girl, past puberty, of symmetrical features and child-bearing hips and satisfy my primal urge to reproduce the species, since I know how important this is to the future of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.” What they think is; “I really really want to get laid.”

For girls I think that they also don’t sit around thinking: “I’ll go out this evening and find a man who has enough power to protect me and the child we will create together for the period while I am pregnant and for the next 15 to 20 years so that the species can be continued”. I think (apologies to Cindy Lauper) that girls just want to have fun.

My roommate last evening was Franz, a genial and recently retired theology professor from the Universities of Utrecht and Nijmegen. We sat for a long time discussing the phenomenon of the chemin de Saint Jacques. There are so many people walking it for so many personal reasons but they are, according to medieval philosophers, in one of three stages of being. The stages are not necessarily sequential, nor are they all achieved by all people.

The first is the sense of being at one with the universe, everything is all right with the world, or for a person who believes in God, being in a state of grace. This is the feeling that I have at the moment, the sense of being OK with the universe. It gives me a strong sense of inner peace.

The second is the sense of meaninglessness, of terrible solitude, for a Christian the “dark night” when there is a sense of abandonment by God. This, I think, is where the unfortunate man who lost his entire family is at this moment. I hope he can survive it. I think that a lot of people have this quietly desperate sense of meaningless in their lives. I certainly have at times in the past.

The third sense is the sense of simply being, the sense that eastern religions and Buddhism, which is not a God-based ethical and moral system, seek to achieve.

We also talked about positive and negative reassurance, on which I will have more to say soon.

I am in another lovely gite. This one is quite special. Andre has walked the camino 9 times, his wife Odile fewer but still several times. This gite is reserved solely for pilgrims on foot, carrying their backpacks and carrying a credential (the pilgrim passport). There are some unusual rules here. One is that the gite is closed at 9:30, so if you are out on the town, you might as well stay there. A second is that while dinner is offered, it is expected – actually required – that the pilgrims are involved in the meal preparation.

There are two parties of women here, both parties from the area of Lyon. One group of three is finishing here and the other of four women, started yesterday in Arblade and will be walking for four days. The second group is a set of friends who are wives and mothers, in their late 30s, early 40s. Between them they have – are you ready for this? – 26 children. One of them, Valérie, sits across from me at dinner and gets very alert when she discovers that I was once a helicopter pilot. She says that her first husband was a military helicopter pilot as well. I ask; “First?” She tells me that he was a French Marine pilot and when I ask what happened, she says simply; “He fell into the sea”. That kind of ends the discussion for the moment, but we will pick it up tomorrow.