Day 30 : Hartmut Engel, We Need to Talk
-Figeac-
I woke up early (for me), at a shocking 7.15am! Iâd been up almost all night, probably the most restless one so far. And, like yesterday, as I got myself ready to be alive, I contemplated a rest day. Figeac was
so nice, and I could explore, maybe even brave the SFR â but alas, the draw of a five odd euro campsite was too strong. On it was.
My tent was wet, because of course it was, it always was with these freezing French mornings. But hey, whatâs a bit of extra weight at this point. As I packed, I realised Forclaz Girl was here again â or had been. Iâd seen the tent last night, and naturally she was long gone by now. And there were three guys Iâd seen in Conques too, also getting ready to set off. New familiars to add to the tally-chart :]
I was feeling a little ambitious today; listening to my body was maybe a stretch. I had,,, negotiated a little. Iâd give it a rest, but only after Iâd broken it. I was going for my longest day yet, at 30.9km â and I was going to make it by 7.00pm. With that force to push me on, I started my day with a brisk walk along the same way Iâd walked yesterday, along the river. Confusingly, the way sends you across a bridge to the other side for a few hundred metres, then straight back across. Okayy!
Itâs a sharp little morning, but no more than expected â it always is coming off the back of the rivers, and Figeac is right on the CĂ©le. Thereâs a variant from here that leads through the valley that sounds
incredible, but I only remember about four hours from here, so thatâll have to be shelved for another year (I have no doubt Iâll be back for more Caminoâs or other long distance walks, I quite love it :]).
I pass two pilgrims here, one of whom boisterously flings out his arms, shouting âBON VOYAGE!â as I do, which is both incredibly funny an very endearing, and I smile the rest of the ascent away. Thereâs no fog this morning, just soft sunlight rising over gray clouds â it would seem I am once again behind the storm, as the first hour or so is spent glancing over my shoulder at the darkness engulfing the valleys. Oh boy!
But, for me and the others in the blob for today, itâs clear skies and heat. Very welcome â itâs been a chilly few days. In the distance ahead of me, I see a smattering of pilgrims in full white with what seem to be,, robes (?) or some kind of fabric flowing out behind them, which I am
very excited to catch up with because: huh?? I pass a few people, get passed by others. The blob reconfigures, but by the time we reach Faycelles, itâs makeup hasnât changed significantly.
-Faycelles-
Easily the tiniest little place the way has gone by, the only thing Faycelles is seems to be a rest stop for pilgrims connected to a house and a road that leads to another few houses. And thereâs
no-one. Minus the gaggle of exhausted pilgrims huddled around the rest stop, that is. But Iâm feeling good! Faycelles means Iâm already almost eight kilometres in, and I barely feel a thing!
Unintentional waymarkers :]
So I donât stop, just press on. Until I need a stop, Iâll try not to â I donât want to disrupt today too much, given that itâll be decidedly longer than my last few. The trees are different, shorter. Theyâre stubby, almost, thicker brown wood, full of rivets. A few of them have lost their leaves, others gifted with massive heaving tufts of green.
Thereâs a little water tower I can see over the trees ahead, marking the way to the next town. Iâm clearing kilometres like theyâre nothing, absolutely breezing by. Iâve never walked so fast in my life, and â oh this is Faycelles.
-Faycelles, again-
I will never get tired of writing it like that itâs so silly !! But yeah, another day, another case of mistaken-town-identity. No wonder the kilometres were flying; they were just meters! As soon as the church came into view the lightbulb went off, and as I rounded the corner to the welcome sign, my worst fears were confirmed. Noooo.
At the least, Faycelles is
also a very beautiful town, and has quite the striking silhouette, especially against the clouds. Thereâs a rest stop/cafe type deal, but itâs chockers so I keep on â a little while through the town, thereâs a undercover rest area with water and toilets and a great view of the church. Score :]
Faycellesâ funky church :]
Here, I have a little sit-down, a little reassess. Iâm two and a half hours in, and Iâve only made it 8km. To my credit, I start to give up, then remember I havenât eaten anything yet, so make a bit of a bold decision and eat the last of my tomatoes and almost all of my bread. Iâm saving a stale end â what for you ask? Oh, just for the can of baked beans Iâve been lugging around all day.
I remembered they existed yesterday, and then later at the Carrefour they had a special going, and yeah, I still spent $5 in real money on a Singular can of beans, but rack off, Iâm taking those red âon specialâ stickers as direct communication between me and the big man upstairs. He wanted me to have the beans, I took the beans. Donât ignore the signs !!
Anyway, thatâs besides the point; I am now (1) not hungry, and therefore once more have hope, and (2) donât have any other choice because thereâs no shops for the next 22km and a can of beans that canât be resealed and a stale baguette end can only go so far.
So, after a little âshould I, shouldnât Iâ with my raincover (I didnât), I left Faycelles in the metaphorical dust. Metaphorical-but-literal mud, if you will. The trip out is
very fun, little tasters of the new scenery youâll enter throughout the day. Thereâs a small cliff-face, complete with mysterious tiny house-shaped hole that I imagine only a small dog could fit into, and the track passes a small rest area (great spot for a wildcamp), surrounded by tall white stone walls and moss, where a woman and her dog are enjoying the breeze. You even get a killer look back into town as you leave the woods behind :]
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33
Almost immediately after leaving the woods, you start a very flat section that lasts for a good ten kilometres or so â a few climbs and descents, but no real hills of valleys, just the bumps that come with going against the grain of the land. Itâs farmland for the first stretch â harvested â long, flat and gray, rimmed with bright greens and specks of autumns orange. A few tree tunnels later, and youâre climbing a little bump, when you realise someone has dropped their hat â and itâs white. It canât be,,,, do I finally get to meet them??
I do, and it is (affectionately) anticlimactic. The robes are jumpers tied around their waists, the white seems to be so that their guide doesnât forget who is in their group â understandable, but also, would you feel that secure trusting a person to lead your entire seven hundred something kilometre journey when they donât know your face? Is this an odd thing to fixate on? I donât mind the groups, but surely youâd want them to
recognise you, right??? Maybe Iâm biased.
Anyway, I give the woman back her hat in the most non-way possible. I planned the entire climb up how to best signal âis this yours?â with some shitty paper-mached French sentence and gestures, but when I finally got to her, I panicked and just sort of brandished it, holding it out and staying completely silent like she was some sort of deity or maybe wild animal, rather than a 70 year old French woman. I imagine I was probably a little bug-eyed with stress, which I think contributed to her full four seconds (I counted) of confused silence as her, her husband and I came to a complete standstill. Longest four seconds of my life.
Then the penny drops, and she reaches back for the hat that isnât hanging off her pack because it is firmly grasped in my outstretched hand, and goes âOH!â. She takes it, thanks me, and I, bright red with exertion and definitely not pure undiluted awkwardness, just sort of half nod, laugh a little too loud, and run away. Youâd think the more I interact with people, the better Iâd get, but I seem to actively be getting worse. Fuck me.
At least I have things to distract me with â the scenery has officially Changed. Weâre entering a new chapter; this one of chalk, bone white (âyou are the ornament, you are the ornamentâ) and stacked everywhere. About ten minutes ago, give or take, you and I entered one of the regionsâ many chalk-plateaus (causses), this one âdes Causses du Quercyâ. Itâs all going to shift very fast, and again, youâll feel like youâre somewhere else.
Here, there are squat little houses of chalkstone â that your current best guess on is shepherd huts â that resemble the past stone farmhouses dotting the plains before Aubrac purely in their abandoned-ness (donât think thatâs a word). These ones reject the harsh corners of the latter, choosing instead to be perfectly cylindrical, with small spiral roofs, all stacked stone. They look
awesome. I wouldâve loved to go inside one right by the path (it even had a little shell!), but the people in white were still hot on my tail and I never wanted to look them in the eye again, so itâd have to wait.
You pass by more and more, and the ground turns to gravel and white chalk; the trees get drier, brittle branches stretched to the sky. Old cars litter the yards of the rare house you do pass, rusted bodies missing bonnets, ancient projects destined to always be tinkered with and never finished. Itâs beautiful â but somewhere around the eighteenth kilometre, it starts to grate. Iâm so close now, I just need the final energy boost to force me to get there.
Thereâs less than 3km between me and my rest and my fucking
beans, and I spend it less leapfrogging and more playing relay with another pilgrim. Everytime she pauses, I catch up, and the second I meet her point, she speeds ahead, rinse and repeat. I am the worlds most useless relay runner, evidently; is that even the right metaphor? I swam in a relay race when I was twelve by accident, did that count as experience?
Relay race aside, I eventually stumble into Le Puy Clavel, climb the tiny last kilometre stretch and arrive, legs shaking, at the houses (and gßtes) of Gréalou.
-Gréalou-
Bigger than all of the towns so far today (since Figeac, obviously), GrĂ©alou is,,, lovely? Itâs still relatively small, but itâs quaint, and it has an oddly suburban feel to it â at least on the street that intersects with both the highway and the chemin. The lawns are bright green, manicured perfectly, the pools pristine, the driveways spotless.
The further in you get, the more lived-in it becomes. Itâs still only a few streets, but theyâre full, overgrown gardens and weeds covering old wheelbarrows, random chairs stacked in open garages, tables with faded tablecloths peeking out from shady overhangs. Way nicer.
So much nicer, in fact, that they have a minipicerie opposite the church, with a bunch of round tables and water.
Perfect. I decide against the beans for today, figure Iâll save them for a really tight spot instead. I buy incredibly overpriced cherry tomatoes and some little brioche buns instead, cobble together a sandwich. A Bueno too, because I need sugar (always).
Art coming into Gréalou !!
And then, as I was checking out, I heard it. The most beautiful sound Iâve ever heard. A quick jingle of bells, a gust of wind; the scene was set, and she arrived, all navy backpack and trekking poles. She opened her mouth, and out came the melody;
âOoauh, witch waey ahr tha TOY-lets?â
A fucking
Australian, complete with Australian groan. Brash as anything, she was gone, set off in the direction of tha toy-let. I was over the moon. I hadnât heard a proper Australian accent in months and I missed them so much â just the worst accent in the world â I needed to catch up with her.
And so I settle down, my relay partner on the table one over, attempting to peel a carrot with what looks like,, a key? Good for her.
âBon Appetite,â she says, and, when given the opportunity, why would I not try to make up for my previous white-hat interaction??
âYes,â is what my brain conjures up, while I nod.
Come ON dude.
Once again feeling humiliated, I focus on my sandwich, focus on airing my feet, focus on anything but other people. Unfortunately, other people seem to quite enjoy focus â bit bloody hypocritical, to write that on a fucking blog, isnât it?? â and everyone is saying hello, trying to talk. Sorry to let you down, fellow pilgrims, but I seem to be incapable today, youâll have to try your luck elsewhere.
One guy (more accurately, two) seems to be expecting this, and just gives me a nod of recognition and a thumbs up; itâs half of the pair from the fog, and then from Golinhac! Theyâre well used to my smiles and nods and silence by now, evidently having seen it live over the past few days.
My relay partner sets off, and I wait a little longer, trying to avoid feeling so creepy when I continuously come up to her and
almost pass but donât. My efforts are futile though, because I meet up with her almost immediately, as she stands by the roadside trying to read a map. She tries to enlist my help, but the only thing Iâm worse at navigating than social situations is an Actual Map.
We fall into step quite easily, and for the first time in exactly a month, I have a full conversation. Sheâs American, so language isnât a problem, and we have the same pace, so even if I wanted to avoid it (which I honestly didnât, really) I couldnât speed on ahead. It was nice, just to listen to someone else talk â Iâd been listening to my own voice for weeks now.
More cool art : this time part of an instalment based on the âDolmenâ which are these cool rock structures (think knock-off Stonehenge)
A few times I stumbled on the words, couldnât connect the jokes fast enough â not helped by the American/Australian sarcasm gap. If I got 5Âą every time a âas fun as it sounds?â in response to an American talking about something clearly Not Fun has killed the conversation dead, Iâd have the Camino paid for. It was the worst â normally sarcastic little dickish quips were like the cheat codes to having a conversation. I canât believe Iâm going to say this, but I almost miss the British. American conversations â at least with Americans older than I am â are so much harder; I donât understand their rules at all.
But, even with that, I managed. A few general questions, the basic set of three. Then, as it started waning, as I was wracking my brain for conversation topics or even just loose words I could pretend were sentences, she asked me what my favourite city was so far. Then, an ammendment;
âWell, not that you can really call them cities â I mean, theyâre tiny.â
BOOM.
I donât care how annoying it is to constantly reiterate that cities are scary and that I grew up in small towns that were big towns to me, if someone says something like that, a little switch in my brain flicks and I
have to bring it up.
And so weâre talking about town, and high school, growing up, and weâre talking about dreams, and about what she does â really sick musical shit (she is so cool) â and she tells me this beautiful story about her lifelong love for songwriting and how she got into the industry and her life so far, and sheâs so into it, and she obviously loves it, and Iâm smiling and she laughs, tips her head back and says,
âAnd I met this musician, this incredible songwriter, and we fell in love and got married and had this whole incredible life together and then he gets cancer and dies.â
And her head tips back down, and she winces.
Iâm quite good at yearning, at longing. Iâm a sentimental fucker, doomed to miss everyone I meet, everything I touch; all my writings condense down into some sort of craving for someone, for something. But it all feels so pitiful now. Fuck. What do you
say to that? âIâm sorryâ is so fucking useless, but so is everything else. My mouth reacts before my brain can, and âoh shitâ is the best it can muster.
âYeah,â she says, âshit.â
Weâre walking along a meadow, trees to the right craning over us, and weâre both momentarily so distracted we almost miss an arrow. She stops, second-guesses â but weâre on the right track. She stumbles up to rejoin me, and we carry on, side by side. After a beat, she half-laughs.
âYâknow what really sucks, about death? About dying slowly? About losing someone â someone
young â watching someone like that die?â
She doesnât finish her sentence, doesnât answer her question. She doesnât need to. It hangs in the air, painful webs caught in her hair and her eyes and her hands that tense around the can.
I open my mouth to say something â what, I have no idea â but she laughs, high and tinny.
âYâknow what the funny thing is about Perrier? All the other sparkling waters stay carbonated â but the second Perrier gets warm, it goes flat.â
She doesnât want to acknowledge it, wants to distract, wants to make me forget I ever heard her spill her guts. I understand, I let her.
âGuess they just want you to drink it really fast and buy another,â I joke.
âYeah,â She laughs again, properly, âDamn Perrier!â
And then weâre gone, onto twenty different topics, and we donât bring it up again. I canât tell if thatâs good or not, but it seems to work for her, and it doesnât seem like my place to challenge. Plus, I feel like anything I could say would make it worse, feel too cliche, not cliche enough. Iâm not good at my own grief, Iâm not good at other peoples grief. Iâm not good at Big Emotions in general, especially if I donât have time to draft out my feelings first. I canât tell if I feel like I should miss the people not in my life anymore less or more. Or if I shouldnât compare. Definitely shouldnât compare. Canât stop comparing.
Weâre so involved in conversation that the last ten kilometres sort of,, disappear? Weâve bullied the Germans, had very different opinions on bullying the French (I am all for), discussed Nazism and the Weimar Republic (Modern History gave me so many good talking points â maybe the Germans are right, and if you just know enough assorted Facts and Things you can manage), talked about abortion rights, compared the US senate and the Australian parliament, had exceptionally opposite views on centrists (fuck them, sorry!), talked about chalk, discovered (itâs right next to the path and a bit fucking hard to miss) a massive cave, walked right to the back (I did, at least), had an emergency alert go off that neither of us could read, talked about natural freshwater springs and Tennessee, stealing figs and apples and fruits, and forgotten a pair of sunnies and then weâre there.