There are some moments where the particular planets of too much walking align favourably to provide a pleasant experience, and quite a few of them occurred on the walk this week. These moments happen when one has had enough sleep, limbs haven’t fallen off in the middle of the night, and the roads lack traffic, leaving one to walk along the road and not on the sloped ankle-grinding runoff ditches to the side.
The fields of wheat have given way to fields of corn and baby wine, neat and regular in their straight green rows. You may think endless rows of cereals are boring, and you would be right.
Magical mornings
The forests have changed, which is welcome. Now they’re long rows of pine trees with ferns that feel like you’re tramping through a prehistoric route. But the change in trees feels as though you’ve actually made it into a new area and not some giant treadmill going through the same scenery. Around Castets a lady told us there were storms that, combined with the sandy soil, ripped up a lot of the old forest, which explains why the pines didn’t look so old.
This was a lovely little bridge leaving a town with a name I can’t remember, just before Castets, with the happy black dog called Zorro that L got along famously with (although who I got to pat first)
I had the worst food experience in Onesse-Laharie. We stayed at a pilgrim hostel, which was fine, on a Saturday public holiday, which was not fine, as the small hospitality industry was shut for the day. Same for the grocers. The camping site could dredge up dinner that night, they said, so we returned for what was the foulest cheeseburger in creation. The bloody thing was still cold in the middle.
It’s one of those double lapses in logic that leaves you stumped, as you can’t get past the first logic brainfart to deal with the next. First of all, why do you microwave a cheeseburger patty? Especially in France; you have certain culinary expectations to live up to (even though yes, it was a camping site, have some bloody pride). While I didn’t expect to be taking this trip and writing damning critiques of the quality of the pilgrim hostel champagne, I didn’t expect the cooking standards you find in a mechanic’s lunchroom. Using a microwave is like dropping food on the floor. It’s fine to eat unless you’re planning on serving it to someone else. Second of all, if you’ve chosen to live your life like that and misuse a microwave, how do you not know how to competently cook a chunk of meat properly?
So I handed it back and I didn’t have enough French to be a bitch about it, and I didn’t really care if it came back at all, but a few minutes later it returns, like a bad penny. This time the whole thing’s been nuked to within an inch of its life, resembling a French-Polynesian atoll in the 90s.
I mean I still ate it. I was hungry.
While waiting for the man with the OM1 in Bordeaux, I saw this building and snapped a pic. Future building!
There were some nice spots, even though the gloom of the cheeseburger spread not just through my insides but through the weeks ahead and behind. Castets was nice. We stayed with an interesting family who switched to English enough to keep me in the conversation. Dax was recovering from a fete and didn’t have a photolab able to do photos in a day so we left. How did we lose this technology? In the 90s every pharmacy had a 1-hour service. But we got to Bayonne and didn’t look back.
Afternoon light in Bayonne, OM1
We were close to the border and could see signs of the Spanish everywhere. The buildings changed a bit and there are a lot more paintings of people killing bulls. Bayonne is a bloody lovely town. I only knew of it through the Elysian Fields song of the same name. Didn’t know anything about the town but wanted to visit it based purely on that reason. Well, the band didn’t do anything wrong as the town is my favourite so far. Quick film development time and a beautiful city to take pictures of. Furthermore, we had French-style tapas which was 90% cheese and who the hell could ask for something better.
The lads out for a sesh, OM1
Early morning driveway
I got a roll back on the OM1 as well. At Bayonne I got to put in a roll off the OM10 and L’s Trip 35, and then finished the OM1 later that evening walking through the streets. There’s so much to photograph. The OM1 came out nice but it was tricky shooting without a lightmeter. Some shots were easy (when it was bright and over the water) but the shadows in the afternoon through the streets made for risky business. Still, happy with how both cameras performed, especially in some of the low-light shots, the OM10’s bane.
Morning sunlight in the pines
I asked L how far we’re through the trip and apparently we’re halfway through in time but not halfway through in distance. I worry about this as my joints, which were fairly easygoing and dependable things before, are now protesting the slightest movements. I know I’d come good with about a month’s recuperation and a team of Swede masseuses but we’re lucky to have these two days in Bayonne before hitting the Spanish border in two days.
Garden in Castets
It’s going to be sad leaving France. I’m getting to be halfway competent in ordering at restaurants. My hard-won language skills, honed in dozens of villes, will be all for naught once we cross the border and start over. But L and I are more or less starting Spanish at the same level, so it’ll be fun to learn a language together. Given that I walk faster than she does, this will give me more opportunities to practice while I wait in bars for her to catch up. Let us hope then for a steady and patient run of Spanish bartenders from here to the west coast, but this late in the pilgrim season, I daresay they’re sick of the sight of another ungainly, sweaty, pack-laden hump mangling their language.
But we’ll see. In any case, goodbye France, hello to tapas, pilgrim-clogged roads, fart-bunker hostels, and if there’s not one op shop between here and the coast I’m throwing my pack in the ocean and never leaving home again.
stumbling through the camino 