my own personal st jacques de compostella

Santiago de Compostella. That’s the big one. The famous one. The pilgrimage route largely ignored since its heights of popularity centuries ago, now becoming THE vacation route for those looking for exhaustion, blisters and a big ol’ dollop of god cream. Or perhaps spirituality cream, it’s really a diversity of taste.

What a lot of people don’t think, or perhaps care, about is that pilgrims looking to scoot and skedaddle themselves to the north-west corner of Spain need a starting point and landing elsewhere in Spain was something not available to most European peasants of the middle ages. Most.

The reality of Europe at the time was multiple pilgrimage routes, some on their way to Santiago de Compostella, others to Rome or Jerusalem. The SdC route in fact had at least three paths through France that pull together towards Spain before joining the pilgrim highway, straight to eternal salvation. One of these happens to pass through the north of Aveyron, named St. Jacques de Compostella and easily traced by the seashell carvings and paintings that mark the way. Although it inevitably passes through many important sites on its way south the most important for local flavour is undeniably Conques, a tiny village buried in the valleys of north Aveyron that found its spot on the pilgrim trail by stealing relics from another church. Classic. Steal the relics, more pilgrims, more fame, more wealthy benefactors and the land holdings grow allowing the local Church and monks to produce increasing amounts of wine, for which even most of the labour is free because apparently even viticulture kills sins.

All this is to say I didn’t walk any of that. Instead I caught a bus to Villefranche de Rouergue and started hiking back along Grande Randonée 62B to Rodez, approximately parallel to St. Jacques but a few degrees south. The GR trails being a system of routes, signed with red-and-white-stripe trail markers, that sprawl across France like some spider web intending to catch people in the outdoors and sell them products from what must be the most well-developed commercial topographical map industry in the world. They lead you through forests, along riverbanks, down country lanes, across farm right of ways, and where necessary along the edges of small roads.

To give you an idea of the distance involved in this undertaking look at google maps, or whatever, just taking directions from one city to the other. It’s a fair distance but I figured what the heck, and I stepped off at 9:20am. I walked and walked and walked, meeting many fine dogs, one of whom enjoyed placing a stick in front of me, then when I picked it up he would pounce, necessitating a brief tug of war before he released and let me throw the stick, inevitably behind me in an attempt to send him home. He persisted until I actually pointed that way and he slouched his shoulders and watched sadly from a distance, thinking this happens with every hiker that passes through. My best guess is I stopped for a grand total of just over thirty minutes for snacks and water and a few photos. I knew I had until around 7:30 light wise and was therefore moving at a steady clip. Even with these efforts I still figured I would be making my final push, two hours or so, in the dark.

So I walked and walked and thought I should have reached Belcastel by now, a pretty village with a pretty castle of all things that marks roughly the halfway point. I thought I saw it twice, once it was a tower on a hill and once it was another village entirely, things you only figure out when you’re up close.

At a certain point I had decided I was mistaken, misremembering a map I had looked at in a bookstore and Belcastel was not actually on this route. Just after 5 when I walked up to a sign saying Belcastel 2.5km that way I discovered I was wrong.

So there I stood, around 6pm in Belcastel, knowing this was approximately the halfway mark and I’d used just under 9 hours to get that far. Yes, I knew the GR would be windier and longer than the roads but this really hit home after seeing the Belcastel highway sign at 2.5 km out, then following the GR trail markers away from the road, up, up and away onto the steep slope of the river valley, before coming back down closer to town, having added both a climb and undeniable distance.

I considered getting a room as I was starting to flag, running a bit low on water, but seeing 88 euros for a single and realizing I had set a goal of Villefranche to Rodez in one day I decided to struggle on, but along the roads rather than the hiking trail. I was not in the mood, even if I was able to follow the trail all the way in the dark, add another 9 hours to the journey and arrive home at 3 in the morning. Although for that authentic pilgrim feel maybe I was letting myself down there?

My one regret is not changing my socks at this point as they were a bit damp and that one moment’s pause would have undoubtedly saved me a bit of rubbing on the tips of toes that I am still feeling today. Thankfully I’ve never had a problem with blisters that saw the bottom of my foot leave me, but baby toes in damp socks can only survive unscathed for so long.

What became an increasingly hobbled and pathetic voyage along darkened highways where I was shuffling forwards with two walking sticks, relying on them more and more as the night deepened, pulling off to the side when a car’s headlights alerted me to an impending approach, took me around 5.5 hours (615 to 1140) and was about 27km in distance depending on where they measure town to town distances from and which signs you trust.

Based on ratios and figuring a slightly better pace previous to the evening’s blistered limping, my estimation of the morning’s walk is approximately 45km. And 72km in 14 hours are numbers that both seem reasonable and I can be happy with.

Distance (as the drunken, wobbly crow flies): 72 km in just over 14 hours
Injuries: sunburn on back of calves (yes, I wore shorts and it was glorious!), tight left calf for a few days, achy feet, blister on end of right baby toe, rub wound in centre of left foot, long blister along outside of ball of right foot (almost said along outside of right ball), other small rubs on both feet, various rubbing/chafage in the usual spots but nothing drastic
Enjoyment: through the roof
Smug self-satisfaction: of course
Disappointment I couldn’t make my way along the GR path the whole distance and emerge upon Rodez out of the forest like a legitimate pilgrim or perhaps a farmer who has taken longer than expected to move the herd of goats to market and return: mild but admittedly present
Werewolves spotted or attacked by on the desolate, star swept patches of emptiness that is the D994: secrets