1 mar

Walked another 17 kilometres, from Espeyrac to Conques. Making a total of 132 kilometres, but I am really at 202 kilometres from Le Puy-en-Velay.

Yea, I cheated. Part of it was beyond my control. The snow in Nasbinals came down so hard yesterday that the footpath to Aubrac got lost. Really lost. I was surprised to see the two people (to whom I spoke to yesterday) in the afternoon back at the hotel. They are not walking to Santiago in fact, I came to find out. They were just having a long weekend of fun. Which almost turned into disaster. The guy knew the route to Aubrac, just 8 kilometres up the road, really well, and had walked it many times. But yesterday, he got lost in the storm. Next to the walking paths there are normally little stone fences, just like you see north of Yorkshire, but they had completely disappeared in the blizzard. The woman told me she thought she was going to die. Luckily they were picked up by a car at some point.

With the new snow from last night it was impossible for me to walk this stretch. Just waiting in Merlin, or in the hotel was an option, but I’m bad at waiting. So I got up, got breakfast and started to clear the parking lot where Merlin had stayed overnight. Merlin was the only car there, and was parked strategically towards the back, so there was a lot of parking lot with a foot of snow to cover.

Merlin started like a charm and pretty soon – one hour snow shovelling – I parked her next to the street and went to get Julie. Merlin is not really good in snow. In fact Merlin is not very good in any kind of circumstances except for perfect ones.

I had planned to go to Espeyrac, which is not only skipping the Monts Aubrac, but also the next two walking stages. I decided I had overdone the first days of walking and needed to slow down. For the next few days, including today, I am not going to walk more than the recommended stage. My knee concerned me, more than I wanted to admit to Julie. And although skipping these stages is cheating, I am fooling no one. Starting in Le Puy was basically a way of making sure I would not arrive in Santiago too early. But the real important part is the Camino Frances, or the part that’s walked in Spain. There I won’t cheat anymore.

When we drove away, we found out that not only the St. Jacques way had disappeared, the road to Aubrac itself was covered with snow and closed for traffic. It took us a 100 kilometre journey to get out of the snow and winter and back into sun and springtime. Cheating it was, but it felt great.

In fact. Todays walk, considered quite hard in my little journey companion book, went smoothly. My knee only hurt at the steep and rocky descent into Conques. It didn’t help that some of the rocks had come tumbling down and covered the path with rubble. Painful knee or not, I finished today’s journey in a little more than 2,5 hours, where 5 were estimated by the book. I felt very pleased.

To see Conques is like seeing a dear old friend. That little peeking guy on the tympanum. The sober black and white striped stained glass windows by Soulages, I think his name is. With the sun pouring in from the West, they looked completely different than last time. But then again, different in a way that makes them unmistakable themselves. There must be a good photo series in each window, just looking at it at a different time of the day and the season, but maybe it needs a Monet, like his work at Rouen cathedral, to make the subtle changes significant.

1320 kilometres to go.