5 mar

Walked another 30 kilometres, from Cajarc to Bach, making a total of 242 kilometres.
A perfect day. No cloud in the sky. A beautiful landscape with gentle rolling hills. And good company. And listening to the Cello Suites of the great Johann Sebastian right now.
Han and I had a nice lunch in a little restaurant in Limogne, sitting outside on the terrace in the sun. To keep sitting in the sun we had to move our table constantly, but it was well worth it. Delicious soup, a rabbit for Han and a burger for me, with meat that was still very read, making it more a steak tartare than a burger. But I prefer it that way. And then some crème brulee. We could smell he burned sugar being prepared in the kitchen at least twenty yards away. But it should be burned, it was extremely tasty.
A nice french woman started to talk to us. She was a yoga teacher and lived her own life like she was a ‘pelerin’, she claimed. ‘Sometimes it rains, sometimes the sun shines, sometimes the road goes up, sometimes down. And your always following your destiny.’
I nodded, with a little sheepish smile on my face. But I do not agree with her. If life was the same as a pilgrimage, why take a pilgrimage. I do not really know what life is about – in fact I do, but don’t want to diverge into that matter here – but a pilgrimage is about suffering. I just want to make clear that I do not think that life is about that.
There’s a whole lot of value in suffering, I am finding out. In bearable suffering I mean, of course. But today didn’t bring any of it. Except for the pain of seeing someone else suffer. Han bit on his teeth while walking, but he was clearly in agony because of a nagging blister.
After the yoga teacher lots of people at the restaurant wanted to know what we were doing. And everybody suddenly started to talk english, which made the conversation very easy suddenly. There was a Scottish guy who even spoke perfect dutch. Almost accent less, amazingly. He had lived a half year in Holland he said, but even when I will live in England for the rest of my life, people will ask me after two sentences where I am from.
And then there were Rachel and James, a couple in their thirties who live in Tunbridge Wells but also have a house nearby. James wanted to walk the Camino himself. Had been to St Jean Pied the Port, the French starting point for the official journey to Santiago, and to Santiago himself. ‘I love to walk with a clear destination.’
That is, it seems to me, a common thing among current day pilgrims. We might want to find out where we would like our life to lead us, or where our lifes might lead, but we do this by following a set out path.
And we do this by not making it easy for ourselves. A challenge is always good, definitely when we are able to live up to it. I am more confident now than four days ago that I’ll be able to do just that.
But it is still early days, I remind myself. Still 1210 kilometres to go.