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Published: July 10th 2009
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As I have arrived in Stantiago on July 6th, I will try to give a review of the past few weeks and upload the relevant pictures.
Week no 6
The beginning of the week was quite dramatic. First Christoph want to continue on his own so he left us. This was a very reasonable thing to do as our personalities didn't match at all and there seemed to be no possibility that the situation might improve. Shortly after the separation Wolfgang and I were sitting in bar drinking coffee and discussing what had happened when we saw Andrea passing by. So we invited her in for coffee and she told us that she had missed her way to the hotel she had reserved. After telling her what had happened to us she spontaneously decided not to go on looking for the hotel but go with us. Thus, we were a group of 3 again and this nucleus persisted through the rest of France. The day itself was long and exhausting with a lot of uphill and downhill bits and we arrived quite exhausted at the farm we had booked our room. Originally, we had booked for 3 men,
now it was 1 women and 2 men. The owner laughed quite a bit and prepared us a wonderful meal. In addition we met a very nice French family and spend a very agreeable evening
The next day again was very tiring, especially at the end where the Camino wouldn't go straight into the village Faramans where we wanted to stay but went around it in converging circles. But finally we made it and had a large gîte (15 beds in 3 rooms) for ourselves (3 persons).
The next day was much more relaxed and we arrived in a place called Revel-Tourdain. The first thing we did was go to local store to ask whether they would serve us coffee as the the 2 bars in the village were closed. They did, and they also had bread rolls filled with chocolate whereof we bought 2 for each person and received the coffee for free. Then we went to the bar where we had booked the rooms which was simple but clean and nice. At dinner, we met this Austrian guy. He told us that he would do at least 40 km a day (on this specific day we did 18)
and made it quite clear that he considered pilgrims which did less as complete idiots. So, very consistently, the next morning he tried to walk away from us as fast as possible but apparently he wasn't as fast as he pretended because, after 2 hours we were still quite close behind him. So he increased his speed and finally we lost sight of him of which none of us really was sorry.
So we arrived in a village called St. Romain sur Surieu, in a gîte which can be described as just wonderful. Situated on a hill in a beautiful house it offered rooms of which we took 2 and which had beds where we slept like angels, and tents. The restaurant offered special tea blends and from the garden one had wonderful panoramic view. In addition the weather couldn't have been better. As the gîte was fully occupied we met quite a lot of people - and most of them were very strange. There was this elderly couple from Germany. Even before saying hello they told us how many kilometres they had already done. Then there was a group of five who as well walked 30 and more km
per day and so they looked. On elderly man was obviously so exhausted that he couldn't lift his head anymore. Another gentleman had blisters on his feet, that is, 2 blisters, the right foot was one blister and the left foot the second one. A third person, a women, started to whisper, as dinner was brought later than expected due to the many people, "huuuungry, I aaaam huuuuuuuuungry, wheeeeeere is the fooood?" pointing her long thin finger to the plate in front of her. Eery!
The next day the Camino led us to a town called Chavanay across the plane of the Rhône valley. What an experience. There was a strong wind blowing across the completely flat landscape. In fact it was blowing so strong that at a certain point I couldn't hear my footsteps anymore. Believe, when you have walked a certain distance, one of the few things that remain the same are your own footsteps. So if you keep on walking without hearing them anymore that is an experience as if you have lost the ground under your feet and all around you is nothing but wind.
The Camino led us on to a village with the simple
name of St. Julien-Molin-Molette where we stayed in a castle with wonderful rooms. We estimated that we had earned this as the walk covered around 600m in altitude and went up and down quite a bit. Unfortunately, the castle had no water because the firemen had destroyed the pipes during an exercise.
The week ended with a very short walk (8km) to Bourg Argental where we spent a leisurely afternoon. The hotel was a dirty disaster so we spent only the time to sleep there. Fortunately the weather was nice so we could sit outside and look at things. The village has quite a lot of nice buildings but does nothing to promote itself. It rather seems to be a place for winter sports. In the evening we met Heidi - or rather she met us as she just sat down at our table in the restaurant where we ate with the words "I'm sure you don't mind if I join you for dinner." As a matter of fact we did mind but of course, you can't say "no, go away" so we spent our pizza with her. She kept babbling on about things we thought to be rather irrelevant
and then asked us when we had planned to start the next. We said between 7am and 9am hoping that would make the message clear but, when we started at 8:30 the next day she seemed to bump into us so we finally had to tell her that we wanted to walk without her.
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