A HOME FROM HOME

Pilgrims are sometimes thought, by those who don’t know, to be self-denying in their journey towards their goal.  When I got back from my 600 mile jaunt, I was sometimes asked if I journeyed on my knees (well, when I got back I felt as if I had been), or if I slept in pilgrim hostels all the way.  Even in the glory days of mediaeval pilgrimage, many on the road were basically tourists, and travelled in style: so much is clear from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  As I’ve said in earlier accounts, some French pilgrims were looking for luxury restaurants wherever they could.  As for me, I varied my places of rest at the end of each day, finding as I went different homes from home.

These varied from luxury hotels to pretty basic hostels, with six or eight in a room on two-tier bunk beds. At the end of the day it balanced out. One night I arrived in Conques too tired, wet and cold to notice the number of noughts on the price of the room: next day I felt I had settled the French national debt when I paid, so the next night was indeed in a bunk bed. And in some ways the latter was more fun, though one reason for seeking the luxury end of the market was to get a really good hot soak in a bath to get my muscles and legs ready for the next day’s hike.

You get what you pay for, and the hotel in Conques was indeed a superb building in a dramatic location. In the morning I watched the clouds rising out of the valley past the towers of the Cathedral just outside my bedroom window.  However, when I got to Cajarc on the Lot, where I had booked a modest “chambres d’hote” (B&B, only in this case it was B without B) I found myself quite alone in a house on the edge of town.  The owner lived somewhere else, and had left a note on the door for me to telephone when I arrived.  Pilgrimage is about companionship, as well as solitary communing with the spirit, and I felt I could have paid a bit more and got a lot more fun in a proper hotel.

I actually stayed in three really expensive places out of my forty days on the road, and the other two were in Spain, both in Paradors. In the 1920s the Spanish government set up a nationwide chain of hotels, many in historic buildings, to boost tourism. The two I stayed in were former Hostals, built for the mediaeval pilgrims on their way to Compostella: the Hostal San Marcos in Leon, and the Hostal dos Reyes Catholicos in Compostella. Both are built along the lines of monasteries, with four
courtyards in a larger square, with the rooms looking inwards. They are both built on a vast scale, with lofty dining and reception rooms at ground level, and a grand chapel. These days they are used a lot for conferences, and luxury tourism, but originally they were available for all classes of traveller, however poor. I regarded these three expensive nights as “reward” and used them to build up strength for the next stage.
 

But perhaps the most lovely place I stayed in was not a hotel, nor a B&B nor a hostel with bunk beds, but a private house, with a meal with the owner.  I found it in a guide book; it was a bit off the main route I was following, and the owner said she’d pick me up in her car, in case I had difficulty finding it.  I said I’d walk there along the roads, but she said, no, follow the footpath, to take advantage of shade (it was now mid-June and quite hot in the late afternoon). Of course the path climbed up the side of the valley, and then climbed some more up a steep field path, so I was glad of her advice and the shade.  But there was Madame Lucette, sitting peacefully in the shade of the hedgerow, looking rather like my granny.  I felt this was a good omen, and that here was a place where I could feel at home.

Having hosted many pilgrims, she knew what I needed and invited me to have a cold beer before anything else.  We sat and chatted in the open barn she had set up as the guests’ dining area. Cats came and went; the swallows and martins darted in and up to the eaves.  It was warm and golden in the setting sun.  In due course I was ushered to the guest room, looking again like a room in my (country) grandmother’s house, old prints on the walls, a bowl and jug for washing. I was invited to choose what to eat for supper.  It was mainly lentils and turkey breast, with salad from her garden, and wine made locally by her son. In due course her teenage grandchildren came in, to use the internet (so not so old-fashioned after all). We ate together, chatting away about families like old friends, even though we had only just met, and I was on my way next day. Then she settled down to watch a film on TV (Marcel Pagnol, Manon des Sources), and I went back to write up the day’s adventures in the last of the sunshine with another beer or two. That night I had the best night’s sleep of the whole journey. And next day, the price of this slice of heaven was a mere 30 euros, less even than some of the modest hostels.
What a home from home!
 
William Marsterson, September 2007