The Aubrac Plateau

Today marks our first week of walking.  We reached the village of Aubrac at 1307 metres early this afternoon, having traversed across the Aubrac Plateau all day. The countryside is open farmland and almost treeless. We had a lot of long steady climbing today. 

Very cold today, -3 when we got out of bed this morning, fortunately the hotels still have the heating operational. It remained cold all day but it made for pleasant walking untill the icy wind hit us on the exposed grassy hills in the afternoon.  When we first set out this morning at 8am the puddles had a layer of thin ice on the surface and some sections of track where it was a bit muddy and damp were covered in ice crystals. Apparently there is the possibility of snow here right up until May.

Last night at dinner we had our first taste of aligot, a French speciality from this region. It is a dish made from melted cheese blended into mashed potatoes which can be stretched like a dough, and it was served with sausage.  Very tasty, but a little heavy for us so we did not indulge like the locals.

Unfortunately I have to report that I have developed a blister the size of a 20 cent coin on the back of my right heel. I am so annoyed!  Cannot believe that I walked the whole of the Spanish Camino without blisters and here I am only 7 days in on this one with a blister.  I think it has been caused by not having my boot tied tight enough causing friction  with all the climbing. Today I padded it with wool and tape and was able to walk without too much trouble so we will see how it goes.

An even bigger problem has been caused by our USB charger getting zapped in a power point two days ago and now no longer works.  We have tried in every village we have walked through since to buy a new one to no avail.  Fortunately we have borrowed a spare one from Hanna for now, but Hanna may be pushing on ahead of us after the weekend. We rely on the charger for six devices, the mobile phone, which is a necessity to call ahead to make hotel bookings, the Samsung Tablet, the camera, my kindle, and our two fitbits which are our watches.  

We pass through a larger town on Saturday, Espalion, which will be our last hope of buying a charger for some time. It is also the May Day holiday weekend so we are hoping shops will be open. If not, plan B could see us leaving the trail, catching a bus to a large town somewhere and then coming back to rejoin the trail. Not something we want to think about right now.

For the past two days we have been walking on and off with Hanna and our two Aussie friends, staying in the same accommodation, drinking wine and having our evening meal together which has been great.  

Tonight however, as is the way of the Camino, we are all seperated.  Sandy and Karla are in a Gite half a km from town, we are right in town, and Hanna is staying in the next village a few km away.  We are bound to meet up again on the track tomorrow, a 24 km stretch, our longest so far, mostly steep downhill, to Saint Come d'Olt, where we will be spending the night in a restored medievil convent. 

Day 5

Finally a WiFi service strong enough to publish a blog posting.

We are loving France and had a fantastic first day on the Camino.  It began with a 7am Pilgrims Mass in the lovely cathedral that overlooks the beautiful town of Le Puy.  This mass is performed each day and although spoken entirely in French, it is easy to understand the message of wishing pilgrims a safe journey.  After a blessing and a smile from the friendly Bishop, each pilgrim  was presented with a small scallop shell medallion. There were at least 40 pilgrims at the mass who were setting out on the walk that day, many more than we were expecting to encounter.

After the mass we walked out of Le Puy with Hanna, all of us rugged up against a cold early morning and immediately began a steep climb.  Thick fog reduced visibiliy so we were unable to look back down on the lovely town as we left it, however after a few kilometres and just before reaching the village of La Roche, the fog cleared and the sun shone for the rest of the day.  We walked 16km through mostly farmland, much of it dairy country. Spring has certainly sprung in the French countryside, the fields are lush with green pasture, often sprinkled with hundreds of yellow daffodiles, and the continous sound of birdsong accompanied us for most of the day.

Our first night was spent in the tiny village of Montbonnet at an elevation of 1130 metres which gave us a climb of 500 metres for the day.  

Our second day saw us continually climbing and descending for 14km into the village of Monistrol d'Allier on the d'Allier River. We had rain on and off all day and just made it into town before a storm hit.  We had a great view of the river from our hotel room and watched as a group of kayakers take on the rapids just a little way downstream.

The following two days of walking were again challenging as we continued climbing to the village of Saugues and then Le Sauvage at 1300 metres. Yesterday we walked 20km, half of that in heavy rain  in full wet weather gear. Today we walked 20km in fine weather but very cold and sometimes windy conditions to the village of Les Estrets. I doubt if the temperature passed 7 degrees today.

Although at times it has been cold and wet with muddy conditions and the track challenging, it is a fantastic walk and we are enjoying it immensly.  The scenery is stunning, the food so far has been superb, and the accommodation is very good.  We've eaten home made cheese and yogurt straight from the farm, homemade salamies and preserves, as well as delicious braised meats and potsto bakes.

We have met many pilgrims, most are from France, also an English girl Meg who is walking the Camino with her dog Oscar, and two Australian women, Sandi and Karla who we have become quite friendly with.

Tomorrow we walk 23km to Finieyrols which is the start of the Aubrac Plateau.  Tomorrow will also see us clock up our first 100km!

LE PUY EN VELAY

We are in Le Puy and it's lovely, except for the rain that has just started to fall as I write this.  A storm is passing over, the rain is quite heavy now and there is thunder. Hopefully this will all pass before we set out on the first day of our Camino tomorrow.

We arrived in Le Puy yesterday by train from Geneva. In fact the journey required catching three trains, first Geneva to Lyon, then on to St Etienne, and finally to Le Puy. For the last leg of the journey from St Etienne to Le Puy, the train wound it's way around the valley following the beautifull Loire River offering spectacular scenery.

After much research, Steve made all the train bookings on line before we left home and the tickets arrived by mail several weeks ago. The schedules were tight as we had only 15 minutes between trains, which isn't a lot of time to navigate between platforms and read notice boards when everything is written in French, but due to Steve's precision planning, everthing went smoothly and we had a wonderful trip through the French countryside. The trains were great; modern, clean, comfortable, with places to store luggage and run almost on time.

We arrived in Le Puy late in the afternoon and spent some time wandering the narrow streets of the old town before finding our hotel.  After checking in we made our way back to the train station where we sat in a street cafe drinking 'le vin rouge de la maison' awaiting the arrival of our friend Hanna from California, who was arriving on a later train from Lyon. As we'd hoped, Hanna was wearing the same bright yellow jacket she wore on the Spanish Camino, so was instantly recognisable as she walked from the station.  Such a joyful reunion, hugs all around, then back to the hotel for our first of what will be many delightful meals together.

This morning we walked the steep streets leading to the Cathedral to obtain our Pilgrims Credential which we will have stamped in each village we stay in along the way.  We also climbed up to the Statue of Our Lady Of France, an impressive caste iron monument perched atop a volcanic pinnacle. Made from 213 caste iron guns captured from the enemy at the seige of Sebastopol and donated to the Bishop of Le Puy by Napoleon III, she supposedly represents the victory of good over evil. For a long time she was one of the largest statues in the world, but that all changed with the erection of the Statue of Liberty in 1886.

And so our journey begins tomorrow and it's all uphill for 16km. We arrived as tourists and will leave as pilgrims!

READY . . SET . . GO . . . . . ALMOST!

Excitement is growing with just 7 days to go before we board the plane!  The weather is lovely, training is going well, we’ve been clocking up the kilometres walking local streets and National Park trails, going to the gym, and we’ve been walking with our friends and fellow members of the Tamborine Mountain Bushwalking Club.  The feeling now is, yes, we can do this!

We’re also excited to learn that a fellow pilgrim from the USA, Hanna, who we befriended on the Spanish Camino, will also be walking The Way of Le Puy at the same time as us. It’s going to be wonderful to meet up again and walk together for the first several days until Hanna strides off over the horizon to continue on at her faster pace, as her time on the Camino is limited compared to ours.

With our bags already packed, there’s not much left to do this week except to stay fit and keep those legs pumping.

The next blog entry should be from somewhere in the vicinity of Le Puy, France.  Au revoir!

The Knoll NP is our favourite walking track on Tamborine Mountain

Steve crossing Sandy Creek - The Knoll NP

Cameron Falls Lookout - The Knoll NP

Cameron Falls - The Knoll NP

Tamborine Mountain Bushwalkers  -  D'Aguilar Range  -  Brisbane Hinterland

Wendy - Hanna - Steve - walking from Finisterre to Muxia

GETTING SERIOUS

Full packs went on this morning to walk the Witches Falls section of Tamborine National Park.  With only 20 days to go before boarding the plane, it’s time to get serious about training!  Although there’s still a bit more weight to go into the packs, today we felt comfortable and did the walk with relative ease. 

However, with departure time fast approaching, we’ll have to start walking 20km distances every few days over decent sized hills, carrying our full pack weight, if we are going to be ready for this Camino.

TRAINING

We’ve been clocking up the kilometres around our local streets and on bushwalks wearing our day packs.  Haven’t yet started to train wearing our full back packs, but that is about to change.  The hard training we undertook prior to walking the Camino Frances across northern Spain in 2014 proved invaluable and I’m certain that I would have struggled at the start of that walk if I hadn’t trained.

Gone are our pedometers and homemade computer templates to record daily distances used for last year’s training.  Instead, we have both invested in a ‘Fitbit’, a device worn on the wrist which displays the time, the steps walked each day, the kilometres walked each day, and the equivalent number of floors walked up each day.  At the end of the day, the data from this device can be wirelessly transferred to a computer or phone.  The ‘Fitbit’ program appears on the screen by way of a ‘dashboard’ which not only displays your daily stats, but also identifies the level of your activity throughout the day as either mild, moderate or intense.  We love our ‘Fitbits’ and have found that by wearing them constantly and checking our step totals throughout the day, we’ve become motivated to continually strive for higher step counts.

The computer program also has a fun component which gives out virtual badges for new achievements such as the ‘Skyscraper Badge’ for climbing the equivalent of 100 floors in a day, or a ‘Trail Shoe Badge’ for walking 30,000 steps in one day.  I recently received my ‘London Underground Badge’ for walking 402 km since strapping on my Fitbit!

We recently had a break from walking the usual local streets by taking off with our caravan for a couple of weeks to bushwalk in Girraween National Park near the Qld/NSW border and Torrington State Conservation Area in northern NSW.

Steve relaxing in camp  -  Girraween NP

The Granite Arch  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek Circuit  -  Girraween NP

Mt Norman Track  -  Girraween NP

view from Castle Rock  -  Girraween NP

the climb to Captain Thunderbolt's lookout
Torrington State Conservation Area

Torrington State Conservation Area

Mystery Face Rock  -  Torrington State Conservation Area

Our Fitbits, showing Steve's 18,000+ steps for the day,
sitting atop our guide book,
 which although written in French, is proving invaluable

WALKING THE CAMINO

Walking the Camino Frances changes your life in some way.  I have yet to meet a 'pilgrim' who disagrees with this statement.  Some walk for precisely this reason, whereas for others, including ourselves, this was not the original intention.  The daily ritual of rising early, lacing up your boots, swinging your pack onto your shoulders and stepping out into the quiet countryside to follow a path that has been walked for centuries, along the way passing places of outstanding cultural, architectural, artistic or religious interest, changes one's concept of how travel should be.  Life becomes simplistic and mesmerizing, but never, ever boring!

Walking the Camino can also be one of the most shared and collective experiences of your life, if you allow it to be.  We met people from all over the world, some only briefly but with whom we shared an incredibly close bond, some we will be glad to never meet up with again, and others with whom we still keep in contact and now consider good friends.  For the first two weeks of the Camino Frances we walked with our niece Anita.  We parted with Anita in the beautiful city of Burgos as her limited time on the Camino was over and it was time for her to make her way to Madrid for the flight home.  The memory of our goodbye on the steps of the hotel on that cold early morning was, for me, one of the most poignant of the whole journey.

There is also the challenge of carrying a pack with all your current worldly possessions for eight hundred kilometres, including across two mountain ranges, in all weathers, whilst trying to maintain some semblance of orderly appearance.  Then at the end, having coped with all these challenges, feeling invincible and incredibly fit, not really wanting it to end, proud of your achievement, yet at the same time astounded that you actually succeeded.

And then, on the horribly long flight home, which you vowed on the horribly long flight over never to undertake again unless you could afford business class, you begin to think about perhaps walking it again, or perhaps walking a different Camino, because from this time on, walking through a country is the way you want to experience it.

And so, on the 18th April 2015, after much research and planning, Steve and I will board a plane for another horribly long flight in economy class to Geneva, Switzerland for a two day stop over before catching a train to Le Puy in France to begin our second Camino.

Anita and Wendy at Roncesvalles
about to take their first steps on the Camino Frances

Steve and Anita - first day on the Camino Frances

Anita - Steve - Wendy

Meeting Jane and Hanna - our American friends

Steve, Wendy, Anita and our friend Diane from the USA
sharing a bottle of vino tinto
with Luca, a French peregrino

Anita and Steve walking the Camino Frances with our
Aussie friends Ian and Robyn

one of the many beautiful towns along the Camino Frances

Watching the sun rise over the Meseta

Wendy walking towards Cruz de Ferro (the Iron Cross)

the 'Iron Cross' - 1,504 metres above sea level

Steve on a cold bleak day

Wendy at the 'Monumento do Peregrino'

Arriving in Santiago, Spain



 
Praza do Obrdoiro and Cathedral, Santiago
journeys end 

journeys end celebratory drinks!