May 5: Creepy-crawlies

We voluntarily added 6km to our walk today. That’s just who we are (if by “who we are” you mean people who didn’t want to wait 3 hours in a wet garden for our gîte to open and went into town in search of beer). We didn’t find it, the beer – instead, we arrived when the local brasserie was serving lunch and wouldn’t take us if we wouldn’t eat; the local patisserie served coffee, but with nowhere to sit and everything else doesn’t open until 7pm, of course. This is deeply rural France after all…

We have noted before how this is a service economy that meets you only on its own terms. There is no lack of welcome or generosity, but you are on their turf. I think this is part of why even our few words of French make such a difference. They represent a recognition that we are guests (which we are). In a world that is wrestling with pluralism; in which the English language and the habits of the dollar-wielding Americans are a new form of colonialism, it is salutary, as well as important, to be shown that some cultures insist upon respect for their own rules from passers-through.

So, we sat on the church steps sharing a chocolate bar (from my snack pack) and the water we brought with us, until we turned around and walked the 3km back to our lodgings. Luckily, the timing was perfect and we hit a brief (and the only) spot of sunshine in the day, which was otherwise overcast and often wet. But, it was, once again, splendid. Our day started with a house centipede revealing himself as our roomie in Cajarc and proceeded with millipedes, snails, slugs and caterpillars: all things crawly making the most of the wet weather.

We saw our first field of poppies, still rather sparse, especially when compared to the ones we have seen in Spain, but still blushing. Poppy fields are so charged with significance: from Remembrance to Traditional Ways of Farming, lives lost and ways of life fading… But, also full of hope, and (for me) wonder.

Another hoped-for sighting (for me) today was a hoopoe, ahead of us on the path, probing the wet ground for juicy bugs. We disturbed him on the corner and from a contained figure of buff-pink he flew off in a startling explosion of flaring black and white wings and tail. I am always thrilled to see one, like the goldfinches, only singular and secretive: from “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” (Salman Rushdie’s storybook with a hoopoe on the cover); to the savage trinity of nightingale, swallow and hoopoe in Greek myth; to the fact that they are very, very rarely seen in the UK… They are just magical to me.

More generally, the “camino vibes” are ramping up: the scallop shell signs are increasingly in evidence; hostels post ads welcoming “les pelerins” specifically and more fellow walkers are sporting their badges and rosaries.