Nogaro - Aire-sur-l'Adour

As expected the legion of the elderly wake up at the crack of dawn. I anticipated this and went to bed early enough that I didn’t want to kill myself when the inevitable happened. I’ve only been out of Britain for a week and I’ve already got a luminous hiker’s tan. The next person to see me naked is in for a shock. 

I leave Nogaro behind. 

About a quarter of the way down the route I begin to flag. I think the day before was a fluke, that I used up all my energy, that I was flying high on the winds of hubris and am now crashing back down to earth. I emerge from some woodland desperate for a bench or even a dry log (it has once again been very soggy) and in front of me is a hand-painted sign advertising Gîte d'étape Labarbe. I turn the corner and I see a huddle of farm-buildings, some picnic tables, and a tall, open-sided barn with a little tea and coffee station. It bustles with pilgrims. 

It is a donativo, meaning you pay what you can. I have a coffee and I sit down and fuss a small ginger cat. I chat to a man who says that he took me for Dutch, because I am tall, blonde, and my name is Jan. I cannot fault his reasoning. He tells me that they call New Yorkers “Yankees” because those are the two most common names for Dutch men: Jan and Kees. We’re gonna get those Jan-Kees! He is very plausible. I refuse to look this up.

I keep walking.

Another 7 or 8km down the road the pattern repeats itself. My back begins to ache once more, and a particularly muddy stretch of forest leaves me mentally worn down. Pacha Mama in Lelin-Lapujolle is run by an extremely friendly woman who learns my name and then trills, “Ca va yan-ees?” every time she passes me at the table. I drink a cold beer and eat a packet of crisps. Every time spirits start to flag, there is a little pilgrim rest stop. It’s almost like they’re doing it on purpose!

By the end of the day I have walked a fully-loaded 28km, give or take me forgetting to turn Strava on or off. This is almost certainly more than I have ever walked in my life, and on several points I decided I couldn’t do it. But it turns out I could. This is something that wankers who do Tough Mudders and Iron Man competitions are prone to saying, that participating in tests of endurance teaches you something more profound about yourself: that you never know what your limits are until you push them, and you might find that you have far more capacity than you realise. They might be right. Maybe I am the wanker.

The gîte in Aire-sur-l’Adour is run by two former pilgrims. I am not just the only English speaker here but also the only person under about fifty eight. The grey brigade are here too, though I don’t believe they are the same ones. They make game attempts to communicate with me over dinner, but we are as bad as each other, and I’m worse - I’m the one in their country. They are cheerful, tanned, and chase every last drop of stew around their plates with a piece of bread.

The evening meal in gîtes is: you get what you’re given. And what you’re given is meat (and cheese, and wine, and coffee). Today it is what looks like cassoulet. In an attempt to express the deep ethical conundrum at the heart of attempting to continue a plant-based diet in rural France which respects local traditions and enables me to participate in the communal experience of dining with other pilgrims, I say the following to the men opposite: “In England I am a vegetarian, but in France I love the meat”. They seem to like this. They give me extra cheese because I am a vegetarian, and chuckle in an only slightly friendly way. 

I am enjoying the perks of being a pilgrim. I like greeting everybody that I see. Buen camino! Bon chemin! You see the same people on the road multiple times. I learn their names and they learn mine. We negotiate whatever pleasantries we can manage as I excavate my school French. I like following the little signs telling pilgrims which way to go, and I like the infrastructure around them, the gîtes with their scallop shell symbols, the markings embedded in the roads. I love the stamps you get in your pilgrim passport. There was a brief period when I’d read too many complaining posts on reddit that I wondered about sacking it in and travelling somewhere else. But that’s not happening now. I think I’m hooked.