GR653 Day 22: Arles - St Gilles

Spent a jolly evening sharing a bottle of Rosé de Camargue with the other two solo women travellers (not pilgrims - but one of them had cycled 2350 km from the Netherlands!) staying at the Auberge du Pèlerin et du Voyageur, an excellent little hostel located right between the Roman theatre and amphitheatre. In the morning I said goodbye and headed for the office of the Parish of Arles to ask for a tampon - I mean, a stamp - on my pilgrim passport. I also asked for another pilgrim passport, or credential - créanciale in French - as I have only four free spots left on mine, just enough to get me to Montpellier. 

I have already reached the end of the GR653A "Via Aurelia" in Arles, my target for this fall, but as the weather is still fine and there is nobody waiting for me at home this week I decided to carry on along the GR653 "Voie d'Arles" as far as Montpellier and put another hundred kilometres behind me!

Before leaving Arles I took a peek at the Roman forum and theatre and the medieval cloister.

Then I left the city behind and crossed the Rhone.

My goal today was to reach Saint Gilles, a pilgrimage destination in its own right, where pilgrims on the road to Santiago or Rome traditionally stopped in to venerate the saint's remains, in the crypt of the abbey. I went there but it was dark in the crypt, and the church was under scaffolding, so no photos! 

To get there I avoided the historic pilgrimage route, which has now been taken over by cars, so that pilgrims wanting to walk in their ancestors' footsteps find themselves on the shoulder of a highway - I had enough of that yesterday! I chose the alternative route recommended by the local chapter of the Amis de la Chemin de St Jacques, which follows the embankment of the Petit Rhône canal. For 14 kilometres! Walking along an embankment means the ground is perfectly level, but it also means no shade or shelter from the wind. And it is VERY monotonous. I began to understand why so many pilgrims on the Camino take a bus across the Mesetas - it must be something like this. Prolonged over several days! In my case, the 14 km of monotony finally ended at a disused railway bridge. Though it was perfectly obvious that the railway line was no longer in use, because it disappeared into shrubbery at either end of the bridge, walking over the canal on a railway bridge still gave me the willies, shaking me out of the stupor induced by 14 km of flat, featureless monotony under the sun. 

Then I walked past a field of cattle, some of which were bulls - black ones with big horns just like the bulls in Picasso paintings! Though I assumed there was a sturdy barbed wire fence between them and me, I wasn't going any closer to find out! I hurried along my way and was quite happy to find myself on the outskirts of the town of Saint Gilles. 

And even happier to find a sign in the abbey welcoming pilgrims! The town has not one but two pilgrim hostels, and I went to the one announced on the sign in the church. It is just the sort of pilgrim hostel I was used to staying at on the Via Francigena: bunk beds, use of a kitchen, facilities for hand-washing your day's sweaty clothes and hanging them up to dry, €12. No sooner had the volunteer who came to let me in finished showing me around and explaining things than two more ladies arrived. Anne and Marie-Helène and I agreed to walk together tomorrow and look for a place to stay together. We discussed alternatives, looked at maps, went grocery shopping and ate our dinner together. All this is sorely taxing my very basic French, but that's the spirit of the Camino! And it's great to get back into it after the isolation of the Via Aurelia as far as Arles!

Looking at the hostel guestbook, I see that 90% of the pilgrims who come through here set out from Arles, so I look forward to having more company from this point on, as well as more, and cheaper, facilities!

Arles - St Gilles 24 km