The thing about Long Walks is that you never know, when you wake up in the morning, what the day will have in store for you, or who you will meet along the Way. Today has been a day of unexpected meetings!
I set off from my hotel in Salon-Provence and out of the town, through the suburbs and along a country lane through tranquil farmland to the town of Eyguières. The official route skirts the village and continues onward, but I thought it would be a pity not to stop and see the village, so I left the route to go into the town centre.
When walking a pilgrimage route I always make a point of stepping into any churches I come across, if the door is open. Here I stepped in and ended up spending the rest of the morning! The service was just getting underway, there was something about the congregation that made me feel at home. I put down my backpack and found an empty spot in a pew. When the next hymn began, I was astounded to hear drums, electric guitar and bass, accompanying a solo cello - an unusual combination, and not at all what one is accustomed to hear in church! I left my place for a moment to go over and take a closer look at the musicians. Then I stayed to hear the sermon, which was directed at the children in the congregation and therefore easy to understand, and until the end of the service, when the priest invited everyone to stay and have a drink together after mass was over. A long table at the end of the nave was in fact being set up with a bowl of punch, soft drinks and snacks! When the priest came down the aisle to join the parishioners, I asked if he had a stamp for my pilgrim passport; he replied in the affirmative, and that he would go and get it after he had finished talking to everyone, and to help myself to a glass while I waited. So I joined the congregation for a drink, complimented the musicians, and got a stamp from the priest, who turned out to be Polish, and to have come to France only ten years ago. At midday I left the church to continue on my way - fortified with one priestly blessing and two cups of punch!
From Eyguières my route headed along a dirt track into a nature reserve, the Regional Park of the Alpilles - the "little Alps". Through stunning scenery, with only occasional backpackers and rock-climbers for company this Sunday afternoon, despite the fact that it was a perfect October day with air so clear you could see every single leaf on every single tree in the distance.
I stopped for a lunch break out of the wind on the leeward side of a bergière, a shelter built for shepherds and their flocks in the 18th century and used until the 1950s on what used to be a transhumance route between the Camargue and the Stura Valley in Cuneo, in northern Italy.
The path came out of the park at Aureilles, where I had determined to look for a room for the night. It was still early in the day, but the next town, Maussanne, was some distance away and I had been walking into a strong wind all day. On my way through town, I heard someone calling me and turned around to see a young woman waving at me from outside the local café. "Are you a pilgrim? Me too! Come in and have a cup of coffee!" So I did. She was going in the opposite direction to me, towards Rome, with a heavy backpack equipped with everything required to camp out under the stars, and a dog. We chatted for a while and I proposed that we look for a room together, as it normally costs the same for one or two people. She agreed, saying she normally slept outside but wouldn't mind a hot shower. But she tried calling all the places on the list of suggested accommodations in Aureille, and all of them were booked up. Then we set off to try a couple of other locals the bartender suggested might have a room to rent; no luck there either. In the end the young woman went merrily off toward the mountain, to look for a place to sleep under the stars with her dog - I suggested the bergière might make a good shelter from the wind - while I, equipped with only a lightweight silk sleeping sheet, had to look for something more concrete (literally). I had seen a room for rent on airbnb but the host was not replying to my request... what to do? I consulted the list of pilgrim accommodations the woman at the tourist office in Salon had given me and found the name and phone number of Jeannine, who takes in pilgrims in her home in Mouriès, an hour's walk to the south of Aureille, off the route. I called her, apologising for the late notice and managing to explain in French who I was and that I couldn't find anywhere to stay in Aureille, and she immediately offered to host me. So I set off down the road at a brisk pace, arriving at her door at sunset. She offered me everything a pilgrim needs: a hot shower, a warm bed and a bowl of soup. Taken with her elderly mother (who has 14 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren) and invalid husband. The soup was followed by anchouade, a local specialty, a sauce made from anchovies dissolved in olive oil and served hot with bread and vegetables to dip in it. And plenty of conversation, which I pretended to follow, nodding and laughing at appropriate intervals, until asked a direct question, when I mostly had to ask for clarification!
A very special evening, with a generous family I would never have gotten to know if it were not for the twists of fate, or as my hosts would say, the ways of the Lord, on the Way!
Salon-de-Provence - Mouriès 29 km
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