GR653 Day 23: Saint Gilles - Vauvert

Set off with Anne and Marie-Helène through orchards and vineyards, parched after six months without a drop of rain, to the tune of the traditional French pilgrims' song Anne taught me at the hostel last night:

Tous les matins nous prenons le chemin
Tous les matins nous allons plus loin
Jour après jour la route nous appelle
C’est la voix de Compostelle

Chemin de terre et chemin de foi
Voie millénaire de l’Europe
La voie lactée de Charlemagne
C’est le chemin de tous les jacquets

Et tout là-bas au bout du continent
Messire Jacques nous attend
Depuis toujours son sourire fixe
Le soleil qui meurt au Finistère

Ultreïa, Ultreïa !
E sus eia
Deu, adjuva nos !

No wind at all today, but plenty of hot sunshine. We took it easy and even had a nap by an apricot orchard after lunch. When we arrived in the town of Vauvert we stopped by the church, then the local bar for a panâche (shandy) and the tourist office to get our stamp and some information for the days to come. Then we went to an address where there was supposed to be hospitality for pilgrims, but it turned out to be stables converted into tiny rooms... where you had to go outside to get to the bathrooms and to eat. Sort of an urban version of camping... we decided it might be all right in mid-summer, but not at the end of October, and so we checked out the local hotel and found we could get a triple room there for only five euros more a head! No contest!!

Saint Gilles - Vauvert 24.5 km 

(inc. 2 km looking around the village for a place to stay!)

Why sleep in a stable when you can stay in the French capital of kitsch? 

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

GR653A Day 21: Mouriès - Arles!

Last day on the GR653A (Via Aurelia). My hostess Jeannine filled me up with toast and quince jelly, packed me up some almonds, raisins and oranges for the road and sent me off. She refused my offer of a donation to cover expenses, saying that if I wanted to, I could make a donation to the church instead. So I set off into the village, stopping by the church with the intention of immediately discharging this debt; but there was no "poor box" in view, only a box for donations toward the Christmas crêche. I wasn't sure that was quite her intention, so I decided to remain indebted to the Church for the time being and continued on my way. Mouriès is the olive capital of France, and in harvest season, many people were out spreading nets under their trees and picking olives. I had even considered offering to stop and help Jeannine with her crop, as there had been some discussion over the dinner table about who would be able to lend a hand on Monday, who on Tuesday, etc. I jokingly offered to stop and lend a hand, and Jeannine replied that I could stay another night if I did; in the end I decided against it, because I saw that if I could get to Arles today I would have enough time to go on to Montpellier within the week. However I imagine that it would be easy for pilgrims and wayfarers to find free lodgings and meals in this part of the world at this time of year, by simply offering to help with the olive harvest wherever there are families out picking their olives!

That's a lot of olives! 

I took a small paved country road from Mouriès to rejoin the GR653A, which then headed along a dirt track through the woods.

A new kind of danger sign!

This warning sign is not quite so scary

The region produces not only olives but Merino wool.

I took another minor detour to pass through the centre of the small town of Maussane-les-Alpilles, where I found nothing to distract me for any longer than the time it takes to eat a freshly baked pan au chocolat. From there the path plunged into the forest again, to emerge by a beautiful specimen of a windmill at Fontvieille.

I stopped to eat my lunch in the shade of the windmill, but it offered little shelter from the wind (not surprisingly) and so I didn't stay long. Once again today I was walking into a strong wind most of the day. So strong I couldn't keep my hat on, so I had the sun shining in my eyes in the afternoon as well! 

At Fontvieielle the GR653A Via Aurelia, coming from Italy via Menton, meets the GR653D or Via Dolmitia, arriving from Italy via Monginevro, and therefore crossing the Alps. There is supposed to be a marker at the spot where the two trails meet, but I must have missed it (and a great photo opportunity!). On this October day in 2017 I was unfortunately not joined by throngs of pilgrims arriving from across the Alps, but continued on my solitary way. And, oddly, the trail markings became not more but less frequent after the two trails converged, so that I took several wrong turns and would have lost my way entirely in a maze of pathways had I not had the GPS track on my phone. The route left the road and continued through shrubbery over a hill and past the ruins of a Roman aqueduct. 

It then became apparent why there was such a maze of pathways, littered with horseshoe prints and.... other signs of the recent passage of horses, as the trail passed through a large equestrian centre. From here the rest of the way to Arles is a bit of a disappointment; far from making a triumphal entrance on the final stretch, it simply follows the road, mostly right on the shoulder of route D17, though in one stretch a pathway has been blazed through the woods only a few metres from the roadside. I don't like walking by the roadside, even when there is plenty of space; I don't trust drivers. Most of them are probably just ordinary people, in too much of a hurry to get from one place to another to go on a Long Walk; but you never know when one might be drunk, or deranged, or simply have a heart attack while driving, through no fault of their own; so I never quite trust them to stay within the white lines. The number of automobile parts I step over when walking along the side of roads suggests that drivers go off the road more often than they would like to admit; and the amount of rubbish I wade through suggests they are bad people in general. If I can walk for an hour, or two, or three with the remains of my picnic lunch in my pocket, or backpack, before finding a garbage can in which to dispose of them, what possible trouble could it be for the driver of a car to keep his aluminum can, or plastic bottle, or cigarette box within his vehicle until he comes to a trash can? Surely less effort than it takes to roll down the window and throw it out? I don't understand. Then there are pieces of trash you find by the road that really make you wonder what the story behind them might be: a child's shoe. A pair of underpants. 

And so it is that route D17 brings the pilgrim ingloriously to the end of this trail, in the city of Arles; but it is not really an end, merely a waypoint, or a new beginning: here the GR653 itself begins, ready to take the pilgrim to Tolouse and from there to Col de Somport: the Pyrenees, and the Spanish border, 785 km down the road.

Mouriès - Arles 32.5 km

Ventimiglia - Arles 464 km - 20 days

Arles: the Roman Arena

Arles: the city hall

Arles: the Basilica

Arles: view of the Roman theatre from the window of my €25 room

GR653A Day 20: Salon-de-Provence - Mouriès

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