Day 0 Le Puy en Velay  August 26, 2016

 

The Le Puy Way of the Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostella (The Way of Saint James/Camino) is the pilgrim road through France and Spain from Le Puy en Velay to Santiago. We walked part of the Le Puy Way from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago in 2013 (800 km).

There is no denying it was a sportive challenge for us both. It was also, to varying degrees for Lynn versus Russ, a spiritual, cultural, and historical journey that we both found to be a richly rewarding experience. So much so, that in 2014 we walked the Dingle Way in Ireland (200 km) followed by the daunting Via Francigenia in 2015 (1,054 km).

Tempus fugit, as they say. How many more years will we both be able to walk such distances? The answer lies not so much in the stars, as deep within ourselves. Thankfully, we are both still feeling able and very excited to set off on a walking holiday again in 2016. After much research and soul searching, we decided to do a pilgrimage again and walk the first part of the Le Puy Way this year from Le Puy en Velay to St. Jean Pied de Port in France.

This year is an extra special year for Pilgrims walking the Camino. Pope Francis has declared 2016 to be a holy year on the Camino. Normally, to be a holy year, St James Day (25th July) must fall on a Sunday. Since 2016 is a leap year, July 25^th fell fall on a Monday, with the next jubilee scheduled for 2021.

 

Nevertheless, on 8th December 2015, Pope Francis opened the Holy Door at St Peter’s basilica. This is an important symbolic act. Christ identifies himself as “the door” and Pope John Paul II states that the door “evokes the passage from sin to grace”. It was opened to remind us to retain humility. Pope Francis then declared 2016 to be the Holy Year of Mercy. 

 

Pilgrims have been travelling to Santiago de Compostela for over a thousand years. Godescalc, Bishop of Le Puy, who went there in 951AD, was one of the first. At the height of its popularity in the 11^th and 12^th centuries over half a million European people are said to have made the pilgrimage each year, most of them from France.

In medieval times people went on pilgrimages for a variety of reasons:

·        As a profession of faith

·        As a form of punishment for sins

·        As a means of atonement

·        As a way of acquiring merit

·        As an opportunity to venerate the relics of many saints along the way (indulgences were available to people who  visited shrines), and

·        The opportunity to escape their surroundings

 

The number of pilgrims travelling westward to Santiago from different parts of Europe dwindled after the Reformation in the 1500’s and other, political, factors, but never dried-up, and since the 20^th century there has been something of a resurgence.

Le Puy has been pilgrimage center since the middle ages, not so much as the starting point of the French C amino, but as pilgrimage destination in its own right. In fact, it is only since the 1900’s it has been associated as the start of the Le Puy Way.

Le Puy en Velay is an ancient town in a volcanic landscape dominated by rocky peaks rising from the valley floor. The Chapel of Saint Michael d’Aguilhe, built by Godescalc after returning  from  his pilgrimage to Santiago in 951 crowns one puy. An enormous statue of Notre-Dame de France (the lady and child) overlooks the town from another rock high above. The Romanesque Cathedral in the old town houses the 11^th-12^th century cloisters and 17^th century statue of the Black Virgin. 

We made our way to Le Puy starting on August 25. We took a plane from Ottawa, connecting to a plane to Paris through Montreal. We transitioned to Paris time during the week before we left, and slept all the way on the flight to Paris, which arrived at 7:35am, on time.

At the airport in Paris, we got sim cards for our cell phones and 20 euro each worth of time. Russell set up the phones, we called each other and I sent text messages to Kristjan and Kristine at home. We thought the phones were all set up.

At 11:58 we took a train from the CDG airport to Lyon. The Lyon train station was a complete mad house. There were numerous large groups of youth waiting for trains to various adventures. I have been concerned about travelling in France because of all the recent terrorist activity in the country and the busyness at that station was a bit disconcerting. At one point Russell said ‘do you feel better now?’ and pointed at a group of soldiers armed with machine guns walking through the crowds. I looked at the soldiers, all barely old enough to be finished high school and felt nauseous at the thought of how our society has regressed. In the middle ages it was dangerous for pilgrims (wolves, bandits, fever, rivers that were difficult to cross, unscrupulous ferrymen) to travel to Santiago or other holy places, and they were not at all sure they would reach their destination, let alone return home in one piece. Today, the modern pilgrim has to worry about being victimized by ‘Islamic’ terrorists, most of whom probably have no knowledge of the Koran or interest in the Muslim faith, but suffer from mental illness. Imagine those young soldiers having the wisdom to decide whether to shoot someone, and then living with that for the rest of their lives.

From Lyon we took a train to St-Etienne Chateaucreux. From there we had a 6 minute transfer time to get on a train to Le Puy. Earlier in the day I received an e-mail saying the train from Lyon might be 5 minutes late which was making me very nervous. You can pretty much set your watch by these trains in France. Thankfully, the train was on time, and there was a train conductor on the tracks who told us which was the train to Le Puy, so we made it.

On the train to Le Puy we sat with a German pilgrim bicycling from Heidleberg to Santiago. He spoke fairly good English, but he had a cochlear implant so had trouble hearing and understanding us. On that train, a man beside us with his (we presume) wife and son disappeared for a while and came back smelling very heavily of weed. They got off and another black fellow got on that sat across from us smelling and acting very intoxicated. He announced “I’m okay” then opened a bag of chips that spewed all over the place and then dropped a bag with a bottle of beer inside that spilled everywhere. We were getting close to Le Puy so I went to the washroom, only to discover that both the sink and toilet were plugged with paraphernalia from the guy smoking the weed.  I got out of there fairly quickly so as not to accused of being the one to indulge. At this point the black fellow found another beer in a bag that he opened and then seemed quite content, saying ‘I’ve got a beer’. At this point they announced we were at Le Puy, the final stop on the route, and the poor fellow was busy chugging his beer and gathering up his multitudinous bags. We arrived at 5:20 pm, for a total train travel time of 5 hours and 22 minutes.  While at the CDG airport we saw some signs saying you could now fly direct from Montreal to Lyon. Wish that was possible when we bought our tickets!

We wished the German fellow all the best, and I told him about a pilgrim get together at the Camino office at the Cathedral he might like to go to. He was staying the next day in Le Puy as well.

We checked in to our hotel, were glad they knew Macs had booked us there the following night, and we didn’t need to change rooms the next day. Then we went to buy some groceries and later to get a takeout pizza. The fellow said the pizza would take 20 minutes, so we set off to find the Cathedral and the place of the pilgrim get together for tomorrow. We managed to accomplish that before the pizza was ready, which we took back to our room, ate and went to bed. We were pretty exhausted, but pretty good too.  Getting on Paris time before leaving really helped.