I was quite nervous about this first segment, which is a 24 km/15 mile stretch with 2000 feet of elevation gain. My longest training hikes were 12-13 miles, with about half the elevation gain. But today went surprisingly well.
I woke early to attend the 7 am pilgrims mass this morning at the cathedral. It was still dark when I walked over. There were about 75 people who were starting out on the trail today – if this is late in the season, I wonder how many people were out at the peak? Most of them were French, which I know because (1) the priest asked at one point how many people were from France, Germany, Italy, US, etc. and because (2) they were participating fully in the mass, in French. The man behind me had an amazing baritone.
There was a large grate in the center aisle of the church. The rest of the floor is stone. I was sitting at one end of the grate, and I wondered what it was for. At the end of the mass, the grate opens dramatically to reveal a staircase that descends out of the cathedral for the pilgrims to exit onto the trail! Like we were going to enter a dungeon. It could have been a trailer for a D&D movie, and it was totally worth getting up at WTF o’clock.
People began gathering their packs and heading down the stairs to the trail, which starts in the streets of Le Puy.
The trail winds through some commercial streets and then residential, and then out into farmland. The weather was perfect – blue skies, clear visibility for miles, and it never got too warm.
After that, it was one beautiful vista after another, interspersed with the occasional farm building, village or town.
The trail is mostly paved or dirt backroads, with steady elevation gain, but mostly with a gentle grade that wasn’t too difficult. The last mile, though, was descending all that gained elevation on steep, rocky, uneven single-track – so rough I wondered more than once whether I’d taken a wrong turn – through a forested area. But then it broke out into sunlight, and voilà: I had arrived in Saint-Privat-d’Alliers.
So I made it, and my luggage made it, and I fell asleep writing this blog post and hope to sleep properly tonight!
On the language front, I managed to have something of a conversation with a fellow from Le Puy who was only hiking for three days but had completed the whole trail in July; and I checked into my hotel, found out when dinner and breakfast were and located my transferred bag, all in French. Not too shabby!
