We woke up at 6 AM Sunday August 16. Packed up and ready to go by 6:30 am. We came down for breakfast. We are a hearty breakfast. Nice spread of cheese, bread, dried salami, croissant, jelly of all sort, yogurt, died fruit, juices, coffee, chocolate etc … I like to dip the fluffy croissant into the hot chocolate and eat it like the French kids! Comfort food for me. That’s how we used to eat them in the morning when we were kids. The sun is out bright and shining already. Summer in France the day is very long. We did bring our head light for the days we plan to walk early but I doubt we will need them. It looks like it’s going to be a nice walking day. It’s a bit chilly out. We need our light jacket. I have been reading that’s it’s 90 degrees over here and I was expecting very hot day but it feels more like 60 degrees to me.

We finish breakfast and headed up to the cathedral for the morning pilgrims mass and pilgrims blessing. It has been a tradition since the medieval time that the pilgrims are blessed before they head out on their pilgrimage.

We headed into the historic center of town. Soon we took off our jacket and started sweating. It’s quite a climb. Well worth the effort but it’s a steep hill up to the Cathedral of notre Dame du Puy.

A UNESCO world heritage site, The Cathedral Notre dame du Puy is very very beautiful, inside and out. The climb takes us through the back way, through many arched stoned gates along stone walled small alley ways. The cobble stones roads underneath our feet must have been there for more than a thousand years! We headed straight the tall statue of the Virgin Mary first.

Then we got to the back door of the Cathedral which was locked, we had no map so we were just lucky to even get to the back door of the Cathedral! We walked along the stone walls, making a whole round around the huge complex and got ourselves to the front of the cathedral. More steps to climbs. High steep steps and a lot of them!!! We finally got into the Cathedral and it was well worth all that climbing and walking.

Lots of pilgrim backpacks piled up by the door. We put our backpacks down too and joined in with the rest of the group of pilgrims. There are about 50 pilgrims at mass this morning, 10 of them are children, boys and girls from 8 to 12. The rest are young men and women and some older pilgrims.

A catastrophe in the cathedral this morning: a young girl named Margeride dropped her pendant down the aeration grid! She was wearing her cross, her baptism pendant and some other precious pendants on her necklace. Yanick, her father, asked the priest if he can help them retrieve the pendant and necklace. The priest had a sad face but shook his head. Sorry I don’t think we can get them back. The family then asked the nun who also shook her head. She can’t help them neither. Luckily for them, a local person gave them a helping hand. He brought up a double ladder, climbing all those steps and brought it into the cathedral. They lifted the old aeration grid that weights about 100 pounds. They put the ladder down the whole and the dad Yanick climbed down to retrieve Marguerite’s pendants. It’s probably had been ages since anybody had been down there, Yanick found himself a treasure troves full of surprises: money, strange objects, all kinds of stuff, even a walking stick some poor pilgrim dropped down there too. The fiasco ended happily with Marguerite getting her necklace and all her pendants back on her pretty neck.

The pilgrim mass lasted about one hour. Mass was all in French of course. Then came the pilgrim blessing, the priest blessed is all and sent us on our way for a safe and successful pilgrimage.

At then end of the blessing, the priest gathered all of us around and asked us where we are from. We were the only 2 from the United States. He was funny. When we said we are from Florida, he said “ah, Florida, it’s like France”! 90 percent of the pilgrim are from different regions of France: Paris, Lyon, st Etienne, Grenoble etc .. 2 from Belgium, 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Antibes, that’s all we remembered of the day’s statistics. The priests handed out some medals which were quickly taken by the children. Then comes the pilgrim blessing cards and prayers in different languages, you pick the card on your own language. Then he handed out some souvenirs in small plastic bags, some volcanic dirt of the region, some other gifts from the church. Then he said “you are walking for yourself but also for the church. There are others who can not walk for one reason or others, they might be too sick to walk or they might have other obligation that prevent them from taking the time away to walk, but they do have prayers and petitions. They have written their prayers in this box. You can pick out one or two or as many as you want but make sure you pray for them everyday as you are walking your pilgrimage”. The box is passed around and everybody pull out the little pieces of paper on which is written the prayers.

That was the end of the morning mass and blessing. We then headed to the sacristy where a very nice nun gathered the pilgrims that needed a pilgrim passport around her and showed us all the nice passport in the plastic bag to keep it from getting wet in the rain. It has the nice Cathedral stamp on it for the first day of the walk. It cost us $5 euros each but well worth it.

With the new pilgrim passport, we are now ready to head out. The got our packs and exit the Cathedral, following two very determined lady pilgrims walking out with a very fast pace. We followed through the church court yard, headed out near a gate when they stopped and looked around. Then they made a right turn, we followed them, then they decided to turn back. We continue to follow them. They seemed to take us in a round about way so we asked them: “do you know how to get on the way?” They said “oh don’t follow us, the way is by the main cathedral door going down on the other side. We are just looking for the bathroom!”. Ah, that’s how we started our walk, walking around following two women desperately looking for a place to get rid of their morning juice and coffee!

We went back through the Cathedral and now follow another group of pilgrims to the main Cathedral door. We later learn that this door is not open very often. So we are very lucky it’s a beautiful nice view directly from the main altar, straight out to the main door and out down the zillions of steps leading back down to the historic center of town. Lots of pictures were snapped. A beautiful start to our pilgrimage! The whole group of pilgrims headed back into town and on to the Camino.

We walked past many shops of bobbin lace, which the town is famous for. We headed slowly out of town and start climbing. The first stretch is a test of endurance. Keep on climbing. Ed said this is a never ending hill. We climb for a long time. The first hour was just straight climbing, then the path level off somewhat for us to take a breather. We begin to pass many memorials for world war soldiers, many interesting looking crosses on the road and beautiful vistas of small village along undulating hills. The weather is perfect. Not too hot. Not too cold. Not raining. We can’t ask for more.

We passed many secluded hamlets, many ancient stone crosses and stone walled pastures. Corn fields with ears of corns 6 inches long, apple orchards with apple trees full of apples. Many farmers’ barn stocked full of hay preparing for winter. Cows in pasture. Ed wonders if French cows moo in French. I think they do. They don’t say “moo” but more like “meuh”!

We picked fresh black berries on the road. Sweet and ripe. We met up with a couple of pilgrims. A mother and daughter pair from St Etienne that are walking only for a few days this time. They did another section last year. We met another young couple who are walking for 2 weeks and will go as far as they can. We met up with some young kids who walked so fast they left their parents behind, they run up the hills through the pasture and don’t even take the nice stair steps on the path. They are having so much fun. Running in the fresh air having the time of their lives!

This first week’s walk will take us through the Velay mountain and the Margeride plateau. This area is very rich in history and culture and has many many pilgrimage sites since the middle age.

We decided to have a short walk today since we have to deal with jet lag and just trying to get used to the new time zone and the hills and mountains of the Velay. We walked through an extremely enjoyable rural and shaded path to St Christophe sur Dolaison. We reached st Christophe at 11:45 am. It’s a small village with one restaurant. We entered and inquired about lunch. The owner said sorry but the place booked full today. Oh oh! There is a bar in town. We walked over to the bar. No food. They only had a few loaves of bread. The grocery store is closed for the day. There is nothing to eat. We have to walk on.

We kept on walking for another km. we enter the hamlet of Tallode. By now both of us are starting to fade. There is a farm where we can stay the night. We can’t move on any more. We were too hungry and tired.

The whole farm is empty when we arrived. The door is open. There is a welcoming sign hung on the door but nobody in sight. There is a nice garden full of tomatoes and zucchini and green onion. A patio with table and chairs. We sat ourselves down and took out our boots to rest our feet. We waited under the shade of a tree and ate a small bag of dried cranberry and a small tart snack. That was all we had. It helped a little bit. After a while a woman showed up. We explained to her that we want to stay the night, eat dinner, but we are also starving right this minute. We are about to faint from hunger. She stratched her head and starting thinking. Oh what do I have to feed you, she says. Bread, cheese, ham? We said yes out loud. That would save us. She kindly brought out a basket of sliced bread, and a small round of cheese. We dove in like 2 starved people that have not eaten in a month. The poor lady yelled out: wait, wait, I bring you some meat. Don’t eat just yet. Wait. Wait. She instructed us. We stopped eating.

She rushed to another side of the farm to get us some dried meat. Once she is out of sight, we started eating again! We were so hungry. When she came back out, she gave us some meat and 4 fresh picked peaches from the farm. We ate everything!

Then we went up to our room and crashed into our bed. I managed to get up and washed our dirty clothes and hung them to dry by the window while Ed passed out into a deep slumber. We both slept soundly until 6 pm.

Other pilgrims are starting to get to the “gite” by now. We probably will have a full house. A family of 5 from Paris. A single lady from Cambridge, England, who is walking only today and is walking back to Le Puy tomorrow, she just came to say good bye to her son who is running the Camino! He is planning to run 40 km a day, almost one marathon a day for 10 days. He does carry a small pack, about 6 kg. What a daring attempt! A single lady from Quebec. She is a chatter box herself. A very young couple from France and another single lady from Lyon. There were 12 of us at table by 7:20 pm, hungry and eager eaters waiting for our meal.

Dinner was served at 7:30 pm.

The farm owner cooked us a sumptuous feast! She served a wonderful warm green lentils salad and a cold whole tomatoes stuffed with green lentils. The lentils were grown on the farm itself. Delicious! Then comes a farm pate’. Red wine, rose wine. Then come a stuffed veal baked to perfection and lamb shoulder that fall apart with its own wonderful juice. Next comes a plate of assorted cheese with fresh bread. Then a trio of desert. Peach tart, cold flan and a raspberry sorbet with raspberry sauce! Wow what a way to end a great diner! There were lots of food, great company, great stories being shared around the table. English and French co mingled but all seems to flow flawlessly. The kids even requested a kid’s meal of fried eggs which the owner cooked right away for them and everybody’s happy!

After the feast we went up to our room and crashed again straight to sleep. Ed got into a deep slumber instantly. I gathered my first day laundry which I folded neatly back into our backpack. We are ready to set out for an early start in the morning!

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