the kindness of strangers

I am sitting in a bar in Navarrenx right now after walking almost 100kms in 3 days and having one beer. Bad combination, alcohol after a really long day is stronger than normal! But it's ok, I'm not blogging inder the influence, and I don't think that's illegal anyway...

At the beginning of this trip, I was amazed at the friendliness and hospitality of the people around me, locals and pilgrims alike. There was a real sense of the Camino as an experience that involved everyone around it. But that disappeared for a week or so as I passed from the Massif Central. People seemed to tolerate pilgrims but weren't that happy about us traipsing through their neigbourhood. On occasion there were signs asking us not to stop, etc which I can understand, and maybe in summer whenb 100 pilgrims a day are passing by there house is necessary, but felt decidely unfriendly to me. I swear one family had trained it's dog to follow pilgrims, growling, because that's what it did! But as I've passed into the South-West - Occitane and Basque country - the spirit has changed and I wanted to share some of my wonderful experiences over the last week.

I was walking to Aire sur L'Adour the other day and it'd been a big walk. I was about 4kms away from my destination when I spotted Olaf, a guy from the Netherlands I knew, sitting on the step of a caravan that was parked by the road. I went over to say hello and the woman in the caravan immediately greeted me with a huge smile and the offer of some food. She presented me with a beautiful little sandwich of amazing bread, goat's cheese and ham then asked if I'd like a glass of wine. Now, it was about 1:30 but this is France so I said yes, but a small one. She gave me a big one - small only in Giant's terms. I sat down and we talked about the road and the country nearby. She was a jeweller and she and her husband travelled around to the markets. They were such lovely peple and when Olaf and I headed off we were both so reinvigorated, not just by the food (and wine!) but by the sheer generosity they'd shown to two strangers. We stopped to pick some figs a few minutes later and they drove past in the caravan. They stopped in the middle of the road and handed us half a loaf of bread out the window, so we gave them our figs. And on we went. We arrived in Aire sur L'Adour and were about to cross the bridge when a woman called out to us, wushing us a good walk. She was an ex-pilgrim and when she heard where we were staying that night she said she was going near there and led us to the gite. She gave us tips about the Spanish road and some good places to stay. At the door she bid us good-bye and went on her way. The gite was run by an ex-pilgrim called Jean-Michel. After doing the walk, he bought a house especially to start a gite and he eats breakfast with the pilgrims every single morning. He'd thought of everything and I spent one of the most wonderful, relaxing, tranquil nights so far there.

The next morning, after 3 days of fog and grey skies, the sun rose in a symphony of orange and pink and it felt as if I was starting a whole new stage, refreshed and healed by the kindness of strangers. I couldn't believe that in one afternoon I'd had that many wonderful experiences. But there was one more to come... I was walking through Uzan and it was about lunch time. It was Sunday and everything was shut. As I walked along I saw a sign with a scallop shell and read "Pilgrims, something to eat and drink, help yourselves". I looked into the garden of this house and saw a table with chairs and coffee, tea, cold drinks in an esky and a cake tin. No-one was around the house at all. I went in and had coffee and cake and could see that this person put this stuff out every day, changing the flavour of the cake regularly. Almost more than the other times, I was quite overcome by this experience. It's one thing to be generous to someone we see face to face, and just once. But this person did this for countless nameless, faceless strangers and it meant more than I can describe. That someone cared enough to do that blew me away.

I was thinking about these experiences and what it is to receive kindness. Then when I helped Olfrid with his travel plans (see post "My new career" and we sent him on his way, he took my hand in both of his and just said 'Rosemary, Rosemary' without really looking at me, but I could see how grateful he was for what I'd done. And I realised that I'm a stranger to him, and what I did naturally was also an act of kindness. So I guess it goes both ways.