the strange road to Nasbinals

I titled this blog "the strange road to Santiago" after the Paulo Coelho book "The Pilgrimage" which is about this road. Up until the other day, the road had been wonderful, tiring, painful and beuatiful but not strange. That all changed on the way to Nasbinals. It was about a 30+km walk and my feet were pretty sore by this stage. I had picked up a sandwich to take away in a tiny little cafe about 5km out of the last town and was planning to picnic somewhere along the way. I chose Rieutort-d'Aubrac as a good place and plodded on. When i reached the town (tiny, TINY, barely a town) I saw all these people milling around the centre of the village - tat's to say they were standing in the middle of the only road in town. I thought this was kind of weird, but as always I greeted them with a friendly 'bonjour'. Suddenly one of the women ran towards me and said in French "Can I hqve a photo with you?" I was a little surprised but what else do you say but yes? Then another woman who was a little way off screamed "Wait! Wait!" and ran down to join us. So I posed with them, then I was surrounded. People on all sides were calling out questions - "Where are you going? Where did you start today? Where are you from? Are you going to Santiago?" and others were yelling my answers out to those at the back of the pack. A fez people were speaking to me and i had no idea what they were saying, thiking it was a dialect, when I realised they were Spanish as well as some French people. One man could speak English and he finally said "Everyone says we must let you go because you have a long way to go, but we won't forget you". With that and many waves and shouts I walked off out of town, shaking my head with amazement. I realised I was really hungry by that stage (since the picnic had kind of ben forgotten!) and I sat down on the sie of the road to snack. The whole group drove passed me hnking and waving about 2 minutes later. I guessed that I was their pilgrim experience.

I kept on going and finally reached the gorgeous little town of Nasbinals, with strets that spiral around the churc in the centre of town. I found the building where the Gite was and walked in. I looked around and realised I was in small community hall and what do you know but the whole tour group was sitting there at a huge table having lunch. They all broke out into shouts and started clapping and crying "It's Rosemary!" and a chair was pulled out and i was waved over to sit down. I had food coming at me from every direction - amazing home-made stuff, French qnd Sanish - and wine and coffee and everything else in between. A man was filming me with his video camera and others were taking photos while many people just grinned at me. Then came more questions and they were all so lovely and keen to find out about me. turns out they're like a France-Spain friendship group and they do tours in both countries. After about 20 minutes Frederique walked in (a French girl I'd met on the way) and they pulled out a chair for her too. Lunch was clearly over, so they packed up and gave us leftovers and one woman gave me her address in Spain if I go past her town. More kisses and smiles and finally good-byes. It was the strangest day and more wonderful than anything. God bless the Camino!