Via Lemovicensis: On French

After two long days walking, I’ve planned for two relatively short days. Part of that of course is just geography – where are the villages where I can stay? Some of it, though, is my own Camino rhythm.

Breakfast at the gîte this morning wasn’t even served until close to 7:30, so it was about 8:20 before I left. A little less vital, since this is meant to be a short day. The skies were cloudy when I left, and the air was cool. They were still predicting rain – thunderstorms, even – but it certainly didn’t look that way this morning.

A couple of pilgrims left before I did, including Philippe. Monique wants to give her feet a rest, so she’s taking an extra day at the gîte. I probably will not see her again, unless she catches up to me in Saint-Jean, where I am taking my rest day in a couple of weeks.

It’s hard to believe that I am more than halfway through my time in France!

Today is the anniversary of the day that Francine randomly started speaking French in the hospital for several hours.

She was fluent in Italian and French, and she could hold conversations in several other languages, including Dutch, Spanish, Neapolitan dialect (which she insisted was a language of its own). She even had a few phrases and words in Hebrew that she recalled.

She had a faculty for languages that I can only admire and wonder at. I still have fond memories of her on our second Camino speaking Italian to the Spanish and modifying her vocabulary with Spanish words as she learned them. It was watching somebody start to learn a language in real time.

She loved language. She loved learning them and loved using words as a sandbox to play in.

She would have been right in her element in the gîte last night. Conversation flowed around the table in French, Dutch, and English.

Why she specifically started speaking French that morning, I have no idea. It might have something to do with the promises I made her the day before.

One of them was to complete all of the adventures that we had planned, starting with the one I’m on now, the Via Lemovicensis.

After leaving the village, I was roadwalking this morning through the woods. I was probably close to a kilometer outside the village before I remembered to start my tracker. Whoops. When I finally compile my distance list, I’m going to have to remember to asterisk this day.

At about 8:40, the road, which had been gradually disintegrating for some time, finally gave up the ghost entirely and became dirt and stones. Here I passed through the ruined hamlet of Les Rivailles: one crumbling stone house and one shipping container with a front door, completely overgrown and hemmed in by bushes.

I was already sweating in the humidity of the woods, so I took off my fleece. As I did so, I noticed that I had been notching my belt tighter than previously. I’m clearly already losing weight.

The rough road wound its way through wood and meadow, much as in the previous days. I think the soil is getting sandier here, but it may just be the roads.

It’s sobering to think of the millions of feet that have trod this way before me with the same intention, some before French was spoken here, or even a language at all.

The path this morning was filled with golden butterflies.

At about 9:20 AM, I was briefly back on asphalt before returning to dirt and grass. Across the meadows, I could see rain falling on the horizon. The wind was definitely coming from that direction, so perhaps we would have rain today after all. Not soon, though.

On today’s walk, there were no villages, no cafés, no shops, at least until today’s final destination. For these kinds of days, it’s important to plan ahead. Mostly today was walking on dirt or asphalt through the countryside, through the woods, with only a handful of little isolated hamlets. 

And I was in no particular hurry. My only concern was to get to my final destination, the city of Thiviers, before the shops closed. Tomorrow is May 1st, a national holiday in France. The law very strictly prohibits shops, cafés, restaurants, basically everything, from being open that day. The only exceptions I’m aware of are places like hotels and gîtes. So it was vital that I replenish my food stash and additionally procure something I could make for dinner the next night.

It is to my own great shame that I do not speak French. I had two years in high school, but I was an indifferent student, and in any case that was more than 40 years ago.

I do have a collection of stock phrases and random nouns that, with an unfailing politeness, can get me through a Camino in France. I often say that I have twenty words of French and ten of them are wrong, but this is a slight exaggeration.

I generally book my gîtes – and unlike in Spain, you most certainly should book ahead in France – by email or WhatsApp. Here, Google Translate is my friend. Occasionally I have recourse to a French-speaking pilgrim friend (thank you, Philippe!) or a friendly hospitalero who can make a phone call for me.

At about 9:50 AM, I was on asphalt again as I passed through La Fagnade, which so far as I could tell was a single house with a large manicured lawn and some outbuildings. I still had not spotted Philippe. I had the feeling that perhaps I was moving a little too slowly today.

At about 10 AM, the road passed by an extensive farmstead that was larger than many of the named hamlets I’d walked through during the past few days. Even roadwalking, I saw many of those little golden butterflies in the grass and bushes by the side of the road

At about 10:10, I passed by a little farming hamlet clinging to the top of a hill. The sign said Le Pont Fermier, which means something like “the farmer’s bridge”. Needless to say, I didn’t see a bridge until I was well past the hamlet.

At this point, I estimated that I was about halfway through my day. I was feeling good, although a spot of second breakfast would not have gone amiss.

Shortly thereafter, I passed by La Grave, which, unless I’m very much mistaken, consists of four barns, three sheds, and a house. It’s possible that one of the things I counted as a barn was actually a house/barn combo. And of course, it’s possible that there were additional buildings further back from the road that I couldn’t see.

I wonder how many thousands of years people have been farming and raising livestock on this land?

I passed by several farmsteads as the sky grew increasingly overcast. At about 10:45, in the farming hamlet of Le Petite Pouge, I took a moment to prep my pack for rain. The whole operation took less than three minutes.

With the line of houses never actually ending, at about 10:55 the Camino turned a corner and I was suddenly in the hamlet of Le Grand Coderc. It was now that I felt the first drops of rain.

At 11 o’clock exactly, I spotted Philippe ahead of me in the distance.  A few moments later, I caught up with him in the hamlet of Le Petit Clos. It was at this point that we left the asphalt for a dirt and gravel road through the meadow.

By 11:20, we were back on the asphalt road walking through the hamlet of Le Tuquet which was flush with a new construction and restorations.

Shortly thereafter, Camino turned towards Thiviers, and it appeared to be one long straight shot on the road, going steeply uphill for probably the last 2 km.

We entered Thiviers well before noon.

The first stop was a grocery. The price is here continued to amaze me. I spent just over €10 on everything I’m likely to need for snacks and lunch for the next couple of days. Plus soap, which I was running out of.

The next step was to find someplace to have lunch, to eat some of the old items out of our food stashes, perhaps supplemented with a tasty beverage.

By 12:45 we were sitting under an awning drinking a beer and eating our lunch. Perfect. The skies opened up in rain.

Thus fortified, we waited for the rain to let up before we made our way over to the church across the street.

This is a magnificent building with some highly skilled and beautiful pieces of religious art. It also has some incredibly awful things shoehorned in, including in one of the side chapels a little table for children with pencils and coloring books. Call me a stick in the mud, but that does not belong in front of the altar.

There are magnificent 20th century statues of Saint Michael and Saint Joan of Arc here, as well as some beautiful and moving statues from earlier centuries.

It is almost as though this were a place perfectly conducive to prayer which the modern imagination has tried to subvert to other purposes. I can’t really explain it any better than that.

Perhaps the comparison of the artistry of the old pulpit with the clean, meaningless lines of the modern ambo most clearly illustrates the dichotomy here.

Nevertheless, in His presence I prayed, and at the shrine of Saint Roche the pilgrim I lit a candle for Francine.

Philippe had left before me, so I made my way to the gîte alone. I arrived at 2 PM. I’m sleeping on a mat in a loft. And after my shower, I did just that for an hour. Apparently the last few days are catching up with me. 

In other news, I have decided not to take the Bergerac variant. It’s too difficult to find accommodation along that route. Even the “regular” route is a bit of a challenge if I want to avoid a 36 km day.

Date: 30 April 2026

Place: Thiviers 

Today started: La Coquille 

Today’s Photos!