Via Lemovicensis: Woods and Chihuahuas

When I started packing my bag this morning, it was clear that the rains had returned in force. It was storming.

According to the weather app, the rain would continue all day. By the time Herve and I left about 7:30, I could see a little sliver of blue on the horizon, but it was certainly pouring as we set out to find some breakfast.

We soon found the only open boulangerie in town, purchased some croissants and chocolatines, and brought them to a café where we could purchase coffee. We were soon joined by Louis-Marie and Luc.

Herve mentioned that today was supposed to be 26 km. I immediately responded telling him that if that’s what the book said, it was sure to be 30. He laughed at my pessimism, but I stand by my Rules. On the Camino, all distances are lies. I usually add 20% to the guidebook number, and this is generally pretty close to what I end up walking.

I had my first and second breakfast one right after the other. Two pastries, two coffees. I’m getting used to these leisurely French breakfasts. It was after 8:30 by the time we left. The rain had stopped for the moment. An auspicious time to be leaving.

I headed for the Camino route, Herve took a detour for an ATM, and I have no idea where the other two went. Already, we had scattered.

I soon discovered this village was larger than it seemed, as I found myself walking through a series of modern suburban-style developments interspersed with older row houses.

I had this morning replaced the inserts in my shoes. I have special inserts that help with my occasionally reoccurring plantar fasciitis, and I brought two extra sets of them on Camino this time. I’ll probably change into the final set somewhere on the Meseta in Spain.

Feeling the renewed bounce in my step this morning, I think I made the right call.

At 8:55, the Camino left the houses, the village, and the road behind for a dirt path similar to when I walked yesterday – forest on one side, fields on the other. The grass was wet, of course, and it wasn’t long before my shoes were soaked through.

When I first met Herve a couple of days ago, he asked me the question that almost every pilgrim asks when they meet another pilgrim: “so, why are you walking the Camino?”

At the time I told him that I would tell him over a beer. Last night at dinner, he asked again. And then he added, “is it to do with the card?”

He had seen me writing in my journal, and I keep one of the cards from Francine’s funeral there.

So I told him the whole story. It ended as it usually does, with the both of us in tears. He thanked me for the story, and we raised a glass to the memory of my beautiful bride.

The path soon joined a dirt road through the forest. I performed the tricky operation of taking off my fleece without disturbing my rain poncho.

I emerged from the woods at about 9:10 into the little hamlet surrounding Château de Puyferrat. There is a hotel here that offers pilgrim rates. This was one of my last-ditch possibilities for a bed last night. Even the pilgrim rate here, though, is expensive.

From here the road became a lot rougher and descended steeply into the valley. I moved extremely slowly. Thanks to the flanking bushes and trees, at no point could I see the château from the road.

At about 9:20, the Camino emerged on an asphalt road near a tree farm. It was weirdly hypnotic to see these large trees all planted in rows.

It was sprinkling intermittently, enough to keep my poncho draped over my backpack, but not enough for me to put my arms through the sleeves and the hood up.

At 9:25 I briefly passed through the hamlet of Davalant, though I only saw one house before the Camino took a sharp turn down a dirt road through the now familiar mix of woodlands and open fields.

My brain was taking a moral logistical and practical turn this morning. I’ve started losing quite a bit of weight. I have two pairs of hiking pants with me in two different sizes. I’ve typically been hiking in the larger pair and wearing the smaller pair in the evenings.

However, the day is fast approaching when these pants are going to switch roles. I’m cinching up my belt so tight now on the larger pants that the waistband is starting to fold over. I know from prior experience that this will eventually lead to problems.

I’ve been putting this off for several days for probably stupid reasons. I don’t like the arrangement of the pockets on the smaller pair of pants. They’re also not the nigh indestructible REI hiking pants, but a different brand. 

About 9:35 I passed through the tidy hamlet of Rougerie. A very suburban feel. I was practically chased out of town by two extremely vocal and angry loose Chihuahuas. At one point, I actually had to use my hiking sticks to fend off the smaller one when it looked like it was making a lunge for my legs.

I can’t remember the last time on Camino I had to do something like that. Possibly 2018?

About a kilometer later, the Camino turned down another lovely gravel and dirt road into the hamlet of Les Brousses. There was a sign here indicating the distance to Ann Arbor Michigan. Basketball fans? Former employees of Borders?

For a while, the road descended through the woods getting muddy or as it went. I was now sweating so profusely in the high humidity that my glasses were fogging up.

By 10 AM, I had reached the bottom of the valley with wide farming fields and very large, muddy puddles. Now it was time to climb up the other side.

At the top, the road widened out considerably as it passed through small hamlet of Chassaing and back along an asphalt road briefly before returning to a dirt road through the woods.

Here I passed a sign saying that Mussidan, my destination for the night, was 20.4 km away. According to my tracker, I had already walked 8.6. My prediction, so far, was right on the money.

Shortly thereafter I walked through the  hamlet of Guibaudie and straight back into the woods. By 10:20, the road had become a path through meadow and woods, up and down the hills.

Somewhere in the distance, somebody was playing a badly distorted radio entirely too loudly. I passed by a rural farmstead, and after this it was asphalt again.

The road took me up through the well-to-do hamlet of Saumonie. This place seemed to go on forever, but eventually it was back to the gravel and dirt and mud.

At about 11 AM, I passed through a charming little suburban hamlet, the name of which I could find on no map. It could possibly have been a neighborhood of any one of three nearby villages.

There was a picnic table, so I took the opportunity to rest a moment and have a snack.

When I continued, the more I walked on the more this place more closely this place resembled a village neighbourhood. I eventually realized that this was in fact part of the long, drawn out hamlet of Planèze. It’s definitely large enough to be a village on its own, though there was no church and I didn’t see anything resembling a shop or a commercial district.

I was still walking past houses at 11:30 when it began to drizzle again. After the last of the houses, the asphalt road climbed up into the woods. By the time I reached the top of the hill, the drizzle had stopped.

As I passed an RV park at about 11:40, the sun actually broke through the clouds. I started singing. Soon I was walking through a little hamlet with well-kept country homes. This might have been Puy de Pont. There was, in fact, a small bridge over a stream as I was heading out of town.

By noon, the road had taken me up through another fancy little Hamlet that looked like it was vacation homes. This might have been Lacaud. 

After this, the road suddenly became gravel, and then dirt. The on-again off-again drizzle had returned, so I was looking for someplace sheltered to eat my lunch.

I walked a long time on a broad, relatively flat forest access road. At about 12:35, I came up upon a little forest shelter, designed for backpackers.

It was the perfect place to eat the sandwich I purchased this morning at the boulangerie, although it was nice enough outside now that I ate on one of the benches out front. The sandwich was ham and cheese on a half baguette, and I absolutely devoured it along with a few cookies.

As I was packing up at about 1 PM, my three friends arrived to begin their lunch. I stayed and chatted about ten minutes before walking on. Less than 100 m from the shelter, I was walking on asphalt again.

There was definitely blue in the sky now, though the clouds directly overhead were still dark.

After just a kilometer or so, the Camino once again turned down one of the gravel and dirt forest access roads. Had I continued straight ahead instead, I could have gone to the village of Douzillac, only about 2 km distant.

As the Camino twisted and turned, my road alternated, first dirt, then for a while on asphalt, before inevitably return returning to dirt.

At about 1:50, I passed through another upscale little hamlet, Les Faures. About five minutes later, I passed a sheltered picnic table in the middle of the forest. If I’m being honest, it would probably have been a better place for lunch than the place I chose. 

There was a house with a walled garden just a few meters down the path. I can only assume that on the other side of the building there’s a paved road, because what I was walking on at this point was a narrow dirt path through tall grass.

Ten minutes later, it had once more widened out into a dirt road through the forest, eventually joining the now familiar style of forestry access road I’d been walking most of the day.

At about 2:10, despite more than 70% of the sky being blue and clear, it began to rain. It absolutely dumped rain for about five minutes. Then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped. The sun broke through the clouds.

The relative monotony of these roads gives you plenty of time to think and plenty of time to pray. I find I must often remind myself of the Professor’s words from the lips of Gandalf, “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

At about 2:35, I entered the suburbs of the village of Saint-Louis-en-L’Isle. The forestry roads were done for now. Now it seemed as though I was walking directly towards the last remaining dark clouds in the sky.

I was in the village center ten minutes later in a café with a tasty beverage in front of me. Sadly, the little village church was locked, though I did see a lizard scoot under the door inside. The church bell struck three as I was walking away from it.

As I left the village, the Camino turned onto a bike/pedestrian path alongside train tracks. A wooden bridge took me over a stream as the path approached the River Isle.

Shortly thereafter, through a break in the trees I caught a glimpse of an old château, apparently boarded up. To my left was the river. Along this way, I met dog walkers and cyclists. One tightlipped lady who passed me on a scooter strongly resembled a woman I used to work with many years ago.

By 3:30 PM, I could see houses and other buildings of the village of Saint-Front-de-Pradoux up above me, above the railroad tracks, on my right. There didn’t seem to be any way to access them. My confusion was soon answered when the Camino left the river entirely and climbed up into the village.

The village church was locked. The Camino quickly left the village, almost as though it were embarrassed.

Soon I was roadwalking through a sort of suburban neighborhood that might have been the hamlet of Tendou. The road continued on, a pleasant sort of suburbia to my left, and fields and paddocks to my right.

Eventually, there were houses on both sides, and their density grew. The Camino turned and swung out into open fields briefly, one last gasp of open space before entering the town of Mussidan. 

I crossed the bridge over the river into the town just after 4 PM. From the river, this is not one of those pretty villages, and as you move towards the center it appears like half the town is under construction.

It definitely improved once I got near the church, although the sudden drizzle didn’t help.

The Church of Saint George is cavernous and whitewashed, and the walls are lined with nearly life-size plaster statues of Saints. The architecture is Romanesque, and there are some beautifully detailed capitals at the top of the pillars. The interior furnishings, though, except for the side altars and a few carefully preserved remnants, are entirely modern.

An ancient baptismal font is filled with sand and surrounded by a small garden of rocks upon which people have written their names.

I sat and prayed here a while, and I lit a candle for Francine near the polychrome statue Notre Dame du Roc, a primitive 16th century piéta that the multi-village parish is named for. 

By 4:45, I was safely ensconced in my room. Total distance for the day was 30.2 km. Almost exactly what I predicted at breakfast this morning.

Shower and a bit of laundry followed, as well as some rest. Next agenda item was dinner.

I went out to explore the town. Fun fact: almost everything is closed on Mondays here. And then it started raining.

I ended up finding a pizza place. I ate a pizza. 

Date: 04 May 2026

Place: Mussidan

Today started: Saint-Astier

Today’s Photos!