{"id":20909,"date":"2026-05-03T12:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/?p=20909"},"modified":"2026-05-03T12:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:39:18","slug":"via-lemovicensis-the-looming-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/via-lemovicensis-the-looming-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Via Lemovicensis: the Looming Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span>en I think in the g\u00eete last night, including one Spanish cyclist. Breakfast at 7:00. Rain is predicted for today and pretty much the next week. And possibly thunderstorms. Looks like I’ll be living in my poncho for a while. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A group of us left at about 7:50 in the morning. Today is Christian’s last day \u2013 he walked to the cathedral with us, and then to the train station. We hugged our goodbyes, and Luc and Louis-Marie walked with him, chatting as always in the morning light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The morning was temperate and overcast. You could smell rain in the air. Puddles everywhere remained as evidence of last night’s storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after only being here less than a day, I’m going to miss P\u00e9rigueux. I have long said that the platonic ideal of a city is Rome. Well, the platonic ideal of a medieval<\/em> city might just be P\u00e9rigueux. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I would like to return to the Dordogne area for a vacation at some point, perhaps a week or so. First, though, I have to finish walking through it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardly anything was open on a Sunday morning, except caf\u00e9s. And there was a Sunday farmers’ market in one of the squares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So naturally, we partook of both. Luke attempted to order the four of us pan au chocolat for second breakfast, but we have now entered the chocolatine zone. It was a very funny moment when I was the one who corrected him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sweet grey-haired old lady at the caf\u00e9 insisted that it wasn’t going to rain today. Louis-Marie and Luc put away their rain gear. I was not nearly so convinced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, we made our way to the Cathedral to see if we could pick up the Camino path. It was just past 8:30, and we’d barely walked two kilometers. And somehow that was fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had hoped to pray lauds in the cathedral before I left town, but it was locked up tight on a Sunday morning. The first Mass of the day there was apparently not until 11 AM!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we took our leave of Christian for the final time. After a moment of confusion regarding which route out of town went the way we needed to go \u2013 entirely my fault \u2013 we were finally on our way. We walked down a wide boulevard, Rue Victor Hugo, for a long time in a straight line. This was effectively backtracking in the direction of last night’s g\u00eete, and then past it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 9 AM, we already made one wrong turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I encountered something I had never encountered any of my pilgrim images before. The Camino markers in many places were defaced for political reasons. If the stickers are to be believed, they were damaged or even removed by anarchists who equate the Camino with bankers and capitalists. Wacky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slowly, we left the city behind for the suburbs. These became more rural as we went along, with the occasional bizarrely out of place large apartment blocks. It was, in any case, much more enjoyable than the death march out of Limoges a few days ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We even walked briefly on a pedestrian walkway along the River Isle. Admittedly, there was a freeway on the other side of us, but there was a pretty solid barrier, and it never felt unsafe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then it was back to walking through pleasant suburban neighborhoods. It was 9:40 before we left the official bounds of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within five minutes we had entered the town of Chancelade. I suppose it’s technically a sort of suburb now, but the history of this town goes back to the early medieval era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we met up with Herve, who was resting on a bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took a slight detour to visit the ancient Abbey here, and in the process I lost all of my companions. The abbey bells struck ten as I approached. Based on the fact that the choir was packing out audio equipment, I guessed that I had just missed Mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The abbey church itself is narrow and long, austere but not severe in its architecture and appointments. I prayed there a while before moving on. It was definitely worth the slight detour to visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would have liked to stay a little longer, but according to the sign posted near the church I still had more than 22 km to go on the day, and the morning was half gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The morning continued through French quasi-rural suburbia, punctuated by short sections of woodland. Some sections were on dirt roads that passed by backyards, but most of it was roadwalking on asphalt through the suburbs of Terrassonie and Combedallie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn’t particularly warm, but I was sweating thanks in large part to the humidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At about 10:50, I entered an extended bit of woodland, with the occasional meadows and homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At about 11 o’clock, I passed through the expensive, scattered hillside hamlet of Les Andrivaux. There were definitely some suburban style homes, but most of the buildings were solidly rural in their character. As the Camino wound its way uphill, I only saw two humans \u2013 both joggers \u2013 but the streets were filled with friendly roaming cats and dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it was back to the forest, though still steeply uphill, until the Camino at last turned off the asphalt road and onto a soft dirt path. What a relief! Once again, the signage on the ground was at odds with the GPS. I followed the signage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The path was wet and slippery as I made my way downhill. The path eventually leveled out and joined a rough and occasionally very muddy dirt road. Uphill and down through the forest I went. I could hear rain falling on the leaves above me, but very little of it reached the forest floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 11:40, the Camino briefly emerged from the forest to pass through a little unnamed hamlet before plunging back into the forest, this time on a wide and smooth dirt road. The brief burst of rain by now had stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Camino eventually turned off onto a rougher sort of dirt path. Just before noon, I emerged onto a busy highway and had to scamper across to pick up the Camino route on a dirt road on the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camino passed by some very well-to-do houses. At one point there was a rusty wheelbarrow in the middle of the path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then it was back to roadwalking. This is where I finally caught up with the French pilgrims. There was quite a bit of blue in the sky now, and the sun was beginning to poke out of the clouds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And me with my poncho hanging off my pack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 12:15, the Camino turned back into the woods on a rough dirt road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We emerged briefly at the suburban hamlet of Les Fieux. Afterwards, our path through the woods was on a slightly less rough dirt road. Herve stayed behind to eat his lunch on a convenient concrete slab near some new construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 12:35, it was back to roadwalking. Sometimes there was a shoulder, but mostly not. Although we were surrounded by trees, there was usually no shade on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By about 12:45 PM, we had entered the village of Gravelle. It was too much to hope that there would be a caf\u00e9 or a bar open on a Sunday afternoon. And yet there was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took our lunch right around 1 PM, bread, sausage, cheese, bananas , and cookies out of the stash with a beer on the terrace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proprietor said a storm was coming. We left just after 1:30. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The road out of the village followed the bank of the river on our left, with suburban housing on our right. eventually, the houses ended, and as the river turned, we found ourselves instead walking beside a canal, often dodging dragonflies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We followed a grassy foot path alongside the canal to the village of Annesse, arriving in about 2 PM. Here, we crossed over the canal on a foot bridge and then joined an asphalt biking trail to a suspension bridge. The bridge crossed over the River Isle, and the bike path took us through woods and meadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entirely too soon, it was back to the road and through the edges of a farming hamlet and into farmland. At some point, the asphalt road became an asphalt bike path. Not really sure when that happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 2:35, we entered the hamlet of Le Perrier. Hard to tell much about it, since most of what we saw was backyards and the back of houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards the end, we did see some houses from the front, and they had a very suburban feel to them. and there was lots of new construction, including an entire housing development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The road ran between the river (now on our right) and the farm before entering the little suburban hamlet of La Borie. It was a pleasant enough walk, but by now I was willing for the day to end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continued following alongside the river on the road. At about 3 PM, the road once again became a bike path, and we were following another little canal rather than the main body of the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At about 3:10 PM, we crossed over the canal on a bridge and entered the bounds of the village of Saint-Astier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five minutes later, we had crossed the bridge over the river and were walking into the medieval heart of the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 3:25 PM, I was sitting on the bed in my room, the last available room in town. Moments later, I was dozing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was more than an hour before I was showered and out to explore the village. First stop: the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It originated at the hermitage of Saint Astier (around 640), and has been built, destroyed by everything from from Viking raids to the Fronde, and rebuilt over the centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is enormous and whitewashed, with a host of mostly Baroque paintings hanging on the wall. It reminded me more of a museum gallery than a church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were places though, where the character of the place shone out. Most particularly a side altar carved from walnut and featuring Virgin and Child flanked by Saint Ann with the young Virgin on one side and Saint Joseph on the other. It was the only place with lit candles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other place was the altar of Saint Astier himself, which was next to the entrance. It’s the only part of the church that’s not whitewashed, and it is lovely and compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was here that I prayed, and here that I left a candle burning for Francine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I went and explored the village, keeping an eye open for any place open for dinner tonight. I didn’t really get very far, as the promised thunderstorm finally started pouring down at about 5:15. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only restaurant I found that was open on Sundays is closed until May 18 for the owner’s vacation. Best I could find was one of those automatic pizza kiosks that was almost a kilometer away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I went back into the church and prayed Sunday Vespers. I had planned on doing this later anyway, but it seemed like an opportune time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I left the church the second time, the rain had stopped. Herve called me and let me know that he and Luc and Louis-Marie were in a nearby bar with a decent promise of food. I headed over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And indeed, there was food and friendship to be had. And also, it poured rain the entire time I was there, only letting up after 8:30 or so, when we headed back to our rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Date:<\/strong> 03 May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n