6-8-10 Montpellier to Saint-Guihem-le-Desert day 65

6-8-10 Montpellier to Saint-Guihem-le-Desert day 65
I got up and packed I was not feeling that great, after having wrestled a bit internally, I knew I had to move on fom Montpellier.. I just felt it was necessary or else I would start feeling discouraged...i had also decided take the suggestion of the tourist office and just bus it.. since there were no guaranties of a place to stay in-between and the destination was 39kms by foot which I perhaps could cut into with the tram decreasing it to 29kms but I could not do that either today..so as much as it rankled my pride I took the bus.. I had a coffee at the same place I had my salad the day before, the man there asked concerned if I had enjoyed the food, I assured him it had been great. A young man approached me and when he found out I was a pilgrim sat down and asked me questions, he wanted to know which route I was taking so I showed him my new book, He had done part of the walk last year and was hoping to do the whole walk soon... I was saying how in the book there were days were you were expected to walk 40kms and how I thought that was crazy, he assured me after a while the walking gets addicting and you want to wake up earlier and earlier so you can walk more.. my sore feet disagreed with him, my heart hoped it was true...we wished each other respective luck...I found the bus stand..but was confused by the contradictory info I had on the pamphlet and what was posted... finally 'my bus' came.. even though he only spoke french he explained I had to change buses in another town... the first ride was about half hour..then he dropped me off at a bus stand and directed me to one of two other buses..it was the wrong one.. there was a lady outside of it talking to the driver... the right bus was pulling away... the wrong bus driver honked at him to wait.. and the woman took my pamphlet and ran to the other bus for me to confirm it went to my destination..this gave me a chance to actually get my bags on and walk over there... I thanked her much for help...again if she had not, I would have had to wait another three hours for the next bus.. this ride was even shorter...only ten minutes...and I arrived at Saint-Guihem-le-Desert around 1:30, on the way I had seen the older french woman who could speak german hiking up the street with her friend... it was cheering to see pilgrims even if I had not gotten here by foot... the town looked charming as all, perfect old village.. at it's beginning where two restaurants in full lunch rush...they were too expensive for me so I just had a drink and waited till the tourist office opened.. then when I went in, I found the french lady with her friend. I had just wanted to go up to the counter to ask about pilgrims place to over night when she came up and said her friend had to bus back to Montpellier because another friend had just lost her parent, this meant that I could take her reservation at the pilgrims place, so I did not have to ask the tourist office anything... my french friend was limping too..she had had a bandaged hand when last I saw her, because she had fallen..the hand still looked a bit swollen.. apparently she had fallen again and hurt her foot a bit...i admired her will to keep going, I found out later she was 75. I walked with these two women to were we were suppose to wait for the place to open, we had a little over an hour.. we found one place, it later turned out to be the wrong spot, but it had a nice garden and tables and chairs so we sat... and I looked at their guide books and maps and had some of my cheese and crackers... and got a little of their story... they had met each other in Nepal, when my french ladiy's husband was still alive about ten years ago and have remained friends since...even though the one lady had to go back to the city overnight, they would meet up again the following night and walk together for about ten days. They then discovered that this was the wrong address, so we gathered our stuff and walked in the back of the town, were the nunnery was and waited a bit more.. the one lady took a little walk and came back and told me my route tomorrow, which is definitely helpful, since I did not know and I would leave before businesses open...she also warned that there were two trails with the same markings but they had different trail numbers mine was GR653, so watch out...again had I not gotten that little bit of info, I would have been confused the following day..a nun who told us she was from Madagascar, registered us and stamped our credentials and gave us room keys. If we were just walking part of the way they would charge us 18euro but since we were doing the whole compestella we only needed to pay 10. again since the nun spoke no english the translation was helpful. At this point the other french lady left her bag there, and headed back to the bus stand leaving just the two of us.. we went to the room unpacked a bit and took turns showering..we decided to head into town again. I got some snacks from the bakery for the next day, she tried to find a newspaper but could not. We checked out the inside of the church and then found a restaurant were we both ordered green salad and mushroom pizza and a beer. She told me she was a mother of 8 and had 14 grandchildren..her husband had died about four five years ago, they had had a very good relationship so it was very devastating for her. He had had a heart condition, but it sounds like they kept active and walked a lot. She had decided about two years later to go on pilgrimage from her home, there are three main routes from france, she took the middle one, we are now on the more southern one. Her kids and family thought she was crazy, but she felt she needed some time for herself. It sounds like the family is very close knit and she is constantly getting visited by everyone. Last time too she took four months to make the journey which was her goal this time. She said she was still very grief stricken when she took off on her first pilgrimage. Near the end of that trip she met a swiss man who sounds like he was quite a character and adventurer himself. He'd done the pilgrimage already ten times.. he had been married to a woman who had had cancer already for a while, and they decided to do the pilgrimage together, knowing that she would die along the way and she did... I believe he had her cremated and continued the pilgrimage in her memory, but the way he worded it was that he left his wife behind on the pilgrimage...when I heard this part of the story I got dejavu, I never get that anymore... he told my friend that now she can let go of her husband it was now finished. When she first heard this it was a blow to her gut, but soon she would realize he was right... they met again in Santiago at the church..and have stayed in touch since then.. via letter and email. She has visited him and he her... it's a platonic friendship but the pilgrimage and being widowers created a bond between them. He apparently had gone to asia and had been a monk there for a while and had explored different world religions. She said he was a spiritual searcher like me... I thought inside well I have chosen a faith, but I am still searching for the best tools for me, so in that sense yes... as she talked about him and her own journey, and as the other stories i've heard came to mind... I began to draw the conclusion that the pilgrimage to Santiago, the compestella is it's own practice... and what is so uniquely beautiful about it is it is a path for westerners...therefore your not going into some exotic traditions were everything needs to be taught to you from the ground up... and it's not even like you have to read books or study... you just have to take on the role of pilgrim, what ever that means to you and walk...the path will unfold itself... you just have to show up...she too echoed what the austrian man from two months ago had said...no one leaves the pilgrimage unchanged...she said too after she returned home..she had healed and recovered from her husbands death. Her children too recognized she was happy again...and for the first time since her husbands death she could enjoy classical music again..this had been something they had shared and when he died she had developed a temporary aversion to hearing any of it.. so now again...she feels that she needs to take a break from the demands of her family and take these four months to herself. Each week one of her children phones her and gets an update, they then email it to the rest of the family. This way each child has a one to one with her and everyone still knows what is going on with out bothering her constantly ...she just radiates warmth and I think is a person who's been a giver all her life and now she has come to that point in her life were she needs some of her own time. She says her friends who care for her, think she is crazy, why do you need to walk? You have a nice house, a good family, you have everything you need, why take on this hard ship? And she just says, 'because I have to'..which makes me feel like being a pilgrim is addictive... my italian friend said, for most people who finish the compestella, it is only the beginning... my french friend then proceeded to encourage and inspire me to go on...she said if a little 75 year old lady can do it so could I... also she encouraged me to start slow again and only walk 15kms the next day since there was a big hill in the beginning. She could not eat all her food so she had them wrap up the remaining quarter pizza for take away she gave it to me for tomorrow, so this was on top of the food I had already bought and half a baguette she had given me.. she said I needed to eat more while I walked, because I told her I had lost my appetite during the day. Again this extra food proofed fortuitous the following day. We went back to our room, I did some mantras and we talked about about the one daughter who was born my year that need more support and encouragement because she had made some bad choices with men but still feared being alone...i was trying to imagine managing and supporting such a large family... she said her and her husband where with the church all their lives, but the church has made a lot of mistakes. So none of her children are in the church, but she said they are all honest and caring so that is all that matters. We were both tired.. she had walked a hard 25km. And I found out that there had been a stopping place with refuge along the way..apparently my book is not that good... and even the tourist office did not know... but I still think I needed that third day rest. We went to bed at 8pm. I slept through most of the night, I woke up for a while in the middle but slept again...so I got all I needed...