Camino de Santiago – Part 4
September 5, 2024, was day 3 out of 16 on the Camino. It would also be the worst day. Writing this chapter will not be easy. However, in any muti-day trip, there has to be a worst day at some point.
The day started out in light rain in the small town of Nasbinals. However, it was a big improvement over the pouring rain the previous day, so I was eager to move on and have a decent mileage day for once. In the first two days, I had covered only a sad 70 miles. I was on a bicycle and was hoping to average at least 50 miles a day.
The day started out well. As I gained altitude riding, the temperaturedropped . I put on extra layers of clothes. Unfortunately, I lacked a proper hat and gloves for cold weather, but I got through it. After a couple hours, I dropped down in altitude and was able to shed the extra layers.
Despite a lot of ups and downs, I was making good time and didn’t waste any time with issues that beset me the first two days. My goal for the day was Conques-en-Rouergue, as it was labeled on maps, but referred to as just Conques on signage and by other pilgrims. In France, there are often multiple cities with the same name, so they put on the province in the name on maps for clarity. In this case the “enRouergue.” There is another Conques in France, known on maps as Conques-sur-Orbiel.
I took a break about six miles from my destination in the charming little French town of Senergues. It was looking to be a very good day, getting me to Conques about 3:00 with the rest of the day to eat, drink and explore the city. I put Conques into Apple Maps which correctly mapped out a simple way to get me there.
As I got close to Conques, suddenly Apple Maps rerouted me and told me to take a heavily overgrown road. As I would learn later, accepting this advice was a huge mistake. At first, the road wasn’t bad, but it kept getting worse and worse. However, I kept going because the distance to my destination was measured in the hundreds of feet. I’m also a little too stubborn for my own good to admit I made a mistake by turning around.
Suffice it to say that after about two hours fighting through vines, fallen trees and whatever else, Apple Maps had announced “You’ve arrived at your destination!” I was absolutely in the middle of nowhere. What little path there was had at this point faded into nothing. I was on the side of a hill and there was simply nowhere to go from there. There was no choice but to turn back.
By the time I got back to the road, two hours had been wasted. At least I survived. Had I suffered an injury, my dead body would probably still be there today as nobody would have thought to look for me there.
My bicycle, however, suffered a flat tire. I had a spare with me, but my European bike required an Allen key to remove the wheel, which I didn’t have. On all my bicycles at home the wheels can be removed easily with a quick release. The good news was that I was only about two downhill miles from the real Conques, where I could find an Allen wrench and fix the flat. So, I rode downhill on one flat the rest of the way.
The village of Conques was just beautiful. I’m told the location of the movie ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was based on Conques. It was also crawling with other pilgrims and I feared again I would not find a place to stay. I was rebuffed at the 100-bed Albergue behind the main church, but they kindly referred me to a house that operated kind of like a hostel.
I went to said house, but nobody was there. Finally, a woman came by to clean. Despite a serious language barrier, she conveyed that the person to speak with would be there fairly soon. Said man arrived at bit early and sold me a five-bed bedroom, which I had all to myself. He also kindly let me borrow a set of Allen wrenches. That afternoon I would use them to fix my flat tire.
After a much-needed shower, I spent the rest of the day exploring Conques, including a nice dinner and a pilgrim’s mass. It was nice to be clean and back in civilization after the ordeal trying to get to the fake Conques.
The next morning, I woke up with a stabbing pain in my right big toe. At the time, I had no idea what had caused it. There seemed to be a lot of unusual bugs in my room. Perhaps one of them bit me. I recalled a scene in the movie ‘The Other Side of Heaven’ in which a missionary sent to Tonga woke up with bloody feet in an insect-infested hut.
There was nobody else in the house. Based on noise that morning, a handful of other pilgrims already left. The man in charge was nowhere to be seen. I simply had to wait around in pain for the tourist office to be open to ask about the nearest doctor. That I did. The closest doctor was in St-Cyprien-sur-Dourdou, or just Cyprien as they and signage referred to it. The people at the tourist office were kind enough to make an appointment for me and explain how to get there by bus.
I took thebus there and hobbled my way between the bus stop and medical clinic. The doctor, a young man in plain clothes, did an exam. My right toe was significantly inflamed compared to the left one. I asked him if gout might be a possibility, which my daughter, who is a doctor, suggested by text, previously. He said he didn’t think it was gout, but neither did he have any other ideas. So, he gave me a prescription for prednisolone, an oral anti-inflammatory and told me to take it easy for a couple of days. The cost for said medical visit was about 25 Euros, as I recall. Thank you, France! I got the prescription filled at a pharmacy in the same town and immediately took my first dose. Then, I took a cab back to Conques, as I would have had to wait hours for the next bus.
After I got back and hobbled my way between the bus stop and thelarge house I was staying, I took a nap. By the time I awoke, I was feeling about 75% better. On my way back to town to get something to eat I checked on my bicycle, which I discovered to have two flat tires! Recall, I used one of my spare innertubes the previous day and had only one left. My explanation is that when I fixed the flat the previous day ono the rear wheel, I pinched the innertube and caused the flat myself. This has happened to me before. The front wheel I assume had a slow leak from the previous day.
I was now in a pickle. Conques not only didn’t have a doctor, but certainly no bicycle store. No, the closet place that had a bicycle store was Rodez, which was about an hour away by bus. Between my swollen toe and a bicycle with two flat tires, I was not in a good mood. It would seem nobody else was stupid enough to bicycle the Camino in this section, so I was left with few choices. One of them was giving up and going home.
While I was wandering around a garden and cemetery next to the church, I ran into an old hippy pilgrim named Mark. I met him previously the day before when I went to his Albergue that rebuffed me for being full. Despite being full, they were nice enough to let me sit around the courtyard and showed me around a bit. It was there I first met Mark.
In our second conversation, Mark told me about the thousands of kilometers he has spent on the Camino. It would seem he lived a significant portion of his life on it, doing just about every available route and many multiple times. For him, the Camino was a way of life. He was absolutely evangelic about it. As to my situation, he didn’t offer specific advice, except he urged me to not give up. He didn’t say so, but he seemed to think doing the Camino by bicycle in this section of France was an awful idea and he would have been right. One thing he emphasized was that “The Camino will provide.”
I have heard this said about Burning Man many times before, except there it is “The Playa will provide."To be honest, I didn’t like to hear this so often about Burning Man, which has a lot of moochers. When said freeloaders happen to be attractive women, they are known as “Sparkle Ponies.”Both Burning Man and the Camino have a lot of good people who are happy to help others in need. That is a good thing, but nobody should count on such generosity as a substitute for proper self-reliance.
I thanked Mark for his much-needed encouragement. It caused me to think of ideas to get myself and my bicycle back in working order and back on the Camino. At the rate I was going, there was no way I would finish by late September, as I had planned. So, I had to consider cutting the trip short. That evening, I would attend a piano and flute concert at the church and then a light show, did a self-guided tour of the upper sections of the church and watched part of a light show on the exterior façade of the church. About 11:00 PM, when I got back to the house where I was staying there was apparently nobody else there. Fortunately, the door was unlocked this late at night. I would later learn albergues are known to lock their doors or close their gates around 9:30 PM and if you’re locked out, tough.
With that, I will conclude this chapter about day 4 of my adventure on the Camino.
November 7, 2024 Puzzle Question
How can you put the ten pennies shown above into the three glasses in such a way that each glass contains an odd number of pennies?
November 7, 2024 Puzzle Answer
1. Put an odd amount into two glasses and an even amount in one. For example 3-3-4 or 2-3-5.
2. Put either glass with an odd number into the glass with the even number.
November 7, 2024 Puzzle Question
You are blindfolded and seated at a table. You are informed that the table contains 25 coins, 10 heads up 15 tails up. Your task is to create two piles that contain the same number of heads face up. How can you do it?