From Geneva I walked. The first yellow shell on a blue square surprised me. It’s the symbol of the Camino, and a wave of belonging and familiarity washed over me. Knowing that I was on the route, on the way was so relaxing. I was, once again, part of this ancient pilgrimage. I didn’t need to check my map, or navigate. I just needed to walk and follow the signs.

Geneva lies just a handful of miles from the France border, and I slept my first night in France. The area still felt suburban, but as I walked over the next few days, the villages became more antiquated and the vineyards stretched for longer as I entered the Frency countryside. The route I was following was called the GR65, and it stretches across France from Geneva to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where the Camino Frances begins. About one third of the way across France (from Geneva going west) lies the city of Le Puy en Valey, a gorgeous city centered around a steep hill. Atop the hill is the Cathedral of Le Puy, once led by Bishop Gadesgalc, the first non-Spaniard to make a pilgrimage to Compostella, in the year 950. No, I didn’t forget to add a 1. His route, now called the Via Podiensis, or Chemin de Le Puy, is the most historic and popular extension of the Camino Frances, which stretches across Northern Spain. 

The GR 65 between Geneva and Le Puy, in contrast, was first walked around 1995, as a part of a French project to improve infrastructure for long-distance walking trails. Though an awesome idea and through lovely terrain, it is just a touch less historic. During my first handful of days from Geneva, I saw about two or three other walkers and I was setting up my tent most nights, since there was not much infrastructure for walkers, especially in the mid-Fall. My feet were feeling sore, my heart was yearning to get to Le Puy, and my planning mind was not optimistic for upcoming accomodation, so I decided to take a train to Lyon, rest for a couple days, and get a bus to Le Puy where I would begin my pilgrimage in earnest. 

I spent a lazy few days in Lyon letting my feet rest, buying a new pair of shoes (God bless the Altra Olympus), and eating well. It felt strange to go from five days rucking across the French countryside in solitude to the relative bustle of Lyon, but I liked the city. It had all the bold sophistication of Paris but without the air exclusivity and status. Sooner than I knew, I was on the bus to Le Puy, where I stayed in my first proper pilgrim accommodation of the trip. On the eve of my departure I ate a baguette toasted with brie, an apple, and some dry summer sausage, foreshadowing the bulk of my diet for the next few weeks. 

Every day around 7am, there is a Pilgrim’s Mass in Le Puy, where all of the prospective pilgrims may enjoy a sermon, receive blessing, and start their journey with ceremony. When the mass is over, a metal wall slowly rises from the floor, followed by two more swinging out to form a U-shape, open side facing the altar, exposing a dark, rectangular opening in the floor. Into this darkness we descended, through stairs and outside, spit out before the cathedral’s grand  facade, from where the city of Le Puy can be seen. 

Sufficiently hyped up, the walk began. I was among other pilgrims again, part of something more than a thousand years old, celebrating it in the most tangible way I can think of alongside thousands of others in step with me. I threw myself into this purpose, and the quest became everything. I was walking to Santiago. I had about 950 miles left to go. 

 Le Puy’s small suburbs faded quite quickly and a carousel of scenery began, with cow fields taking the place of forests, to rolling agricultural fields, being replaced by quaint villages, then barren grasslands. I leapfrogged with other walkers, like Casper, the dutchman, who wasn’t quite as fast as me but took far fewer breaks than me.

My first night was spent in my first Gite. It was in a town called Monistrol D’Allier, and the host’s name was Andre. Gites are the typical form of accommodation on the Via Podiensis, and they’re exceptionally beautiful. Gites are sometimes as big as a whole monastery, or an old hotel, and sometimes as small as a cabin, or just someone’s house with a pare bedroom or two. Sometimes they function like a classic hostel, with a large dorm, a shared kitchen, and a common space, where the residents are free to figure out their food for themselves. But the majority of gites I stayed in were much more familial. Around 6 or 7 in the evening was the dinner, which the host would cook, and everyone staying there would sit around the same table and enjoy the meal together, chatting, laughing, drinking, and eating. Without exception, these meals were delicious and elaborate, often beginning with a soup, then a main course, a cheese course, and a modest desert, and of course as much wine as you could want. 

I would estimate that about 70% of the other walkers on the Via Podiensis were elderly French people who either spoke no English or had little interest in doing so. More than a few times I sat at a dinner table doing my best to decipher a word or phrase here in the barrage of French flying around me, usually too tired to keep the effort up for more than a few minutes, especially with the distraction of a delicious meal in front of me. But I was far from lonely, and made plenty of friends and acquaintances. Peter the Swissman who worked in a special needs school for decades, Michele, the priest in his 60s who was taking his first vacation ever, Casper my Dutch friend, and a hundred more small conversations shared over dinner or a kilometer or two. 

Every morning, gites offer breakfast, usually in the form of toast with butter, jam, and a hot beverage of your choice. I always chose hot chocolate. Belly full of delicious carbs, I would begin walking. From Monistrol D’Allier to Le Villarette d’Apchier, to Nasbinalls, to Aumont Abrac. As the trip went on, I played a game where I would try to list off every town I stayed in since Le Puy as a sort of mental chant, with each name bringing back memories and images of food, faces, architecture, and the miles covered to get there. 

A day or two after Le Puy, the route climbs onto the Abrac, a plateau renowned for its local breed of cattle and its barren, desolate terrain. The Aubrac region, and is also famous for le Bete de Geauvaudin (spelling?), a legendary super-wolf that killed dozens of people in the 1600’s, and is rumored to still be out there… I kept an eye out, but was more than entertained enough by the nature around me. The scenery reminded me of the most godforsaken parts of Ireland I’d been through, and images of Scottish moors I’d seen. I loved it, and had not only plenty of exuberant pilgrims for company, but the warm, biting wind. I got into the habit of starting in the dark and walking through the sunrise, taking breaks in the warmer parts of the day, and separating myself from the bigger crowds of pilgrims that hit the road later in the mornings. I was rewarded with a private front row seat to some of the most delicious sunrises I’ve ever seen. 

From the Aubrac, the camino descends into Saint Come d’Olt, the first of a string of stunningly preserved medieval villages. I stayed in Fonteilles and ate dinner cooked by someone who could easily have been the French Santa, across from four Aussies. The string of ancient villages ends in Conques, which may be one of the most stunning manmade places I’ve ever seen. It served as the inspiration for Belle’s village in the original Beauty and the Beast movie, and I’ll tell ya, I have never felt more like I was in a cartoon world. The monastery in Conques is the end goal for a lot of people, and it is a worthy finish line. I hit Conques on my seventh day, and enjoyed one of the most illustrious nights of pilgrim revelry of the whole walk. A huge communal dinner, a pilgrim mass, an illumination of and in-depth (and impressively long-winded) lecture explaining the cathedral’s tintinabulum (research says that this is actually called a tympanum), and then an intoxicating display of some local music. 

The crowd thinned consistently from Conques. Hostels and gites were less full. I made it through Grealou and Figeac, two beautiful towns, through the Quercy, a stunning expanse of pristine trees criss-crossed by equestrian paths that transcended century. I stayed in lovely places in Lacoste, in a stone hut in a back garden, and Grealou in a lovely homestead. I arrived in Cahors, about the halfway point across the French portion of the walk. I took two days of rest there after hitting a solid mental wall. I was just under a quarter of the way through the entire walk, and I felt like I’d already been going forever. I thought about calling it and heading to the Alps, or London, and doing something a whole lot easier. I had a great call with Luke and decided to just put my head down and plow on ahead. 

The second half of the walk in France really thinned out in crowds. The terrain became hilly and agricultural, towns nestled on hilltops, sometimes crowned by a great stone fort or tower. I cranked up my mileage, testing a theory that the wall I’d hit was coming from an excess of free time due to lower mileage. I pushed some bigger days, and the Pyrenees appeared on my horizon sooner than I expected. The highlight of the section was certainly the city of Condom, which is where D’Artagnan is from, and houses one of the most elegant cathedrals I’ve ever seen. I, of course, sought out as much memorabilia as I could, and bought a couple dozen postcards. 

The small towns in Southern France were charming and quaint, and the accommodations were no different. In Manciet I stayed upstairs in a family’s house and ate dinner cooked by Tom, and sang Irish songs to a Korean couple (crazy story from the guy, not mine to tell) in exchange for a Korean song. I arrived in Condom shoulder-to-shoulder with three French walkers who were doing the Via Podiensis in chunks and stayed with Florian in one of the most charming homestays I’ve ever visited. From Condom, the route felt very agricultural, and the villages started to feel more open and sun-soaked. Before long, I realized that it was not a pillow of low-sitting clouds on the horizon but rather the peaks of the Pyrenees, taunting me from afar. I met a lifelong-priest named Michele in Navarrenx and Lloyd in Arthez-de-Bearns, who wild camped with the boars most nights. 

Before I knew it, I was walking through the gate in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the end of the Via Podiensis and the beginning of the Camino Frances. I rested a day there and soaked in the atmosphere, the haggard and weathered pilgrims arriving from France, the shiny, fresh pilgrims just preparing to set out in their virginal gear. I maxed out my protein intake (including a great steak with an American guy named Jean-Paul), watched Martin Sheen’s movie The Way, the inspiration for so many walkers I met, and wrote up Condom postcards to all my friends. 

The next morning I set out once again, and the Camino Frances was begun.