Via d'Arles from Toulouse - Le Grangé
Actual date: October 19, 2008
Le Grangé
32450 Faget-Abbatial, France
The walk was gently up and down small hills on a mix of roads and trails. The gîte was a farm house accessed through its cultivated fields. There was only a small sign on the GR that indicated its location, and it pointed to no real trail. We asked the farmer driving the tractor for the gîte location and he pointed around a rise. After a couple hundred meters in the grass along a stream, there was another sign pointing up a grassy trail on a small hill. At the top was the farm, the only building in sight. We entered the designated door, and the hospitalier was there registering two other pilgrims, the first we had met since starting at Toulouse, on the trail or at the night stops. The dormitory was up some very steep stairs to an attic with a dozen beds and a WC. The showers were on the first floor.
We asked for the demi-pension, and the hospitalier seemed a bit surprised. She chatted with the other pilgrims, who were French, and after they also chose the demi-pension, agreed to dinner. Since the farm was the only building within more than a kilometer, we were glad that dinner was available, even if it was coerced. There was a kitchen for pilgrims, but after the hospitalier returned from buying food, the main course was duck confit, she then prepared the meal in her own quarters next to the pilgrim quarters. Little English was spoken by the three French, and my French is very minimal, but we had a very pleasant dinner conversation by gesture and limited vocabulary in which we learned that the French couple was on their 200th day of walking. They were headed back to Arles where they had started after walking at least the Via Arles, Via Aragones,
Camino Frances, Camino de la Plata, Camino del Norte, Camino Primitiv, Camino Ingles, and the Camino Portuguesa! The hospitalera's husband arrived at the end of dinner after a day of farm work, and had a heavily bandaged hand from cutting it sharpening the discs on his plow. I felt a little embarrassed at being a city dilettante with the time and money to walk a pilgrimage imposing on people who actually work for a living! It was one of those humbling camino experiences.
The accommodations were top notch, and I highly recommend a stay at Le Grangé.