Namur
My day began on a glum and grim note: not much sleep due to a pesky mosquito buzzing me every time I began to nod off … until I was no longer able to nod off. He won … I never managed to swat him as the hours dragged on. Dawn came with rain and wind battering the old, worn rectory of Father Paul, and I felt no inclination to spend the coming day fighting yet more of this dreadful weather. When I went downstairs to the kitchen to join Paul for his breakfast, his animated spirit did much to make the gloom lift. At one point he declared, “Every day is a great day for me. I have never been unhappy even one day in my life. That is my charism, I suppose.” I was ready to begin my own happy day when Paul offered to drive to the edge of Perwez, not something I would usually accept, since part of the pilgrim spirit for many is the importance of walking every step of the way. But his pilgrim hospitality trumped my pilgrim purity, so I agreed, and off we went together. When I thanked him for all his kindness, he just laughed his great laugh and declared, “It’s the normal thing to do, nothing more.”
Today’s walk to Namur was not so easy; powerful winds buffeted me almost the entire day, and I was mostly confined to highways instead of roads and trails like yesterday. But the most challenging thing was just the distance involved, somewhere around twenty-eight kilometres, a six-and-a-half hour hike. My fragile knee held up, but it is quite sore tonight. A good night sleep is good medicine, though.
It seemed as though Namur would never appear as I walked the last few kilometres. But once I hit its northern limit, it took another forty-five minutes to cross through its busy commercial centre and find my way to the town’s youth hostel. My roommate for the evening is also a pilgrim, Herman from Antwerp. He is sixty-three and pulling his stuff behind him on a special little wagon made just for the purpose. We had dinner here together. He is the first pilgrim I have met so far. I am feeling a lot of temptation to quit, but I remember this from last time and another, wiser pilgrim’s advice: “Don’t quit until you’ve been on the road for at least five days. The first week is always the hardest.”
I ran into a very funny old lady as I passed by a dairy barn this morning. She came bounding out of a shed to see who was making all the racket (my walking poles are very noisy on pavement and cement), and then with great interest probed into what I was up to, then called her grizzled husband over to see this curiosity. They had never heard of Compostelle but seemed delighted that somebody was doing something so nutty. That’s all for today. If my knee still aches in the morning, I may take a day off here in Namur, because the next segment involves lots of fairly steep climbing and descending. Well anyway, I’m happy I made it this far.
