Camino v3 - Day 8: St Émilion to Cadillac (48km)

A lazy late start and a generous bed and breakfast breakfast. It should be, given that I could have stayed three weeks in a pilgrim hostel for the price of a night here! It's going to be a hot day again, but I'm going to make it a short ride today, aiming for Cadillac where there's a pilgrim hostel in the local psychiatric hospital; should be interesting.

St Emilion wine in the making

I've decided to take a detour via La Sauve. Not so much because I want to visit this town, although there's the ruins of an important abbey which played a significant role in the Chemin de Compostelle, but because there's a cycle-way along an old train line. I'm glad I did because the ride is just wonderful. Apart from the fact that it's more or less level all the way, there's a lot of interesting things including bridges and even a tunnel along the way making for a great ride which as a bonus is mostly shaded.

Private bike-tunnel, complete with automatic lighting

You have been warned

I end up visiting the abbey, which includes the tower which is one of the main parts of the structure still standing. There's 157 (count them!) steps up the stone spiral staircase to get to the top - and another 157 steps to get back down again. You notice these things when you've just ridden 30 km or so. The staircase is a marvel of engineering and it never ceases to impress me how they managed to build these things back in those days - and we're talking 12th century, which is not exactly recent. The view from the top is of course, spectacular, with vineyards in all directions.

I self-navigate my way back to the route and an hour or so later I arrive in Cadillac, a town famous for being named after an American car.  (*) Or perhaps it's the other way around. Or maybe it's the Johnny Hallyday song. Or the wine. Either way, the reason I've chosen to stop here, as I mentioned, is the pilgrim refuge, which really is inside the psychiatric hospital. "Tonight, put your bike inside your cell" the security guard warns me, "this is a psychiatric hospital after all and you never know."

Pilgrim cell

The room really is a cell; it's in an old stone building, which has a row of cells the ground floor. Complete with massive wooden doors with little peep holes (now covered) a stone washbasin built into the wall (now with a plastic tub on it but no more than that - no tap for example.) There's a hospital-style bed with crisply stretched hospital linen, although I have to make the bed myself, not surprisingly. There's a little box of supplies to make a frugal dinner and/or breakfast. While there is a toilet nearby there's no shower. That's what the plastic tub is for. The guard gives me an electric kettle so I have hot water "For your tea" he says, using the English word for tea and clearly feeling very impressed with himself.

Bed for the night - in an original pilgrim cell

Apparently, the psychiatric hospital was founded by the local Duke, on the site of the former pilgrim's hospital in the St Jacques quarter of the town. As part of the deal, the Duke stipulated that in perpetuity, provision had to be made to welcome 4 pilgrims in the original cells, offering them bed and bread. The cost to the pilgrim for the overnight lodging and food was to be nothing, and remains so in the spirit of the original arrangement. Very impressive!

Dinner options tonight are limited since it's Monday and virtually all the restaurants are closed. In fact, there's only two that are open, and they are, interestingly, right next to each other. I decide on "Les Remparts" a French-Italian. As I leave the hospital, the security guard asks me if I'm heading out to dinner. If you like pizza, he says, go to Les Remparts. And he was right, the pizza is really impressive. Mind you, they also have a "Hamburger au steak de magret de canard et foie gras" which sounded interesting; how often do you see a duck breast and goose liver pate hamburger on a restaurant menu?

As I'm waiting to pay at the bar, there's a guy looking at the takeaway menu. He's having trouble reading it. "This is no good" he exclaims "I'll have to go and get my glasses, I can't read this". The woman behind the counter, probably the owner, takes her glasses from where she's put them on top of her head, "Here, use mine, they're all the same anyway." The guy takes them, puts them on - he looks quite a sight wearing her glasses - "Ah, that's better!"

(*) According to Wikipedia:
The name of the commune was adopted by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, the founder of Detroit and Governor of Louisiana, on his arrival to what is now the United States. The Cadillac division of General Motors, and Cadillac, Michigan are named after him.