The Camino de Santiago in France. VI. From Cahors to St Jean-Pied-de-Port (Via Podiensis) on GR65 track

Huge, centuries-old ash trees accompany you on the dirty, as if you were going to enter a castle alley.

At the end of the dirt road, the GR65 turns at a right angle on a tarmac road and climbs up from the small plain where the small river flows peacefully.

Further ahead, you’ll leave the tar to run resolutely into the land of vines along the hedges, where the pathway will dawdle for a while.

The vineyard is extensive here, and the pathway pleasant. A little further, the GR65 finds a small road again, still in the vineyards.

What a pleasure to see these vines running on the hillside, to discover these vineyards, symbols of a thousand-year-old anchoring of know-how and a certain vision of elegance and beauty.

At a place called Basquin, the pathway even allows you to cross a private property, its small pond lined with water lilies.

But now, the weather turns to rain and storm again. The pathway continues through the vineyard until you find a small dirt road.

Now it is raining heavily, and water is flooding the dirt road, in the vineyard that has suddenly turned gray. These moments when nature is unleashed often pose logistical problems for the pilgrim. When he sees the sky take on big clouds, he often goes to dig at the bottom of the bag to find the saving cape. But sometimes he is taken aback. So, it’s the absolute urgency to have something dry to put on at the end of the stage.

Fortunately, today the storm stops, as it appeared, the watering can almost empty, as it continues to drizzle. So, there is new thought for the pilgrim, to keep or to leave his distress uniform. Most of the time, the pilgrim keeps his cape on, before definitely seeing the sun rise.

So, you walk, first again in the vineyard, then in the fallows, on a grass that has become soft sponge.

Shortly after, the GR65 finds an asphalt road near an undergrowth.

It runs parallel to the now washed-out road, before quickly finding a fork that heads towards Bédat, where cereals sometimes compete with the vines. You will hardly come across any head of cattle in Gers, or so rarely.

Bédat is two or three houses under willows and cedars. No living soul in the area! But, we know that the track was designed to avoid humans as much as possible. When you walk around the many trails of Santiago track, you never know if the shutters are closed to protect from the gaze of pilgrims or if they are permanently drawn for eternity. Not here, can’t we see a car, a sign of life?

Another little tour in the vineyards, and the GR65 returns to the asphalt road.

It then runs along the vineyards. When you see the vines here, which grow on flat ground, you understand that this is not a favorable region for the blossoming of great wines, but it is well suited to producing small country wines or even Armagnac.

At the end of a long straight line, the GR65 leaves the vineyards to reach a pathway that runs along the fallows and the undergrowth. Here is announced Elena’s gîte, Lamothe’s halt, whose castle you can quickly guess in front of you.

It is a pathway that nods between open spaces and undergrowth dominated by oaks, hornbeams and chestnut trees. The region is humid here, amid tall ferns and weeds.

In the lush vegetation, the castle grows visibly.

The slope is quite steep on a wide dirt road to climb to Lamothe.

Fortunately, a gîte has a refreshment bar, an adorable bar with a very large choice. The pilgrim stops with pleasure and satisfaction. Here it will be announced to the harassed pilgrim who walks from Condom, without stopping in Montreal, that to reach Eauze, it is only happiness: 7 kilometers flat, in the shade, along the “royal alley”. So, the pilgrim even forgets to go to visit the tower of Lamothe on the hill, a 12th century lookout which dominates Izeute Valley, with the river which forms the border between Ténarèze and Bas-Armagnac.

Coming down from the hill, the road passes by a small planisphere, where from now on you will no longer be allowed to lose the north.

From here a wide dirt track descends into the undergrowth, steeply sloping.

Here you leave Ténarèze for Bas-Armagnac. Cheers!

The pathway rejoins the plain, when it crosses the Izeute River, muddy and dark like all the rivers we have encountered in Gers.

From here you will quickly understand your happiness. You have arrived on the old railway line. Rare works of art allowing the transit above and below the track remind you at leisure. So, let’s go to the Royal Alley, as they say here, to Eauze.

It is wide, calm, restful to the soul, and magnificent, along the leafy trees, straight as obelisks, which cast their shadow on you.

Rare holes in the trees allow you to take in a peek into the surrounding countryside. In fact, it is an artificial wood created from scratch to enclose the train in its universe. Sometimes the terrain shows some relics from past showers.

So, let’s dream a little more. Fairly quickly, the train arrives at Bretagne d´Armagnac station. Bretagne-Armagnac, everyone out!

Not long ago, the goats were holding a meeting in the middle of the old tires in front of the men’s urinal. Today, ironically, it is an Englishman who bought the station and who understands only a few words of French. It was a single-track line, 56 kilometers long, connecting Auch to Eauze, passing through Condom and Montreal. Commissioned in 1909, it was definitively closed, and since eliminated, in 1954. Ah, the poor fate of the railway in France! The Camino de Santiago is used to crossing these wrecks. Some lines still have their old rusty rails, others are completely toothless. In France, there is Paris and the rest of France. But yes … Yet there are claims here and there that one day they will rehabilitate the old lines. But, certainly not here, the Englishman swore it to us.

A stone’s throw from the station, there is a small road where you can escape for a little more distinguished accommodation off the road. The pilgrims, for the most part, are connected to the Internet, and when there is a network, which sometimes happens in France in remote lands, you can then join this type of accommodation, if the purchasing power allows it.

On this great avenue, the trees are all of great majesty. Oaks are not alone. There are many ash trees, but also hornbeams and sometimes sycamore maples. Here is the proof.

Don’t imagine that no one lived along this route once. Not all the houses were assigned to receive station masters. However, the sign indicating the direction must date from the era of the railroad, rusted for eternity.

When it is possible to take a look out of the leafy alleys, you can see vines, in the middle of the meadows. Anyway, you walk in Bas-Armagnac.

There are not many accommodations on this part of the track, but when they are present, they are signposted as here when the pathway runs near Le Coupé.

And the landscape repeats itself over and over. Here is the world of silence. Alas, there is hardly any song of birds in our forests, except the whisper of the wind caressing the leaves of the trees.

It is very likely that for those who will pass by here in the coming years (but when?), you will no longer be able to walk on dirt, but on asphalt, because the Greenway is programmed to head to Eauze. On the other hand, the structures of the old railway line will undoubtedly remain immutable, allowing small roads to pass through, which for you lead nowhere, but not for the locals.

Is it really necessary to tell you that here you are walking through a small area where the chestnut trees have taken over? But it doesn’t last.

Further on, the artworks are more present. Would you get closer to civilization again?

You are indeed getting closer to Eauze. Here is a house by the side of the road. No doubt, an old station. But for whom? There are no homes all around.

Approaching Eauze, near Moulin du Puy campsite, the dirt road crosses the Gélise River.

After another short passage in the forest, the pathway arrives near the city. At your choice to get there. Towards the shops, near the industrial zone, or across the park.

By giving up shops, the route crosses a large park, near the sports complex. From here you can see the church.

On leaving the park, the route crosses the suburbs for a long time …

… before arriving through narrow streets in the city center. City, finally, so to say, Eauze has only 4,000 inhabitants. But it is the capital of Armagnac.

Eauze, former Elusa, capital of the Elusates, former Basque people, became Roman, a flourishing city in the High Middle Ages. It was later destroyed. In the 10th century, the city developed again around a monastery dedicated to St Luperc. The medieval city experienced  later a new development, protecting itself behind ramparts and ditches, of which only few traces remain today, having been cut down by order of Richelieu in the 17th century, during the Wars of Religion.

The church, dedicated to St Luperc, is a former bishopric, now a cathedral, built at the beginning of the 16th century, in Gothic style. Life is mostly concentrated around the church square, under the arcades of the Armagnac square.