Today was a long travelling day, starting before six, and ending about seven this evening. It was also one of the busiest travelling days I can remember.

Eurostar was completely full at eight o’clock. Taking the Metro to Paris Montparnasse it was absolutely rammed,  very largely with families and couples travelling with suitcases. On arrival at Montparnasse, one was greeted with a notice that told hopeful but unwise  travellers that every single train from the station that day was fully booked.

Bordeaux Saint-Jean was chaotic. The train to Langon was cancelled and a replacement bus was planned. But rather than one, they needed four. I got on to the third one. Arriving in Langon, the crowds pouring out of the coaches were met by a tidal wave of travellers emerging from the station building looking for the buses back to Bordeaux. Every glimpse I had of motorways and major roads showed them looking like the M25 on a bad day.

But for all that we were only 25 minutes late getting to Langon, and SNCF staff were working really hard to help every one. The hubbub and hustle, however, didn’t really let me feel I was restarting my  pilgrimage.

Once in Langon, I faced a dilemma. There was (theoretically) a bus to Bazas at twenty past eight, but, it is a public holiday, and if that didn’t arrive I was stuck. There was no other means of public transport, and no sign of any taxis operating at the station. I decided to walk into town and find some food, if I could,  while I made up my mind. Away from the hustle of the crowds, just walking by myself with my rucksack, I was caught out by a rush of joy as I realised that now I felt I was on pilgrimage again.

I thought I would start walking towards Bazas (there is only one practical road) and try hitch-hiking – it was too late in the day for the three hours walk it would have involved. I walked about two kilometres along the road, past the hospital where I spent a night last autumn. I was waiting until I got to the place where the Bazas road hit the town bypass before I really applied myself to trying to get a lift, as I thought I would stand a better chance after that junction. But I had my thumb out anyway, and a very kind man in a car with Belgian plates pulled over and brought me to Bazas.

He dropped me off only one hundred metres from where my lodgings were, so I felt very thankful and blessed by his kindness. It meant I haven’t got in too late, and can have a good rest before the walking starts in earnest tomorrow. And walking past the hospital and seeing Bazas again has also helped me feel I am picking up the threads.

The day was coloured by the news of the Pope’s death. I had a real affection for Francis for several reasons. No one gets it right all the time, and he made statements that sometimes jarred and didn’t do all I might have liked him to do. But that said, he was a genuinely humble man, who inhabited a hugely powerful role without letting it go to his head. He exuded a genuine love of people, and he didn’t let the apparatus of Vatican officialdom distance him from human contact. He cared for the oppressed and the overlooked, and he urged us all to see that social emergencies and environmental ones were not separate things, but all part of one huge challenge to humanity. He remained visible and working to the end of his life – not unlike the late Queen – and like her fulfilled his God-given duty. He was a blessing to his church and to other Christians and other communities, and he lived his Christian faith with a joy that came from having faced life’s challenges fully and having found God’s love present in it all. May this faithful man rest in the peace of Christ.