Designed to be friends

There are moments that glow. An astral alignment of place and time and people that come to represent the things we dreamed of from this journey.

Like the movement of the stars there’s perhaps less random chance in these moments than we might like to believe. The hand of design is at play – an intelligent designer, you might say, setting the scene with care and understanding, laying out the props for their own corners of paradise.

At Lasserre de Haut in Gascony Joelle Pfeiffer bought a big house with a few old barns on top of a hill. She imagined a beautiful family home for herself and her new husband. But people kept knocking on the door on hot days asking for water, or on rainy days asking to shelter in the barns. That was how she discovered her home was right on the route to Compostela. She invited these people in and talked to them, and so learned what it is that walkers need. Then she opened up her dream home into a dream resting-place for them.

We arrived on her hilltop in a baking mid-afternoon. All day the group of eight who had met the evening before had passed and re-passed each other as is the rhythm of the road, alternating rests and surges and with each passing learning a few more things about each other. We arrived with Adrian, the sixteen-year-old Swiss lad on holiday with his aunt and uncle. Adrian was hot and even more tired than us, but he had struck out ahead with the gleam of a promised swimming pool in his eye. As we got close, we thought the same thought: “It can’t be here; this is way too sophisticated for pilgrims!”

But for pilgrims it was, plus a few stylish bedrooms for holiday guests or self-indulgent walkers. The big, grey-stone farmhouse dominates the bamboo-shaded terrace, the wide gardens and the low smooth valley of vines and pastureland where we first heard sheep bells. The solid barns have been converted, on one side to dormitories and boot- and clothes-drying hangars; and on the other to secluded private bedrooms with their own terraces for lounging, hot showers and cool shutters and a soft bed with oil paintings to gaze on. Sweaty clothes were taken off to a washing machine and returned dried and folded, and those unlucky enough not to be staying there could buy drinks and sandwiches and sit slowly before the view like the rest of us.

For it was the garden and the valley that made this most closely resemble a paradise. The shaded swimming pool – where Adrian was already floating in his own world when we went to explore – wandered down to a terrace of wicker sofas and sun loungers with deep-coloured linen cushions under the bougainvillea. Beyond the flowers and young trees the wide lawn offered the temptation of hammocks or strolls to look over the vines. There were family pictures and books to borrow. But it was at dinner that the spell took hold. An afternoon of swimming, snoozing and gossip had made us into a group and round the long table under the reed canopy the simple meal with fresh southern-tasting flavours was laced with hilarity over absurd European outlooks. French, English, German or Swiss, none of us had before seen flat peaches when the world was quite happy with round ones. It was a puzzle that the two kittens, carefully placed to charm, distracted us from. Every few minutes someone would break off, gaze out into the valley that was hazy with an apricot sunset and marvel that we had been allowed to live such a Vogue life, even for just one night. And we would all fall silent in agreement.

At the end of the meal we drifted away, 1930s house party-style, to table football in the outdoor sitting room, to a stroll round the wild flower meadow, to a hectic ride on borrowed bikes the four kilometres to Montréal and the nearest TV set for the Euro 2008 final.

Six days later the tone was very different but the touch of a considerate stylist was again evident. The Gîte du Cambarrat in the Béarn from where Isabelle and Nicolas Champetier de Ribes farm and work as a fabric designer and landscape gardener respectively, is the farmhouse dependent on their old family domain of Cambarrat, which means “enclosed field”, for the clearing surrounded by forests where the chateau and farm stand, close to Maslacq. This is a pilgrim hostel in a more basic style. For self-propelled pilgrims only, staying in small dormitories where the deep wood walls make a nest and the bunks are like berths in an old ship, in the glow of their individual lamps. Here the toilet is out in the garden, near the washing lines. No machine, but as you arrive Isabelle contentedly points out where to do hand washing and has left a full bottle of detergent to help. You can cook your own supper in the long kitchen built into the end of the barn – or you can, as we did, accept the offer of demi-pension and a relaxed four-course meal prepared and left for us to heat up and eat in our own good time.

From the moment we stepped into the cosy bedroom, a deep restfulness came over us. Nothing seemed too precious or demanded unnatural behaviour. There were three of us that afternoon: a German man called Klaus, whom we had met the night before, had arrived early and was already rousing drowsily from one snooze as we arrived. It wasn’t long before we followed his example, and in the extended, overcast but warm afternoon three oddly tired pilgrims cuddled into their bunks and slept or read the hours away, rising renewed and freshly optimistic into the evening.

It was then that we started to notice the care behind the style of this gîte d’étap. Its atmosphere of old, unimportant family bric-à-brac, easy to live with and unassuming, has been created with items selected for their beauty. Duvets and pillows made from the rich linen fabrics Isabelle designs; an old, rough-stone sink with a charming curve is just the right shape for the zinc bucket to stand in. Earthenware jugs catch the low light by the window, Vermeer-like. A hat stand welcomes our hats and a stove-top kettle invites us to brew tisanes or coffee as we want.

It is small and personal. When Isabelle came to take payment and to stamp our pilgrim record books, the ‘stamp’ was carefully hand drawn for each of us, as she explained the symbolism of the banjo for her husband’s passion, the stripes of the Basque country for the linens she designs, the enclosed field. As we finished our meal, Nicolas appeared to clear away and we got talking about his banjo playing – then he returned to profit from our interest and grab some extra playing time from his busy day. Not banjo like I have ever heard before. Five-stringed bluegrass music and arrangements of Vivaldi’s harpsichord music, and Nicolas’ own classical compositions that sounded like running streams.

Perhaps little of the setting or the behaviour that night was left to chance; the “design eye” of this cultured pair was evident once you had woken up to it. But because of it, we and Klaus became friends during one of the most memorable evenings of the trip and each of us received the deep rest we needed, in our different ways, at that particular moment of that particular week.



10th July 2008