Small french routes to Santiago

[davidson]

I'm living in a teeny village in the Luberon valley, near the town of Apt
while trying to write on the next book with hub David Gitlitz. [Apt: Provence,
between Avignon on the west and Aix on the south-east and Marseille to the
south. If you've read Peter Mahle's _A Year in Provence_, you've got the right
area, but don't push me on Mahle: he missed a lot of what's real here.]

When it's a nice day we try to take a short hike. The hiking routes, the
randonnees, are terrifically well marked and there are a lot of them around
this area. One nice day we're out hiking and what do we see on the hiking
signpost ? An taped on famous-after-1993 symbolic star for the St. James
route. Sure enough, right through Apt. It would have to have been since the
Roman road (the Via Domitia; Domition Road) is the highway from Avignon to Apt
before having to face the great gorges and massifs.

There is a lot to see around here that is pilgrimage-based, in the broad
sense. The town of Apt claims a relic of St. Anne, mother of Mary.... Her
pilgrimage is still a viable/living one. A small town just 15 kilometers to
the west contains another miracle-working statue of Mary and people still make
pilgrimages there today. Their ex-votos are in the form of handpainted oil
"thank you's". There is a little evidence that this area may have formed a
minor route toward the Pyrenees and ultimately compostela. Most churches
around here have a statue of St. Roche/Roq: he with the leper wound and the
dog who holds out bread for him. St. Roch is always dressed as a Santiago
pilgrim.  There are an occasional reference to St-Jacques, such as the
aumonerie / almshouse in Gordes.

Linda DAvidson