A short 17km walk today, bringing the total to 524kms!
We had a lovely night last night at La Table des Cordeliers, although some of the items on the menu we ordered were not what we would normally eat…
Another nice leisurely start to the day because of the short distance, leaving the hotel just before 8:45am – if it wasn’t for the fact that we need to have our bags ready for pickup at 8:00am we’d probably be starting even later😀
It was really a beautiful walk today, heading through the town on Condom, across and then along the river Baïse before climbing up onto a ridge to head to our next stop. Most of today’s walking was on minor sealed roads, and what wasn’t was on good unsealed paths, so we made good time.
The countryside was pretty well unchanged from the last few days, lots of farms and hamlets, big fields of wheat, corn, more vines today than before and a lot of a crop that we can’t make out – beans or some kind of potato or turnip (according to Al, I would not have a clue!).
The real highlight of the day was a detour (yes, detour!) off the track to the beautiful village of Larrissingle, one of the only intact mediaeval villages in Europe and the only one in France.
Back on the track after Larrissingle we passed the 1000km marker to Santiago and shortly after that the Pont d’Artigues, a mediaeval bridge built especially for pilgrims and world heritage listed.
It was a fairly short walk from there into Montréal, which is also a very nice mediaeval village, a bastide with the traditional central square.
A couple of the photos are long range shots of chateaux – there are just heaps of them dotted around the countryside, some looking amazing and some derelict (and everything in between!).
steelewalking 