Well, our accommodation last night surprised us a bit – it wasn’t that much to look at but we had a lovely meal, a good night’s rest and a reasonable breakfast, so all good! We were away jay just after 8am with a bit of cloud cover but lost a bit of time buying some lunch at the boulangerie – it’s Bastille Day and we’re not sure that much is going to be open later, so we got a sandwich, a baguette with ham and cheese, and a lovely raspberry tart. We just got going again and we saw another boulangerie that had quiches so we bought one of those too!
The way marking on the way out of town wasn’t that great but we managed keep to the track, walking through forest and then and out into the ubiquitous corn and vineyards. After about an hour we ran into a Canadian couple, Paul and Sonia, and ended up walking with them for the rest of the day.
We stopped for a break just under 2 hours into the walk at a gite where the hosts had kindly put a couple of benches and then walked on to a fork in the road where we had planned to take a short cut, which we did, stopping at Arblade-Le-Bas for lunch, where all the locals had congregated for a Bastille Day bbq. After Arblade, we once again had miles and miles of corn in front of us and little shade, which made it quite hot and a bit boring. In any event we made quite good time into Barcelonne-du-Gers, just under 3kms from our destination for the day. It’s always deceptive when a little town crops up just before the final destination – you think you’re there but you’re not!
Our walking companions dropped off just before the bridge that crosses the l’Adour river so we left them and finally found a bar just over the river where we both re-hydrated before walking about 900m out of town (along the trail, thankfully) to our accommodation. We thought we could get dinner here but we can’t so we’re just about to head back into town for dinner. Overall a very nice walk, albeit a bit hot in the end.
There’s a picture of the waymark that we followed out of town – these appear in most towns and it’s nice to think that the towns care enough about the pelerins to put them in the footpaths.
Just on 28kms by the time we got to our accomodation and 591kms in total.
steelewalking 