Happy Mother's Day to me. The best part of this day was, after our walk, opening emails to read lovely Mother's Day wishes. All in all this was a pretty good day. The walking was for the most part on mostly flat and dry country paths. Late morning we stopped in the lovely little town of Auriébat which has an equally lovely church where every Sunday morning (that would be today) someone is there to welcome pilgrims and give them a guided tour of the church. Auriébat is the site of a pre-Roman settlement situated high on a very good look-out hill. The fortified church is C15th with a towering 35m high spire. Even after leaving this town and walking for over a half an hour we could still see the church sitting high in the distance protectively looking out over the land in all directions.
This was one of those days where distances between gîtes and gîte availability determined how far we would walk and it wasn't all that far, just under 20kms. This also meant that we got to Maubourget a couple of hours before our gîte was to open. To pass the waiting time, we found a bar open and spent an hour watching horse racing and harness racing on the TV, watching the French men betting on and yelling at the horses and enjoying an adult beverage.
Once again we are spoiling ourselves with a gîte suite instead of just a gîte. There are six other pilgrims sharing one large dortoir (dormitory) while we have a suite to ourselves. Don't feel the least bit guilty. I only have to worry about one person snoring and him I can prod to be quiet. And....the hospitalitié insists on doing our laundry, whether she is being exceptionally kind or whether she took one look and realized my hoodie hasn't been washed since I left Canada who is to say?
Again we are seeing the outline of the Pyrenees in the distance, looking bigger and more foreboding each day but I obsess more a out the weather than the climb. If the weather is dry, I can handle the climb, if not, I will just have to handle the climb anyway.
A somewhat sketchy makeshift bridge
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Sounds like things are changing for the better. Thank God. We hope this bit of more favorable weather hangs in there for awhile. You are both doing great.
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
John and Robin