The Camino lost a little of its charm today and, by a little I mean a lot, as the rains came and came and kept on coming. Talk about dampening yesterday's enthusiasm. We sloshed our way from Pau to Lescar where, after visiting the tourist office, we misplaced the camino. A wet, frustrating forty-five minutes latter we were back on track and just a wee bit testy. Surprisingly, we arrived in Artiguelove by noon hour and found the expected epicerie so we could stock up as tonight's gîte in Lacommande has only cooking facilities, no demi-pensionne, no restaurants or cafés.
Did I mention it was a little wet?
The first week, when we were walking with Julia, we met a French pilgrim, Bruno, who lives in Artiguelouve and who asked us to call him when we got to his town .....so we did. We still had two to three hours to walk so we didn't really have time to visit but Bruno insisted on coming to get us and to take us to his house, a huge country house with a spacious backyard and garden. When we saw his two Newfoundland dogs we could see the need for that huge yard. Those dogs are massive. I thought Bebop, my brother's Bearnese Mountain dog was big but these two dogs could be his big brothers. Bruno piled us back into his car to take us back to the Camino or so we thought but he turned the wrong way and it seems he was graciously taking us all the way to Lacommande. No way was I going to correct him. Bruno left us after making sure we were set up in the gîte and promised to return with his two big dogs tomorrow morning at 7:30am to walk with us for an hour or so,
Lacommande is definitely a gîte but thank goodness a small one, only four beds. There is a two burner hot plate and a pot to make dinner but we operated an albergue in Estella, Spain with this same lack of appliances and we had to feed 32-45 pilgrims a night so I think we will be able to make do tonight.This little town may not have much other than a couple of houses, a church and this gîte, but it has a winery and tasting and sales begin at 4pm. Yay, Lacommande
So two Canadians, two Dutchmen and a South Korean stagger into a gîte......sounds like the start of a joke and in a way last night exemplified the basis of a well-repeated joke. What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. And what do you call a person who speaks one language? An American. Last night everyone else was multilingual but they all spoke English to suit Dayton and I. We pooled our meager food resources and the wine we bought at the winery and had a very hearty meal with good conversation.
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