Mon May 2 Air sur l'Ardour to Arzacq de Arr (something)

Jean-Marie et Marie-Therese - Grenoble, France

Arzacq -Arraziquet (not even the French people can pronounce or spell this town's name)

As lovely, easy and euphoric as yesterday was, today was as tedious and tough. It started out promising with an overcast sky but a lovely walk around a lake with the hovering mist just dancing over the water and fishrods set into the banks of the river by the early morning fishermen. We had about thirty kilometres along easy terrain but it was a lot of road walking and my boots were just pinching my toes the entire day. Should have been faithful to my old boots.
As the clouds burned off and the sun got hotter so did the feet. Wearily and oh so gratefully, we got to our gite in mid afternoon. The next four days are all over 30kms so it's looking a little scary for me and my tender toes.

We walked a lot with a lovely couple from Grenoble. Marie-Therese is a very fast intense walker and just as intense helping me with my French. Like a drill sargeant she made me repeat things over and over again. Teaching languages was her pre-retirement job. And she must have been good. At one point this morning, Marie Therese suddenly stopped, threw her arms out open wide and joyously exclaimed ¨just think; three weeks ago today I was in hospital¨. She has been battling cancer for three years and now her she is walking the camino to Ronceveaux - and we can't keep up with her. What an inspiration!

Sunday, May 1 Maison LaBarbe to Air sur L'Adour

Festival - Aire sur L'Adour

As we left our Gite Maison LaBarbe, we walked out into the glory of a sunlit Sunday morning coming down. The sense of serenity and quiet peacefulness was almost tangible. Appropriately we immediately came across an ancient church, very basic and simple. The interior with its rough hewn wooden benches was as simple and unadorned as the exterior.

For most of the morning Dayton and I had the vast landscape of the vineyards to ourselves, one side rows and rows of meticulously aligned mature vines, their trunks all knarly stumps and on the other side fields of nez young growth, their trunks all slender and green. We alternated walking along the vineyards with equally lovely paths through the woods and later along an old taind track.

When we walked into Air sur l'Ardour we were surpised to be greeted with a big festive scene with everyone out partying and enjoying their natioanl holiday. there was a midway with rides for the kids and chip wagons! Yay!

Our gite was just as pleasant a surprise. When we did the hospitalero course everyone one of the exercies was to plan the perfect gite. I think our host, Andre, at the Gite Saint Jacques here has done it. He had an amazing house built into the hillside, beautiful gardens and rooms and he has thought of everything a pilgrim could possibly need. Plus he dispenses care for sore feet and legs. Most pilgrims make this town a stop because they are over 30 kms the next day with no stops anywhere.

Sat. April 30 Manciet to Maison LaBarbe

Market - Nogaro

What a glorious day. After as plentiful a petit dejeuner (yogurt, bread, rusks, jam, hard-boiled eggs, apples, cereal, and tea and coffee) as our evening meal, we hefted our packs and were once again walking by 7:45am. We started with some road walking but then the rest of the day alternated between walking along the edges of vineyards and quiet shaded forest paths. We had the opportunity to cut 5 or 6km off our walk by taking a variant along the road but who would opt for the rush of traffic over the quiet woods. I was feeling very blessed and thankful to be sharing this lovely day and this lovely walk with Dayton - even though he was his usual 100m ahead. We do pretty well together at the best of times but even better on a Camino.

We borke up our walk in a little town of Nogaro where there was a Farmer's Market. It was a really bustling Saturday morning with everone out shopping and visiting. We also learned that Nogaro annually hosts a very unusual bull fighting event in which the matador is in greater peril than the bull. the matador tries to prove his talents and machismo by staying inside a center circle while the bull charges at him and he tries to pull a flag off the charging bull without moving his feet.

Nogaro also is home of a large Motorcross racetrack so as we left town the tranquility of the countryside was devastated by the distant roar of the engines.

The gite at Maison LaBarbe is really just an old isolated farm house but we had a great afternoon drinking beer in the garden and visiting with the incoming pilgrims. Dayton also spent the time trying to plan out our next couple of days as Sunday, May 1st is a national holdiay so everything is closed and then Mondays all shops are closed as well. Have to get reservations and demi-pensionnes booked. We had another great meal; vegetarian ratouille and pasta for me and duck for the others. This is foie gras country!

April 29 Seviac to Manciet 27km

Le Petit Dejeuner @ La Ferme du Soleil

We left our lovable gregarious hostess at La Ferme du Soleil at 7:45am and walked along the road bordering the vineyards and the bright sun beaming down on us as we played Dodge'em with the cars flying by. In France there are no speed limits posted as it is understood that there are only two speeds fast and faster . Then it was a lovely on a generously shaded path hrough the forest into Eauze. We thought we had lost the signs of the camino but Dayton assured me that we were on the right path because we were walking uphill towards a church - uphill and a church - has to be right.
Now to tour Eauze, have lunch and another 12kms this afternoon to Manciet. Lunch was a lovely stop at an outdoor restaurant; Dayton got the Plat du Jour and they made me fries. Perfect.

It took two and a half hours to do the 11km into Manciet; sometimes it's just hard and slow. Manciet looked like it had given up trying but our gite, which from the outside did not look like it would still be standing int the morning turned out to be surprising comfortable. It was run by a good looking young man who cooked us a very good and plentiful meal, enough for a family of six. We had the usual vegetable soup, a platter of butter boiled potatoes and peas with onions, about 3lbs of sausage for Dayton, a salad of tomatoes and crudities and a very elaborate 'deconstructed dessert. Breakfast the next morning was just as bountiful.

April 28 Condom to Seviac

Condom to Montreal de Gers 18km. Here before noon. Hot sunny and great day. Time to rest up and enjoy the village.
I've mentioned that all pilgims are unique but there are still sterotypes: the purist pilgrim like our Geneva man, the pilgrim social butterfly like Norwegian Desiree, the pampered pilgrim with their reservations and chambres d'hotes for two, the extreme pilgrims who walk 40-60kms a day and collect caminos like boy scout badges and now we have a new category - the Ultra pilgrim.
Today we passed a group of runners, running from Le Puy to St. Jean Pied de Port in 12 days, running 65kms a day! It's like a Camino Survivor game because after 8 days their numbers are down to 16 from the original 23 who started out. A bit pampered too though because they have a suport team and sport veicles to check on them throughout the day and to set up refreshment and snack wayside stands.
We spent the afternoon as pilgrim tourists. Lunch in Montreal where the two choices were a Michelin rate 5star restaurant that would break the bank or a truck stop. We did the truck stop.
Then we toured an archeological site of an ancient Roman villa before going to our gite and enjoying a lazy afternoon in the sun.
A bientot

April 27 Lectour to Condom 30kms

Daniel (Lectoure Host) Toasting Local Armagnac

Le petit dejeuner provided by Daniel at our stay in Lectour was wonderful; fresh homemade bread and fig confiture, yogurt; kumquats and cherries from his garden and cheese. A good start to a long hot day. We walked most of the day beside wheat fields and the only challenges were not the terrain which was relatively flat but the sore feet from mean miserable boots. We managed to avoid every little town which promised an opportunity to have lunch so I was really happy to arrive in Condom and find a lovely cafe for lunch. Good thing too because our gite that night does not do vegetarian and, being too tired and achy to walk back into town to find a restaurant. I just shared some of Dayton's wine and bread.

We were in a real gite this time with dorms of bunkbed and, because I was part of a couple, I ended up in the boys dorm. I was already unhappy about the food situation and the fact that there was no hot water for a shower and then a group of young kids showed up. One of the good things about sharing a dorm with a bunch of young boys (ages 10-12 or so) is that after they are fed and run around the yard playing loud boisterous games for a couple of hours, they sleep very well. Not a peep out of them all night.

April 26 St. Antoine to Lectour

The rain that was promised yesterday was threatening again but all the clouds burned off by mid-morning and we had another hot sunny day. The first several kms were along country farm roads with the only stop a roadside stand where a farmer had left out some water, juice and hardboiled eggs. Dayton threw a Euro in the bucket and an egg in his pocket and he had his lunch. The 30kms were just long hot and sweaty. I,m still sticking with my plan not to whine but my left foot has not bought into the plan - it is crabby.
You meet such interesting characters on the camino. One of the most colourful was Desiree from Norway. Desiree is that person who has never met a stranger. She is as colourful in her outfit as her welcome/ lime-green and cream patterned leggings and shirt with a matching mini-skirt and thick hiking socks over Croc sandals a vision. Just before noon today we came across her in the Centre Ville of Castet-Arroux. Desiree immediately spotted us and asked us to join her as she had just ordered a snack. We wanted to go into the catedral first but she said she'd come in with us and sing for us in her 'quite ordinary voice'. Her voice was not quite ordinary but was surprisingly extraordinary and her song echoed beautifully throughout the church. After that we sat with her while she had her 'snack' - massive platter of salads, tabouleh, couscous, patés, cold meats, brie and roquefort cheeses and a baquette. Dayton was positively salivating in envy.
The other interesting pilgrim we came across was dressed in full ancient pilgrim regalia; leggings, a tunic, a staff and a flowing large black cape. he cut quite a figure. From Geneva, he was walking with his family of wife and three young children and this was their fourth year on the camino walking in etapes to Santiago. I did get a sense of the pilgrim purist in this guy and a bit of a condescending attitude towards those who made reservations in comfortable chambre d'hotes with demi-pensionne, of those who competively tracked the number of kilometres a day or who noted their blisters, shin splints and aches and pains. Oops, scored a hat trick with us on that one. This a good time to remember that the pilgrimage is individualistic; one does what one can and how one can. This is not the place to be judgemental.
One of the benefits of using a chambre d'hote is that often you stay with a family and you get to spend more time talking to them - in French or English or Spanish or any combo thereof - and that's always a good experience;

TBA