Day 23: Stage 19: Périgueux

24 km, heavy rain again😱, a little sun, 16°

You Take Your Weather With You!

What a great stop last night. I had the best time! The dinner was amazing!

Obviously, I need to up my food game with Annemarie arriving tomorrow.🤣 I’ve just had a text message that she’s arrived safely into Paris. No word since, but I figure she’s hurrying to get her train south to Limoges where I was just four days ago (seems like weeks!). She will arrive here tomorrow just before 5 PM.

Breakfast this morning was pretty excellent as well. Last night I asked if I could get an early breakfast because I had to get into town today before everything shut at 1 PM. Today is yet another May national holiday in France. I think that about does it for official holidays while I’m here? Do they ever work?

I figure that after all the rainy days in the past three plus weeks that I’ve endured that I have definitely earned a a good breakfast before yet again stepping out into an incredibly wet day.

The nice lady behind the hotel counter asked me if I really wanted to go out there.😂 My answer was, c’est Camino! Meaning, do I really have a choice?

Seriously, it was raining so hard that I didn’t even get a picture of the town as I left. Something I think I’ve always done. Obviously there is no sunrise picture today.😑

The pounding of the rain on my hood generated just enough rhythm to help me with a couple of Haiku today. I had to wait till the rain stopped later to write them down.

Wrapped in Gore-Tex 
From head to toe alien 
Hood off a person 

When I’m all wrapped up in my Gore-Tex from head to toe I feel like no one can really see me. It almost seems like I’m an anonymous entity walking along the side of a highway. When the rain slackens, I usually pull my hood off, and I feel that there’s suddenly a real identifiable person visible to the passing drivers. I’m really here!

I did risk my phone to get a couple of photos between the various intense rain cells.

I of course, had my lights flashing, though at 7:30 the traffic on a holiday Monday morning was fairly light. The speed limit on here was 90, and some of the drivers would fly by in spite of the rain, and me!!

The rain finally began to settle down. This is the radar image showing what had just passed over me during the prior hour. I was pretty happy to see that gone. If you didn’t figure it out, I’m the blue dot.

I was walking the D8, typically smaller than a national route, and of course much smaller than an autoroute (freeway). The sign says that there’s 15 km to my destination, and at this point, I believe it was correct. However, I saw 15 km to go on signs in at least three different places.🙄. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever make it to my destination.

I really liked the pink marshmallows. I thought they added some pop-colour to an otherwise dull situation.

At this point, I stripped my rain jacket off with a plan to keep a sharp eye on the rain cells because I just knew that I couldn’t be that lucky.

These are for Caitlin for finishing up my veggie garden. About the only flowers today. I think perhaps I lost my lilies this past winter.

For much of the day, the traffic was quite heavy. I had to focus to make sure that I didn’t get hit because people aren’t use to seeing pilgrims walking on this part of the highway. Most people were pretty good, but the real danger seemed to consistently be the older drivers who didn’t seem comfortable when they saw me. They would drive past me very close, even though there was no one coming from the other direction. I had to step off the road and into the grass a number of times.🙁

Fortunately, there were no big trucks on the road today because of the holiday. That said, they are usually the most courteous, and they always wave to me. On that note, I have been getting waves and nods and pumped fists (I assume supportive pumped fists) from so many people during the past three weeks. It’s really quite inspiring. I had a huge group of cyclists pass by me today and they were super friendly. The lead riders made sure that everybody knew about me all the way down the line and to be aware of my presence. I actually took a video of the whole thing which I will be sending to my grandchildren.

The weather started to close in again and the radar indicated more rain ahead. This prompted me to stop and put my rain jacket back on which I had tied around my waist.

When you walk distance
You take your weather with you
Is there any choice

The first vineyards as I head towards the Bordeaux region. The Garonne River can’t be too many kilometres off, right?

Finally, I was on the outskirts of the city. There seems to be a chain of these blue elephant car washes.

At about this moment, the skies opened up again. It just poured, but I was in town and all I had to do was find my key pickup point, drop my pack at the apartment and go out to find a grocery store before they all shut down at 1 PM. It seemed like a pretty simple ‘to do’ list, but I had trouble finding the key pick up place.

My host said that I could pick it up at the pub on the right just down the street. However, when I got there, the pub was clearly closed for the day. I texted back-and-forth with my host who said that there was actually another place where the key was going to be left for me. 😳 I was a bit confused about that, but I went to the other location and I did find the key there. But not before I got pretty wet.

I found the apartment, a kind of interesting building in the old town where I dropped my slightly damp gear.

A simple, but a pretty nice place. I think the floor angles in multiple directions, but that’s part of the charm.

As I walked through town to the grocery store, my initial impression was that it’s a pretty neat looking little place. I’ll be investigating further tomorrow while I wait for Annemarie to get here just before dinner. Unfortunately, she won’t have a lot of time to look around, perhaps an hour before we find a place to eat.

That’s about it for today. I just received a text from Annemarie that she’s on the train heading from Paris to Limoges which will take her something just under four hours. When she told me that, I reminded her that I have been walking a lot the last three weeks and that I’m not surprised that it will take so long to get down here. Does she think I’ve been sitting on my duff for the last three weeks?😂😂 Only kidding because she’s more than aware.

I’ll be having one of my final ‘Geoff is alone’ dinners tonight and I will actually be able to eat by 6 o’clock! And because the blog is now written and the laundry done, I’ll be able to relax this evening. I don’t even have to plan a walking route tonight. Pure bliss.😇 I did hear from Hil and she is comfortably ensconced in a castle one stage ahead of me. We considered staying there as well, but I decided that AM needs a place where she can rest a little better than a communal situation will allow. She’s going to be jetlagged when she gets here and we need to look after her for a few days. After that, anything goes! At least I think it does?

Bon Chemin!

Geoff🍷🙏❤️