Day 30: Stage 25: Auros

20 km, Cloudy, 19°

Short, But Sweet!

As the title of today’s blog post suggests, we walked a short stage. We were already staying outside of the city last night, and we had an arrangement with our host for tonight to have access to her place when we arrived. Here’s a photo of where we are staying.

Although the stage was short, we had a very enjoyable walk and there was lots to see. First, a quasi sunrise picture.

We had hoped to see more of the sun today, but we mostly ended up with a cloudy day.

We started off by walking along the river and listening to a small crew who were logging a plantation forest on our left. The trees are planted in long rows with plenty of space between them to make the harvesting easier. I’ve passed these sorts of plantations many times, and it only became clear today as to why the trees are planted in straight rows with so much distance between them. It makes sense, but until you see the harvesting process in action it can make you wonder about the spacing. The lightbulb went on for me today!😅

And then there was this strange planting process. From a distance it looked like a whole bunch of sheets hung on a line to dry. However, on closer inspection that wasn’t the case, and I’ve no idea why they’ve set things up this way. Another mystery of our time that will hopefully be solved in the same way the logging process was solved earlier today.

For much of the day, we walked along quiet country roads, passing through small villages and numerous farm properties.

We happened to stop and have a look at this 17th C church which is located on the floodplain. The church entrance use to face west as most churches entrances do. However, in the 1860’s an architect was hired to redesign the church because the locals were tired of digging out the deposited silt after each annual flood which sometimes reached 1.5m. He basically kept most of the church intact, but moved the door to the east side. To my eye it also looks like the church was raised higher to get above the recorded flood levels. It was pretty nondescript inside, but had a good story.

We were even visited by a really nice puppy dog who oddly didn’t want to bark at us or bite us. He was just interested in being scratched behind his ear. Even Annemarie gave him a pat on the head.😂

We passed over top of a really beautiful canal, and for a minute, we thought we might be walking along it. Sadly, we continued straight onwards.

Turns out that the local geese are not that friendly. Fortunately, there was a fence between us. I watched as this goose even chased a car that drove by hissing at it all the while. It felt like we were walking through a very strange neighborhood.

There seem to be some mills in this area, with some well constructed waterways.

If you’ve ever complained about rolling your garbage bin out to the curb?😉

Our host Colette is an avid gardener. She complained, like all of us, quite loudly about all the rain this past month. She has a rider type grass mower, but has been unable to use it because it’s heavy and the ground has been so soft. As a result, her yard is overgrown with waist high grass, the swimming pool water has turned green and her beautiful flowers are not doing so well. She does have some interesting types of plants that I’ve not seen before.

Better than anything else she has a washing machine and a dryer! You find washing machines from time to time on these walks, but almost never a dryer. Because she can house up to eight people at a time, she needs to have these available.

Somethings just don’t go through the dryer. There’s a good breeze blowing, and the sun is popping out now so things should get dried in time. It’s been many days since any of my clothing has seen the inside of a washing machine!

We are the only two staying here tonight, but on some nights she has up to eight people. I feel like we got a little lucky tonight because we have her yard all to ourselves. Colette will make us dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow. I wonder what we’re having? Annemarie seconds that query.

We’ve decided that there’s an interesting story in Colette. She lives in this rambling house all alone, there is a house-cat that we haven’t yet seen (maybe named Millie), she has grown children with somewhat grown grandchildren and she has a very interesting black Cadillac parked and very stationary in her backyard. She is presently away from here for about an hour providing after school daycare to three very nice looking kids whose picture she has. She speaks some English to complement our similar level of French and she has lived in Paris, but now lives in a small rural village in SW France. Yes, there is definitely a story here. I have so many questions.🤔

Tomorrow we have a longer stage to walk, perhaps 26 km. I have yet to sort the route out, but it will take us through Bazas where I need to stop to get my cell phone data plan recharged, pick up some cash and also a few groceries (read, chocolate). Interestingly, walking in France is much more of a cash society than walking in Italy the past two years. I was able to use the tap on my cash card almost everywhere I stayed, but not so much here.

Annemarie‘s not overly attracted to cats, but of course that means that they are overly attracted to her!😂 The cat lady, as she calls herself.

That’s about it for today. A short, but sweet stage with lots on offer. If dinner is really good I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Bon Chemin!

Geoff (and the cat)🐈 ❤️