Day 36: Stage 30: Saint Sever.

25 km, Sun then cloud, 22°

Mon Dieu, it’s Sunday!🤯

As I was saying yesterday, we decided to go back up to the square at a bar for our dinner in the hope we would see some of the French Open. However, they were showing rugby highlights from the French league. So I enjoyed glancing at those from time to time while we enjoyed some nice calamari and a cold beer. Very nice! 

There was a table next to us full of young people who are enjoying their beer served in a way I’ve not seen before. they were sort of beer towers with a tap on the bottom. There were a number of them on different tables. After all, it was a Saturday night.

After 9 o’clock last night, I was trying to read the Champions League final highlights as they were posted online in real time. I decided to text my friend Ariel at home to see if he was watching the game (we usually watch it together). It turned out that he was, and I decided to check the TV in our place to see if they had the game on. Much to my surprise they did! So I sent Ariel this picture of me watching the game, well at least my feet were watching the game.😊

Turned out that his feet were watching the game too!

We texted back-and-forth throughout the entire entire game. It was pretty funny because I was getting a better satellite feed than he was. His had about a 90 second delay compared to my feed. So if something exciting happened like a goal, I would comment on it before he had even seen it happen. It was a bit odd, but it was nice to watch the game together. For the record Real Madrid beat Dortmund 2-0.

This morning we walked out of our place and into a beautiful sunny day. We stopped for our usual breakfast, including our favourite hot beverages.

While we were having breakfast Annemarie brought up the fact that we had forgotten to prepare any food for lunch today. We suddenly realized that today is Sunday, and that of course meant that almost everything would be closed from around noon onwards. I looked ahead on Google Maps and learned that the only grocery store that would be open was somewhere close to our destination. And it was going to close at 12:30! So we finished our breakfast very quickly and left town.

There was a fair bit of trail walking today. A fairly decent dry stretch meant that the trails in this area were in pretty good shape. There is a sand base in this area which helps with the drainage.

As we walked, I alternated between my maps app and Google maps on my phone to try and figure out the exact location of the grocery store. I finally pinpointed it and then sorted out a route off the chemin to take us there.

We saw our first sign for the Intermarche and continued onwards. Time was passing quickly and almost 4 hours had passed.

And then we were there and it was an Intermarche Super! The best.😊

We had to sort out lunch for today, breakfast for tomorrow and dinner for tonight. This meant we had to agree on everything.😂 We also had to find appropriate beverages for with our dinner. That part was fairly easy, a small bottle of white for Annemarie and a small bottle of red for me. a nice 2020 Bordeaux red.😋

As they were closing the store we stood outside dividing up the groceries. We still had to walk into Saint Sever. We rejoined the chemin and crossed the L’Adour River, a good sized river.

Then a steep climb took us right into Saint Sever, another historical old town complete with a beautiful Abby which dates back to 998.

Tomorrow is a short stage so we will have time in the morning to wander the streets here a little bit. It was pretty dead on a Sunday, but on Monday things should be mostly open and there will be a lot more people around.

That’s about it from France today. We have a simple dinner of tortellini and two types of sauce! Annemarie prefers pesto sauce while I prefer a tomato based sauce. We were able to find small bottles of each so that we will both be happy. Did I not say it was a Super store?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my new boots worked great today. No blisters!

Bon Chemin!

Geoff 🍝🍷🚶‍♂️