Day 39: Stage 33: Sauveterre de Bearn

27 km, Sun all day & HOT! 31°

PYRENEES!!🏔️ 🏔️🏔️

A long post on a long hot day!

After we got sorted out in our nice accommodation, we went looking for dinner. And we found it! A really nice regional restaurant that makes all their food from scratch. This was Annemarie’s birthday dinner that I missed after I left in April.

The first course was a potato thing which looks like the Spanish things that you dip into hot chocolate. I just can’t remember their name? Churros!There was a nice goat cheese paste to eat with them. Needless to say, it was quite amazing.

Then the next course was duck breast with some lovely tasty vegetables. I should point out that we are drinking, some excellent wines from the local vineyards. The owner helped us to pick them out and took the time to explain each of them to us. It was a very slow night. 🙂

Today we began the stage and completed the stage in two different, but equally amazing mediaeval towns! This bridge greeted us as we left this morning. In terms of mediaeval bridges it doesn’t get much better than this.

We first had to wait for a high-speed train to fly by before we could actually get onto the bridge. I got a great video of it for the kids, the train that is.

Orthez was just a magical place. The buildings were quite unique with a different roofline than I’ve seen elsewhere in France. We just really enjoyed the whole experience.

As I said yesterday, with the exception of a few modern items, it’s almost like nothing has changed here for hundreds of years.

The scenery today was nothing short than outstanding. We climbed a whole lot more today than we have in the past number of days. The upside to that is the wonderful views. The downside is obvious.

We passed through several lovely villages.

I found the houses to be really beautiful both in the countryside and in the villages. Houses that would be a delight to set up just the way you want. Haha…I’m getting too old for that. You want to do that sort of thing for a lifetime home. But still…

I mean, just look at these very cool places!

Any way, back to our walk.😊

Pretty scenery all day in pretty much every direction.

After one particularly stiff climb, we came out of a forest and there they were. The Pyrenees! They were initially difficult to see, but that would change as we steadily grew closer.

It’s taking a long time to reach the Pyrenees on this walk. On our prior two approaches walking other chemin, we came in to the Pyrenees at a very shallow angle. This meant that they grew in size steadily for many days. On the Vézelay the approach is almost at right angle to the mountains, so they don’t show up quite as soon. They just sort of suddenly arrive. However, once you see them, you can’t look away. They just sort of appear around every corner when you’re up high.

At one point, just after the village in front of Annemarie in the above photo, we started onto a back trail only to turn around because of the heavy yellow mud. The type that sticks to your boots and becomes almost permanent. I decided I wasn’t taking Annemarie up through that mess as it would be a long exhausting slow climb. I had heard about this mud from Hil and the Dutch fellow who passed us going the other way yesterday. So we followed the road for a time to avoid it.

It was getting pretty warm and Annemarie was feeling it. It’s not her favourite type of weather to walk in. We took a break in a little village sitting by the side of the road. This village is one of those villages that has no public facilities, ie., a bar or cafe.

After ‘lunch’, I found us a gravel road to descend on from the village. On the way down, I started to get a little bit concerned that there might not be a bridge to cross the stream that runs from the lake. I’ve experienced this before and if not to deep it’s possible to go barefoot. It was a long way down and I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to walk back up!

I need not have worried. There was a crossing. The lake actually turned out to be a private fishing pond, complete with nets over top to keep the birds from taking the fish. I said to Annemarie that my father would love this lake because he could sit there feeding the fish all day long, just as happy as could be.❤️

Back on the chemin it was heating up…a lot! Well over 30° on the roads. In some areas no shade, and unfortunately one of us was suffering a bit. We both know that in these tough situations all you can really do is gut it out. And she did.

We finally came around a corner and there was home. Just down a hot road.🙂

While AM was basically just focussing on getting there, I remember saying to her that our approach seemed to be so much like it might have been for pilgrims approaching the city in mediaeval times. It was a very odd sensation. Perhaps it was just the heat?😂

We found a swimming place by the river and stopped at the vendor shop to have a cold non-alcoholic drink to prepare ourselves to climb ‘the stairs’!

They were nasty switchback stairs, but we managed.

We arrived at the top to find that there was a funeral underway in the church. Probably a pilgrim that didn’t make it up the stairs. 😇 We never did see the inside of the church. 

Turned out that there is no restaurants, cafés or bars open in this town. Our host suggested that we go to the butcher who makes some amazing takeaway meals. We decided that this was a great option and I should’ve taken some pictures of what was on offer because it was pretty good. Our host also told us that there is a book rating these butcher shops and their take away meals in France. Sort of a Michelin star rating system for butcher shop ready made meals if you like. Live and learn. We could’ve been taking advantage of this during our French travels these past many years. For the record, I had mutton stew over couscous and Annemarie had lasagna both washed down with an ice cold beer. Yum!

For the record, my app says that we climbed a decent 550 m of vertical today. There will be more tomorrow, but hopefully it will be just a little cooler.

That’s about it from here today. Two more stages will take us into SJPDP.

Bon Chemin!

Geoff 🍻🏔️🚶‍♂️☀️☀️☀️