Did I mention the hour-long climb out of Conques? Of course, I did!!!!
I wore my baseball hat today, the first time on a hike, but my face is pretty red, and thought I needed it. I think it made my incline easier as I could really only see down and not ahead if I positioned my head a certain way. Thus going up looked like fragments of needed leg movement vs the full picture. Lots of road walking today, but a great day. We’re both really sad to see our French family “ Mom power”, Laurence, Paul, and Maxance leave us. It’s hard for me to watch Bronwyn sad with this as well… we hate to see our children sad.
They joked they’d send us pictures of themselves rested and clean and I said I’d send them pictures of cow, horse, donkey poop in our paths. Most of the crew we know is stopping tonight in Decazeville, we would walk on three kilometers to a small gite across from the Saint Roch church. Five years ago a sweet lady would beckon us to stop here, I’m not certain if she was offering a bed, dinner, camping in her yard, or wanted to chat with this mom and young children doing this trip. It was late that evening and we were exhausted so kept going… I would always regret it. So I knew this time I would stop, reached out and there is a new owner. We arrived at 6pm, we didn’t leave Conques until 11 and we took a really long lunch at the same spot as five years ago.
We ate well!!!! We were greeted by Caroline, a pleasant gal, and her boyfriend and another pilgrim were playing the piano beautifully as we arrived exhausted!!!! ( don’t we always?). An AMAZING dinner, and a sweet gite, just four of us!!!! A room to ourselves and the best night's sleep yet!!!!!!
Over lunch a heavy set white lab greeted us, I went through my pictures to find we had a picture of this exact dog five years ago, but substantially thinner. There was another dog picture taken on this day and we both said it looked older and we doubted we would see it… well… an hour later a dog comes out of the driveway barking at us and it was it!!!! Even the owner confirmed when I shared the image.
I forgot to mention about an hour from Conques I remembered a donkey VERY well from five years ago with pictures of Aynsleigh toddling with her backpack towards it, I kept looking for the donkey this trip and there he was!!! I screeched with enthusiasm and he brayed at me, and a pack of crackers later our true love had been rekindled!!!! It’s neat being greeted by some of the same animals as years past. The same happened to me on my Norte route of 2014 and 2016, the same sassy dogs captured over the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment