Plenty of useful agriculture today. Rather more sunflowers than hitherto as we get further south, with different fields at different stages of progress. we saw a fine crop-sprayer on a tractor unfolding its long arms like a 'Transformer' that Billy would have paid good money to see. At Marsolan village we met a charming bunch of school kids out for a walk under the nominal control of three ladies who found it more difficult going up a steep hill than did their charges. But we had a spring in our step too, particularly after we stopped for water and chewy bars and the rest of the strawberries.
Another hour and we passed the Chapelle d'Abrin in the company of a tiny solitary female walker who we decided was probably a Swiss nun in mufti. She was very friendly and certainly Swiss. She had started from Zurich, wearing trainers, and reckoned that she was another 9 days from the Spanish border with a further 30 days walking in Spain. The Chapelle was formerly of the Knights of St John but is now a private house and we could only admire some architectural features from outside. It marks the spot where the Puy (and Zurich!) route meets up with the Rocamadour route. Indeed La Romieu is allegedly more related to the Rocamadour route than to ours but forms a convenient stop for us before Condom.
Lunch was on a headland by a lake and many others, no doubt heading for La Romieu and with not much further to go, felt it an appropriate place to pause. We had then some brutal upwards mud - it would have been quite impossible downwards - and some more dry high fields before we reached our destination, spot on at 2pm. We failed to visit the notable botanical gardens on the way into town - where there was little activity. We called at the tourist office to find out that our Gite was in fact a couple of kilometers out of town: we could have saved ourselves some mileage had we simply come in a different way which actually went past it. But she kindly offered to telephone and our hostess, Christine, arrived minutes later to drive us there with great cheerfulness. She couldn't do enough for us and the gite is excellent, clean spacious and comfortable restored farm buildings on 30 hectares of land including a lake. I made tea while Clare got the washing machine going and Liz did a great job on the muddy boots with bucket and brushes. I suspect we all fancy sitting and sleeping rather than swimming.
Christine has offered to drive us into town for supper and to collect us
if we wish. Des and i did the 1k walk round the lake. we watched what we thought were a couple of badgers but they turned out to be a large colony of semi-tame coypu. Clare read us her description of our 20 mile walk last year into Cajarc. I distinctly remember being very tired and footsore and feel much the same today!Supper menu tonight (and probably most nights here) was simple and local: gesiers salad, confit de canard and desert. We finished with a glass of Armagnac and walked home in the scents of the evening. A quick detour to inspect the substantial War Memorial and the separate but equal Memorial to the Resistance. Lots of roses growing well throughout the town (and cats of course) but we never did make it (this time!) to the Botanical gardens.
