Count d’Artagnan (actually Charles de Batz de Castelmore d’Artagnan) who was the inspiration for d’Artagnan in Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. The fact that there were four of them is a minor detail.
If a picture says a thousand words, then this is my longest post, ever😀
My roomie wanted an early start, but at least he made coffee when he got up at 0615! I didn’t depart until 0730h as walking in the half light is not my thing when the day is not too long. Mind you, the current weather is hard to plan your day by: at 0730h it was 7⁰, but by early afternoon it is in the mid -twenties. As I write this, it is 26⁰ at 1520h. I did a load of laundry and it was dry in about 30 minutes.
The Puegeot at the gates of dawn (apologies to Pink Floyd)Couldn’t figure out if this was advertising a music festival or a belly-dance competition
The path today was scenic, but tedious, as the vast majority was on narrow rural roads, all paved, and mostly concave. This made walking on the sides tiring, not to mention running the risk of knee and/or ankle strain. From looking at my photos for the day, clearly it was also a day of signs:
Mikes from anywhere, an information sign. A bench would have been more useful!An old albergue, no longer accepting pèlerins The house where Henri IV lived before he was Henri IV
The town of Auch (pronounced Osh, with a long ‘o’) is a magnificent old town, with an impressive Cathedral and ancient alleyways and back streets, built long before Canada or New Zealand were even “discovered”.
Hastily taken snap of the Cathedral before the guided tour made for the entrance The Cathedral is famous for its organ. There was a smaller one in front of the choir stalls, but maybe they were interconnected. Sadly the only music on offer was piped chants.Before they invented building inspectorsThe view of the old town from the riverbank, where I enjoyed my supermarket lunch: fresh baguette, jambon, and stinky cheese
The exit from the town was not as impressive as the entrance – a slow uphill on busy roads through the scruffy (to be polite) light industrial suburbs, with noisy trucks and decaying sidewalks. Maybe there’ll be some forest paths on tomorrow’s agenda!
The road to Montégut. And that’s not the albergue on top of the hill, but I discovered it is for sale, so one day it might be!
In 2009, we embarked on a one-year family sailing adventure aboard a Grand Soleil 39, "SV Mulan". Our original sailing blog is linked on this site.
In 2017, Susan, Andrew, Sam & Max walked the Camino Frances from St-Jean-Pied-de-Porte to Santiago de Compostella (and rode bikes from Burgos to Leon as a blister recovery strategy), and in 2018 Jack also joined the crew as we waled the northern section of the Camino Portuguese from Porto to S de C.
In 2019 Andrew, accompanied by Max for the first few hundred kms, and Susan for the Tiscan section, walked the via francigena from Canterbury to Rome. That journey is blogged in this site.
This blog is planned as an alternative to the endless instagram posts used previously to communicate with those interested in our travels - although there is a linked instagram account as well!
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2saunter 