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12.-07.08 Saturday.
Lectoure to Roquelaure via an assignation in Fleurance.
We rose early after a noisy night in the world's most expensive campsite, some of the local staff were up and playing with the machinery for mowing etc at 06:00, still we did not mind but would if we were staying. The whole place is a lager, a fortified Dutch town in a foreign land, and not what we call camping. We then walked 6 miles in to Fleurance to meet Tim’s daughter Rhona and her friends who had done very well in the Pre Tour de France, Col du Tourmalet stage. We had a bit of a wait but not bad considering the difficulty they had in hitting the moving target presented by the two of us. We all had lunch put together by Rhona, on the steps of the Mairie in the old centre covered market area of the town, score again for Bastide architecture. Tim got a new book from Rhona, thank you especially since you have not finished it. We then after farewells decided rather ambitiously but because the rain had stopped and it was still cool (you have to go with the weather and today has certainly been a matter of good timing), to do another 12 miles or so to a campsite we were 95% plus sure existed, we arrived after a lot of walking some on roads, some on a very good track, and once through another mosquito infested green lane, nothing like mosquitoes for getting tiring legs going faster.
While in Fleurance we visited the local Office De Tourisme where a very nice lady whose English was even worse than our French phoned to a campsite we are hoping to use in 2 days time, but due to the vagaries of finding campsite information we didn’t know if it still existed. The phone call confirmed that it did, so maybe we will have a bed in to 2 days time.
This is another Dutch run site but completely different and family run – we were welcomed, and offered a biere, and given a pilgrim discount and asked to the Karaoke in the bar in the evening. The son of the owners has done the Camino on mountain bike (only 11 days from here!) so can’t be far away now.
We have also had contact fro Graham (an old Easter holiday friend) who is currently staying with friends in Bergerac. We had hoped to meet him there but we rushed past a few weeks too early for him. The current plan is to meet him (and George his dog) near Tarbes next week if it can be so arranged.