Month: June 2014

5.06.14 Thursday Aroue to Ostabat Asme. .(probably)
A quiet night on the lawn at the back got a bit cool as the clouds cleared in the wee smw hours. But a cracking day dawns. A lot of tarmac up hill and down dale with short bouts of mud mean the team has time to muse on other things, the hills around us are scattered with fields of grass with white dots in the distance. They become cows or sheep or occasionally white aphids (as Ray says or geese as we later find out). We try to guess what they are from a distance Betsy is spectacularly bad at it! The team fantasy takes over and we wonder about selling the rights to “Cows OR Sheep” as a cheap day time tv programme and wonder if Brucie would come out of retirement to host it.
After a particularly gruelling hill we end up near a little chapel and a table d’orientation or disorientation as the spell chucker trys to have it. Reasonable views of the mountains confim snow on Pico d Annetto just in Spain and 3500 m or so high hopefully we will be nowhere near it.
A local old boy in a beret recommended a restaurant in Ostabat and we realise that with only 4km to go we could have lunch there so a spurt downhill results. Unfortunately not only are there two more hills 5.5 km but when we arrive it is not serving today as the lady concerned has her grandchildren. Nice for her and a good insight into the size of places we are going through. We eat yesterdays bread with cheese and ham and will cookin the alburgue/ gite later. A good days walk and an afternoon of scorching heat.
22km 700m up and a bit less down

4.06.14 Wednesday Navarrenx to Arouy.
The promised rain arrives and persists on and off all morning and finally stops just before arrival in Arouy. A day spent marching through wet jungle in deepest Gascony with the occasional duck for relief. Still it could be worse it could still be raing and we could be crouching in wet tents. So as with almost all other days billed as below average when it comes to it it is above average, at least with respect to distance. Arouy has no bar or shops and even the pizza hut (no not Pizza Hut) is shut. So we settle on the back lawn of the gite comunale to await the opening of the in house store. Fortunately we have our meal for the evening with us.
Not much of a report for not much of an average day. No photos too wet to risk the phone but one of the lady birds on the site yesterday.
20.5km 37m up and down.

3.06.14 Tuesday Argagnon to Navarrenx.
The Gite de Cambarrat last night gave us a good meal with wine, a hand drawn tampon (once the lady of the house came home) , and a seranade with a banjo by Nicholas our host. A good deal coupled with a good sleep and maybe even Tony forgave the hole in his sock and talked to the smallest of the three white hounds that went for him. Breakfast is goodwith toast coffee and some homemade marmalade, the best, almost only, mamalade encountered in France.
The route is down at first with a lot of tarmac and no mud but soon starts to go up and down as if determined to give us a good workout before the pass into Spain. We stop briefly at the old 13th C . reconstructed 19thC church in Sauvelade. The high point of this building is the thick slab of green marble from a nearby Roman villa. Found after exhaustive search lurking under the base of the stairs to the balcony.
An average day follows Ray spots a humming bird hawk moth and the cuckoo was still heard. After a good wander along a wooded ridge with distant views of the Pyrenees we decend into the outskirts of Navarrenx. We are now into the edges of Basque territories so any major spelling inadequacies that may possibly have produced criticism before can now be excused on ethnic grounds. Tim complains that his ankles that gave problems on the first camino are feeling a little sensitive, Ray who also marched rapidly up the hills on tarmac relaxes and keeps station at the rear but soon Tony is waving from a bar on the ramparts of the town, allegedly the oldest fortified town in France and both sink gratefully into a seat. Magically beer appears!
The campsite in Navarrenx is a bit of a space time warp, run by English and inhabited by caravans with English number plates. A walk round the town soon reorientates us and a visit to the tourist office, where the lady kindly showes us the information in Miaw Miaw Dodo (THE guide to the GR65) that we have already seen, completes the process. Firmly fixed in France we get two nights meals and lunch from the local Casino ( supermarket chain) and enjoy a meal of fish in white wine and garlic with potatos , green salad melon starter and choclate mousse to finish washed down with copious wine. Tomorrow is another day and we may be carrying all we eat as we delve into Basque territories.
25km 570m up 550m down.

2.06.14 Monday Lareule to Argagnon via Arthez de Bearn.
Lareule in medieval times was an important staging post on the way being an impartant abbey supported by a crusader knight order similar to Templars, sadly nothing remains but the parish church after the religious wars.
The gite last night was good meeting people we had seen over the last weeks on the way, one was unfortunate Hermsn women wjo had developed shin splints and had stopped in pai that day. After four eerks from Le Puy feeling fitter snd walking by herself she hsd been doing longer distances that at first and eas now needing a few days off to allow it to settle both Tim and Betsy have had this common camino problem and sympathised.
The rest of us set off at a good hour after Betsy’s long talk to the cat. The day fell naturally into two parts before snd after beer. The first part was good for lack of mud but plenty of tarmac, a very old church on the way with an uncommon stone carved tomb of a 14c local lord. The a beer in Arthez followed by lunch at a pilgrim halt thoughtfully provided by locals in a shed with table and chairs and a comments book Ray wrote in Welsh.
A great few km along s ridge in chesrnut woods followed with a steep descent down to Argagnon to finish. The gite de cambarat was found about 400 m up a track off the maikn road. The dogs bark and the smallest nipped Tony’s ankle putting yet another hole in his sock and was only saved a wack with the walking pole by the appearance of Nicholas the gite hospitalero. It is not right to wack a mans dog in front of him. But he did apologise. The gite is delightfully rural but has all one needs. Beds and plenty of hot water with washing lines are all well supplied.
25.8 km 420m both up and down.

01.06.15 Sunday Ferme de Marsan, Pimbo to Lareule.
The rain that started at dinner time stopped at 2.30, the tents are dry inside and are soon packed we are off by 7.30. Ray says we are not on the camino cos we are going downhill but this changes, we turn right on to the Way and head uphill steeply, after a while we go through the regulation mud but still climb up to Pimbo a linear bastide on the top of a ridge. It has another gite comunale attached to the church which has a very old arch with what look like celtic designs around it. The church is known to date to 11th C and has a round ceiling around the altar which is ready for the service and a garden at the back. More up and down continues enlivened by Betsy spotting a small grass snake asleep up a bramble.
Along a road we are effusively greeted by a black Labrador, we have met the first Buster of the trip. (For those ignorant of previous adventures, a Buster is a dog who chooses to follow, or sometimes lead pilgrims along their way.They are amiable spirits not excessively friendly but quiet and content to ramble often long distances attached to the walkers.) This one was with us for about 5km when we were witness to a dog napping as a blue Peugeot stopped a young girl got out, grabbed our new friend and bundled him into the back. The car then drove off with a woman presumably her mother glaring at us. Oops. Maybe he was a wanabe Buster, not the real thing.
The way has further attraction added in a couple of placed by some house owners and farms placing old farm machinery beside the path. One such collection is by the walnut tree in whose shade we have lunch and provides the usual excellent drying rack for the tents.
A few hills later we reach the gite in which we are staying and four beers gratefully disappear before the usual cleansing rituals take place. The weather seems to have warmed up!
24km 630m up 660 m down