It’s a hard farewell this morning. Muriel has an incredible property and is super nice and generous to boot with her time.
We wake up to coffee, hot chocolate, plus the dessert she offered the boys last night but they weren’t able to stay awake for served up with breakfast. Homemade creme brûlée. Incredible.
We can only say you have to experience this place for yourself. There is something really special in the gite’s run by previous pilgrims. It only heightens Alissa’s fantasies of running a magical French gite over looking the sunflower fields. As we all scrawl our thanks on Muriel’s signature wall, Muriel presses the boys favourite book finds on them and for Alissa it’s Peter Mayle’s A year in Provence. I see my future and it’s looking a lot like the French countryside.
Nate speaks incessantly on future plans of coming back to walk the Camino and work as a ‘hospitalero’ at Le Par Chemin. He has it all figured out. He’ll see you when he’s 15 Muriel. It is wonderful to see him so gripped by this experience.
It’s an easy day of rolling roads and towns. Sunflower fields at the end of their lives are in the process of being shorn down. Walking on roads can be a bit boring but your speed increases to compensate so that’s a bonus. This is a hot, sunny French autumn day. At Muriel’s recommendation we are heading for a small gite in Miradoux that once again allows us to camp in their garden. No campgrounds on this part of the route.
On arrival at the small town a lovely French woman we’ve seen a few times over the course of the day comes over to point out to Alissa that if we take the road to the right, it leads to the town of a famous French singer. She’s quite insistent and we wait dripping with sweat and exhaustion, anxious to stop. Alissa nods and smiles and wonders if she’s suggesting we walk there to see him as she won’t let up. Eventually she manages to convey we understand, although not at all sure we do, but no-one is willing to walk unknown kilometres more in this heat and she lets us on.
This tiny town surprises with a pizza truck for dinner (thankfully, the local epicerie selection was appalling), a playhouse and little playmate (the owners son) for Tom. We chat with a lovely French Canadian who unfortunately becomes known as ‘French Canadian’ due to our inability to retain all the new names at this point. New books are read far too late into the night. We’re on a roll.
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