day 19 – draft
Sunday, 24 April 2016
Larressingle to Manciet Eauze
28 km today - 536 km to date

This day starts well. No navigation issues.  Cross the Pont d'Antigues and not much later notice a pathway crossing the road I am on.  I check my offline map and see it is a named pathway and that it takes a series of gentle curves towards my next destination. And it is brilliant to walk on: it is level, sealed and passes through forest/bush and passes over or under all the next roads I meet.  I find it was once a railway line.

I “alight” at the town of Gondrin where the church is locked but find an open air market underway so buy somke kiwi and banana.  And notice Gondrin has a rugby team.

About this time I begin to feel pain at the front of my right leg, where it joins the foot.  After about 5 km of the 20 km to Manciet the pain is too distracting.  After a while I get a lift to Eauze.  This is with a male driver and two women in their late 30s in the front of a people mover and two children and a small dog in the back. They are not totally familiar with gite arrangement in the town so the driver asks a conveniently nearby policeman who tells me to go to the Tourism Office.  I get there to find they are closed on Sunday.I turn around to see my rescuers have parked close by, beside the central church.  The driver helps me again by ringing the first gite that the guide says English is spoken, and takes me there.  Now it is I find the owner does not speak English at all so we communicate by typing words into Google translate on my tablet.  At last we agree I will stay two nights and get medical advice the next morning, Monday.

I go back to the church and find my rescuers just arriving as well : they offer me coffee and tell me they are a flutist, a soprano and an organist who also plays the harpsichord and they are putting on a concert that afternoon and will I come.

I do go and hear about a dozen items from almost as many composers from around the time of J S Bach.


Dnner is marvellous, cooked by mine host, Marie-France with two other walkers, Serge and Michel Louchard from Lille. Compared to other meals this is a tour de force and lasts for three hours.  Fortunately for me, Serge has some English.

And so to bed.