Stage 39: Argagnon - Navarrenx, 26 kms, Sunny:), 19

The Le Puy's Version of "Ramon's" Albergue!

We stayed in a very strange gite last night. If you've ever watched the movie The Way, (fess up Neil, how many times has it been?:) ) then you know the story about Ramon and his very strange albergue on the Camino Frances. The general story follows the arrival of our four intrepid peregrinos as they show up at the end of a long day of pilgrimming only to witness some pretty strange behaviours from the operator. They basically run out the door and end up sleeping outside that night. 

One could say that we had a similar experience last night, except our mistake was that we didn't run out the door! We arrived to find the place decorated in 1950/60's decore. It wasn't really decorated, more like it was locked in a moment in time. British time. In France. Interesting. The landlady was a fiesty older woman from Cornwall who was none to friendly and who we will call Ramona for the purposes of our story.

We had phoned and arranged a room with two beds...pretty straight forward, or so we thought. However Ramona informed us that we would be sharing our room with another peregrino. Not what we has agreed to, but in the spirit of the Camino we agreed as we'd met him before. She later approached us and said she wanted to put another man in our room...not a pelerin, but a working stiff because she and her son hadn't bothered to make up another room. I suggested that we were supposed to have had our own room, and she told me that we'd asked for two beds in the room. I agreed, but of course we hadn't asked for a dorm!  So I ended up telling her a firm no, not with my wife in the room. She then reluctantly agreed, knowing it wasn't an appropriate request. Then a short time later we were sitting out on the 2nd floor porch reading when some huge guy with a towel around his waist flies out of our room and says something hard to understand and goes down the veranda to the outer door to the shower. Did I say this place was rambling and oddly designed?! It was!

Turns out he was the son who arrived home from work and uses our shower? Odd, but ok. We're getting the hang of this...we think. Then Ramona tells us that she has a pet pig who will be joining us for dinner, but won't be dinner:) No kidding, we are joined by this hug pig, three year old Raquel who falls asleep by the heater and begins to snore. It's getting pretty weird!

It gets weirder. The pig wanders over to its bed and gets covered up to sleep...yup just weird.

So we sit down at the common family table to eat. Annemarie and I, the French pelerin from our room, two working guys here for two weeks, and the son. No Camino talk, just very basic chat between the working guys and the son, in very basic French. Even I understand it all...like I said, basic. The son had a strange roll at dinner as host and dinner company....but he didn't have much to say. An awkward meal to say the least. There wasn't any flow to the dinner conversation. The pig was fun though as she moved again. The highlight of the night! 

Finally got Ramona to say a few words today when I chatted with her about her collection of videos about the Carry On Gang. A British comedy troop that was very popular in the 60's and we used to attend a few of the movies when we visited with our Victoria family on vacation. Actually quite funny.  Remember that Gord? When I get home I'll be looking them up on YouTube. 

Anyway that was our Ramon story. The pig was the sanest part of the night! 

A nice day of walking. A brilliant sunrise as we headed off into the coldest, clearest morning yet.

It must have been about 6 and of course I dressed fairly lightly thinking it wouldn't be that cold...walk with my hands in my pockets! Poles under my arm. I walked faster to warm up, but Annemarie reminder me to slow a bit, and I did. Missing the ghost gloves Caitlin gave me. First time on Camino without them:(

Another stunning early morning walk.

New friends everywhere!

A few cool homes.

An Abby. 

Scenery to make you weep.

We are now walking into the foothills of the Pyrennes. Lots of ups and downs today. We have been on the road so long that we take the hills like troopers. Yup, we go down, so that means we go up. Little effort anymore. It sucks that you can get this walking fit and then instead of going home and staying that way, you have to get back at it. We chatted about returning to the gym and our regular exercise...yet our walking fitness will actually drop off. Seen it before...just seems wrong!

We mostly through walked today. We have the road pretty much to ourselves and we linger at hill tops, in churches and say hi to the few pelerin we meet. We arrived into our destination, a walled fortress town celebrating 700 years! Very cool.

Check in at our gite and run out to find a bit of lunch...there wasn't anywhere to stop today for a meal and we were so rural last night that we couldn't buy lunch supplies. The kitchen at a bistro is closed but we can have food from the salad bar, so we load up! So good with a cold beer. Hot and sunny now at 14:00. Best part though is to be found in the toilet! Ha! How they got the road marker and then put it here? Hilarious!

Beet I've ever seen!

This is the mirror

The weather pattern will begin to break down later tomorrow and we still have a ways to go. Hope to avoid the rain that is coming. There is little in the way of towns and accommodation this next stretch. We made a reservation some 30ish kms away for tomorrow night. A long day, but we are both looking forward to it. The next day close to the outskirts of St Jean Pied de Port and Friday in for a look, lunch and the train to Bayonne on the coast. Always feel it's better to finish the walking season with a flourish! Should be fun, but we are very rural tomorrow so may not have wifi. Sadly we will drop our pelerin pals tomorrow, but we will meet others as is tradition. Bon Chemin!