Day 37 October 2 Maslacq to Navarrenx

23 km 489 ascent 459 descent 5:37 hr. 21⁰C

Breakfast was at 8am this morning. I slept very badly, and opened the patio doors wide open as soon as the alarm went off. Took everything out of the plastic and thanked God it wasn’t needed.

The Belgium’s were there when we went to breakfast. I felt a bit bad, I brought tea bags from home for my morning tea, but had just used my last one. Thankfully, the tea bags were very accessible at this breakfast, and I only needed 3 more. I took two, with, it seemed to me, everyone watching. I asked Russell to get one too. Now, I am all set! 

I asked the young lady in charge of breakfast if Chantal was coming, and she said no. I asked the Belgium people where they were staying over the next few days. We may not see them again until St Jean Pied-de-Port. We are all booked at Hotel Central on Oct 5.

Once again we were the first to leave. Early on, we walked through a corn alley again. We then passed what I assume was the Chapelle Notre Dame de Muret, a ruin of an earlier Chapel.

Up a major climb of least 120 meters, but we now had an excellent view of the industrial complex we saw from the other side yesterday. 

We think it may be a meat processing plant. There appears to be a lagoon to handle the blood, and a very new and clean steel plant to efficiently process the rest. Russell can’t find any further intelligence on what is happening there on the internet.

We stopped for coffee at Sauvelade, where people seemed to be finishing up after an all-night party. We stopped at a restaurant and ordered coffee so as to be able to use the WC. There were 3 guys from Spain drinking beer with their eggs and toast, which they followed with bourbon in their coffee.

My wallet seems to have fallen out of my backpack at some point of rearranging things, but after we left, a fellow pilgrim from France we have met along the Way came after me, and gave it to the Spanish guys who were closer behind us. It only had money in it (ie, no credit cards or bank cards), but it was much appreciated.

We figured out we weren’t following the Micheline guide today, although we seemed to be following the GPS.   I decided we must have been going via Bugnein instead of Laborte (as per the Michelin guide). I asked a young fellow on a bike, who might have been around 10 years old, where we were. I showed him alternatives on my map, he said Bugnein. He also then launched off into a great dissertation in French, which I took to say, ‘it’s all a descent from here on’.

It is really hilly now, with the Pyrenees in the background, and vultures flying around.

We entered a forest again, and saw trucks and signs indicating some sort of hunting was going was on. 

We then ran into 6 or 7 men in orange vests with rifles and figured out they were hunting wild boar. As we passed, I put up my arms to say ‘don’t shoot’.

It was becoming very hot and there was a lot of road walking, without an acceptable shoulder. My left foot was not happy.

Walking in to Navarrenx we passed Meritein, what looked like a very upscale and rich suburb. When we reached Navarremx, it too was very nice, and we passed a medieval rampart. This is a Bastide town.

tonightno problem finding Le Relais du Jacquet, where we stay tonight. It is a flat. Very large and spacious apartment. The fellow told us our bags were here at 9am yesterday. He didn’t expect us until today, and called La Pelegrin, thinking it was his mistake, and wondering what to feed us. Funny they didn’t figure out the problem! No wonder our bags didn’t arrive in Maslacq until 5:30pm yesterday!

The room had a washing machine, so we washed everything and hung it up to dry outside. Unfortunately it was late by the time we washed it and it didn’t get much time to dry outside before we had to bring it in. Still, it was nice to get to wash everything in a machine.

There was a pilgrim meet and greet at the Church of Sainte Germaine at 6pm. We went, knowing it would all be in French. There were prayers, followed by a discussion of the history of the church, a tour, and then we went to another place for appertifs. The church was built in 1562 and became protestant a year later in 1563. Louis XIII gave it back to the Catholique Church in 1800. It’s a very beautiful church, and very well used.

Some of the people at the flats tonight are vegetarian, so our host prepared a vegetarian meal. We had a nice (it was either pea or squash) soup to start; a vegetable lasagna; followed by salad (a bit of a weird order but I was very happy to have it on the menu regardless of the order); cheese; and then seminolina with ice cream for dessert. The fellow has a wedding ring on, and I asked if his wife cooked, and he said they were getting divorced and she had never participated in the Relais. I get the feeling he is not happy about the split.

The dinner was a bit of a strain for us, because we were the only English. There was the vegetarian group of 5 pilgrims from France. One of them was an airline stewardess with Lufthansa out of Germany, and she spoke English, another French couple, a single lady from France, and the host, who spoke very good English. He was directing where everyone sat, and put Russell and I fairly far apart so we couldn’t just sit and ignore everyone else (which the other French couple seemed to get away with).

It was a nice meal, we had a lively and good conversation with the stewardess, who apparently flies to Japan a lot, and we told her we were thinking of going there next on a pilgrimage to shrines.

We had a very nice sleep, not too concerned about bed bugs here.