Pilgrims on the Way

A bit of a lazy start today, but today’s stage is listed as only 19.5 km, so I wasn’t bothered about it. I finally left the gîte about 6:40. The most treacherous part was going down the building’s crazy stone stairs.  Quite cool this morning.  The Camino exited town through one of the remaining gatehouses in the ramparts. From a […]

It rained last night. Not hard, but pretty constant for most of the night. This, combined with the sort of general dampness of our gîte, means that not only did the clothes I washed last night not get dry, even clothes I didn’t wash at all feel vaguely damp. I left about 6:15 this morning, which was about half an […]

Not only did last night’s gîte not have Wi-Fi – which isn’t super unusual – but they also didn’t have electrical outlets in the dorms. This means that I had to rechargew my phone using a battery pack. Again, not a problem – that’s why I brought the battery pack with me in the first place. I knew that there […]

Last night, for only the second time since I’ve been in France, I had all of my clothes laundered in a machine. As much as the daily hand washing of clothes is something of a ritual for the pilgrim, I know that it’s really only getting the clothes cleaner, not actually clean. It’s amazing what a difference a washing machine […]

Yesterday, I broke out my rain jacket for the first time in France. I wore it to the grocery, and then to my trip to the center of Nogaro. I returned to the church of Saint Nicholas. It is a solid Romanesque structure with enormous supporting pillars. It projects a feeling of strength, solidity, and permanence. The church was consecrated […]

I had quite the adventure trying to find a place for dinner last night. I was staying in the Gîte Communal, so there was no dinner there. And it turns out that nearly every restaurant in town is closed on Mondays. I ended up going to a small hotel restaurant. The food was out-of-this-world fantastic, but it definitely put a […]

Jacopo and I spoke last night about today’s route. It was planned to be a long one, more than 33 km, but the possibility exists of breaking it in half. Doing so would be the first major change I had in my planned schedule, but especially given the heat, I have been thinking about it for some days. The truth […]

This morning, I overslept. After breakfast with Jacopo in the Presbytery refectory, I didn’t make it out the door until about 6:40 AM. Jacopo was running just a little behind me. Slept like a baby. I definitely needed the rest. The streets of Lectoure were dark, and there was very little in the way of street lights. I could find […]

Yesterday evening, I returned to the church of Saint Pierre to pray vespers. Mass for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary began at 6 PM. The priest was a young, dynamic African immigrant, apparently responsible for a large number of the churches in this area. Afterwards, there was a small reception hosted in the parish offices for the pilgrims. […]