October 19. La Coquille to Thiviers.

I asked Ken to do the blog today. This is his version.

Tough day. Here’s a frigging picture.

Given that’s typical Ken and thus completely unacceptable, here is the real blog.

One thing I didn’t mention earlier was that my foot was seized up by the time we reached our accommodation last night and it was difficult to walk. But it felt okay this morning and off we went.

We have stayed in so many different types of places. From this stone house in the morning to a mobile home in the evening.

It is mornings like these that make me happy to be doing this. Starting off walking downhill (unusual in that we usually start off with a lovely hill) in all that green with 6 asses below me. Oh wait. Sorry. There were only four donkeys, not 6.

The meticulousness of how these stone houses are put together never ceases to amaze me.

I had to get a picture of this tulip tree in all its glory. The owner drove up as I was getting the photo and agreed it was beautiful. The shape of the leaf gives the tree its name.

I finally realized that it was the lacing on my shoe cutting off circulation that was causing the seizing of my foot, so Ken did some readjusting. This helped my foot immensely but by then I was developing a shin splint.

Ken says “Finally! The right person getting lectured!”

We weren’t sure we would find anything to eat tonight so we considered maybe we could have chicken…

Stereo barking.

Ken here. Terry will do anything to get out of walking, even taking pictures of microscopic flowers or looking through garbage for anything we can take. Takes a lot of patience on my part.

Terry here. Here’s the microscopic flower – bell heather. And I had gone over to put some garbage in the bin. However, even though it’s free to put things in the recycling bins you actually have to pay to put anything in the garbage bin. That’s why there are all the garbage bags outside the bin because no one wants to pay. What a stupid system. At least they don’t worry about bears.

A not so microscopic dahlia.

Yay! Only one thousand two hundred and sixty eight kilometres to go!  Although, we are not going all the way to Santiago this time. Maybe another 400 to go.

As we were walking towards this time, we could hear all this yelling and wierd howling…then gunshots.  Hunting with dogs. I don’t understand how they could be hunting so close to residences and the town. And I won’t get into opinions on using dogs to flush out deer and other animals so that the poor animals die terrified.

A more suitable “sport”. Petainque tournament.

One kilometer left to go.

Our home for the night.

Barely beat the rain.  Our home had a jar full of candy, which we pretty much cleaned out, so much that we felt guilty and put 5 euro in the jar. Scott has been carrying rice, lentils and bouillon in his Mary Poppins bag so we had a good supper and we’re snug as bugs.  But sadly, I couldn’t get any of the three cats I saw to come for pets.

But cosy, fed and dry.  What more do you really need?