No Green Grass

We have been very relaxed bears over the last 2 days: we have had some leisurely starts and shorter walking days with longer lunches. It has all been very civilised, although the accommodation has been fairly basic - not that a pilgrim bear needs much more than a shower, some food and a bed.

We are going to have to improve our spelling in French of our name though, as in both of the last 2 gites we have had our name on the door of our room spelt as Sykrs - so we're worried about being taken for Germans.

The mornings are definitely turning autumnal and are cool and misty. This morning, just as we were about to leave the gite (the last persons to do so), there was a heavy shower, so we waited until it had stopped and the sun came out.

No doubt the farmers will be pleased by the rain as the land is completely parched and we haven't seen a blade of green grass for days. All the animals are having to eat hay or silage as there is no grass for them to eat. The cows also have salt licks in the fields and they have sculpted them into such interesting shapes that we reckon we could organise a great art exhibition of salt lick sculptures.

This lunchtime we sat outside a church in the village of Bach (yes, we did hum a suitable piece of music as we entered) and watched lots of leaves and conkers falling off some chestnut trees. There were several cars parked underneath and there fairly frequent bangs as conkers landed on the metal roofs. Blue Bear would not have been pleased if it had been the bearmobiles underneath.

As we finished lunch there were rumbles of thunder and dark clouds gathered rather ominously. We sheltered in the church during a 3 minute shower then set off again as we hadn't too far to go.

We managed to walk fast enough to keep the storm just to the edge of us, until about 3 km from tonight's gite. We had light rain until we passed the 300m to go sign, when it started to get heavier, so we raced for 'Poudally', the gite, and arrived not too wet.

This is a private gite and a real gem. It is a very old building but the young owners have clearly lavished a lot of love and attention on it, not to mention money, and it is lovely inside. When we went into our room we were very amused by the lovely brown hen sheltering just the other side of our glass door.

We'll probably have to wait until tomorrow to post this as we are in the middle of nowhere, with no wi-fi, but as it's stopped raining now we'll hopefully go outside soon to take some photos and find the donkey we've heard braying.

Love from the Camino Bears xxx