Day Twenty Two

Start of the fourth week.

We are at St Savin, although the finish of my walk today was 14 kms from here. This was the nearest campsite. St Savin is twinned with Hartley Wintney, which should interest several of the readers of this blog. I don’t know if that includes the policeman who booked me for speeding outside the police college while my brother was lecturing inside.

Today was a flat walk, at last. The last flat walk was Day 1. This is Day 22. Not a bad average, I suppose, one flat walk every 3 weeks. The first 10 kms was along an old railway track, lovely and shady, trees on both sides, those on the left separating me from the Vienne river.

I then met Gay in Lussac-les-Chateaux for coffee. We hadn’t realised it, but we are familiar with Lussac, having stayed there at least twice, once in the lovely Orangerie Hotel – our chief memory of that is that there were coracles floating in the swimming pool. Yesterday Jacques told us the curious fact that Lussac, which is named for its chateaux, has a few remnants of one castle, whereas Persac – where he lives and we were residing in his orchard – has seven chateaux but no castley suffix to its name.

After Lussac there was little shade. The roads were straight and quiet. Also, as I said, flat, although my gadget tells me that my total ascents today were 896 metres, which is a mere Pennine.

The campsite is hosting a collection of campervans and caravans who are here to celebrate a 60th wedding anniversary. Tonight there will be feasting and accordion music. In town this afternoon there are celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the town being twinned with a German city. We shall walk into town presently and check that out - after all, I have walked a mere 30 kms today, giving a total so far of 583. Oops! Undersold myself, make that 683 kms to date.

We have seen donkeys every day. Of course they are cute, but I was wondering why they are there. After all, farmers do not keep any animal for sentimental reasons – they have to earn their keep. We cleared this up with Jacques yesterday. The answer is simple, really. As that dog on the television used to say – Sausages!

p.s. Did I mention that it was over 30 degrees? Never mind, back to thunder and lightning tomorrow. Then rain the day after. Who needs more than 3 days of dry weather?