Up quite early, and after breakfast, and a picnic Nicole insisted on making up for me, I was off by 8am. My feet were feeling better, and appreciated walking in some soft flat shoes I have with me. But they are only good for road walking, so after 4k, I swapped to my boots, but with double socks and no insoles, and headed into the woods.

I can report that the boots saw me through the day with little discomfort.

Pondaurat, Savignac, and several other villages around, have very old churches built up against other dwellings. I imagine they were very likely the presbyteries, but they look quite odd.

Here is Savignac, which looks, from the north, like someone has taken the remains of the church and incorporated them into their house. The western view tells a different story.

I wanted to see inside, but it was locked. The window of the house next door was open, so I asked the young lady there if I could borrow the key or if she knew where it was. No, she didn’t have it, nor did she know where it was to be had, but in a slightly surprised tone of voice that anyone would want to go in. I have always been very keen to have open churches where I served.

Another day of almost entirely uninterrupted solitude. Understandable in the countryside, for the Camino is routed along very minor roads, and through woods and fields, but every village was dead, and not a shop, not even a boulangerie or a pharmacie to be seen. What I did see were the advertisements for the big supermarkets at towns 10-20 Kms away. What do people without cars do? I haven’t seen any evidence of a home delivery service, not for Amazon, and certainly not for grocery shopping.

My picnic from Nicole was a gamefowl pate (home-made, of course) sandwich, with one Michel’s monster tomatoes. I had it in a grocer’s in Auros,  one of a handful of shops there that were open. There was also a table and chairs, available for people who bought a coffee to sit and socialise. I had a splendid Alsatian beer with my picnic.

After lunch I took a detour from the Camino – 3.5 Kms out to the Abbaye Saint Marie de Rivet. The nuns here are Cistercians, an order known for their simplicity of life.  Their chapel bore this out; an almost stark room of great simplicity.

Visitors sit in a transept behind where I was standing to take this picture, at right angles to the quire, so they can see the altar, but not the sisters. Vespers was lovely, but the chants used were not traditional. I’m not sure they gained anything by being updated.

The buildings were beautiful, and beautifully kept. And they have a flourishing ministry to retreatants, pilgrims, people coming for seminars, and day visitors. There are quite a few new buildings tucked behind the old, with up to thirty plus extra cells for those visiting. Again, simplicity is the theme.

It was interesting to go to supper with some young men and women, one there to revise for a professional exam, others for more obviously spiritual purposes, besides a gaggle of middle-aged pilgrims. We were eighteen in all. Now this may be a nun thing, but the jugs of water to drink at supper were definitely warm. Not hot like the fierce nuns at Ditchingham served, but unpleasantly warm. I don’t get it.

Along the way I saw a flock of ten white egrets on a water meadow, some donkeys, and a very huge and vicious chained mastiff who really, really wanted to eat me.

Over the motorway near Savignac I watched the world whizz past before settling back into my slow journey

Good night and God bless you.