Today was a day of delights. After heavy rain, mists and fog, it was such a joy to walk in sun and shade. It never got too hot, but it brought all the surrounding landscape to life.

Undulating countryside sometimes gave us wonderful views of the mountains

and glorious river views.

Nature was very present: a hare, swallows, a cockchafer beetle, wild orchids and hosts of amorous frogs and toads. Wonderful trees. It felt such a privilege to be walking through it all.

Sault de Navailles was a particularly lovely village; house after ancient house in good states of repair. Some lovely old features kept, like the doors above. There were interesting signs and notices which made clear that they are a very pilgrim-friendly community, which made it all the more disappointing that the church was locked.

The miles unfurled until I was rolling down the hill to Orthez just after 1pm.

It was the capital of the Béarn, an independent state until the seventeenth century. Old houses with brightly-painted shutters abounded, as did relics of its history.

This last is now a museum telling the story of this most powerful and influential noblewoman, Queen of Navarre and Marquise of Béarn in her own right (Salic Law was unknown here). Her son became Henri IV of France, the first of the Bourbon kings.

She was also a staunch Protestant, a humanist very influenced by Erasmus. Despite Henri’s coversion to Catholicism, she made the Béarn a Protestant state until 1620.

The story of the way the Catholic French state bore down on its Protestant subjects, how they survived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the contribution this community made in civil society, and in wartime, was told on the top floor of the museum. It made for a surprisingly moving 45 minutes.

Then it really was time to take my leave of this marvellous pilgrim route. To the station and an express train got me to Bayonne by 5pm. I am in the pilgrim hostel for two nights before heading home.