The dinner at the gite was the best ever. May be we were too hungry. First the vegetable soup came out. All vegetable with herb, steamy hot for a very cold autumn evening. The aroma filled up the dining room with such a warm and wonderful smell of home cooking. Leek, potatoes, carrot, beans, herbs, and the ravaging hunger of a whole day’s walk with no food equate to some very big gulp of slurping down soup like you have never seen before. I must say we inhaled it. We ate it so fast it brought a big smile to the chef’s face.

Next she served us a salad of greens and tomatoes and some tuna and cold cut meat. That did not stay on the plate very long neither.

Then comes some pasta with red sauce and the best duck confit ever. The skin is crispy and the meat so tender it falls off the bone.

For desert we had a baked apple with a scoop of ice cream. We were so full, satisfied, happy and life is back in our tired body.

We said good night to the rest of the group and head up to our room right away. We are tired. We have a long day tomorrow too.

This place is very cold at night. It’s more like icy. Or freezing to be correct. I took a couple more blankets out of the closet. We huddle up under the blanket. Ed says we need to bring our core body temperature up. That’s a lot of big words. I say we need to get warm very fast before we die of frost. There is a reason why they fed us so well, so we can have enough energy to fight the cold of the night.

I think it’s the change in season. It’s raining outside. The main heater is not on yet. It’s too cold for us. Ed has no problem falling asleep. Hot or cold, his head hits the pillow and he’s out within the blink of an eye. He claims he is a person of pure intention and of higher consciousness so he an fall asleep easily. I must be a person of very bad intention ( what ever that Is that I am intending to do) as I toss and turn, I fuss for a long while just trying to fall asleep. It is way to cold for me. We are now near the Pyrenees mountain range, under 80 miles away, I don’t know if that has anything to do with the weather being so cold. It nice to walk in the cold, we move faster. But it is not nice at night unless these gites turn on the heater!!!

Ed also set his alarm for 2 AM hoping he will wake up to catch the presidential debate in the U.S. I think pilgrims should stay out of political debates. I can take a lot of thing out of Ed but I can’t and the passion for politics out of him. I can only sigh ….

I will see if he will wake up in the night to watch the debate. I doubt that will happen judging from the deep breathing right now.

We can’t help but laugh at the French pilgrim discussion tonight about the American blockbusters “unger games” and “arry potter”. The French can’t pronounce the “H” so hunger games turns into “unger games” and “arry potter”. It took us a little bit to catch on to it but we finally figured it all out. “Hello bank” is “Ello bank”. “Ollywood”, “appy birthday”, “ome sweet ome”, there, now you just manage to speak English with a French accent!

It rains all night.

At 2 am Ed woke up and boot up his computer. He got online and tried to get the big republican presidential debate online. There is one spot where he can get a very strong signal. It’s in the bathroom. No problem. He takes a chair into the bathroom and set his computer on the sink. He fusses with the computer for 20 minutes. No debates.

Ed then put in all kinds of searches for any possibilities of a streaming channel some where. Finally he called me up. Honey, they display something in French. Can you help me. I have a quarter of one eye open. I don’t wake up easily at 2:30 am. It says on his screen to “click here to watch the stream” so we click on the button. Then it says “prohibited in Europe”. All I did was translate what was displayed on the screen.

Ed decided to give up and go to bed. Thank goodness. The night was so cold I don’t want to be out of the blankets.

We woke up to a cold and freezing morning. I think summer has ended end of August. The Fall season has ended yesterday. And now it’s the beginning of winter season! I think snow will be here today! Oh la la! It’s so cold! There is no question today regarding to garter or not to garter. Today it’s a double garter or triple garter day, wear as many garters as you have to keep the legs warm!

Before breakfast Ed tries to get online and reads the report on the presidential debate. Nothing. He searches every where and not one bit of report. Finally he says it’s night time in the U.S. Everybody is still sleeping.

I texted our son. He texted me back: mom, the debate if for Wednesday night. Not Tuesday night. I will try to find a recording online for you to watch if you can not catch it online!

So Ed is just one day early. He will try to watch it again tonight for sure.

We left miramont sensacq early for a very long walk day today. We stop by the village shop and stock our bag with food. From the rain all night last night, the walk is a crazy muddy and slippery walk. Downhill slippery means we can slip all the way down the hill so we use our poles to stop the sliding. Uphill slippery means stepping uphill but sliding backward. It is hard to describe what happens on the walk, basically it just mean we had a very hard and unpleasant day. Ed ended the day with very red feet and I am a bit concerned the red areas do not turn into full blown blisters. Feet care will be our first priority tonight.

All the while walking through muddy trails, Ed keeps saying: video is on, you can give a sliding demo now. I walk ahead of Ed, zig zagging from one side to the other side trying to find a dry place to put my foot. We manage to finish the stage today, visiting the church of Sensacq, passing by Arzacq and finishing today’s walk in Larreule.

Another interesting thing today, for the first time as we pass a farm in the region, the farmer asked us “are you an immigrant?”. I guess because we were walking with our backpack? I told him we are pilgrims on the way of St James. He wished is good courage for our walk. A little bit after that, Ed decided to stop and check his backpack for his passport. He just want to make sure we don’t get into trouble in case we need to show some identification. We found all our passports so we walked on with a big sigh of relief.

We spent quite a lot of time walking with a psychologist from Australia who is on her third pilgrimage. She is walking alone and we had a good time talking to her. She was in the gite with us last night, together with a group of 5 other lady pilgrims. They are a lively group of women who met each other on the walk. They told us wild stories of romances on the walk, one man met another woman in Conques and they have been walking together since then, another share a tip about a gite ran by a single gentleman that they like a lot, he served them all kinds of food and wines and a lot of other juicy rumors and wild stories of romances on the camino. Get a bunch of single women together and you get nothing but trouble!!!!

We arrive at the gite today which is a farm with a long table in the dining room. We expect a very big crowd of pilgrim for dinner tonight. The place is extremely well kept. Very nice farmstead. Very nice, clean and beautiful rooms. We love it already. The pilgrims started to arrive as it gets closer to 5 pm. It’s a full house tonight. I look forward to a lively large group of pilgrims for dinner tonight. I am sure we will hear even more stories as everybody seems very friendly and very warm and caring.