Pilgrim Goodie Bag

I have a friend house-sitting at the moment… and also ensuring that our cats don’t feel neglected and unloved 🙂 She and her husband are a rather glitzy pair… lots of travel for work, lots of posh nights out and they are simply rather fabulous and glamorous. So before they came to visit I gave them a little task, to please find me a few toiletries that a weary pilgrim could sneak into her rucksack and not notice the extra weight.

Well… what can I say! They didn’t disappoint! I think I have enough to last me for ten caminos!

So I set off on my walk this morning smelling sweetly and ready for the day ahead. We did manage to set off earlier, but even at 8:00 am it was hot. We planned to walk the sentier route around the village of Salers but after 15 minutes of walking through overgrown paths and long grass in unmowed fields we decided we’d retrace our steps and see if there was a better route we could take. We didn’t want a long walk today as we’re off as tourists later.

We picked up a GR and followed this but as soon as we hit the village the markers disappeared. We retraced our steps again and looked and looked… GRRRR… in the end we decided to pick up a different trail and see how far it too us… and of course 5 minutes out of town we saw the original route markers again.

We lost perhaps 20 minutes faffing here and it was getting hotter. We walked up the trail and out of the village but crikey it’s scorching again. We stopped for a boots off and pondered our choices. It really is too hot to go walking out on the higher exposed hills… even with my UV brolly… it’s going to be 36-37oc by midday and we didn’t know where this route was taking us. We could see the original Saler’s sentier route markers, so we picked this up again and as we knew the walk was only 6km in total we were sure it would be ok.

We walked for a little through pastures full of the famous Saler’s cow. They are really pretty cows but big, solid looking animals with fur and long horns.. . and I’m thankful they are on the other side of the electric fence! They each wear a bell… the bigger the cow the bigger the bell. A field of Salers sounds like a enormous wind-chime!

Before we knew it we had wandered back to our campervan site and the shade of the trees… and more cold beer!