We had an effortless 16 kilometres to walk to Lectoure today – effortless at least for the first 15 kilometres. That last kilometre threatened to do us in when the temperature peaked at 31 degrees and we still had a hill to climb. 🥵 Other than that, it was a great day. Once again we were imagining what life might be like for a French farmer as we passed farm after farm. Castet-Arrouy was our only chance for coffee but we didn’t stop. We had a supply of dried apricots, nuts, raisins, one apple and plenty of water to tide us over until we reached Lectoure.

At one point we came to a big farm without a fence where the sunflowers had all been harvested. When we saw pilgrims across the way, we took a short cut and walked diagonally across the field, being careful not to get snagged by the sharp sunflower nubs. We took a closer look and noticed new sunflowers had already sprouted. Cool!

As soon as we caught sight of Lectoure at noon, we also caught sight of the Pyrénées for the first time. It gave me instant goosebumps! In ten days we will arrive at the foothills of the Pyrenees in St. Jean Pied de Port and our journey across Southern France will be over. Ten days only!

At the Saint-Gervais Cathedral in Lectoure we admired the most amazing, colourful stained glass windows and then wandered down to the other end of town where we found a church that had been turned into a huge second-hand store. It was fascinating what they have to sell – everything including the kitchen sink! A town of about 4,000 probably needs only one big church anyway. 😂 

We are staying at B&B A2 Pas in Lectoure and love it. We have a third floor private room with bath and kitchen conveniently located across from a pizzeria and a wine store. How perfect is that? For under 20 euros we brought back to our room a large pizza and a bottle of Chateau Haut-Meyreau wine from Bordeaux bottled in 2021. It was a very good year. 🤣