“What a wonderful world” was a perfect song to describe this morning. When we set out from Chez Nadine in Eauze, the rising sun was skimming the tops of the grapevines and jet trails shot across the blue sky this way and that. The fading moon was still high and followed us all morning. This world has so much beauty when we slow down and pay attention to what is around us – something we don’t do enough of in every day life but certainly do here.

We enjoyed our stay at Chez Nadine. It was prettily decorated, comfortable, had a beautiful pool and bathing suits to borrow. Nadine cooked up a veritable feast last night! Six of us sat around a big, square, wooden plank table and had prawns (salmon specially prepared for Dave), duck breast stuffed with foie gras, mushrooms, red and rose wines, etc. Google Translate worked like a charm most of the time, but also resulted in confused looks and much laughter when “GT” got the translation wrong. 🤣 

Today we walked by more corn fields and vineyards and we actually found a few clusters of slightly shrivelled grapes missed by the pickers. We passed by a few stand-offish cows and horses who weren’t as curious about pilgrims as the ones we met earlier in our journey. The tiniest mouse scooted across the trail and stopped, frozen in its tracks. Then I found a ♥️ rock, almost as perfectly shaped as the one I left at Cruz de Ferro in 2015.  

We stopped at a friendly little café in Manciet about halfway to Nogaro, our destination for the day. When we left Manciet our Wise Pilgrim offline map wasn’t showing up so we had to be extra vigilant not to miss any trail markers. Once we arrived in Nogaro and had wi-fi access, we downloaded the off-line map and are good to go tomorrow when we head to Arblade-le-Bas.  

We are at Gîte du Pied Levé in Nogaro where there is no communal meal but there is access to a kitchen. Perfect! A kitchen and a grocery store around the corner that doesn’t close in the middle of the day is a great  combination!