Camino Buddies.

 

Day 22 - Moissac

     A couple of firsts occurred today. It was the first day that we traveled the whole day with other pilgrims.  Denis and Elise both made it obvious that they wanted to walk the day with us.  Denis is from the foothills of the French alps and is a retired sports instructor.  He looks strikingly similar to Martin Sheen, who is the main actor in the movie that introduced us to the Camino several years ago.  Elise is a free spirit.  She is a retired computer programmer from southeastern France.  They have both traveled a lot and can speak some English.  The four of us enjoyed each other’s company and tease one another.  Unfortunately,  Elise slipped and twisted her foot early in the day and by late afternoon she was really hurting.  We reluctantly said goodbye when at a gite a few miles from the end of our walk. Another highlight was meeting Claire. We traveled earlier with her and thought that she had lost us in the dust when we took a day off.  She is one of only a few pilgrims we have met that will be going all the way to Santiago this year.

The other first was our longest day so far, which was 18 miles.  The weather finally cooled down enough to walk in the afternoon.  We are staying in a private house room on an old street in a larger town that boasts an 11th century church and abbey.  We had pizza on the street tonight in the shadows of the church.

     Today we passed through an amazing array of crops. We passed apples, plums, grapes, kiwi, sunflowers, figs, sorghum and melons.  We were able to sample most of them since we could glean them along the route.