Arrived: Lectoure 4:15pm
Total hours: 8.75
Total kms: 32.3
Accumulated kms: 465.8
Weather: Sunny and cloudty in equal measure
This morning my shin was really sore and I started wishing I was someone who took drugs. Then I thought, wait! I can be someone who takes drugs! So I stopped at a pharmacy about 17km in and bought some anti-inflammatory gel. For the next hour the pain grew to be almost excruciating, when I started to question whether I might somehow, somehow be walking on a fractured leg, then suddenly it was almost completely gone. It was miraculous. The rest of the walk was virtually pain free.
More of the same today, lots of barren fields with nothing growing in them. I met two Frenchies at the gite tonight, Flan and Guy. Flan started walking in August, and has been moving very slowly, stopping for weeks at a time to visit friends. He's the first person I've met going at least to Saint Jean Pied de Port, and perhaps the entire way to Santiago de Compostela. He said that in August the fields were full of crops and flowers and looked amazing. He told me this time of year was perfect to be doing what I was doing - focussing purely on walking - because there were no distractions and the landscape was really just quite depressing. I wouldn't say I've found it depressing, but it is a bit sad to be walking through field after field of broken and desolate earth.
I passed two cemetaries on my way into Lectoure as well, both of them, like virtually every cemetary I've passed on the journey, even before All Saints Day, absolutely full of colourful flowers. It's such a marked difference to our own cemetaries, where you're lucky to see any flowers at all. Different things are important for different cultures I guess.
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