Hotel du Tilleul Aurillac

We spent the entire afternoon canoeing down the Dordogne. We packed a lunch and found a nice spot along the river to enjoy some wine and cheese. It was so peaceful and beautiful. Every couple of Kilometers was anothe castle overlooking the river. The river was so flat that we could just float along and enjoy the view.

From the cousins house we moved further west to Neils parents house. They have a place in a beautiful old town. It is an old walled vilage on the hilltop overlooking the valley. The village is full of cobblestone streets, windy narrow alleys and cute little homes. We ate great meals, enjoyed excellent wine and spent time with Neils parents. thank you again for hosting us!

We left the west coast and headed inland to look for work. We stopped at Angouleme for lunch which had a spectacular view from the old city. We carried on into the Dordogne, and looking for a campsite came across a municipal site in a little town called Argentat-sur-Dordogne. The weather was stifling hot, which that night brought on 24 hours of massive thunderstorms and then 3 days of rain! The Dordogne was flooding and even Argentat lost electricity one night!

... sense. So, after making the drive up the Costa Brava in our slightly disabled car, we arrived back in Avignon, where we'd rented the beastly thing a week before. By the way, the toll road in France can be pretty hairy, in terms of giant tailgating trucks. It IS very fast, but just a word of caution to timid drivers or those who have a problem with constantly having to stick your credit card in toll gate machines before ...

... jean michel, the friar, in the cathedral. today was emotional because a lot of our friends from the chemin are not continuing, so we had to say good bye to them; i might have shed a tear or two saying good bye to some of the nice old french ladies that have helped us along the way. we only have two more days of walking through the french hills before we descend into a valley that apparently ...

... because his bag is too small as well as his marked and loud noting that his body weight is much lower than mine, has not been afflicted with any painful blisters, and other than the usual figuring out how to wear the pack pains, has been pretty pain free. I have been pretty pain free as well, minus a small blister i developed on the second day on my left achilles tendon region, and which underneath the moleskin and a european remedy ...

Finally the day of departure from the BB arrives! Plan was to be gone without trace before it awoke, but packing and pondering took too much time for that. Lengthy goodbyes to the Welsh boys and Andy. Everyone else was too busy meditatin. At the last minute before disappearing, Dani ran out with fruit for us. Felt like the spotty kid who gets a momentīs attention from one of the big girls. Why so ...

Misery. Weīre so WET. Chris didnīt sleep. And I barely did. Found a cheap super market and bouhgt a cheap roast chicken to dry our sorrows. A bad move. This over-preserved chickenīs soul will come back to haunt us. Catch about six rides from village to village til we get to ...

... next morning to a perfect dawn, and to the crack, crack, crack of rifles from the valley below where the locals were hunting wild boar. The delicious boar is a delicacy and we tried it in many forms at the local restaurants and on our picnic table later in the week. The best version was at a tiny restaurant - il Corso - perched high on a rocky outcrop in the Marremma Coast hinterland, overlooking the Apelmeia wine estate where Robyn took us to meet an ...

... winter. We don't pretend it's not coming...we know it will be there every single year without fail. When it gets cold at home we bundle up in down filled coats and toques, turn up the thermostat, and drink lots of hot drinks (or other warming beverages). When it nippy here in Europe, they don't have forced air heating and without wall to wall carpeting, the old floors are bare wood or tile. Perhaps the people walking ...