Nursery night

Friday 5 September

Our hostess of the night before needed to leave for work at 8.30 am this morning so we committed to being ready to leave then too.  An early start ( mostly ) means an earlier finish.

Another hot and long day was ahead of us.  We were ready for it - must think positively, must think positively…

We had plenty of water with us, plus plenty of energy food including left over rice dish from the night before.  Our first stop was late morning at Champlitte, the town where we knew that the Italians and the Americans from a few days before had stayed overnight.  Might we possibly bump into them ?

We then went our separate ways until lunch time.  My route was along a straight main road, long and slow uphill.  A left turn after approx 3 miles took me to the point at which we had arranged to meet for lunch.  The meeting point was a ‘ Lavoire’.  We seemed to be in Lavoire country.  These were roofed wash houses from times gone by, set in the middle of a village.  They were very well preserved and still had running water in them.  We found this cool water always very useful for freshening up and cooling down with.

Tony was late.  Very very late, and I was getting hungry ( not good ).  We spoke on the phone, and he had been having navigation issues - differences between map vs gps vs walking route signposts.  Eventually he arrived, and we tucked into our veritable feast of afore mentioned goodies.  

We separated again for the final stretch of the day.  I went ahead to establish where in our destination town of Dampierre-sur-Salon our accommodation was.  We had booked this through the town tourist office ie the phone number of a lady who worked at a local nursery / infant school where we were welcome to sleep on one of their class room floors.  The lady with the key and I met, and I was shown around the building.  We had use of the kitchen, and any food or drink that was there.  There were showers too.  Perfect.  This was another example of people being aware of long distance walkers who need ( simple ) accommodation and therefore registering their contact numbers with the local tourist office where walkers find them - simples.

I met Tony at a supermarche and gave him the heads up.  We bought provisions for a tasty tea ( including booze - oh what extravagance ! ).  Here we met 2 Brummy walkers.  One had a very nasty blister that had had to be treated by a French doctor.  The other had a very large tummy - we wondered how they would fare on their onward journey.

Tony had suffered today.  The sun had been hot again, and the day long.  We were on the final countdown of our days to destination Citeaux Abbey, just south of Dijon, so motivation was high but the body had just about given up.

A very good sleep was had by both.

Distance - 19.50 miles

Distance since Helmsley - 939.35 miles