She told us she didn’t speak much English even though her father sent her to England to learn it. “The English speak so fast and there was no way I could ever understand” our host seemed to respond with some regret, “but I know German well because they didn’t talk so fast.” But she did speak our language, that of the ‘Pelegrín’ or ‘walker.’
You can tell this when they allow you your room well before you are expected: ask you inside their home and gesture for you to sit on their lounge; when they offer you an assortment of drinks; engage you in conversation as though they have nothing else to do; ring for your next night’s accommodation; suggest she drive there because the phone is unanswered, and wash and dry your clothes. That’s a special language.
So another grand ‘Pans de Bois’ which, like the one before, had its idiosyncrasies. The previous one had a 10 centimetre speed bump in the doorway between the hall and the lounge. A danger to anyone but for someone with PD, a good test for your balance if you don’t clear it – I fortunately passed.
In this one, you must duck if you’re over 5 feet. It’s our category and once each it caught us on the forehead which caused both of us to speak yet another language that we had learnt in an informal setting when we were young.
Dinner for us, with 3 older French couples and a fisherman, was pleasant. I don’t know if it’s a culture thing but the 3 women rarely spoke (our friend in Munster will surely inform me) at both meal times. They were all on holidays as we picked up snippets of conversation. The fisherman spoke English, and had been studying the language of fishing for 10 years. He now knows how to catch ‘hard to catch’ fish including Pike.
Once again a beautiful and diverse track, mostly flat, but with small lakes, one the home of a whole new family of white swans. Noisy dark forests clung to our cosy track to one side mostly as we move from gravel to mud (but saved by the patches of grass), through deeply rutted (tractor wheels), muddy and puddled holes hidden by very tall grass – slow and difficult!
At one point, and as I was in front at the time, I saw an unusual (for me), animal on the road. It heard me as I took a far away snap, but when I got there, this stripy beaver-like animal was swimming into the undergrowth.
Still in ‘Pans de Bois territory’ but this time the first PdB (sounds a bit like a disease) church we have ever seen, directly opposite our PdB rooms for the night – a lounge/kitchen also attached. We’re here early so we walked around the whole ‘Pans de Bois’ village admiring this exquisite 15th century architecture.