We left ‘school’ early in case the kids arrived early, really not sure when they start. The kids I’d say are preschoolers and the building has a large inside activities area rather than a gym with lots of smaller rooms, a large kitchen and shower rooms.
What we do know about the older children is that they get bussed around a lot about midday to 2. I imagine, and have heard they go home for a long lunch, and we see all the action because it is our lunch time too and it is sometimes, somewhere in a village.
No accomodation for 35kms and as the French might say ‘it is not possible’, for us anyway. So after securing a room in this 35km place, we hitched a ride with a lovely young French woman for a few kms to start the day.
It was still a good distance and another alternate route took us through a forest where we saw abundant ferns for the first time (there seems to be a new forest every day with a different name). It was a village route where small towns can be seen everywhere, many of which we passed through. Lunch was had in one of these villages, but no school bus – just a tractor and a man using a town water pump.
The weather is emptying our water bottles very quickly now so not being too sure about the water pump, I asked the tractor man. He filled our bottles and gave us a large brand new one, while wiping his forehead and saying ‘chaud’.
Our last leg was next, following lunch as usual. The directions had been so good, that it seemed reasonable to follow a track through metre-high grass. All our authors signs’ were ticked but the tall grass should have been a warning. No matter, we headed off anyway … wrong! A fence and a river stood between us and the forest we were to enter, so we turned back after an hour of very hard, avoidable walking.
Barred from the forest and with no idea where we were, there was only one option to get us home in a reasonable distance – another hitch. Not only did they stop for us, they turned around because our direction was too long. So another friendly woman and her son took us timidly to our rather plush digs for tonight, where we have a much needed bathtub to wash away the grass seeds!!!!!!!
