Easter Monday - Le Barp-Le Muret
Weather forecast for cloud, but woke to clear skies which remained for most of the day.
Had breakfast in the hotel - good but expensive, and quite a few other guests around. Not until 9 on this jour de fête. Then over the road to the newsagent to buy maps for the trip, which I had not been able to find in Gradignan. Curious: the 1:25000 and 1:100000 IGN maps used to be easy to distinguish by colour; now they are both blue, which seems an odd piece of marketing by the IGN, though no doubt they have their reasons.
The marked route starts along a lane but soon converts to nice sandy tracks through, yes, pine forest more of less the whole way to Belin. I met 3 cyclists out for a spin, though they seemed to be having difficulty spinning on the sandy surface. Jacket on to start, but soon off as the sun got going. Just before Belin, a lady in one of the attractive villas shouted ‘Vous faîtes le sentier de St-Jacques? N’êtes pas trop fatigué?’ so the route appears to be well-known to the locals.
Belin is, of course, mentioned in LSJ as a must-visit where the bodies of many of Charlemagne’s companions were buried. Not a very convincing story and there is nothing to see nowadays anyway.
By now it was time for a little something and, though there are a couple of chambres d’hôte in Belin, no bar was open. So I opted to leave the waymarked route, which goes to the west of the village, and head for the other half of this dual village, Belier, along the main road. This meant I also did not make the detour to the old church of Lugo. Rather a tedious 2km with no bars until I got to Belier, where there was a substantial brasserie, where I had a ham sandwich - marred by a throat-grabbing smoky atmosphere.
I then followed the lanes to the attractive C11 church of Mons, which was, as I half expected, closed, as was the ‘exposition’ next door. Swallows nesting in the porch fled in panic at my approach - maybe not such a good place to nest. A quiet, peaceful place on this Easter weekend.
Just south of Mons is the border between the departments of Gironde and Landes, and at Mons the yellow arrows of the Gironde give way to the stylised scallop-shell markings of the Landes Amis. Unfortunately the route to the next settlement, Le Muret, is very tedious, first along the N10 (wide with little traffic, but still tarmac), then along a lane by the side of the motorway.
Le Muret has a nice Landes chapel of St Roch on entry. A circular churchyard, a holy well at the back, set in an oak grove: in Wales, I would say this was an ancient site, but in the Landes? None of the oaks is particularly old. Butterflies fluttering around here: brimstones and even an orange-tip.
Opposite the church is a manoir with chambres d’hôte, and there are a couple of hotels, in one of which I stopped. Good dinner in the hotel, French for a change.
26km