Day 10; Avroult to…uhm? Where are we?
Ok THIS will be one weird day to remember!
As we approached our destination for the day, the tiny village of Liettres, I pulled up the website on my phone for our booking reservation to get clear directions to the place only to discover that, through ( I’m not confessing but probably), my mistake (or more like incompetence for not double checking dates before hitting accept), I had booked the date for tomorrow, and we are now only 4km away.
Frantically trying to figure things out, I realized that if I couldn’t get the date changed, we would have no place to stay tonight! I emailed the property with a change of date request but the reply was that “…they usually reply within 24hrs”.
Argh! Not good enough. I tried to change the dates myself on Booking.com web site but the reply was “…those dates not available on booking.com”. So I tried to make a new reservation for the same hotel but was told “…those dates are not available on booking.com”. Being so close, we decided to just go there and talk to them directly, only to find on the sign at the front gate said “…the reception does not open until 17:00”. That would not allow us enough time to find another place if there even was one near by.
Standing right in front of the “Gite” (French holiday hotel, sorta) I phoned the number and was given a recorded message, in French, that the reception opens at 17:00 and please leave a message. It was in French so I didn’t get the entire message, but I understood enough to know that we need to find another place to stay or the only other option for tonight could be under a park bench.
I frantically booked a small room another 8km further on down the trail! Argh the thought and pain of another 8km was tough, and the Tylenol had worn off, as had the cortisone some days ago! But as we were sitting trying to figure stuff out, under some trees in the park on the very park bench that was likely to be the one we’d be sleeping under, the weirdest (or serendipitous) thing happened! Maybe because weird things tend to happen when you’re on a pilgrimage.
An elderly woman (our age, were elderly too) pulled out of a parking lot at the edge of the park and slowly backed up down the path towards us. she rolled down the window and asked if we were looking for a place to stay! Hmmm? Ok, weird.
She explained that she owns a small Gîte not far away, right on the Via Francigena trail, and if we’re interested we could stay there. Neither of us was sure what to make of this, being totally caught off guard, and desperate.
She said we could hop in her car and she would take us there so we could look at it and decide. WELL! Serendipity strikes!
It is the most amazing place we’ve stayed in so far amazingly renovated by the woman, Genevieve and her husband Danial.
Pictures don’t do it justice, but first…today’s journal entries:
Dining area.
The couple who own and run the place are retired farmers whose children now run the farm and a dairy. They are amazingly friendly people who welcomed us into their house and made us tea with biscuits. We had a long interesting conversation in Frenglish with Google Translate helping when words and hand gestures weren’t enough.
And so ends the trials and fortunes of today. Good night.
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