Roamin'

pac
Jun 28
3 min read

Onzième jour - Saturday 27th June, Montreal-du-Gers - Éauze - 18.1 klms (running total approx 203.9)

The Roman plans evolved in a completely unplanned and unforseen way. No worries.

The initial plan had been that we would take the deviation via Sèviac and go visit the

Villa gallo-romaine de Séviac, which has an extensive display of a Roman villa including some 100s square metres of mosaics. But it doesn't open until 10am, which would have required a lot of waiting around initially and then extensive walking in later in the day when the temperature was to peak. The second plan was to return by cab from Éauze, the day’s destination, but by the time we got to Éauze and made enquiries the decision had been made to close the display early (which is mainly outside, even if with shade cloth protection) for heat/safety reasons. So Séviac was never to be.

We arrived into Éauze a little after 12:30 pm. The last 5 klms or so were along an old converted rail trail (photo later). We were making very good time - around 5kph - and were slowly being caught up by a solo walker. Let me briefly introduce Jacque.

Jacque is French, I think. He has walked from Geneva, a distance so far of around 900 klms. He has another 200 to go to reach Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and then a further 825 on the Camino del Norte to Santiago de Compostela. Over 1900 klms. Quite an impressive effort, and judging by the strength of his stride today I have no doubt that he'll make it. But more than this, this is a wonderful example of a brief camino interchange. We walked together and talked for less than 10 minutes. In that time he whipped out his little camera (not his phone) and snapped a photo of us, the first Aussies he'd met on his walk, and the kangaroos on the backs of our packs. A couple of minutes later I grabbed the selfie above. We'll never see him again, but he'll remember his first two Aussies and we the fit and fast French man who in one trip is walking almost as far as we've done in 5 caminos (not quite, but you get the gist). Wonderful stuff.

Back to the walk proper. It was a fairly uneventful and once again pleasant day - albeit still a bit warm. Having been stymied on Séviac, we instead visted the Éauze Archeological Museum to see the "Treasure of Éauze". It's a long story - the short version being that in 1985 a couple of archeologists stumbled upon a buried treasure of some 28,000 silver coins, and some bronze and gold coins and assorted gold necklaces and various other precious jewels. They'd been buried some 1,765 years ago (dwell on that number for just a moment). All on display here in Éauze. Again, a few photos follow. The Marcus Aurelius medallions were faves.