La Coquille

Despite forecasts of thunderstorms, today has been a perfect, even glorious day for walking. The October sun is warming, yet the pilgrim never gets hot. The fields and pastures remain splendidly green, while the woods and forests are clearly changing their wardrobe to the autumn collection.
Today’s route took me mostly along dirt and grass paths, still very wet from recent rains and morning dew. I took my first fall of the journey this morning while crossing a small wooden plank placed over a creek as a sort of bridge; as I stepped of the slippery board, one foot went out from me and down I went;
but it was a soft landing and I managed to keep my fanny out of creek, mud and nettles.
Shortly thereafter I crossed into a new region of France, Aquitaine, formerly ruled over by the extraordinary Elinore, whose son, by the way, Richard the Lionhearted, took the arrow in Chalus (where I stayed yesterday), that took his life.
I only met one other person on the road today; just before arriving in La Coquille I was passed by a cyclist, who then pulled off the road at an intersection and seemed lost. I arrived and greeted him; he was a New Zealander on a week bicycle holiday from his sabbatical studies in Oxford. We had a great visit on the roadside. Since I was the only pilgrim he had seen in his travels thus far, he asked to take a picture of me to send to a friend back home who hopes to do a pilgrimage some day, “Just to show her that people really do do this!”.
La Coquille, despite its historical pedigree as a medieval pilgrim stop, seems to be a very modern village: no tipsy open-frame houses, dank and damp churches, or ruined castles about, but cheery.