Day 26: 1000

And I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door

Lyrics from ”I’m Gonna Be” by the Proclaimers

The number 1000 has come up a lot recently. First, this pilgrimage will be (roughly) 1000 miles for us. Today, we reached a point where we are about 1000 kilometers (620 miles) from our end goal, Santiago de Compostela in Spain. And, several days back, we ran across a gîte with an interesting name: Mille Bornes.

Mille Bornes is a French card game common in the US. Borne is the French word for marker and Mille Bornes means a thousand markers, or kilometers. The Mille Bornes gîte is roughly 1000 kilometers from Santiago, and, 1000 miles from the Belgian home of the gîte owners.

Bottom line: We’re making progress.

New Feature: Q&A. If you ask a question in the comments that is of general interest we will address it in this section.

Q: Jim asked, ”What do the French do with the donkeys in their farm? Are they used for pack animals?”

A: Unlike the hard working French farmers, donkeys appear to live a life of mostly leisure on the farms we’ve passed. However, many gîtes advertise ”Donkey Parking” but in our three plus weeks on this pilgrimage we’ve only seen three donkeys used to haul gear, and that was on the first day. Maybe we should hire one for tough stretches

Scenes from the walk today. It was a long and hot day—just over 20 miles. Because of expected heat and rain we will break up the next section into two days.

How to mow your lawn: French Style:

I’ve mentioned that even small towns have a war monument honoring their dead, often with many names. Today I found one with only four. A very small town.

Some of these town names are very hard. For example, our start and end towns today.