Sunday's balade

Given the travails I went through yesterday, I skipped dinner last night, which did me a world of good today, when I went on a nearly four-hour walk.

Like on Saturday, I walked through the marais to La Garette, which is about three miles east of Le Vanneau-Irleau. I tried a slightly different route, at the beginning, that eventually joined up with the bike trail going to Niort. (Dom had told me about this route.) This time around, I walked through and beyond La Garette so as to rack up two hours' walking time one way. But for whatever reason, the walk back went faster, so I ended up walking less than four hours. Not a big deal; I still had 22,000 steps to my name.

This was sort of a prep walk for a rehash of the walk to Niort that I did last week. I'll be walking to Niort again this coming Tuesday, but this time, I'll be largely avoiding the D9 highway in favor of taking the bike trail, which is a bit longer, but which will, I hope, keep me safer from traffic.

Here are some shots from today's walk.

Trail, garden, and canal:

The road goes ever on and on:

So many bovines:

A solitary cow chews its cud:

Two ways to La Garette, it seems:

Quaint house at the end of a bridge:

This is a pun: se lever de bonne heure means "get up early." By changing bonne heure to bonheur (almost the same pronunciation), the meaning changes from "I get up early" to "I awake in a spirit of happiness."

More blue shutters, this time in La Garette:

At this point, I've turned around and walked back to Dominique's place, but instead of going right back in, I've passed La Demeure du Marais and walked out of Le Vanneau-Irleau to rack up some extra steps. There's a huge crucifix right at the edge of the village:

And finally, here's a better shot of Uncle Jesus: