...Upper Hamlet, to be precise ... quiet road, giving access to marked footpaths through vineyards, past chateaux and prosperous houses ... no sign of peasant dwellings so far, though someone is doing the work, automated grape-picking machines notwithstanding ... all notable for an absence of fences ...
Today is Lazy Day ... part of the mind stretching design to have it on a Monday, the day of dread for weekday slaves ... and slightly weird, since there is no "busy" with which to contrast it, since the whole pace of the place is relaxed, everything optional ...
An afternoon wander ends up fortuitously at the Mairie, where the official finds the Camino route from St Foy la Grande and prints it out ... suggesting a two week walk to St Jean Pied de Port ... requiring some amendments to switch to the Northern route across Spain ... all in good time ... things may change before Friday ...
Outside of the silence some interesting characters appear ... a Liberian retired general, US ex-army intelligence officer, Australian estate agent, Belgian environment agency official, Irish IT consultant ... the female retreatants are kept in a separate hamlet, to aid in the resistance to fleshly desires, along with the vegan diet ... which it turns out is not a rule for the monks and nuns who may eat dairy products ... though one announced yesterday that he had renounced milk and cheese after realising the inextricable link between the dairy industry and animal suffering and killing ...
The rituals are interesting to observe ... the balance between structure and freedom examined ... the Buddhist ethos filtering committed boozers, fornicators, drug takers, corpse eaters and angry people ... though many retreatants may have come along specifically to try to deal with those issues ... as for your blogger, anger is not a problem, cigarette addiction was overcome some years ago, alcohol is under control, mammal corpses abandoned long since, though fish still tempts, along with eggs and cheese ... each to their own path ...
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