Pig guts – Day 34, 19th

Today was beautiful – T shirt weather (after the morning cool).  The wheat field was right where the setting sun had left it yesterday evening, but wet now with dew.  Fog rose up gently off the canal giving substance, seemingly to the sunbeams as they burst through the trees.  We putted off towards St Florentin.

One billy goats gruff?

El Capitan (at least for this morning)

Stewart has been trying to capture, on camera, a heron taking off.  There are quite a few of them but they’re elusive .  They stand on the canal’s edge till you get perhaps a hundred yards away, take off, then fly a big loop, typically out of camera shot, and land the same distance behind you.  I’ve captured their feet, Di a beak, somebody else a wing, so between us we could possibly make up a whole bird.  We got to within 20m of one once but just at the critical moment someone brought over a cup of tea and the distraction cost Stewart his money shot.

The path from the little port at St Florentin ducks back across the canal bridge, through a quiet little wood and past an old “moulin”.   The water rushing through the old water wheel race slowly softens as we enter the narrow town streets and wind our way up to the church at the top of the hill.

There’s  beer garden here and we stop to slake our thirst.   Di and I are pretty relaxed about meals and eat when we’re hungry – or even just because it seems like a cool place to eat.  Sometimes that means we only have one meal for the day and snack later on, or don’t eat anything later at all.  This seems something of an enigma to our friends who have reasonably structured eating frameworks.  Notwithstanding, the smell of beef, onions and cheese, the babbling of the fountain, (500ml beers) and the afternoon sun were sufficient to convince us all that lunch would be a good idea – despite plans to the contrary – and we chowed down.

Beer place at St Florentin

For the record, if you can get over the natural gag reflex that comes from the intense smell and texture of offal, “Andouillette”, the local pig guts sausage, is quite a treat.  One blogger describes it as “a slightly fecal flavoured intestine”, and, whilst there’s an element of truth in that, I thought it was great.  Di had croque monsieur.

The church here (in the background of the beer garden) was very cool also.  The stained glass was incredibly detailed (circa 1300) each pane with its own parable.  One told of a young man who left home, fought for a duke, married a rich girl then, weirdly, found his own parents in bed and killed them.  I suspect we’re missing some all important context.   

Crossed the canal bridge out of St Floretin then parked up in a nice little forest area south of Migennes, none of us desirous of the rev-head, rap party, rail yard ambiance experience of Migennes central again.

Tomorrow is our last day on the canals (or was – I’m a little behind)