Making a Dent

After almost two weeks I'm close to halfway through the French part of this Camino. 

The route today was from Saintes to Pons which ended up being a little over six hours. The first couple of hours were fantastic - there was a fog over the Charente river on the way out of Saintes that kept it nice and cool

I know I'm jinxing myself by saying this but I haven't seen any evidence of train line construction in four or five days now. I've gotten used to rolling my own route with the help of my beloved Google Maps. From now on (in memory of Steve Gomez, Breaking Bad) I'll be referring to Google Maps as "Gomie". 

So I told Gomie I'd like to take a more northerly route after a few km walking along the river. He led us up a nice quiet farm road and across a highway to the outskirts of a little village that had an old sign pointing towards the "Theatre Romanaise". It didn't say how far but I rolled the dice and walked a few hundred meters out of the way and was not disappointed. Walking between cornfields, off the path to the left was a small rise in the landscape with some trees around it. I went over to explore and sure enough, the remains of an ancient amphitheater. If you look closely at the picture you can see the separate entrances at the top. I walked around it and on the other side was a pile of ancient roman rubble that must have been the gate, or hot dog stand. 

Anyway it was well worth walking a km out of my way to see. 

So now I'm in Pons, a terrific little mid evil  town with intact ramparts and a "donjon", which I think was a watch tower. 

Dinner here at the Hotel Bordeaux is supposed to be very good. It's listed in the Michelin guide and is only 13e for two courses. It doesn't start till 7:30. I don't know if I can last that long.