Day 25–Monday, July 24. Arrens-Marsous (Zero Day)

Why do we need a zero day after only hiking 52 miles since our last one? Because, with the hiking index I have devised which takes into account: weather conditions, age of hiker, weight of pack, physical condition of hiker, amount of whining near hiker, amount of incline and decline of trail, angle of incline and decline on the trail–when all those factors are considered, we have hiked the equivalent of 2,486.75 miles this past week. That’s a lot of BS to generate just to get a day off of hiking after 7 days on the trail.

We stayed up later than we wanted last night, but since we didn’t actually get into our room until almost 10, that was unavoidable. We took showers and talked to an English woman we met at the Gite. Mary was unusual in that she is a British Citizen that speaks more than English–she speaks French, Mandarin Chinese, and is working on adding Spanish to her repertoire. I don’t mean to make fun of the British, especially since the average number of languages most Americans speak is 0.8 (listen to the way kids talk–they can’t even master English).

Mary had a week to play in the Pyrenees trying to decide if she wanted to hike the GR10–I’m afraid we didn’t give a whole lot of positive input about doing it the primitive way we are trying. If a person has lots of money and can afford to pay for Gites every night and 3 meals a day and not carry a pack–the GR10 is not too bad. But I’m going off on a tangent.

Today was what a rest day is supposed to be. We got up and had breakfast at 8. We considered all we had to do, and then went back to the room and took a 3 hour nap before doing a little laundry. Next on the agenda was lunch. People who know me well won’t hear this phrase often uttered by me, but I think I’m finally pizza’d out. This was the second large pizza in the last 3 days. We’re to the point of craving the likes of Taco Bell, Mackies (real pizza), or biscuits and gravy.

We did walk around town a bit afterwards and even got a key to a chapel from the visitor’s information center. Once we finally got to the right church, we were impressed by the 15th century chapel.

After the chapel, we rewarded ourselves with a beer–what’s a day off without a cold beer? The skies were starting to spit a little, so we headed back to our gite to make sure the laundry was not in the rain, and then we took another nap.

About 7, we decided we were hungry again and went in search of food–no luck so we had a sandwich in our room, rearranged our packs to get ready for leaving in the morning (60% chance of rain tomorrow, but the sun is supposed to stick around a bit on Wednesday). Early to bed tonight.

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man grumpy and his wife full of (whines and) cries.

We just heard from Jessica who we hiked into St Jean with a couple weeks ago.  She is 9 days ahead of us and has finally decided to take a rest day.  We really sound like whinging poms compared to her.  (Thanks, Shaun, for expanding our range of knowledge).