Stage Saugnacq-et-Muret - Labouheyre

The second day fully in the Landes, flat and straight through the pine forest. Between Saugnacq-et-Muret and Labouheyre the Way closely follows the historic corridor taken by the Roman road from Bordeaux to Dax and, centuries later, by the post road.

From Le Muret the route heads south along forest tracks of compacted sand. The maritime pine forest, laid out in regular plots, opens now and then into clearings of bracken, heather and gorse. There is no gradient at all, but the sandy surface and the lack of shade at midday call for a steady pace and enough water.

Halfway through the stage lies Liposthey, a small place that was once a staging post on the road to Spain and offers somewhere to rest. In the surroundings a few airials survive: clearings of grass and oaks around which stood the timber-framed Landes house, the bread oven, the raised hen house and the barns — the traditional pattern of settlement in this land before the spread of the pine forest.

The final stretch keeps the same character as far as the first houses of Labouheyre. The town, a former walled stronghold of which a fortified gate survives, has a church dedicated to Saint James, with a Gothic doorway, recalling its status as a pilgrim stage.

Labouheyre is also the home town of Félix Arnaudin, the photographer and folklorist who at the end of the nineteenth century documented the life of the shepherds and the open moor before it disappeared. With shops, restaurants and a railway station, it is one of the best-supplied points on the whole crossing.