Bonjour! Today was another 12 miles and 1,500′ of climbing. Our totals are now 203 miles walked on this Camino and 25,800′ climbed!

Beautiful: Yes, we keep saying that!  Last night, our B&B was at nearly 4,000′. The blue sky was perhaps bluer than we’ve ever seen. The greens, vibrant green.  Stunning!

Tough: The distance wasn’t bad (12 miles), nor the climb (1,500′). The challenge today was the descent (2,400′), and most significantly, the grade and the surface!  This may have been our toughest day, to date!

Today’s hike was a series of steep ups and steep downs, as:

The challenge was the pitch (grade), which was consistently in the 15-20% range, but mostly the surface!

The trails are primarily fire/tractor  dirt paths. Very steep! With the rain (it rains a lot here), these paths get severely rutted. To keep these paths workable, they will dump a lot of broken rock onto the path.  That works for the tractor.

Not so much for the hiker!

Particularly going downhill, these broken rocks slip out from your feet. You slip. You slide! On a 20% grade with a backpack on, it can be challenging!

Nearly all of our descents today were on these types of surfaces.

Bathrooms: Okay, everybody has to go sometimes!  With few villages, and few resources open in villages, most often “going to the bathroom” is a rustic experience!

Imagine our surprise when we found a village with a “WC” … that was open!

Imagine our surprise when we opened the door and found this!

For those wondering,  “what”, it’s a Middle East style toilet! For those wondering “how”, well, you place your feet on the pads, left and right,  facing towards the camera, then  you drop your drawers. Leaning slightly backwards, you use your best golfing skills to get a “hole in one”!  Enough said!

The things you can learn on this blog!

And a Post Script; We saw 5 new Pilgrims today! One guy left his home in the Czech Republic and is on his way to Muxia … with his dog! The others?  We just saw them but didn’t talk to them.

Ça suffit!

Today is our sixteenth day of walking. We covered 13 miles and climbed 1,800′. The trip totals are:  216 miles and 27,600′ .

Today was mostly an up and down day, though not nearly as severe as yesterday! The grades were not as steep and the surfaces, generally very good.  And the views? Wonderful!

Weather: We started this journey in late August, with daytime highs around 90⁰ F.  The morning lows were around 70⁰. The last few days, the morning lows are in the high 40⁰’s, and we’re starting the mornings with sweaters or wind breakers. Tomorrow, it will likely rain most of the day, with a high in the mid-60’s. Fall is falling!

Signs:  At Montfauçon, our departure town, there was a sign showing the whole of the Geneva to Le Puy route.  I added a “start” point (green line), an “end” point (red line) and a BLUE “you are here arrow. Kind of cool to see the progress!

A little further along, another sign told us how far to Santiago  (in case we decided to keep going! ).

Okay, and another sign helped us figure where to go!  First, some background:  We were following a small dirt trail that bordered woods on one side and a field on another. We approached the back of a farm house. Once at that farm house, we walked (basically) on that home’s driveway, around to the front yard. As we cleared the front yard, we found ourselves in the middle of a small village, at an intersection, with 5+ possible options!  Which is the right one?

We kept looking for the small “scallop shell” sign that would indicate the correct path. Diane finally spotted it!  It was right below the HUGE sign saying “Chemin de Pelerins”! (The Pilgrim’s Path)! Duh!

Mushrooms:  Hunting mushrooms is a very popular pastime in these areas. On several occasions, we’ve seen couples out searching. Our proprietress from Les Herbs Sauvage actually made a dish of wild mushrooms for us that night.

Today, we saw possibly the biggest one we’ve ever seen! Bill’s foot is in the photo to show a size perspective!

As the French would say, TTFN! (Ta Ta For Now!)

12 miles walked, 1500′ climbed. Totals are 228 miles and 29,100′ climbed for this journey.

We stayed last evening in a Gite, kind of a mix of hostel and B&B. This is the 3rd Gite we’ve stayed in, and typically we’re the only ones there. Not this time!

As we came down for dinner, there were 7 other guests! The real surprise was to see our French friends,  Theirry and Eliane at the table! We thought they were a day ahead of us because we took a “day off” back in Bourg-Argental.

The conversation at the table was lively and totally French (no surprises). It was rapid fire! We were able to follow what the topic was, and on occasion, what someone’s opinion was, but rarely were we able to add our own comments. The conversation was just too fast. It was, however, excellent listening practice! We can use a lot more of that!

We also learned why we’ve seen so many additional hikers. It seems there’s a shorter loop hike that leaves out of Le Puy and returns to Le Puy. All of the new hikers that we’ve seen are from this shorter hike.

We left this morning to rain

The hike took us up over the mountains (4,200′) and into a whole new region.

The Le Puy area is loaded with the remnants of old volcanoes, which just added to the already majestic view.

And the highlight? We spent the day walking with Theirry and Eliane, working on our French and enjoying the company!

Tomorrow is our last day of walking. This journey has gone fast!

Today was 14 miles walked,  1,000′ climbed.  We arrived!

The journey had far more traffic than we’re used to …

But still had the beauty we’ve come to expect

And, we crossed the Loire River!

We’ve now traveled from the Rhone-Alps, to the Massif Pilat and on to the Loire valley! For us, amazing!

The total for this journey was 242 miles and 30,100′ of climbing.  We have now walked, in three Caminos,  from Geneva to Muxia/Finnesterre  … a distance of 1,320 miles. Among our 5 European walks, we’ve now walked at bit over 2,100 miles … approaching a length similar to the whole of the Pacific Crest Trail ( from Mexico to Canada).

So, how did this hike compare?

Beauty- wise:  This was, hands down,  the most “every day jaw dropping” beautiful! The Del Norte? The ocean views were the best. The other walks? Wonderful! But this one takes it.

Remote-wise: For someone without local language skills, this would be a tough one!  Such limited resources and consistently closed businesses; you really needed to be able to get information from locals who probably don’t speak English.  Probably the sister walk to this one (Le Puy to St Jean Pied de Port) would be the next most difficult … but there were more resources consistent available to the hiker.

This was also remote for the lack of fellow Pilgrims. We’re going to keep our count at 7 “through-hikers”. As we approached Le Puy, the numbers grew, but we’ve found that there are a lot of 3 – 10 day hikes in and around Le Puy that draw the numbers.

Toughness of stages: Probably this journey is the toughest, yet, but a close tie with the Del Norte. The Del Norte had longer average stages (15 mi/day) vs this one (13.4 mi/day), lasted much longer (41 days vs 18),  with roughly (1,600’/day of climbing vs 1,700′ avg for this one). This Geneva to Le Puy journey, however, had some consistently difficult surfaces to walk on, particularly with the steep grades. We’re probably just getting older and don’t remember the Del Norte pain, but this one seemed tougher.

So what’s next?  We’re still working on what we will do with the rest of this trip (more to come later).  We are sure that,  God willing and our health allows,  we will walk, in the next few years, through Switzerland, through the Alps and in to Italy to connect up with the 2019 walk we did from Lucca to Rome.

More later. Thank you for reading and being a part of our adventure.

We’re still walking about 10 miles a day,  but as tourists! It’s hard to sit!

Changes: We arrived in Le Puy, France on Thursday and quickly celebrated, but unpacked nothing! We had shipped our one suitcase to Carcassone, France, and had a reservation at that B&B for Friday night … one night only.

Why were we moving so quickly? Our original plan was to finish our hike and then do a canal boat on the Canal du Midi, which typically requires starting on Saturdays.

It is an extraordinarily fun and relaxing thing to do … except after 3 weeks of hiking, our backs needed a break. Even though relaxing,  the canal boat line handling, the smaller bunks, etc,  seemed like more than our backs were willing to deliver, so we canceled that plan.

But, what to do with that 7 or 8 new- found days?  Too many choices …

We thought about spending a couple more nights in Carcassone, a beautiful town with a walled city,

And excellent dining (duck breast)!

Unfortunately, our host B&B was sold out! We had to move the next morning!

Staying at another place in Carcassone didn’t look promising, so we finally decided to head on to the third thing on our original list of “to do’s” on this trip:  Go to Girona,  Spain!

Girona is a Spanish community north of Barcelona and has become the European home for most non-European professional cyclists. As cycling junkies, we had to go there!  (The food and the history are also excellent! )

Staying in Girona bought us a couple of days to pull together our plans for our remaining 2 weeks. And it was beautiful!

What we knew was that we had plane tickets home, departing from Malaga, Spain (South of Spain, almost to Gibraltar) on the 3rd of October. What to do until then?

We have decided to spend about a week in Valencia, Spain, on the coast very close to town, then spend the final week in Malaga, again on the coast.

We will enjoy visiting the towns, relaxing and eating too much.

If you know us well, you know that we NEVER leave planning to the last minute. We usually have things nailed down a year in advance. Not this time.

The upside was that last-minute bookings, late September, were really reduced in price! The downside … too many choices/decisions to make in too little time!

We feel good about the plans we have but will very likely go back to our old way … plans on hand in advance.

We hope all are doing well. We miss family and friends.