11 miles today, bringing the 10th day of hiking total to 130 miles.

Last night was a stay at a buffalo ranch, with about 300 sheep thrown in for good measure. (No problem sleeping,  just count sheep! ) Here’s our humble abode. 

Sorry, we have no photos of the buffalo … the buggers were hiding from us last evening. Apparently, they weren’t hiding well enough from the madame … Bill had tasty buffalo bourgignon for dinner!

So, speaking of eating/ drinking: Even the morning coffee is different here. The good news is that they seem to like a healthy sized cup of Joe here. The interesting thing is how they serve it … in a bowl!

In prior posts, we’ve talked about lentils and chevre chaud salad and duck. Well another unique dining adventure of this region is ‘Aligot’, a blend of mashed potatoes and stringy cheese. The result is both fascinating and tasty, but not for the faint of cholesterol! 

We left the Lot River yesterday morning and don’t return to it until the end of our hike on Saturday. It was beautiful! Here’s a shot of the Lot as we’re we leaving Estaing yesterday morning. 

Take care.

12 miles today, for a current total of 142 miles walked.

Last evening, we stayed in Conques, an important religious/ historical town, but not large by any measure. With a population of about 250, it seems everyone there must be working in the tourist industry.

The village is built near the bottom of a very steep canyon, so all the walkways/ roads are very steep, with tight switchbacks.

The old cathedral is the focus of the town, and it is beautiful. They have several pilgrim type events each day, so we joined for the vesper (singing?) and musical recital later in that evening.

The recital knocked our pilgrim socks off! It was an amazing organ performance which was then joined by Latin singing and a trumpet. The acoustical quality in that cathedral was great. The last number they did was “House of the Rising Sun”. Whoa! We’d do that again! 

The concert ended with a lumiere show out front. Same concept as Le Puy, just a whole lot more modest in scale. 

Today started with up.  And up and up! In a little over one mile, we’r climbed 1,000′. What added to the challenge was that the trail quality was not good. Significant erosion meant that ruts and roots and rocks was the menu de jour.

The gift was that the forecasted reason did not start until we were up off of that streep section. 

And, 

Now, on to our chores!

Today was 7 miles, bringing our total to 149 miles. So, here’s the story behind today:  In an effort to split up the climbing and distances, we took a longer stage with significant climbing and split it in two. Ideally, you can split it down the middle. The reality is that you can only split it where there is a place to stay. Thus, we have today’s stage, the shortest stage we will do in all of our walking.

By itself, a short day can be a good thing. Not a big effort and lots of time to rest! Add to that, this was a cold rainy day all day, and a short stage seems perfect.

Except… our B&B does not admit guests until 4:00 PM, and we checked out of last night’s residence at 9:00 AM. Therefore, we had 7 miles to walk and 7 hours to do it in! How slow can you go? In the rain?

Well, we made it back to the river Lot after 4 days being away from it (Estaing).

As we had managed to fritter away 2 hours to travel these 3 miles, we now had only 5 hours remaining to cover the next 4 miles.  Could we do that?

Well, in the very small community of Livinhac-en-haut, Bill found a coiffure and, well, it’s been about 6 weeks since his last haircut, so why not? Using his precision honed French language skills, he asked for and received a haircut! Mostly, it was what he asked for (no giggling, Diane!).

From there, we figured someone in that town would serve an early (for France) lunch, and be slow about it. We found a “Bio” (organic), vegetarian restaurant with one menu selection. What could be wrong with that?

Diane was happy with the meal and Bill was happy with the delay 😃.

With more time to lose, we started again our slow walk, finding “Three Corners, France” (kind of like “Four Corners”, in the U.S., except only 3 states of France meet at this point).

We then’discovered’ every cow, blackberry, building, etc. that could be discovered before arriving at our B&B … 30 minutes early!  Fortunately, the kind proprietors took pity on us and let us in then.

We now have a new record that may be impossible for us to beat: Average pace over a full day: One mile per hour!

Tomorrow will be different …

Today was 11 miles, bringing our total miles walked to 160. The stay in Montredon was pleasant, as we stayed in a very small B&B with only 3 guests (1 more besides us). After the excellently prepared meal, we went for a short walk to enjoy the evening sky, as the rain clouds were now moving on. The full moon was dramatic: 

The start of today’s hike was cool, with a small dose of fog. 

Eventually, we reached Figeac which is bordered by the Cele river. 

After two weeks of walking the Chemin de St. Jacques, tomorrow we take a detour. In Figeac, there are three possible ways to continue the walk. There is the main hiking route, GR65 which we followed for the last two weeks. There is a detour which follows the Cele river for 100 or so miles, before rejoining the GR65. And finally,  there is the Rocamadour detour, which takes the hiker about 40 miles north to see the village of Rocamadour, then follows a circuitous route back, a bit further to the west. We will take that route and rejoin the GR65 in about another week.

There are very few pilgrims who take this route, so we expect that it will be rather quiet (at least with respect to hikers). We’ll see.

More to come, tomorrow.  A demain!

15 miles today for a total of 175 miles, so far.

We left Figeac this morning around 9am. A little later than we would hope given a longer hike, but good enough.  The first thing you see in leaving a town in France is a sign telling you that you are leaving! What is nice about this sign is that it tells us: 1) that we left,  and 2) that we’re on the right trail (notice the white over red stripes on the sign, below the word “Figeac”). Yep, this sign covers all the bases! 

At our B&B, we met a Swiss couple and a French couple who were also doing this detour to Rocamadour. They were kind enough to only speak French, so we had a terrific opportunity to practice/ improve our French. The result was, an hour or so of talking and we were putting together whole thoughts on a range of topics, in French. Either that or our kind companions just decided to let us prattle on and they would nod their heads on occasion. We hope the former is true, not the latter. 

As lunch hour approached, we were looking for an appropriate spot when this lake decided to appear. We had no choice but do stop and enjoy our meal there!

Shortly after restarting, we had this sense that we were being watched.  We looked up the embankment from our trail and spotted this young lady peering down on us! Unfortunately, as I pulled out my camera, she got a bit shy and almost pulled back out of view. 

Tomorrow will be a a longer stage (15-16 miles), which is okay, but tomorrow will also be in the mid-90’s F. Net, we will try to get an early start and avoid as much of the heat as possible.

Au revoir!

Okay, so we’re in a very nice French town, Lacapelle Marival. And it’s August, the month of vacations for France. And it’s Monday, the day that many small villages take as a day off. And we’re off the main pilgrim path, so there’s no particular reason for shops to be open.

As a result  … there is NO restaurant (apart from our hotel) open. There is no store open. No shop open. Even the church is closed (we guess that even priests take vacations). Literally, it is a ghost town.

Such is the life of a Pelerin (pilgrim). You learn to go with the flow (and eat at the pretty overpriced hotel).

C’est la vie!

Okay, both literally and figuratively I (Bill) need to eat my words. After finding nothing open in this town on this day, we ate at “the overpriced hotel”. Boy, was I wrong!

This was at or near the top of any meal we’ve had in all of France, and that includes Nice,  Antibes, and the whole of the Chemin.

The meal started with an “amuse bouche”, much like a gazpacho. Then an appetizer (for Bill, an array of shrimp remarkably presented). Then the pork plat principal (again, ornately presented), the cheese sampler, and finally the mousse dessert presented so beautifully, it would have put to shame a Michelin star restaurant. It was good!

We’re both stuffed, but very, very content. We are also thankful that we were forced to eat at this hotel restaurant!

Such is the life of a Pelerin!

Another 16 miles today, bringing our total to 191 miles walked.

Today’s walk was rather long and on the warm side. To avoid some of the effects of the afternoon heat, we started early, getting in a mile before 8:00am.

This area of France has a number of fortified castles. Today, we saw this one,

looking somewhat like a love child between a castle and a space shuttle. Hmm.

The walk progressed mostly through rolling hills and farm land, providing less shade than normal. Nonetheless, the creators of this route chose to utilize the boundary zones between farmlands, which always seem to have canopies of trees to give the weary pelerin a break. 

As you walk through village after village of France, you note the amazing range of town names. There’s Nice, and Antibes, there’s Le Puy and Figeac, and a million tongue twisters in between. The names don’t mean things in French; where do they come from?

The answer lies in French history, something we in the States don’t have a significant amount of …

France has been influenced, through several millennia, by Galls, Celts, Romans, Germans and others, including local French tribes, with various local languages. And those influences still affect the naming of towns today.

So,  Antibes comes from a Greek outpost indicating that it was opposite (anti …) another outpost that sounded similar to “bes”, thus the name.

Le Puy comes from a Roman term indicating a colosseum. Etcetra.

There are no Smallvilles, nor Warm Springs, etc..

Tomorrow, we reach Rocamadour, the northern-most part of this trip.  The dwellings built into rock, along with the history associated with the ‘black madonna’ should make this fascinating.

From there, we will head south and east, rejoining the GR65 3 days later, in the town of Cahors.

Today was 8 miles, bringing us to 199 miles, overall. You might ask, why didn’t we just continue for another mile to hit the round number, 200? Well we did! We actually walked another 3 miles up and down Rocamadour… but those don’t count towards the hiking total. Not sure why, but them’s the rules!

Today, again, was a hike through farmlands, before we dropped into the steep canyon which serves as home for Rocamadour.

Shortly after starting, we met again our Swiss/French friends that we’d met in Figeac three days ago. It was a great reconnect and another opportunity to practice our French! Thank you again, to our gracious friends, who let us massacre their language!

Just a few short conversations later, we arrived in the village of Rocamadour. 

It was there were met our Australian friends from much earlier on our journey. They had completed their hike in Figeac and were motor touring through France. They just happened to be visiting Rocamadour at the same time we were!

We have many great photos of this town, but unfortunately the internet is painfully slow. The photos will have to wait.

We miss you all.

Today was a relatively long one, with 17 miles hiked and 2,600′ of climbing. Our cumulative total is 216 miles walked.

Today was also a very quiet day. We saw NO other Pelerin in 6 hours of hiking. The challenge is that most Pelerins are doing the hike from LePuy, westward, toward St. Jean Pied de Port. Some of those will choose to do the pilgrimage to Rocamadour, along with a few ‘vacation hikers’. Almost nobody goes from Rocamadour back to the GR65 to rejoin the Chemin … except us. Now, there is a very well developed trail for this route, it’s just that no one takes it … except us.

Before talking about today’s hike, I have a question for the readers: How does a person eat a croissant without leaving a pile of flaky crumbs on the table, the napkin, your chair, and the floor? Okay, so maybe you don’t have that challenge, but I (Bill) do. My first efforts are to not drop crumbs. When it is clear that I am failing that, I “inconspicuously” sweep them from my plate area towards the flowers or something. For the floor, I try shuffling my feet until those flakes can’t be recognized as croissant flakes, or that it looks like that it was the guy at the next table  who was the slob who dropped croissant crumbs

I fear that I will be kicked out of France for abusive croissant eating! Any counsel you can provide is appreciated. Sincerely,   “A Challenged American in France”.

Today was rolling hills and farmland the whole way. 

Most of the time, the trail was very well developed and wide.

Our gift was cooler temperatures as a result of yesterday’s rain and a remnant cloud cover. As a result, we arrived in Labastide remarkably fresh … for 17 miles hiked.

Hope all is well with each of you.