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 …