Today was a beautiful walk, about half of which was on the River Lot. It was a 13 mile walk, bringing our total to 107 miles.

Leaving the medieval city of St. Côme requires our first of many crossings of the Lot river. 

From there, we climbed abruptly to an escarpment that overlooks both St. Côme and the next town along the way,  Espalion. We tried to capture the panoramic view with a video. Hopefully, this works:

On the descent down to the next village,  Espalion, we passed an ancient Persian church, dating back to the 10th century. 

Espalion was, yep, another beautiful village. Here are photos of the river with the town in the background.On arrival into Estaing, we were not disappointed. The village is considered one of the most beautiful in France and is the home of former French prime minister, Valery Giscard d’Estaing (note the “estaing” part of his name! )

Now, what’s this Frankly speaking thing? Well, from the onset of this journey, we have tried to use as much French as possible, to build our very modest skills here. What we have found is that many of the French people were met are much more fluent in English than we are in French.

In short order, they quickly direct the conversation to English. We suspect two possible reasons for this quick transition to English:

1. They feel so badly for us that they want to put us out of our misery as quickly as possible, or;

2. They are proud of the French language and can only suffer so much abuse of their native tongue before they must act … so they move us off of French!

Actually, when we talk them that we’re really do want to learn French and that we will only get better (hopefully) by practice, almost universally they become very helpful teachers of the French language. Very cool.

Enough for now. This is the second place in all of our Camino journeys that had a pool. We must partake!

Today, there were no miles walked. We took a pause, a break. What a unique experience, waking up when you wish, not packing your backpack, eating, then hitting the road! Our only chore was to find coffee, and lots of it!

Like true hiking addicts, we quickly found ourselves walking tomorrow’s hike for about 2 miles before returning to Estaing. We can quit anytime, right? Just not today!

Every small village has it’s cathedral, like Estaing.

They are always beautiful and almost always 1,000 years old. And in every village we come to, there is a plaque like this: 

It’s a list of those who died fighting World War 1 or WW2. Two things are striking. First, the sheer number of casualties for such a small village (a village of a couple hundred might have 30 casualties) and second, the disproportionate numbers of fatalities in WW1 vs. WW2.

I had a great conversation with a Frenchman about this. His response was that, in WW1, the invading German army was held north of Paris for nearly 2 years and many, many Frenchmen died defending that line. In WW2, the Germans literally rolled into the country and there was no front line! It was over.  The French were either an occupied nation (northern half), or a controlled nation (southern half). There weren’t as many fatalities because the fighting ended so quickly.

My friend noted that, only after D-day were the French able to actively engage in the battle again.

He also talked a bit about the challenge of actively resisting during the occupation. When your family, your village, and your livelihood is constantly at risk, decisions to resist are more difficult. He talked also of those who took risks to hide Jews during this time, another very grave risk.

You can always learn something, at any age.  Whether it is a new language or the history of your host. It just requires slowing down a bit to listen.  That isn’t all that easy. We’re still working on it.

You are each in our thoughts and prayers.

12 miles hiked, bringing our total to 119 miles, overall.

We are at a beautiful ranch for the evening where they raise buffalo! I think tonight, Bill will have … buffalo for dinner. Diane will not, in keeping with her ‘no meat’ policy.

They’re is no internet, so this will be a very short post. Hope all are well back home.

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!