Carcassonne to Arzens

I am having great difficulty getting blogger to behave so you might wonder why I am running a couple of days behind or something shows up one day and disappears the next. Along with that the wi-fi is very temperamental.

Sept 23, Monday:
First day on the trail and we were late leaving after a miserable night for both of us. Something we either ate or drank did not agree and we both spent the night running down to the end of the hallway - since that is the pilgrim shared bathroom. We finally headed off to find route out of town, first stopping at the pharmacy for some loperamide.
The beginning of the hike was lovely, along the river with huge trees, but once we had cleared Carcassonne it was out in the open and just got hotter and hotter. Neither of us could get into the rhythm. There was a nice path  through the woods along a small lake which we enjoyed but between leaving town and our destination there was no places for a rest stop.

And by 2pm we would have killed for a latte! Some folks out walking their dogs sent us on a short cut that turned into THE WRONG WAY which then turned us both into very hot, tired grumps when we came into a village that was not on our map, after a long up hill that went on forever. Wendy spotted a taxi, flagged him down and he rescued us - it was now 3pm. The nun would have been horrified! oh well! Our great young taxi driver (who was very excited that we were from “Canada, near Vancouver”) took us right to Arzens where we had booked into Chez Michael with a private bathroom. Unfortunately the bathroom turned out to be downstairs off the living room. But it all worked out in the end.

After we were showered we headed down the street for a much needed coffee and to buy some water and find a place for dinner. Found little grocery store for the water and the one restaurant in town is closed on Monday. So we ended up buying crackers, cheese and chocolate for dinner along with our water. No pictures of dinner tonight!!!

We had thought breakfast was included until we were all ready at 8am and our host had not appeared.  Wendy checked our guide book again and found the fine print. Breakfast 8€ each arranged day before. Ok then! We went back to the little store where we had bought food yesterday and bought a box of  granola bars.

Some scenes along the way today as we followed the GR78, one of the Grand Randonnée hiking
routes in France. Waymarkings have been very good and easy to follow.