Donkeys and sunrise start our day

We hiked from Cajarc to Cahors and I am not sure we enjoyed it very much.  Neither of us can remember but it was either 3 or 4 days along a path in the woods.  Lovely for an hour or so but day after day got very tiresome.  The best part of the first two days were the gites we stayed in.  We hit a real winner in Limogne-en-Quercy.  The gite we tried to book was full but she gave us the phone number for a new gite.  It was not listed in our book because they had just started taking guests in June. As the French say - superb!!!  We do not think she will be able to keep up this luxurious level very long.  Sheets, towels, soap, beautiful bathrooms, fabulous showers, little manicure sets in the bathrooms.  And wi-fi in the rooms.  You can't imagine what luxury this is for those hiking as we are.  After having our showers and getting organized the hostess asked if we wanted to throw in a load of laundry.  Did we???  We couldn't stand the smell of our own clothes any longer so we jumped at the chance.  We put it in and before we could go back downstairs to get it and hang it to dry, she had put it all into the dryer, folded it all and put it in a bin in front of our bedroom door.  We were so excited to smell clean again.  And for all this she charged us 2€, what a deal!l

Dinner was another delicious communal meal.  There were just 4 others staying at the gite besides us, a group of French folks from southern France.  The host cooked while his wife chatted with all of us.  She is Spanish, had walked the Camino and felt when she retired from her job that she wanted to run a gite as she had wished for when she was a pilgrim.  The house was purpose-built.  We were served an aperatif  first of Fenelon. It is a mixture of vin de Cahors, cassis, and walnut syrup.  It was so good we will be looking for a bottle to bring home after we finish walking. We were then served a large salad of tomato slices with garlic and grated carrots. Next course, pork chops prepared in a sauce with diced potatoes fried with onions. Nummy!  Dessert was an apple tart.  (Seems very popular at this time of year - never a 2 crust pie, always just the bottom pastry shell and sometimes a lattice top with some sort of cream with the apples or just plain apples stacked vertically in the crust and then a sprinkling of spices.)  Lots of chat afterwards - everyone talking about the next day's walk.

We hiked out next morning towards Mas-de-Vers! Our longest hike so far, 21km.  And it really felt like it.  The only saving grace for the day is that we managed to find 2 places for coffee along the way.  The first was a complete surprise - a gite just off the road.  We wandered down to it hoping it was still open so we could use the facilities.  Usually they are not open but it was either this or the bush.  A fellow was there and after a quick exchange with Wendy in French, we all switched to English.  He and his wife moved from Holland to build and open a gite 17 months ago because they were both bored with their jobs, and he is "facing" 50 as he put it. He showed us the facilities and then made us coffee.  His wife came out and we had a great chat.  That stop revitalized us for another 5 km or so.  It's unfortunate there are not more of the gites or just plain coffee stops that are open for the walkers.  Often there is no place open or even a bar or food store in the place where we staying.  Such was the case that day when we had reserved beds at Poudally, 1/2 km outside of Mas de Vers (no stores).  Turned out Poudally was the name of the farm where the gite was.  We arrived at 2:45 and waited until the hostess opened the door at 3.  We had a very nice room with an outside entrance looking out over the donkeys' pasture.  And we were surprised to meet up again with the group of 6 French women hiking together. We've been at same gite with them twice before, as well as several interactions in Conques.

Dinner was communal, with 14 guests plus the host and hostess and their 6-month old son in the highchair.  Imagine making dinner for 16 every night with a demanding baby in the background!  Another convivial meal, and the French gals finally broke out some words of English, much to our surprise. We had the best appetizer too.  A 3 x 4" piece of puff pastry with pieces of caramelized onions and topped with a small round disk of Cabecou Fromage de Chèvre.  (Goat cheese). And then broiled to melt cheese.  Oh it was good!

The next morning we were all outside watching the most magnificent sunrise over the fields.  We discussed the poem -     

Red sky at night, sailor's delight,

Red sky in morning, sailor's take warning

The French gals told us their poem:

Rouge le matin, la pluie en chemin

Rouge le soirée, L'espoir (means hope)

And so we hike on once again wishing it was not quite so warm.  Maybe we are never satisfied, eh?

Exploring the Lot Valley

Sunday, September 29th,  Limogne-en-Quercy

We have written a couple of blog entries that we decided not to send as they were just too whiney!  It has been 6 nights since a communal dinner but tonight we will have one.  It's quite a bit cheaper than going out but usually a bit more than cooking yourself.  We like cooking in but seem to be in little towns or villages that do not have much in the way of a food store.  Last night in Cajarc we were lucky with a Casino food store, a boulangerie, a charcuterie and a wine store.  So it was pâté, cantal cheese (one of our favourites in France) pears and a baguette along with a half-bottle of Cahors red wine.  

After we left Conques we climbed out of its valley and crossed over into the Lot valley. The houses seemed to change immediately, and instead of stone houses with slate roofs, we were into brick or stone/stucco homes, all with tiled roofs. 

We took a day yesterday to be tourists.  Spent 2 nights in Cajarc so we could take the local bus up to St. Cirq Lapopie, a famous French village that was a strong hold for the ruling family of the day to control the traffic on the River Lot.  It is also one of the villages on the "most beautiful in France" list.  There were a lots of tourists there but we arrived a bit before they did.  We found that the store opening hours are geared to when the tour buses arrive so being early doesn't really help.  As we went in through the old stone gate we met a woman from Seattle, quite by accident.  As we chatted she told us she owned a house in the village that she rented out when she wasn't in France.  Hmmmmmmm. "Really" we said in unison.  She asked if we would like to see it and of course we said yes.  She had 4 friends staying with her too.  Very interesting house, nicely done up and appointed.  She suggested a place for lunch and its house specialty.  After checking out all the streets up and down the slope the town is built on we went to the hotel for lunch and followed her suggestion: a puff pastry filled with rocamadour cheese and a very nice salad with local walnuts.   It was soooooo good we both just sat there drooling through the meal.  The server thought we should know it was only an entree (appetizer) and too small for a main course. We each had a glass of local wine to accompany.  We could not have eaten anything else - well - except for the warm pear tart with vanilla ice cream with a honey sauce which we shared.    Mm- mmmmm!  Meals in France are such a wonderful experience!

An old house in St. Cirq Lapopie

Our fabulous lunch!

We spent the night again at the Gite Le Pelerin in Cajarc.  Finally another nice place like we have been coming to expect after our first 2 weeks.  Nice people, nice place and a nice breakfast together with the other walkers.  Today's hike was much better than the last few days.  After a big thunder and lightening storm during the night it has cooled off a bit.  We hiked to Limogne, 18 km mostly along stony paths through the woods. It was misty during the morning so we couldn't see very far but the moss covered rock fence along both sides of the path were so neat.  They have probably been there for hundreds of years.  Just after we arrived in town and had installed ourselves in a bar for our coffee it started to bucket down with rain.  And so we were able to stay there and be dry until it was time to check in to our gite.

Moss-covered stone fence alongside today's forest path. 

And so, on we hike, having now covered 300 km.

Changes!

Friday, Sept 27th and it is HOT in France

Conques was a great experience, with good accommodation, meals and encounters with fellow walkers we'd met along the way during our first two weeks. But things change as we move along this trail as through life.  Many of our companions have now left the trail, as they were only here to walk for a limited time (1-2 weeks), or they have scooted ahead to meet their scheduled needs.  So we move on, waiting to meet new friends. 

There seem to be fewer walkers on the trail now, perhaps because we have come to a "variant" in the trail, and so some have taken a different route through the Cele valley.  It's very close to where we spent a week in 2010 when we explored the Dordogne and Sarlat area.  

Other changes are in the weather which has become quite hot, to the point of forcing us to cut our walking days shorter.   So we've taken a couple of taxis. Yesterday we shared with a young couple from Seattle who were happy to share since the gal had some major blisters.   We both feel quite comfortable with this arrangement, avoiding some slogging along the side of a road in the heat. 

Another change is the type of accommodation.  We had such wonderful accommodation earlier on with hosts who really cared that you had come to their Gite.  And the communal dinner was such fun.  We miss that, not having had a communal dinner meal for 5 nights now.  We have gone out for dinner to a local restaurant instead.  More expensive for sure,  but food continues to be very good (wine too!)

We carry on hiking with the hope for cooler weather and demi-pension accommodation.  But the photo here shows one thing that has not changed!

Conques

We have been out of email contact for about 3 days so have not been able to do our blog.  The weather has improved dramatically to the point that we wish it was not quite so warm when we are hiking.  The sky is blue and the hills are beautifully green.  Not quite as high as they were a few days ago but we still seem to do some major ups and downs every day.  Where the road has a switch back we follow a path that does a short cut.  Some hills have loose rock and shale and so we are very thankful to have our poles.  We use them nearly constantly.  We last blogged from Saint-Come-d'Olt after some wet days.  We arrived in Estaing on the 20th and were so impressed with this gorgeous little village we decided to take the next morning off to explore it and check out its little winding streets and bridges.  We left about 11:30 to walk to a Gite in Massip.  Only 11.5 km and quite a nice hike.  Massip turned out to be a large farm with a separate Gite that the family ran.  It was a lovely building, very quiet.  The dinner meal was prepared by the son who is a chef.  It was very good, using veggies from their garden for the salad, veal from the farm mixed with chestnuts in a sauce over pasta for the main course and an apple tart that was delicious. He came out and chatted to everyone all the way through the meal.  Wendy could not understand him very well because of his different accent found in the south of France. In the morning we were served homemade jams including a jam made from green tomatoes cooked with vanilla bean.  Who would have thought?  At another Gite we were served jam made from zucchini which just shows you can make anything into jam, if you use enough sugar.  The next morning we left to hike through Golinhac and into the woods to Espeyrac where we stopped for a good coffee.  It was Sunday and most places were closed but we found our Dutch Canadian friends from Owen Sound sitting outside a hotel that served coffee until noon.  Lucky for us we arrived with 20 minutes to spare.  Joseph and Gerda have been playing hopscotch with us along the trail for the last 4 or 5 days and we have great chats with them when we meet up.  They are seasoned hikers and come to Europe often.  We hiked another 3 km to Senergues for our night in Gite d'etape Domaine de Senos.  We had a room to ourselvs in this beautifully converted building that had been a private school for girls up until 13 years ago.  Now it has the best view for guests at any gite.  The lower terrace and dining room look out over the valley and the hills.  Wow!  And also the best spot for drying our washed hiking clothes.  (We use the term washed loosely, they are really just freshened in the bathroom sink with water and a bit of soap, most things get a little grey looking as the days pass).  

Today we arrived at Conques, having walked approx. 200km in 14 days. This is a slower pace than many on the route, but it feels right for us. Many other walkers, maybe even the majority, have luggage transfer every day, and they are only walking for one or two weeks.  We have discovered that many of the hikers who started in Le Puy are finishing here.  So now we are wondering if the gites will be less busy.  We are booking 2 or 3 days ahead and sometimes have to phone a couple of places to get a bed.  We are using the French accommodation guide book Miam Miam Dodo and the Michelin Chemins de Compostelle Map book.  

Conques is a very historic village, and its abbey has been important as a pilgrimage destination in its own right since approx 900. Little twisting slate and stone streets - slate roofs - dry stone fences, very picturesque.  Last night we went to the church for the pilgrim blessing at 8:30 which was followed by a 30 minute descriptive chat by one of the friars of the famous 12th century tympanum over the church door. He then went to the organ upstairs to play a 30 minute recital.  Wendy and I paid 6€ each to go up to the gallery to listen.  Although the church seemed very austere and plain, it really was quite magical from above with the lights illuminating the tops of the columns at different intervals.  We could walk all the way around up there in the rafters (so to speak).  The music filled the space.  The organist ended with the "House of the Rising Sun".  Some thought that was not an appropriate piece to play but we thought it was cool. Today we have our first full rest day so we can explore Conques. Tomorrow we will hike on. The hill up out of here looks challenging, as in YIKES!!

What a difference a day makes! - or The sun will come out tomorrow.....

After spending all afternoon and evening yesterday moving wet clothes and boots around our room so they would dry and wondering what today would bring we got ourselves back onto the trail by 9:10 am.  We really enjoyed our hike today with a bit of cloud and wind but mostly sunshine and warmer temperatures than the last few days.  We enjoyed coffee served by a local farmer who was doing a great business in an old stone barn along the way. I'll bet he serves 100 cups on some days!

The hike was hard physically with lots of rocky washed out paths and many switchbacks as we travelled from Saint Chely-d'Aubrac to Saint-Come-d'Olt, a distance of 16km.  Our map book says it should take 5 hr 30 min and it took us 5 hrs so we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves.  The countryside is absolutely gorgeous - so pastoral, so green, so quiet, and serene.  Lots of little creeks running strong today after yesterday's storm.  Our faith in our hiking plans have been restored as we look at 15.5 km to Estaing tomorrow.  We have now walked 148.5 km in 10 days.  

Leaving St Chely this morning. 

Arriving in St Come d'Olt this afternoon - twisted spire of old church. 

"There's a trail that I'll be hiking,

Just to see where it might go,

Many places yet to visit,

Many people yet to know,

For in following my dreams,

I will live and I will go.

In a world that's waiting out there,

On the loose."

(From one of our favourite Girl Guide songs)

Rain drops keep falling on our heads!

I think we both agree that today was probably the worst weather we have ever hiked in.  The last few days it has been either heavy mist, low clouds ( as in around our heads ) windy or actually raining.  But today takes the cake with all of the above.  Our plan was to hike from Nasbinals to St-Chely, a distance of 16km.  We left our Gite at 8:10 quite pleased with ourselves for getting packed up and out the door by then.  No breakfast served at this Gite so we had bought some things yesterday for our breakfast: 2 bananas, a small box of orange juice each, a yogurt each and a box of granola bars, 2 for breakfast and 2 each for emergency supplies.   Immediately out the door we had to put our rain ponchos on overtop of our rain jackets and hats.  We found our route out of town and through the trees. Heavy mist but under the trees it was quite pleasant.  That lasted 5 minutes; then we hiked up and onto the aubrac plateau.  It's like out onto the moor in England or Scotland. The wind caught us and the rain pelted us as we hunkered down under our bright yellow rain ponchos (Courtesy of Mary and Les) and we were sort of dry for the first hour. But there was no protection from the wind and the rain.  Even the cows were faced away from us with wind at their backs.    We were hiking on a dirt track that soon became mud as riverlets ran down the hillocks.  We had to go through a number of cattle gates - fence posts and barbed wire which were hard to close again.  It took us 2 3/4 hours to hike 9 km to the village of Aubrac.  By then we were as wet as wet can be.  We found a hotel with bar and restaurant.  We weren't sure they would let us in in our condition but they were ready for us and the others who came along.  We had not seen anyone else up there because of the low cloud but a few had already arrived and more came in after that.  We were all soaked to the skin by then with mud on the lower half.  The hotel had a large drying room for us to take off our wet gear.  We sat and had large coffees with some pieces of tart. Wendy had cherry/strawberry while I had pear with chocolate.  We felt we really deserved it.  Walkers were being advised to walk on the road the rest of the way but we thought we were miserable enough so shared a taxi with 2 others for the last 7 km to St- Chely.  We were lucky to be able to check right into our room at this Chambre d'hôte.  There is a Gite in town but we decided it was time for real sheets and towels for 1 night.  Toilet still down the hallway but we have our own shower and sink.  We have our stuff hanging all over the room hoping to get it dry by tomorrow am.  It is the first time we have ever taken a taxi to avoid walking a section of any trail.  I'm afraid Charles, we cannot agree with you that the Aubrac is the best.  

This picture taken by Australian friend Sue, day before yesterday, not on the plateau today.  Just wanted you to see how lovely we look in our yellow ponchos that blow around like shower curtains in the wind.  I think the cows thought it all pretty funny!!

Aubrac cow laughing at us

Aligot d'Aubrac

We were treated last night to a local specialty at dinner. Our Gite was Les Sentiers Fleuris (Flowered Paths), and it was a wonderful stay. When we arrived we were shown to our own room (no dorm tonight) with our own bathroom too!  After the usual pilgrim routine - shower - laundry - we headed out to briefly explore the town. Then to a bar where we encountered our 2 Australian gals and Jean-Pierre from Brittany. 

We all returned to the Gite in time for dinner at 7:15pm. We were 30 at 2 big wooden tables, which were beautifully set with red and green plates and serviettes. Monsieur and Madame were both there to prepare our meal. The starter was a small bit of salami-like meat along with a cold cauliflower dish. Then came the highlight as Monsieur prepared the aligot This is a mixture of mashed potatoes, and Tomme cheese, seasoned with garlic and crème freche.  Thé Tomme must be young, between 3-6 days of age. The mixture is stirred with a big spoon, really more like a small paddle, and then raised high in the air so you can see the stringy pâté that it makes. It's then served along with some meat (pork).  There were lots of cameras snapping throughout this process. This course was followed by a huge green salad from the veggie garden, and a custard flan for dessert. There were pottery jugs of red wine (frequently refilled) on the table as well.  

During the dessert Madame led the singing of the French pilgrim's song, Ultryea, and everyone joined in the chorus. All in all, it was a fun and noisy evening - difficult to converse in English let alone in French. It was a suitable farewell evening for some who have become our friends over the past week, but who will be finishing their walk tomorrow.

Wendy with 2 Australian gals at dinner