Oct 25, Day 18: Cahors to Lalbenque (18.2 km)

First part of breakfast.
View from the bridge.
We were rested and ready to begin the last section of our walk.  We had talked about shortening or skipping some of the last days because of the pain I still had in my left leg.  We had decided to take one day at a time, but to be open and prepared to use a bus or train.  We bought croissants and pain au raisins at a boulangerie and sat outside and had coffee at a bar.  We also bought vanilla yogurt which we ate at a bench on the bridge on the way out of Cahors.

Notice the sweat stain on René's hat.
The walk out of town was straight uphill as usual, with very similar views to yesterday's.  The morning was warm and we were soon down to t-shirts and shorts.  My leg was stiff and sore on the steep uphill part of the walk but we walked slowly and carefully.  We were surprised to see a pilgrim walking towards us and we remembered that we were walking the "wrong" way on the GR65 out of Cahors.

Hunters in the distance, worry on Susan's face.
Soon we saw a second pilgrim walking towards us almost at the same moment we heard a loud commotion of dogs barking.  We asked if he thought we should be worried about the dogs and the hunters.  He said that they were hunting wild boar.  We talked for a while about his pilgrimage, the delay he had while waiting for new glasses to be sent to replace a broken pair, the comfortable slow pace he was walking, and his hope to make it to Santiago.

We walked on and came to members of the hunting party who reassured us that it was safe for us to walk on the trail.  The dogs ended up being very far from us, or locked up in the back of trucks, and we had no interaction with them.

Back on the Chemin de Saint Jacques.
Picnic tables!
We ended up seeing six more pilgrims for a total of eight.  We saw them only because we were walking against the usual flow of traffic on the GR65.  We were also no longer on the Rocamadour variant and we were now back on the more popular Chemin de Saint Jacques route.  As we had come to realize there were more services of every kind on this route, including picnic tables and a sign left for pilgrims directing them to the potable water.

Gariotte.

Inside the gariotte.
We had directions to cut off the GR65 to get to our accommodation for the night.  After a few phone calls to the absent owner, he drove up and explained that he was trying to solve the mystery of a vandalized gariotte.  A gariotte is a stone structure, used for storage or shelter, with rounded walls and a cone shaped roof.  He is the president of the local gariotte association and their mission is to restore and maintain these primitive structures.  This man loves gariottes so much that he built three on his property, and we would be staying in one for the night.

His had been built in the late 1980's.  The outside looked very classically like a gariotte but the inside felt very dated.  Once we got settled and turned on the heat we prepared a simple supper of soup, baguette, tinned fish, hot chocolate and cookies.  We spent the evening reading magazines and books on the tablets and we slept early.


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