So day seven was tough. The body is now thoroughly tired and needs a year off walking. Days one to four were new and wonderful, day five was really difficult, day six was perfect (16 km and pie!), and then day seven was really difficult all over again.
The profile for day seven looked reasonable compared to other days. A big downhill in the afternoon but nothing we had not experienced before. The weather today was perfect-overcast, not hot, no rain-we had food to eat, a reservation for the night, and enough water. But the walking is hard. People, this is hard work. Why does the difficulty of this not come through other people's blogs? Where are the people who will admit that this is difficult? Hiking all day, up and down hills, over big rocks, gravelly rocks, tree roots, and along asphalt roads and fields is tough takes a toll on the body.
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| Smiling on the morning of day 7 |
Now let me tell you about the day. We awoke in our very cute room in St Chely d'Aubrac and had the breakfast buffet: café au lait, baguette, croissant, jam, butter, yoghurt, pain au raisin, then a shared hot chocolate. Everything in town was closed so our lunch would be nut and raisin mix and cookies.
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| Very red poncho |
The walk was straight uphill in the morning. We had come down from the Aubrac plateau and into forests and farms at lower elevation. It rained a little bit in the morning, so we put on the red ponchos. Fortunately, we did not have to wear them for too long as the rain stopped and we got hot walking uphill.
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| Forest selfie. |
We met Beaudoin and Vicky on the trail and took some pictures and a selfie.
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| Susan contemplating the valley |
The views were beautiful and very different from the views we had had on the Aubrac plateau. The views were enough to divert my attention from my small right Achilles tendon issue, and the blister on the small toe of my left foot. I had never walked so far with a blister before.
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| Herding cattle |
We came across two men herding cattle along a road. We stood to the side of the road and watched them pass. The cows seemed skittish and the men were calming them. We knew that we were the source of the skittishness.
We came to a little hamlet with a little refuge inside a wooden lean-to. A husband and wife team set up the coffee and snacks every morning and welcomed the pilgrims. They were very friendly and we spoke to them for a while. They explained that they felt no need to travel since pilgrims from all over the world passed through their neighbourhood. They were sweet and genuinely happy to see us and we were grateful.
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| Chestnuts |
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| Prickly outside covering of the chestnuts |
Walking again we began to notice the chestnuts and their prickly outer layer covering the ground. They were also falling from the trees. Thank goodness for our hats as they kept the prickles off our heads. Another pilgrim was not so lucky. We came across a German woman, Sophia, sitting on the side of the path trying to remove prickles from her hand with tweezers. She was trying to protect her head from the falling chestnuts and had gotten prickles stuck in her hand.
We walked on then decided to stop for our small nut and raisin snack. While there Sophia caught up to us. She had removed most of the prickly thorns from her hand. She was excited and happy to see us because she could speak English with us. She had met few people who she could communicate with, as she did not speak much French, and she was dying to talk. She told us about her pilgrimage and about the year she had spent in India.
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| L'eglise de Perse |
The afternoon was tough, we had nothing for lunch and I wanted to stop walking. We walked along a road for a while. At the end of the road a man counselled us to walk to
L'eglise de Perse.
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| René is happy to be sitting |
We walked into Espalion along the parkway. We found the
Hotel de France and then went for supper at one of only two places open on a Monday. At the brasserie we had a good, large salad, sausage with ratatouille, wine, bread and a shared dessert. We spoke to two American women sitting beside us who were doing short sections of the hike and did not appear to be as exhausted as we felt. I was envious of their decision to walk so little, but very proud that we had walked as many kilometres as we had so far.
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