Oct 19, Day 13: Lacapelle Marival to Gramat (26.1 km)

Beautiful morning.
We awoke to a beautifully warm and sunny day.  We walked from the hotel to the centre of town to buy lunch supplies at the grocery, plus two croissants and a pain au raisin at the boulangerie that we ate along with two espressos at a bar at the edge of town.  The walk was supposed to be 22 km, which would have been manageable, but it would turn out to be much longer.  Also, since we were now off the main GR65 and on the GR6, there were even fewer pilgrims, and today we saw no one.

Our sweaty faces.
It quickly warmed up in the morning and we were down to shorts and t-shirts.  We walked along country roads and along farmers paths.

Susan re-positioning socks and re-tying shoes, both daily occurrences (in Thémines)
We had a nut break mid-morning.  We sat in the sun and marveled that it was the middle of October and the weather was much like what it would be in September.  I also tried to stretch my left hamstring which was very tight.

Lunch: bread, cheese, apple.
Lunch was baguette and cheese, an apple and part of a chocolate bar at a bench in a little park.  We did not seem to tire of this lunch which we ate most days.  Baguette and cheese are both very high quality and delicious in France.  Most days we had Cantal cheese, similar to cheddar.

We got to the little hamlet of Gary and saw a sign which showed a change to the GR6 route.  A local with a cute black dog described that the change allowed hikers to walk along more paths and fewer roads.  The new route was beautiful, but it turned a 22 km day into a 26 km day.

We arrived in Gramat and I was exhausted.  We came to a church in town and I could barely make it up the stairs.  I sent René ahead to look.  We wandered through town and found the tourist office.  Gramat has a number of wine merchants and a number of fancier restaurants, but not for us as we were headed to spend the night in a Mongolian yurt at Le Domaine de la Croze.

Mongolian yurt.
The view inside.
The couple who owns the property run a bed and breakfast, and also have a gîte and two yurts on the land behind the house.  They also have a goat to mow the lawn.  When René booked the accommodation we did not realize how cold it would be and, for the same price, we should have stayed in the house.  Oh well, it was an adventure!

A Mongolian yurt is a tent-like temporary structure.  The yurt can be assembled and dis-assembled quickly and everything can be transported to the next location.  The structure is in wood, with felted yak wool for the insulation and canvas outer walls and ceiling.  In a traditional yurt there is a wood burning stove, used for cooking and heating.  The stove is placed in the centre, with the stove chimney set to exhaust out of the hole in the centre of the ceiling.  Our yurt had an electric heater and a microwave.

Our hosts left some information about the yurts and we learned the following:

  • entrance should be made with the right foot, and the bottom of the door frame should not be stepped on.
  • one should not pass through the two central posts, between which the stove should be, but instead go around 
  • once inside one should not stand, but immediately find a seat
  • men are required to drink three bowls of fermented yak milk (too bad we did not have any!) 
We had bought a very basic microwaveable supper with a bottle of wine, salad, hot chocolate and cookies.  The night would turn out to be very cold and almost uncomfortable.
Wine!


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