Day 11 September 6 Estaing to Espeyrac

25.4km 686 ascent 698 descent 6:30 hr. 30⁰ C

The Auberge Saint Fleuret has a lovely open but covered patio, with vines and flowers growing on the posts, surrounded by laurel bushes/trees, and flowers on the railings, where we ate both nights, and sat in the afternoon to do the blog. Lots of noisy birds in the Laurel bushes, and a salt water pool.

I went for a swim yesterday afternoon, and talked with a lovely, fairly young, Belgium lady for a bit, who spoke excellent English. In the conversation I told her of all the pilgrimages Russell and I have done over the last 3 years, and she said ‘oh, you’re professionals’. Something to reflect on. The body has a memory, and these walks are definitely getting familiar. She said it was something she had decided rather spontaneously to do, and she really wasn’t in very good condition. She said was only travelling very short distances each day, and planning to go from Aumont-Aubrac to Conques. Later at dinner, I noticed she was sitting with an older woman that had lost all her hair. I wondered if it was her mother, and she had recently undergone treatment for cancer. Perhaps her mother was walking the Camino in the hope of being cured, and her daughter was accompanying her?

Dinner last night was very good. We had a salad of tomatoes, red cabbage, and sweet beets; followed by chicken in a bacon sauce, fries, and vegetables; and, lemon sherbet in a watermelon sauce with lots of mint.

At dinner, there was a black cat ‘doing the deck’ that the hotel staff seemed to know well. He/she was being cute more so than a nuisance, and after checking everyone out, adopted Russell and I. He sat there beside us throughout the entire meal, and was not disappointed. Russell presented him with a lovely piece of chicken at the end. I was just glad he never jumped up into my lap.

There are some things I failed to mention in the earlier blog on Day 9 when we walked to Estaing. There was a basket inside at the Chapelle St. Pierre (the church that conserves the Roman tower) with slips of paper to select among, each containing a bible passage. Some of them were in English. I picked 1 John 3, 18: Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. Isn’t that true. Words are cheap; don’t we all (more often than we would like) have to say, don’t do what I do, do what I say. Actions speak louder than words; walking the talk is what really counts.

When we had lunch with the Chinese girl, she told us she had gone to the pilgrim’s mass at 7am in Le Puy. She said it was one hour, all in French, and she loved it because it provided her with people to set out on the Way with on the first day. She had started on Monday (we started the day before on Sunday), and Christine, the lady we met at the pilgrim meet and greet on Saturday from New Zealand, had also gone to the mass and started on Monday. Christine was going shorter distances each day than the Chinese girl, so she is behind us as well.

At the church in Estaing yesterday, there was an altar dedicated to Saint Jacques and Saint Roch. Saint Jacques is the first martyr apostle and Saint Roch is the protector and doctor to the pilgrims. Along the way, there has been many mentions of Saint Roch.

I knew that things were often closed on Sunday in France, but didn’t realize that Monday was an issue. We are taking 4 rest days along the Way, and as it turns out, two are on Mondays. Including yesterday. That means a lot of stores are closed, which isn’t that big a deal, but also many museums are closed. If it hadn’t been a Monday, we could have visited the castle.

We bought our own yogurt and banana for breakfast today, and had the staff put the yogurt in their fridge. Perhaps it will encourage them to supply it themselves in the future.

We were on the road at 7:40am. For the first 5 kilometers, we walked along the river Lot. We crossed a small bridge (I think, the river seemed to sort of peter out), reversed direction and we walked a short distance along a road that was along the edge of a cliff, near the bottom, and the road had partially collapsed. Two big front end loaders were there working on it, one on each side of the river.

Went then entered a path and had an approximately 200 meter steep rise. We were zigzagging back and forth right on the edge of the cliff, going virtually straight up. I kept slipping back a bit when I took a step, and I was genuinely concerned of falling off. When we reached the road again, a big dump truck was coming down the road with a full load of fill, presumably for the road repair going on at the bottom. There was a curve in the road there that was so tight, he had to stop the truck and back up off the road to make the turn. We then followed the road the rest of the way up the mountain, which involved another 100 meter rise over the course of about 3 kilometers. The steepest part of the rise on that path was okay, and over quickly. The rest along the road, was really tough and very tiring. We meet three people from Italy while doing that rise, and discovered two dump trucks were running up and down delivering fill. The fill was coming from the lot of a new house being built at the top of the mountain. It was dug out from the basement. Reduce, Reuse, recycle!

I didn’t sleep well last night, mostly because we had coffee after supper and I forgot to ask for decaf! I was also concerned about the climb today and the bats.

There were a lot of crosses on the road from the start of the steep rise through to Golinhac. They were made of stone, iron, wood, small rocks, etc. I was wondering if they were for pilgrims who died climbing up that steep ascent!

Since entering the Averyon Region there have been a lot of interpretation boards along the way describing the geology, plants, etc of the region. There were really a lot coming up to Golinhac. It was too bad they were all in French, I’m sure they were interesting and would have provided a good excuse to stop and catch our breath. One thing we didn’t need to read on a board was that the ice age ran through here. The area was left strewn with erratic’s.

We stopped in Golinhac at a park beside the church and had lunch there, then went into the church. It was very modern, built in 1917. We saw just about everyone from the hotel last night at some point today.

 We walked through the woods maybe 50% of the time today, and walked along roadways the rest of the time. At least the roadways were not busy. My feet were not too happy about the roadways, even though often the shoulder was quite good.

It was very hot walking after Golinhac and I was very tired, probably because I didn’t sleep well last night. We got to Espeyrac around 3:15pm. The hotel manager showed us where to leave our boots and poles and gave us our key. Our luggage wasn’t there so we had no other footwear to put on once we took off our boots.  We also didn’t have our electronics to do the blog. So we sat outside at the bar having some cold drinks, waiting for our bags to arrive. A german couple we had met in Estaing yesterday was there and we got into an interesting conversation with them. We all couldn’t believe what was going on in the world today or how things had gotten there. They wanted to go closer to Conques and left. I’m pretty sure they took a cab to Conques, it is only another 13km and they were talking about how there wasn’t much on the way there from here anyway.

More pilgrims we recognized from the Way passed through too and kept going. Later we wondered if they just didn’t want to stay here. The hotel was a bit questionable. We kept all our bags and backpacks in plastic bags when we weren’t getting things in or out. I would have slept in my bed bug bag but it was way too hot. The owners, on the other hand, were very nice. The dinner was delicious – potatoe soup, lentil salad, stuffed pork with beans, chocolate pie.

I fell asleep after my shower when the bags finally arrived, so didn’t get the blog done before dinner, and went to bed righter supper.

I slept like a log, never once worrying about anything. There were no problems, either.