Tuesday 11th September

Last night (Monday) we stayed in a hotel in Aubrey Aubrac. The room was great and we took advantage of the facilities ( the bar and restaurant). I had Carbonara pasta for dinner which came with an uncooked egg to mix in. I did just that and it cooked in the warm pasta. Very nice.

Caths back and legs are giving us some trouble so it was good to have a non walking day yesterday and Cath was able to walk today for just over 17 ks in hot conditions. We are using La Malles Postale who are a great service and take one of our bags each day to our next accommodation. This works well but does mean you have to book a day ahead so they know where to drop your bag. This does take away the freedom of deciding where you walk to each day. Still it is working for us at the moment. We have not seen any church or council run Gites and it appears they are nearly all commercial enterprises so really not a good idea just to turn up (very different from our experience in Spain in 2009)

Tonight we had booked into another Gite in Les Gentianes and after 17ks of ups and downs and long distances across dairy farms in very warm sunshine we arrived around 230pm to a family run Gite. There were maybe 25 others booked in and we caught up with many pilgrims from previous days and this time quite a few spoke English so our communal dinner was more enjoyable than some of the others.

We shared our room with two ladies, one was a German lady and the other was from Alaska or New Delhi. We aren’t quite sure. Strange lady.

A terrific dinner with some showmanship in serving the mashed potato full of lovely cheese ( a regional specialty) plus sausages. Bangers and mash you might say.

Into bed at 9pm and I tried not to snore.