We left Cahors in damp and overcast conditions. We had hoped to stop for bread at a patisserie we had spotted last night. Unfortunately it was closed. So we plodded on hoping to find another one before we left town. But none were open! We left town by the turreted Pont Valentre, and then we went up steeply to the Croix de Magne, a iron cross over looking the town, where we could see views of where we had come from yesterday and the bridges on which we had entered and left.
Our way took us slowly up hill, passing the gite of St Martin, which had a sign saying that there were no shops in any of the forthcoming villages but said they sold bread, I popped in and was offered a coffee and bread was provided, for a donation in their donation box, an establishment very much in the spirit of the camino.
We left in good spirits on a big dipper of a road through pine forests eventually rising to a ridge which we walked along for the next couple of hours.
We were at last out of the Causse and new vistas were opening up, large rolling down land interspersed with trees and slopes of grapes for the local Cahors wine.
We decided to stop for chocolate and morning prayer and the heavens decided to open, and it chucked it down in bucket loads. We donned cagoules and carried on for the next hour when we spotted a picnic site with a shelter where we stopped for our lunch.
Before leaving we got out over trousers as well and thus suitably equipped set out again. The rain continued and continued, and we carried on, our path took us over chalk uplands, which reminded me a bit of the Somme when we where there last year. As the mud stuck to our boots making them heavier and heavier I thought about those soldiers in the constant mud of the Somme and how awful it must have been. Eventually our path took us to a road, tarmac previously hated was now looked on as a blessing, as it was mud free!!
We eventually made it to our gite in Montcuq which was a welcome sight. It was at the Gite we met our first Englishman, walking the camino. He was from Oxford, and was walking with a Swiss German who is doing the walk prior to National Service. They are walking the route in double quick time having left Le Puy six days after us!
As we were talking to them over a beer, a French lady we had met previously on the trail with her husband and a friend came in and greeted us like long lost friends. The friend had left them in Cahors as he had to go back to work in Paris, an so she and her husband sat down with us and the Englishman and Swiss German man for supper. A great conversation ensued even though two and a half of us could not speak any but our own languages.
On the Camino in France
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