We got up just before 7 and started to get our gear together before breakfast. After breakfast we hit the road, the sun was just peaking out from the clouds and so we set out. First we detoured into Montcuq to get bread and bumped into Terry (a French all the way pilgrim) who we had last seen in Espallion. It was great seeing an old face again after so many days.
Reunions over we set off, the book had suggested to me that we would have a gentle day, as there were no spot heights for any of the towns and villages we passed through. How wrong could I be, our morning was a series of long steep up hill climbs being followed by steep and sharp downhill sections.
The scenery was changing again with orchards of apples and plums (which some of our fellow pilgrims were going into the orchard and helping themselves to - we were not impressed.) Large fields were emerging and sunflowers were being grown in vast numbers. As well as more grapes, this time protected by plastic sheets.
Before lunch after a long climb we arrived in the beautiful hill village of Lauzerte where we stopped for orangina and saw our English and Swiss-German friends again.
Leaving town meant dropping down before rising up again steeply through the woods, arriving at a handily placed bench we stopped for our lunch, were we had fantastic views back over Lauzerete. We set off again passing an unusual and much photographed dovecote,
and then plunged down again to an old church which has recently been restored from virtual ruin.
The constant up up up then down down down continued and the distances seemed longer than stated in the book. We eventually arrived at the village of Dufort-Lacapalette our guide book said it was only 2.5 Km to St Martin, (1 km down the main road and then down a road to the right). But suddenly there were way marks pointing to the left into open country and it looked like it was going to go down steeply. I was not a happy bunny to say the least! We stopped, re-read our guide books and consulted our map. I had also seen a sign for another gite, with the word variant beside it. Terry then came along and in pidgin French/English we consulted together, at that point I decided that we would turn back and go by the road, a wise decision as it turned out. The route had been changed to pass the gite on the variant, it was all about local politics and the fact that the owner had political clout. However, if we had followed the revised route we would have added three km to our journey! Instead we arrived at our gite in St Martin a good 3/4 hours earlier than those who followed the waymarks.
At the entrance was a notice asking us to ring the bell, we did with a great reverberation, and Anthony and Sean came out to welcome us. Anthony was Mme. Sykes' French partner, while Sean was Anthony's very large Alsatian dog. We were greeted by the words "Mr and Mrs Sykes", (the first time in France our name was pronounced correctly) Anthony was absolutely tickled pink that someone with the same name as his partner would choose to stay at their gite. Soon Georgina came to join him with a refreshing glass of iced tea for each of us, and then their two little girls who wanted to see these strange people who had the same name as mummy. (if we had been there a few says before, there would have been another Mr & Mrs Sykes as Georgina's dad had been visiting.
They explained that they had put us in the house as in the Gite itself were a self catering group of six French people, and they thought we would be happier in the house with them.
Our room was full of motoring memorabilia from Anthony's days as a rally car driver in the Monte Carlo and the Paris-Dacca rallies.
For our meal we were at first shown into the salon a room of baronial proportions before moving to the dining room where the two of us sat at a table to seat about 20. We were then fed meal of wild boar pate, chilli, cheese (including one that Lesley said was OK) followed by a pudding, washed down with lots of red wine. Over cheese Anthony joined us to chat and after the girls had gone to bed Georgina joined us for a chat as well. We eventually went to bed at 10 after a great evening.
On the Camino in France
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