After saying good bye to Laurence and “the boiz”, Paul and Maxence it was difficult to muster up the energy to keep walking. Their absence from our journey is a void, a wonderful bond of friendship developed so quickly between us.
I’m behind on my blog by about a week so I forgot what I shared but we definitely had tears in our eyes with this good- bye. Bronwyn and I stuck around Conques for coffee and a croissant, best coffee thus far. I forgot that France’s coffee doesn’t really woo me which is a good thing as it’s expensive and I might as well make my own instant coffee (now Spain that’s another story!)….
We hit the post office where I sent off rocks to Jordi, literally heart shaped rocks that we’ve found on the way that will go home with us. At around 11 we were off an hour exactly up out of the valley of Conques. I had taken a look at this stage in my blog from five years ago and we stopped for a wonderful lunch with a heavy old white lab, it ends up I had an image of this exact dog five years ago. When I showed Bronwyn we noticed another dog from the day and both agreed it might not be alive now, it looked alittle older. An hour down the road out comes a bossy dog ordering us to keep on walking, I went to my phone and it was our old dog and even the owner concurred!
Today we would say bye to the young group of “Leader Scouts” that we see through out the day, an impressive group of about ten teenagers who take turns carrying two huge circular tents on their pack. They are an adorable bunch who were supposed to be in Africa on a mission trip but due to Covid hiking the Camino instead.
Tonight we would pass where much of our group was going, Decazeville and co to us for about an hour more up the hill to a small gite right across from the Eglise Saint Roch. I wanted to stop here because five years ago as the sun was going down the owner motioned all six of us over and asked if we wanted dinner, one of my many regrets on the camino I wish we stopped. It has a new owner now and while we couldn’t communicate freely because of my lack of French and hers of English I can say her place is a gem on the Camino and her dinner was amazing!! We had a room to ourselves, nice beds, the gite had a piano, drums and just oozed comfort. We arrived exhausted ( don’t we always?), and arrived to beautiful classical music being played on the piano by the only other two occupants there, a lovely couple who had just met on the way!!! We lucked out because often without notice the young guy would go to the piano and just start playing. What a treat to walk up to the door and like a Siren being called to enter by the sound… This young man will never know the gift he provided to us, although I certainly tried to relay it to him. The dinner was absolutely fabulous, the sleep amazing and I’d wake up and ask Bronwyn , “do you want to stay another night?”
















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