Stage Twelve: Eglise Saint Roch to Figeac (Aug 22)

The rest day was lovely, and we were really lazy! The owner of the gite lived next door to the gite so we felt we had the home to ourselves.

Another wonderful dinner was had last night and the only other occupants were a French couple hiking a few days with their son who was 22 and in college studying Philosophy, and another female hiker who came in later right about supper time. The gite owner has a Rottweiler named Jade who was a real sweetheart pie!  

I’ve done something I’ve never done before and that was to book most of our stages ahead of time.  Had we not we would have had to camp as everywhere is “ complete” the term used when they are “full”. We were able to take an unexpected rest day and not ruin our booking because I removed a side trip to Racamadour, a place we went five years ago. It was not a part of our pilgrimage and was the only time we took transportation to a place. A train took us the forty minute journey and brought us back to where we got on it in Figeac. By removing that variant it opened up that night. We did the right thing, I personally think every pilgrim should try to go there, and we have, so nothing lost I don’t think. I remembered having to get up before 0500 in Racamadour just to take down hammocks and walk through the woods to the train station, and that’s far from a “rest day”, so we were good!  

Today was a difficult hike because there was no place to stop and get a drink, nothing was open being a Sunday.  We were slightly prepared for this and considered the chances but each time we approached anything that resembled a community our hopes did peak. Arriving to Figeac was like last time, exciting! The river runs through it and a bridge takes you to the city. We had no accommodation and last time camped outside of town, before town. It was nice but a long walk to town. We grabbed drinks, planned our dinner at the same spot as last time and I left Bronwyn to run across the bridge and look for accommodation.  Lucked out to get us in a nice hotel! Lovely bed linens, cozy atmosphere and we felt spoiled! We will sleep in because tomorrow’s hike is not really long and takes us on, in my opinion, the best part of the Le Puy route IF you take it, the Cele Valley, which is a beautiful variant along the Lot river and we are so excited!!!

Stage Eleven: Conques to Eglise Saint Roch

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?”