Day 8 St J Blaquiere to Lodeve, 15 km

Short hard étape today but excellent views in perfect weather. I spent the morning trying to sort out what I am going to do tomorrow. There was a very long serious uphill that helped me decide. The normal stage tomorrow is 27 km, lots of elevation. Same thing with 28 km the day after. As I was trudging up a super stony track that seemed like it was not going to end, I thought, I don’t want to do two really hard days in a row, despite spectacular views. So tomorrow I’ll do a variant that cuts 9 km and a few hundred meters of elevation. And then the hard, spectacular day that follows will be a tiny bit easier. It was inordinately hard to decide that!

More incredible views today. Most of the morning was spent going up. Many false tops. Then finally a long flat part and then a long, long, long stony downhill and the longest last two kilometres ever. One small village. And one super amazing panoramic view.

Hardly anyone out walking. I only saw one woman walking her dog.

I ran into Benedicta just before the last bit of walking for the day. Both of us thought we would have been done sooner. When we got to Lodeve, we had beers and huge salads.

I’m staying at the gite across from the restaurant. Three rooms with two beds each. Five of us from last night are here. I got the room with the stranger, a man who does 40+ km days. He promised he does not snore but he’s snoring over there as I write this in the dark.

Today I learned that it costs 6€ to get money from a bank machine.

Lots (too much!) of the afternoon was spent trying to sort everyone’s plans for the next few days. It seems very hard to find transportation out of this area for those who are going to need to leave in the next few days. After a lot of discussion, the man who runs the gîte got me a reservation for tomorrow. Single room. Demi pension.

Everyone came for a glass of wine that turned into dinner. Today was the first day it felt warm enough to me (not to French people) to sit outside. One of the owners of the bar/restaurant where we ate is English. We had her perfect fish pie for dinner.

Stephan, who is going to walk over 50 km (!!!) tomorrow because of a lack of sleeping options, will be leaving at 6. I will try to get across the street for coffee at 8!Read more