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    🇫🇷 Oloron-Sainte-Marie, France
    mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    Oloron-Sainte-Marie
    1Garden behind monastery11

    Day 32 Oloron to Sarrance, 22 km

    Yesterday in France ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    What a great day! It started with a tiny Camino miracle. One of the reasons I have been fussing about which day to go over the mountains was because there was no room available on Saturday night in Santa Cruz de Los Serros, which is when I had originally wanted to stay there. There was a room available on Sunday. That started me thinking about changing the days. But this morning I looked online and saw that there was a room available Saturday. I took it. So decision made not by the predicted weather but by the chance of a nice bed and a reasonable number of kilometres two nights later! So I am now committed- for 4 nights at least - to the schedule I had made. Urdos tomorrow. Canfranc pueblo on Thursday. Jaca on Friday and Santa Cruz on Saturday. So I can stop obsessing about all that!

    90 percent of today was easy. All of it was gorgeous. Finally there were mountains - at first in the distance and then by the afternoon they were right there! They are big! And I am not yet in the really big ones.

    Early this morning, there were a lot of helicopters and fighter jets flying over. Apparently there are bases in Pau. The sound is so incongruous with the landscape.

    New word today: gave … a river that comes from the mountains. The walk was parallel to the gave d’Aspe. Super green, small farms, animals, and eventually, great views.

    Second miracle of the day: a picnic table when I had given up hope of finding anywhere to sit that would not land me in cow or sheep poo. I’d walked through a village fully expecting to find a bench somewhere, but there were none. They did have very nice signs pointing towards Compostela though. And then I thought there would surely be somewhere to sit on the lane that the chemin was following. There was not. Too much sun and too much animal poo. Eventually I saw a huge tree up ahead and thought, I’ll just sit under that! And then when I got closer there was a table! Amazing.

    There were a couple of very small villages with no services, except for one that had a bar that is only open on Wednesdays. The part of the route that was not easy, was a very narrow, sometimes eroding path that went up high over the absolutely speeding, terrifically noisy gave, the river coming down from the mountains. Scary. I talked out loud to myself the whole way — about 2.5 kilometers. Ugh.

    But the walk ended with some incredible roses. The roses are just overall amazing. So many of them today.

    A good part of the rest of the afternoon was trying to sort out the state of tomorrow’s walk. I will spare you all the details, but up until just a week or two ago people were being told to take the bus around a damaged part of the road. And before that people were encouraged to take the bus because part of the route goes along the shoulder of a busy road. Very busy. I also wanted to make sure that there was not more crumbly path running up high over the river. Eventually I got Michel, the other person staying here tonight, to call the person who works in the gite where I will be staying tomorrow night, a guy called Eric, who is apparently the person to ask about trail conditions in this area. He said everything between here and there is walkable. A big relief.

    I am staying tonight in a monastery. Much smaller and much older than the convent I stayed in before. I only met one monk for a few minutes; they don’t come to where the pilgrims are. The service where they do a blessing for the pilgrims (compline? 8:30 pm) was canceled. So no singing tonight. The person who meets you and shows you around is a volunteer, here for a few days. Again it’s just Michel and I, and we each have our own rooms. There were six people at dinner - Michel and me, the volunteer and his friend, and a man and woman who are just walking for a few days and have their own room. . The building is, from the outside, not spectacular. But there’s a cloister just inside the door and a huge garden at the back and a big huge main room where we had our dinner. Thw cloister is full of swallows - hirondelles, which is such a great word. Funny that the dinner was the same dinner I had at the convent, minus salad. Vegetable soup, a kind of homemade pizza, an apple compote and fresh cheese. But the thing we will all remember about tonight’s dinner is the flies. Why do Europeans not use screens? There were probably 70 flies, circling the table and the food and us. Ugh! The company was good though.

    Tomorrow is my last full day in France before I come back to fly home!    Read more

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    1
    5Not sure what these are - at an old hospital11Guest book near the chickens23

    Day 31 Lescar to Oloron, 32 km

    April 27 in France ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    Long, hilly, hot day, with a lot of trees. Not the most exciting walk. Highlight: I finally zipped off the legs of my pants. It was that hot. 28 degrees at some point when I looked. But really humid. Walking in hiking pants when it is hot is like wearing plastic bags.

    Most of the day was spent in the forest. Gronze is so concerned about the length of time in the forest they suggest walking with another pilgrim (easier said than done). This is a French forest, mind you. I respected by roads all over the place. But no benches!

    The hills were super steep. There was a lot of sweating. But let me just say again how great my shoes are.

    A water tap appeared miraculously, with some chickens and a picnic table, late in the afternoon.

    I’m spending the night in a private gite.

    The owner is very chatty! But it comfortable. There were four of us at dinner. Michel the man who was also in Lescar last night and two people walking the chemin de Piemont, which goes east west through the foothills. Their son lives in Montreal. So many people have family in Montreal.

    Tomorrow is shorter and ends in a monastery. The weather for later in the week changes every hour! Now it looks like Thursday might be v the best day.    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    2A real forest1Lunch dateFind the trail markerNot the most scenic part of PauPretty things in the giteMore pretty thingsThe gite1Watercolours of pilgrims!The view from the village

    Day 30 Morlaàs to Lescar, 19 km

    April 26 in France ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Another easy day under cloudy skies. First on the agenda was a visit to the boulangerie for the croissant and pain chocolate that would count as breakfast and a morning snack. And a little quiche for lunch. They always seem like a good idea but then I often, as today, find them really hard to eat while I am walking. And then of course they get squished in the pack. It ended up being tonight’s dinner. After the bakery I remembered to go to the bank machine. Outside the cities, pretty much everything is cash. The first withdrawal I made had a service charge of 6€. But since then there does not seem to have been any service charges at all. After the bank machine I went back to the hotel for coffee. And then I was out the door about 8:15.

    I’m trying to remember… definitely no ups and maybe just one small down. But it was generally flat. But nice flat - not all pavement flat. The day started in farm fields and then through a rural area with lots of houses. Good roses. And tons of rhododendrons. At one crossroads I met up with a group of day hikers waiting for some of their friends to arrive. Most of them were women, more or less my age. First question always - you are alone? There was a little bit of chatting. One of the rare times French people have wanted to speak to me in English. We were talking about aging knees, closed Sunday pharmacies, and I asked if any of them had an extra ibuprofen. Nope but they had something like Tylenol. It definitely helped!

    The chemin goes across the top of the city of Pau, through a real forest, one with an understory. Beautiful. And full of people out for their Sunday walks. After the forest the route goes right to the edge of Pau, around a race track. And after that I left the GR markings and went a few blocks south to a grocery store, which closed just as I was leaving, and then a few blocks west to a huge bakery-cafe for lunch. And after that it was a very pleasant walk along mostly green paths, past some kind of zoo, to the village of Lescar. Built on the edge of a hill with amazing views. And a very pretty cathedral.

    The gite is another really amazing municipal one. So well thought out. Everything you could need. Brushes to clean boots. Newspapers for wet boots. Drying racks. Hooks on the walls, a hair dryer, lots of books, tables inside and outside. A donativo washer and dryer. I have clean clothes.

    We are two here. Me and a man who also started in Arles. We each have our own room. Luc the volunteer, just back from a Moroccan tangine for his Sunday lunch, came and took our money and stamped our credencials. Like other hospitaliers, he looked through it to see where else I had stayed.

    Super quiet afternoon and evening here. Big decision for the next days is whether to put off going to Somport from Thursday to Friday because it looks like the weather will be a bit better. They are predicting clouds and some rain all week. If I wait until Friday I could also, booking.com says, stay in Santa Cruz de la Serros on Sunday night.

    Tomorrow is long with some hills, but they say the rain will not come until late in the day. Hope that’s right!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    Last night's gite in the morning
    Gite in the middle of nowhereFruit trees donated by friends of the cheminPart one of the lunch...cheese and walnut cannelé - usually a sweet pastry made savoury1Pack explosion

    Day 29 Anouye to Morlaás, 15 km

    April 25 in France ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    A blessedly short day! Easy walking, mostly down, under a cloudy sky, not too hot! A perfectly pleasant morning. Woods, fields, rural houses. Some dogs - all very proud of themselves for barking me off. There were a few Saturday morning day hikers and dog walkers out.

    Gronze lists Morlaás as having all services. And it does, but things like the supermarket and pharmacy are more than a kilometer from the centre. A person could manage that - there and back - after a short day, but who wants to?

    I’m staying in a small hotel over top of the bar/tabac - a cafe with no food and the cigarette/lottery ticket/newspaper shop. I went to an actual restaurant for Saturday lunch. Me and all the family parties. Not for the faint of heart being a woman of a certain age eating alone in a full restaurant in France

    Afterwards I came back to my hotel room, and I have not left! Rest day! And time to sort out the logistics for the next few days. I’ve run out of ibuprofen. No pharmacies close to the route tomorrow are open on Sundays (!). And there are none at all on Monday until the end of the day. Tomorrow I go over the top of Pau - a fairly big city. It never occurred to me this would be a problem! Okay, I thought, then I’ll find a supermarket. But apparently there are no medications at all in French supermarkets-a measure to support pharmacies. And then there is the Sunday/Monday food issue. Breakfast here tomorrow. I can buy lunch at a bakery here. Then there is a bakery in Pau that is about 15 minutes off the chemin and open until 8 pm on Sundays. I will have to get Mondays breakfast and lunch there and maybe some kind of plan B for tomorrow’s dinner. There looks to be a snack bar in Lescar (where I will stay) but things are sometimes not open when they are supposed to be! And then Monday is long with no services.

    I’ve booked tomorrow in Lescar and then Monday in Oloron -Sainte-Marie. And then I’m trying to decide how the next few days go. The most likely option: Tuesday at a monastery, then a long day Wednesday to get to the last possible village/gite before the pass. And that will be the last of France for this trip!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    1You can't actually see the bridge from the path2

    Day 28 Auriébat to Anoye, 28 km

    April 24 in France ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Last night I had to go out in the yard to get enough signal to upload the penguin. Anne-Marie, of course, was up still
    and bustling around the outdoor kitchen. Next thing I know she is trying to take a selfie of the two of us in the dark.

    This morning’s mystery: who ate the piece of it-takes-10-days-to-make-it cake that Anne-Marie gave me last night? It was wrapped up in a little bit of waxed paper in a plastic bag that also held the plastic bag with the cheese. I left them on the kitchen table before I went to bed. When I got up this morning, the bag was on the floor. I picked it up. The corner was ripped (chewed) open. The cake was gone. Paper was there. No crumbs anywhere. Cheese untouched. No mouse poo anywhere. All doors and windows closed. Could a cat get in? Wouldn’t either a cat or a mouse also have had a go at the cheese?

    Long day. But I left at 7 and the morning was fantastic. An hour and a half to a good coffee in a real cafe (not a boulangerie). A other hour to a good shady bench. And then lots of shade breaks for the rest of the day. It was 32 degrees this afternoon. How do people walk in summer??? I try not look at my little thermometer (which I love)every five minutes. I finally got out my umbrella for the sun today. It helps!

    I was crashing through spiderwebs in the woods this morning. Had no one left from Maubourguet ahead of me?

    Lesson of the day: this is France - there will be a bridge, even if the path looks like it goes straight across the river or stream…it just might be around the corner.

    I saw two deers, one of whatever the rodent in the rivers is. A garden full of wire-haired vizslas, none of whom paid the least mind to me as I passed. Lots of cows, some horses and sheep. Easy paths with a few hills. I found two shortcuts on the map that probably kept me out of the shade but saved me about two kilometres.

    Today’s gite is probably one of the nicest communal gites I’ve seen. Garden out front. Really well stocked kitchen. A little store that they come and open for a few minutes at 5:30. Single yoghurts or puddings. Canned things. Tiny jars of jam. So sweet!

    I was along for about an hour but now we are four. Two Dutch cyclists and a young German man.

    Tomorrow is short and I have booked a hotel room!!!    Read more

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    111Steeple in the distanceSteeple close up1Look at the stinger! And a rock?

    Day 27 Saint-Christaud to Auriébat 27 km

    April 23 in France ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    I had thought today would be about 7 km shorter than it was. Bad math on my part! And not accounting for starting and ending gites being off the path.

    I was happy to get out of the farmhouse this morning. But I was slow. Didn’t get out until about ten minutes to eight. Overcast, windy. Definitely needed a jacket. And then miles of wet grass. At some point I forced myself to sit down (in some slightly dryer grass) and put preventive tape around my heel. It worked.

    The landscape was rolling hills around flat valley bottoms, agricultural fields on the hills and on the flats, woodlands around the edges. Yesterday there was a field where the farmers had clearly changed their minds about letting people cross it. You could see the path in between the crops - about 50 metres from one side of the field to the other. But the GR directs you to circle the whole field instead. I was obedient, but annoyed. Today the path clearly went directly across a massive field. The farmer had changed the pattern the plough made in the earth to show you where to walk. I always feel weird walking across planted or soon to be planted fields. We certainly don’t do that at home. As I got to the far side today a man drove right by me in a huge tractor and waved. Fields as far as you could see. Tractors on all of them.

    Coffee and bakery stop in Marciac. Good coffee. Really nice village. Huge square with arcades all round. I have one more night in a tiny tiny place. But I am ready to be back staying somewhere bigger! Saturday and Sunday will both be bigger.

    By mid afternoon it was broiling. 30 degrees. Thankfully there was done shade. But honestly, it’s April!

    The only person I saw on the path was an elderly woman and her dog. She used to live in Canada, she said, but can’t remember where. She was hard to understand, but I think she told me twice that her dog has a tumour and they are going to have it out down, though she didn’t use such a euphemism, she used the verb ‘to kill’. And then she was really sad. After we talked a bit she thanked me for stopping.

    I am staying at another very old school gite. Run by Anne-Marie, a woman who, I think, said she was turning 90. She does not stop moving or talking. Old farmhouse. Kind of chaotic in her part but the gite is spotless. Big huge room that looks like it might be an installation in some kind of history museum. A kitchen and smaller (warmer) bedroom at the back. I took that one. And then I cannot even begin to describe the evening I just had. Anne-Marie’s niece is here for a few days, after going to the Pyrenees to meet her boss for the summer. She is going into the mountains to work with a farmer making sheep’s cheese. I have two samples of the farmer’s cheese to take away with me tomorrow.

    But dinner! First there was an enormous amount of food. Bread and soup (of course). Then a large plate of small chopped vegetables and herbs and flowers and a devilled egg. I thought that was the end. But then a plate of sautéed vegetables, rice, and sausages. I ate a fraction of it all. Then cheese - 4 kinds. Then some kind of fruit bowl with cream and booze. I am being sent away with a small piece of a cake that takes ten days to make. I can’t tell you why because the story was complicated, I was tired, and I could not follow. When I got out my credencial to be stamped, there was comment made or question asked about a good number of them. Then we took a picture. The. I wrote in the livre d’or guestbook. All the while there is a constant stream of stories and comments about the state of all the new gites, where people just do it for the money. She was very curious about the place I stayed last night. I guess the people I met are new. She wanted to know what they are up to!

    She showed me pictures of her family’s huge house that I will walk by tomorrow. Sometimes when she was talking she moved well into what would be ‘normal’ personal space. She never sat down. It was exhausting and yet she does have a very warm and welcoming vibe to her.

    I was able to take what I’d like for breakfast (banana and yoghurt). And I am going to try (I say this every day) to leave at 7. Tomorrow is long and I’m guessing it will be hot again.    Read more

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    2About a dozen tiny watch dogs!Can't see them here but mountains!View from the gite

    Day 25 Montégut to Barran, 26 km

    April 21 in France ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    I’m so glad English does not have accents on letters. Trying to type in French on the phone does me in!

    Another green, green day. And oh but it was hot! 27 in the afternoon. And so much asphalt! Sometimes shade. Much of the day was walking into and out of Auch, a small city with a massive cathedral. French churches are often square rather than pointy. But I did not love it inside.

    I ended up doing an extended tour of pharmacies looking for KT tape. 7 in the end. And the last one, which was truly the last one had some. That took almost an hour! And that shortened the coffee break. I didn’t leave Auch until just before 11 and it was already 22 degrees.

    Nothing too special about the rest of the way here. There were a few places where you can see the Pyrenees. But it was very hazy today and you could just make them out. One nice break at a picnic table in a forest. Another very short break on a bench with a magnificent view. I saw no one.

    The gite in Barran is old school. One room and a bathroom on the top floor of a crumbly house owned by the Marie or the parish. 4 beds and kitchen stuff altogether. Incredible view of the beautiful church from the bathroom. We are three women. One is the Brazilian/german woman and other a younger woman from Toulouse. Someone left a bottle of Pernod behind, so we had aperitifs outside before we ate.

    12€ for a bed. Man comes over after work to get the money and register the people.
    It could not be more different than the style-y Airbnb-like gite of last night.

    I think tomorrow will be about the same distance and same temperature. But there will be no pharmacy tour so I should end a bit earlier.

    I just saw a post saying that the whole chemin is now open between Oloron and Somport. Yay! (That’s where people have been having to take a bus around a damaged section of trail.)

    Young woman here is a smoker (still a lot of smoking in France, generally). I think she just went and had a cigarette hanging out the bathroom window. Old school!    Read more

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    1Key to the door carvingsLunch spotAnother good bench1Style-y giteOut the window

    Day 24 Giscaro to Montégut, 32 km

    April 20 in France ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    This app, like others, says, in the place where you start a post, “what have you been up to?” Again, the answer is walking. A lot of today’s walking was on wet feet. And wet feet led to one tiny blister. So annoying. There were stretches of long soaking wet grass and lots of mud. There was a bit of rain, enough to put on the rain jacket and sweat. But by early afternoon the sun was out and it got hot.

    At one point I arrived at the top of a hill, stepped out of the trees and onto a small paved road. Boiling hot. Needing to take off my jacket. A man in a truck slowed down —- I assume seeing someone walking with a pack in the middle of nowhere — to ask if I needed any help. I imagine I was that bedraggled!

    Mostly agricultural fields today. Grains. And ??? I have no idea. Lots of green. A number of small not fancy churches. Doors open but no lights. A few well placed benches. The villages in this region definitely providing some infrastructure for the pilgrims.

    Hills, uneven ground, and ibuprofen meant my knee was not bad. Today it was not the walking that did me in, it was the heat.

    I’m staying in the most stylish gite ever. In a village on a big hill. The morning will be up!

    As in other gites where I have taken demi pension, the owner ate with me. And like all of the other women, she had a small plate of salad while I had an enormous meal. They eat a big meal at lunch, but, still, these are very small plates!

    She is the first person who has mentioned the state of the world to me, asking what do Canadians think of the war? I do give the news a minute or two every day just to see where things are at.

    I left booking for tomorrow late … don’t know where I am sleeping tomorrow. There is no winging it in this route!!! We’ll see!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    First break spot2Coffee shopPath12

    Day 23 Léguevin to Giscaro, 32 km

    April 19 in France ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    I finally managed to get out the door not too long after 7:00. Got a few good hours in before it started getting humid. Not the most inspiring walk today. A forest. Small country roads with pavement. Two small villages with public toilets (!) and a big village with coffee in a cafe designed for parents with small kids. It had playhouses and dress up clothes. Cloudy skies for most of the day. And a few less than ideal
    stretches, like the one where the chemin was buried under piles of sand that had something to do with autoroute renovation. A good lot of walking along things — the autoroute, train tracks, construction fencing. And still a fair bit of pavement. And then there was the truck, a big semi truck completely blocking a very rural bit of the chemin. You walk a bit down a hill and turn a bit and the entire track is blocked by a huge truck. Apparently with all the national highway construction going on, gps is very screwed up. And yet - at what point do you not think this mud track is not a place to drive this huge truck!?

    It was a long day. I finished around 4. My knee is still unhappy but not as unhappy as it was. The non paved non flat bits today were a good change. There are times I think, oh, it’s fine now. But then it changes its mind again.

    Fantastic gite. Out in the middle of nowhere. Geese and chickens and three cats. A pond with frogs. And everything you might need — epsom salts, a machine to spin the water out of clothes, a whole shelf of Asterix comics. Huge bins to keep your pack in - so all your unpacked stuff can fit in too. But I especially like the gingham duvet cover and real duvet.

    Excellent meal, lots of instructions about what’s ahead. Same 4 of us as last night. But the other three are going a different place tomorrow. . I spent a long time sorting out days and mileage. I have a plan that only has a few days over 30 and a few days below 20 for rests. And then I would have 3 extra “just in case” days. And maybe time to spend another day in Toulouse. I’m reading people’s posts about the mountains!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    1It's not always pretty!Airplane stuff111

    Day 22 Toulouse to Léguevin, 23 km

    April 18 in France ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    I’m writing this on a terrace in front of the Maison St Jacques, an association gîte in the centre of a village that is very beige, but pleasant enough. (I expect people must commute from here to Toulouse.) The village has provided the house to the Association Jacquaire and volunteers take care of the gite. 8 volunteers and each one is responsible for greeting the pilgrims, cleaning and whatever else for 4 or 5 weeks over the season. That’s a lot of work! It’s a big old house. Good kitchen. Dormitory with 7 beds downstairs toilet and shower room upstairs. €10 a night.

    Long walk out of the city. I must have checked the track on my phone a million times. The route I took was not the GR and it is marked, but sparingly. Lots on concrete, more aerospace stuff, huge fences. Roundabout after roundabout. But then there was a town with good coffee and apple pastry. And then a village not too long after that. Another short break for a cold drink at a bar/tabac where I talked with a couple who were going out for their first rides on their brand new, matching, beautiful red bicycles. Quick stop in a church, out the other side of the village, and then finally off the asphalt as the chemin entered a really lovely woodland and followed a “biodiversity” path for a kilometer or two before heading back on the road to come down into Léguevin.

    For a long time I thought I would be staying here alone, but there are now 4 of us. Me, a straight coupe, he’s French and she’s American, and a Brazilian woman who lives in Munich. The first two are going to turn right at the Chemin de Piemont and go to St Jean Pied de Port, and the woman will turn at the same place and go to Lourdes.

    Tomorrow is long and it’s promising to be hot so everyone has agreed to get up early.

    And there’s a Sunday market that starts at 7 and apparently has a coffee roaster!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    Coffee #22Old pilgrim hospital113

    Day 21 Toulouse

    April 17 in France ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Lazy lazy day. I spent a lot of it trying to sort out what comes next. It’s not always obvious where to break up the stages. Gronze has at least one that ends in a place with no accommodation. What’s with that??? Tomorrow it will take the whole day to get out of the city. And my guess is that all of it will be on asphalt. Ugh. And then the question is whether the next 4 days are all kind of medium length or whether I do two short (to keep being nice to my knee) and two longer. I’ll decide tomorrow I guess. I will be interested to see if there really are more people walking after Toulouse.

    Besides adding up kilometers to plan stages, I also did my laundry. It took a lot of reading to figure out how it all worked. Pay at a digital screen over there to unlock access to the washer over here and to deliver soap powder into a little container on the other side of the room. Equivalent of $15 to wash and mostly dry a tiny bag of clothes.

    Most of the laundromats I have seen here also rent out space to package delivery lockers. I was the only person washing clothes, but probably 10 people came in and either dropped off or picked up packages while I was there.

    Thai food for dinner to make sure of getting vegetables. And then a very tiny scoop of mint - chocolate ice cream made with actual mint leaves.

    And then I walked back to the hotel along the river. Exceptionally well used public space. La fleuve Garonne flows northwest and into the Atlantic at Bordeaux. It’s already pretty big here. It must be impressive up there.    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    1
    SycamoreThrough here to service centreCoffee spot2Lunch spot1Saint Sernin Basilica2

    Day 20 Ayguevives to Toulouse, 26 km

    April 15 in France ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Gorgeous morning along the canal. My first goal of the day was to avoid the 2000 school children who were doing some kind of organized “solidarity walk” along the canal path today. Solidarity with what? At almost every lock there were water and snack stations set up for them. Huge piles of organic bananas at one. Stacked flat boxes of pains chocolate at another. Cake at another. They were walking 18 kilometres. Younger kids first. At the first water station I passed, the volunteers told me the kids were 20 minutes behind me. The thought of being stuck in the middle of them was pretty motivating for an hour or so.

    The next goal of the day was to find places to pee! Almost impossible. At one point I went through a gate and along a little boardwalk that linked the canal path to an autoroute service centre. Another time I stopped at a cafe. And then nothing - for hours - until the centre of the city.

    At first the path passed through semi-rural bedroom communities. And then it moved into the suburbs of Toulouse. Not the big box store kind of suburb but residence blocks (some may have been students dormitories), offices, and big institutional buildings. The biggest of these was the seriously fenced off Airbus campus, for lack of a better word. Apparently there will be more Airbus on the route out of the city. And when I started looking at the map, there are all sorts of aeronautical things here — Nationsl School of Aviation, Institut Superieur de l’aéronautique….

    At some point today I finally looked to see what species of tree lines the canal. Gazillions of them. One tree every 4 metres or so, often on both sides of the path. The phone said they are sycamores - but they are plane trees, which are related to sycamores. Should there ever be a bug…And apparently there is. Elaine of Elaine and Ned put a link in the comments.

    Closer to the city the canal path became a superhighway for runners. At times it was a steady stream. Midday. Full sun in a few places. But I liked the runners better than the cyclists without bells.

    After I checked in to the hotel and showered, I went for a very good coffee, got some voltaren for my knee, and went to the welcome centre for pilgrims in the Saint-Sernin Basilica (I just had to look up the difference between a basilica and a cathedral). I got a stamp, info and a map explaining the two possible routes for leaving the city, and a confirmed reservation for the next gite. The man phoned for me. He also gave me a second, different stamp so I would have one for tomorrow too.

    A glass of wine on a shady terrace and an excellent Vietnamese meal were about all the city I could manage tonight. I was happily back in the room by 8:00.

    Tomorrow I get to sleep in!    Read more

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    1Autoroute just Nextdoor1113Gite11

    Day 19 to Ayguesvives, 20 km

    April 15 in France ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C

    Avignonet-Lauragais to Ayguesvives, or the Écluse de Sangliers, along the Canal du Midi

    Very very very nice day. Easy, bucolic, and blessed by perfect spring weather. I spent the whole day walking on the north side of the big canal. Incredibly I did not get bowled over by any of the many cyclists, who to a person do not use bells or words to warn you that they are coming. The only person who actually rang their bell when they passed was a little boy of maybe 8.

    No getting away from the fact that the whole path is paved. And it runs parallel to the autoroute, at times getting very close. But I still really enjoyed it. I did not really miss the 25 km of crops that Gronze wanted me to walk through.

    Lots of ducks. A lot of unidentified by me songbirds. Three rodenty creatures I thought were maybe muskrats.

    Busy canal means there was a coffee en route. But there was only the one cafe today. Closer to Toulouse there are apparently more. There were lots of benches and tables. In a few places the rest spots on the canal path had gates leading to service centres on the autoroute.

    I left at 9 and really took my time to make sure I did not arrive at the gite before 3. It’s run by volunteers who come for a week. It’s run by the same association that runs the gite in Revel and the brand new, just opened gite in Toulouse, that people have been telling us about. The couple who are here this week were in Revel earlier and will go to Toulouse for a week later on.

    The gite is right beside the lock of the wild boars! Very cool to watch boats going through. The locks are automated now. You pull into the basin, someone jumps off the boat and enters info into what looks like a parking meter. And then gates open and close, etc. and off you go. But one time it did not work and the people had to wait for a canal employee to come.

    Huge dinner here. It started with a glass of wine and crackers. And then went on for more than 2 hours! I was fading. There are two of us here. Me and a Swiss man who walks with a little trailer.

    My knee was very unhappy this morning. But after an hour it felt much better and now it feels way better still. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.

    I think tomorrow is a lot of city outskirts. Toulouse is the 4th or 5th largest city in France by population, depending on where you look. And then there will be a fancy coffee, a bath, maybe a nice salade composèe, and the purchase of a tube of voltaren,    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    Under the clouds - mountains!
    There is a dog in there, swimming1Mountains!1More mountains!Basin of Naurouze1Canal du Midi1The hill I did not go up at the end of the day

    Day 18 to Avignonet-Lauragais, 24 km

    April 14 in France ⋅ ☀️ 7 °C

    Les Cassés to Avignonet-Lauragais

    Today was more of the tiny canal, La Rigole de la Plaine. A lot more. Probably 19 or 20 km. Very easy walking. It was a gorgeous day. And I got glimpses of the snowy Pyrenees off and on all day! And I actually saw other people. Lots of cyclists, all of whom were going in the opposite direction. A man walking the chemin in the other direction. Two men out fishing for rainbow trout. I talked to them long enough to need to pull up my hood and put on my gloves. There were a couple of joggers and some people walking their dogs, including a man whose nephew has just moved from Ottawa to the Laurentians, north of Montreal and become a Canadian citizen. And then there was the birder. Completely decked out in camouflage. Including a kind of buff on her head and netting that fit around her face and covered her neck, the same shape as whatever it is you call the thing that knights wore on their heads. When I first saw her, I thought it was someone living rough, carrying a big pack and a big walking stick. But, the walking stick was a tripod and the pack was a camera bag. When I got closer I saw the camera with the huge lens. She was looking for black woodpeckers. She told me about all the woodpeckers that live here, showing me pictures on her camera and looking them up on the Internet and checking to see the range and if they might also live in Canada. She thinks there is a lack of respect for wildlife in France. She also said that the 20 to maybe 40 metre wide wooded corridor along the Rigole canal is one of the places she can find the most ecological diversity. .

    Eventually the little canal joins the big one, the Canal du Midi. There is a kind interpretive area and an obelisk marking this feat of 17thC engineering - but there was a lot of construction going on around it so I just kept going. The highest point of the canal, the Naurouze basin, is where the small canal, the Rigole, “feeds” water to the big canal. This is also “la ligne de partage des eaux,” the line separating water that flows to the Atlantic and water that flows to the Mediterranean. (The story is that the designer of the canal noticed a spring that produced two rivulets flowing to different watersheds.) His plan was to send water into the big canal at this point so it would be distributed both to the east and to the west. But then I also read that the lock going to the west was closed, so the water now just goes east to the Mediterranean. I think?????

    After the Naurouze basin, the pilgrim goes out onto the path along the Canal du Midi. I will follow it for two days to Toulouse - and try not to get run over by bicycles!

    Tonight I’m in an Airbnb because the gite was quite a distance from the Chemin. Dinner was a sandwich and an apple tart from the bakery, which is the only source of food in the village. I’ve been enjoying the couch!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    SorèzeStart of the canal1Chess beside the canal1Go straight or 1.5 km around this "lake"1Road to the gite. Only hill of the day.Ruined abbey turned recycling stationGate to the gite

    Day 17 Dourgne to Les Cassés, 35 km

    April 13 in France ⋅ ☁️ 5 °C

    Another drizzly day. A long easy walk. A grumbling knee. An inadvertent and a planned shortcut. An okay coffee and pain aux raisins around 11. A sweet, winding canal built in the late 1600s. And a great gite at the end of it all.

    Today a lot of the chemin really was flat. Finally. Just point yourself in the right direction and walk. It was cold enough to keep both jackets on all day long. Another long stretch of soaking grass and thus wet socks. There were two sizable towns before mid day and then it was all canal until just before the turnoff for the gite (a km off the chemin). About 4 hours.

    The little canal is called La Rigole de la Plaine and it was built to keep the Canal de Midi supplied with water. Lots of park amenities along it through the town and then just the canal, the path, some cool bridges, and trees.

    Despite my best intentions and because they ask you to clean your room well, I did not get out of the Abbaye until almost 8. I got here around 4:30. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit all afternoon, so I just kept going, trying to imagine a bench into existence. Close to the end of the day, the GR turns right to make a scenic loop around what I assume is a reservoir. Walking straight, which I did, lets you save 1.5 km. Because it was not hot, my feet were perfectly fine after the long day.

    Another night with my own huge, spotless room at gite LaPasseur-Elle. You cross a little bridge to get to the gate into the back garden. Fantastic dinner (vegetable soup,as every night, though they are all different; pasta gratin, aka baked Mac and cheese; sausage particular to one of the towns I walked through today; simple salad from the garden; fruit crumble). The owner has walked all sorts of caminos.

    Tomorrow I will follow the tiny canal pretty much all day, until it empties into the bigger, busier canal du midi, which I will follow for two days to Toulouse. Flatter and shorter than the main GR route but shady. Also more boats! The people who write the notes on Gronze cannot hide their disdain for those who follow the canal! A true pilgrim would surely climb some more hills!    Read more

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    Day 16 Castres to Dourgne, 21 km

    April 12 in France ⋅ ☁️ 7 °C

    It’s been raining, spitting really, all day. One of the things I did before I left home was to send my newish pack back to the manufacturer (Durston gear in Golden, BC) to get two small repairs ( which they did for free and sent back in very good time despite the person who does the work having been off sick). One of the repairs was to retape the seams. The fabric the pack is made of is waterproof. But last year, walking in torrential rain in Portugal, water was clearly getting in. Today it was not raining nearly that hard, but I’m still really pleased the inside of the pack is dry! I use a liner (aka a garbage bag) and dry bags for almost everything, so it’s overkill. But nice that it’s working!

    Very quiet walk today. It’s Sunday, I left relatively early, and this is not a busy landscape. I was passed by three women out cycling. And about 800 metres from the end I met a woman (who had spent a year in Milton, Ontario, of all places) who was out walking her fox terrier.

    On a weekday I can see that the exit from Castres would be frightening. Two-lane road going into the city, no shoulder. One confusing roundabout. Today it was fine. Mid morning I decided to shave a kilometre off the GR route and follow a small road directly into a big village where I hoped to, finally, get a coffee. The GR went to the left and made a big wide semi circle before joining back with the road a few kilometres later. I went straight. Within about 100 metres a car stopped to tell me I was mistaken. I explained I was in a hurry for coffee, and he went on. A few minutes later I started seeing GR markers. So did the chemin used to go down the road? Was it rerouted for safety reasons? Or maybe local people found the pilgrims annoying? It was a pretty prosperous-looking area. Big houses behind gates. And at the bottom of the hill, a bar with coffee! At 10:30 on a Sunday. That’s a miracle. And across from the bar - a boulangerie. I took a good long break.

    The next section was similar. Mostly on tiny paved roads and farm tracks, several of which had turned to mud. And one of which was a long straight line of knee-high, dripping wet grass. Within about 30 seconds my shoes were soaked.

    After the soakers, came the woman with a red umbrella and the fox terrier. And then about 10 minutes after that, the Abbaye Sainte Scholastique. What another fab place to stay.

    This is huge Benedictine convent. Just after I got here it started to rain much harder, so I have not explored the outside, but I’ll post a photo of a postcard that shows the whole building. It’s not that old in local terms. Founded and built in the late 1800s. I was greeted at the door by one of the Sisters who gave me a tour and instructions. I am the only pilgrim tonight, so once again I get to have my own room. With its own bathroom. And it’s a nice room, with a 1970s dorm-room vibe. Spotless. Miracle #2.

    One of my knees is bugging me a bit today. So I spent a good chunk of the afternoon stretching and doing some other exercises. Then I went to Vespers at 5:30. There were 21 nuns there. It was all sung (is it always only sung? Everywhere?). The church is large but very simple. There were maybe 10 of us there besides the nuns.

    I had dinner with the other 6 people who are staying here. A couple who come a few times a year for some quiet. A couple from Quebec who are here volunteering for a month. A woman who I think is doing a kind of retreat. And a young woman here to study for her exams. The huge record collection and creperie where I went the other day in Boissezon — it used to be her grandmother‘s house!

    There is barely any cell service here. So if you see this before tomorrow that will be another miracle!    Read more

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    Day 15 to Castres, 12 km

    April 11 in France ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Laverne to Castres

    Very quiet night last night. Eventually the frogs stopped talking to each other. The people staying in the gite (and the reason I got my own room) arrived around 10 pm, a group of women on a roller derby team who had come to play a match tonight in Castres.

    Very short day today. Nothing particularly special about the walk. The woman from the gite and her dog walked with me up the hill to the road. And then about 3 km later I was back on the chemin, a few kilometres further along then where I left it. As I was coming into Castres the sky clouded over and there were a few minutes of rain! Light rain but rain. The forecast is for rain tomorrow afternoon and more rain Monday morning. One of this afternoon’s city chores was to buy rubber gloves to put over my other gloves. It’s also supposed to get cooler.

    Quiet day in Castres, population a little over 40,000. I was here by 10:30. Had a pretty good coffee, wandered around the Saturday food market. Had a picnic lunch (strawberries, cheese, olives, bread) in a park, where a little boy gave me a chestnut leaf. Bought breakfast for tomorrow. Got money from a bank machine. Pretty much all the accommodations I’ve been staying at want cash. But cash machines are not everywhere! I try not to do the conversion of the amount of money I have been carrying around every day.

    I spent most of the afternoon and evening lying on my bed trying to sort out the next few days where there are choices to make between the GR and variants, and where there are not plentiful accommodation options. The main decision later this week will be whether to follow the GR or to follow the Cansl du Midi to Toulouse. I think I have organized things so I can change my mind at the last minute. In any case I was not a good tourist here. I did not, for instance, go to the apparently very good Goya museum of Spanish art.

    I am staying in a huge, soulless, unstaffed hotel. You need a code to get the code to get into your room. It could not be more different than yesterday’s gite.

    I went to a small Thai restaurant for dinner. Without a reservation. The woman at the door says, sorry, we are full. All reserved. But then she looks at me and says,, come in. Can you eat fast? Generally the answer to that is no. But I said, sure! I ordered brochettes. She said, no! They take too long. You want chicken? I said chicken, vegetables, rice? It was fantastic (but not cheap). And I was gone before they needed the table.

    The word is that the exit to Castres is dicey on a busy road. Tomorrow is Sunday and I will leave early so I am not that worried. Tomorrow night I am staying at an abbey with nuns.    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    BoissezonTiny bits rock2Vinyl cafe!1Out my windowTreehouse/yurt2

    Day 14 to Lavergne (Noailhac), 23 km

    April 10 in France ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C

    Boisset to Lavergne

    From one farm to another today. I said bye to Florence this morning. She will be walking longer days than me today and tomorrow. Also said bye to the huge Newfoundland dog that was staying at the gite. And later in the day, bye Cyri’elle who went to the outskirts of Castres today and, I think, is going back home tomorrow.

    Amazingly, there were clouds this morning. Fantastic! Cool. I got to walk without my dorky hat! I actually saw 2 couples (at different times) out for a walk on the path. One of the people said that yesterday, if we’d been standing where we were, we would have seen the Pyrenees. Not today. Instead I saw two deers and heard my first cuckoo for this year.

    At Boisset it is still pretty high up at 770 metres. And while there were some small hills the general effect was down. And not too steeply for the most part. So pretty easy walking in very favourable weather. The sun did come out eventually.

    Often when you come to a trail intersection, there are so many signs that you really have to know where you’re going. You have to know not just the name of the place where you will end for the day, but the name of the next village, which I don’t always pay attention to. And the names of the villages are often very similar. So you can’t just remember that it was the one that started with “Bo….” , because there might be several of them on the same post! I ran into Cyri’elle mid-day. She lost an hour by following signs for the wrong GR, most of that going uphill. I check the gps track obsessively. In general the marking is good, but!

    Two villages today, but we had been told we would find nowhere for food - no supermarket or cafe/bar, just a pharmacy in Boissezon. I stopped at the Mairie in Boissezon for a stamp and, just in case, to ask if there was anywhere to get a coffee. The woman I spoke with checked with someone in another room and then gave me an address, but she did not mention the name. At the address she gave me, there was a crepe place, Galletterie et Vinyl. But it was closed. So I went and sat on a bench across the street. A few minutes later a man came out and asked if I was the person the Mairie had sent? Come in! Super style-y guy. Funky clothes, groovy glasses, serious tattoos.

    In a town without a grocery store it turns out there is a crepe place that is also the space for a huge record collection. Thousands of albums and 45s. Apparently over 100,000. Mostly 45s. All organized alphabetically by artist. They sell them online.

    I had time to kill before I could arrive at tonight’s farm, so I had a crepe and a coffee. A totally unexpected stop!

    The farm where I am staying is 4 km off the GR. I was trepidatious as I was trudging up the last hills. But it’s fabulous. Massive old farmhouse. There is a gite but it was already full for tonight so I have my own room in the house. It’s a place that has clearly been full of projects. 35 years of renovations and maintenance, but also funky art and garden projects. Ponds to recycle water from the house. Sculptures. A treehouse/yurt thing. And the best thing: the ponds are home to frogs! They have a lot to say.

    Excellent dinner. Same soup as last night, and same kind of stew as last night. But while I really did not enjoy last night’s meal (full of cloves), today’s was excellent. And after the stew, salad from the garden and then strawberries with soft, fresh cheese. Perfect!

    The point of staying here, apart from staying at another farm, was to let me get to Castres in the morning so I can see the market. Several days ago I booked a room for myself in the city not knowing I would end up, even in gites, with 3 nights in row of single rooms. Fancy trip!    Read more

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    Day 13 to Boisset, 30 km

    April 9 in France ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    La Salvetat-sur-Agout to Boisset

    Long, beautiful day to a gite a little ways out of the village of Boisset.

    I finally managed to get out the door before 7:30. Quick stop at the boulangerie for a pain aux raisins, which is way better than it sounds. Gloves on and hood up, it was chilly.

    Leaving Salvetat this morning was a mess. GR markings are leading one way, the gps tracks on not one but three apps are leading another way. I assumed this was another case of one village with two different GRs. But then there were no markings at all along the route I was following. Eventually I caught up to Florence who figured out they have moved the GR, presumably to get it off the road . Traffic was not bad this morning and I think we were early enough that walking on the road did not seem dangerous. The new route looks like it might add a few kilometres. I was happy not to have them.

    Most of the walk was through plantation forests - beech and maybe hemlock? No undergrowth, no middle story. But the shade was good. At home we talk about hiking on trails that are all rocks and roots. Here it is rocks and sticks. Every so often these trails are just covered with sticks, which, of course, sometimes roll when you step on them. They also make the trail feel messy.

    I had just been thinking that I have seen no small animals. But then I did — something that looked like a mink but maybe bigger and a deer. And then later when I was having a croissant on a bench, a mouse came for the crumbs. . Coolest thing today was a weird plant that the internet says is purple toothwort, a parasitic plant that grows on the roots of other plants and has no chlorophyll. There was just one clump. Oh, and I finally saw a menhir, a standing stone. (Yesterday’s gite was Gite L’etape les Menhirs.)

    Quick stop in Anglés, a drab village, for a croissant and a cold drink from the supermarket. There were unlocked public toilets behind the village hall, which does not happen that often here, unlike Spain, where they are everywhere and mostly very clean. These ones were the hole in the floor kind, which, thankfully one does not see that often any more.

    Lots of the houses in Anglés have outside walls covered in thin slate tiles. Apparently, it is to protect the house from humidity or moisture.

    Leaving the village there was a great chorus of frogs. And then two more hours through the forest. The last section of woods actually had a bit more diversity it.

    Lots of info panels here about US paratroopers in the area in WW2. Honestly, I was so hot I didn’t read them but I took pictures for later. The woman who owns this gite has a sign up here too. She said the family of a paratrooper who stayed (I think) in this house came to stay recently.

    This house is beautiful in bucolic surroundings. Lots of animals. Goats, sheep, cows, weird beauty queen chickens and normal chickens, a bunch of cats, some dogs, two donkeys. There is a dog agility course in the back, and the woman’s daughter runs a pet sitting business.

    Two rooms, three of us. I got to have the room with the double bed. Age? Language? Maybe also Florence just being nice. She arrived first and took a bed in the other room. I did not argue; this room is beautiful. As they say on Escape to the Country, it has a dual aspect.

    Tomorrow I am going to another rural gite that is a few kilometres off the chemin. It puts me closer to Castre on Saturday. I think tomorrow is about 20 and then Saturday will only be 12.    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    1112This is the gite tonight1Bird posters all over the village

    Day 12 to La Salvetat-sur-Agout, 21 km

    April 7 in France ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Today is brought to you by the colour green. With supporting roles played by water, yellow flowers, and church bells.

    It could not have been more perfect weather. I wore my gloves for about an hour first thing this morning, my jacket until I had lunch. It got warm in the afternoon but not too warm.

    A lot of the day was spent following rivers. There were lots of little streams running down the hillsides to meet them. Brooks, creeks, streams - I’m realizing I don’t know the difference. But there was a lot of running water. And then for about an hour the chemin goes along the shore of a “lake.” It was really a reservoir. And while it’s beautiful to see water (and it seems the lake is a big deal), the lakeshore felt very sterile to me. So I asked at the tourist office later, when I was checking in to the gite - was that actually a lake? Well, no. And, yes, they dynamited the houses and drowned the villages. Apparently someone local, who would be about my age, and was a child in one of the villages when this happened in the 1960s, wrote a book about it.

    Only one very tiny village en route today, we’d call it a hamlet. Ho uses, some animal enclosures, a big church. The bells were ringing as I passed through. There had also been bells chiming earlier. Very cool to be walking in the forest and to hear them.

    Despite everything getting flatter today, it was still pretty hilly. More beech forests - one with daffodils. Lots of moss-covered stone walls, the semi tidy ones. And eventually up and over the biggest hill of the day to get a view of another reservoir. And then past some impressive forsythias in people’s gardens. And down a small road, lined st various points, with huge dandelions.

    This village is big enough to have a few stores and a cafe-bar that stays open all afternoon. I had a post-walk panaché and then took another stab at perfecting the coffee order: allongé with milk on the side. That was good! It won’t work everywhere but good to know.

    I’m staying in the gite communal, the municipal gite. Massive old presbytery. Thick, thick walls and glacial cold as soon as you open the door. The sleeping rooms are upstairs and thankfully not cold. There are three of us here tonight - the same as last night. The young woman Cyri’elle who has been on the same itinerary as me for days now, and Florence, who is probably more or less my age and is from Brittany and will be doing my next three days in two. Three pilgrims, three bedrooms (each with two beds). We each get our own room.

    Gourmet meal from the tiny supermarket: a carrot, a tetrapack of fairly good vegetable soup, bread, a very soft blue cheese (not Roquefort, which comes from here) chosen because it was in the smallest package, and two little containers of yoghurt. I’ll have the other two for breakfast. Have I complained yet about having to eat first thing in the morning? Ugh.

    I’m pretty happy with how everything is feeling. Shoes remain great and worth the drive to Ottawa to get them. Knees are good. Achilles is happy.

    Tomorrow is longer but, I am ever hopeful, flatter. And maybe a coffee stop early afternoon???    Read more

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    Day 11, To Murat-sur-Vèbre, 22 km

    April 7 in France ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C

    Saint-Gervais-Sur-Mare to Murat-sur-Vèbre. 22 km plus the 2.5 extra when I was looking for my watch! 🤦🏻‍♀️

    Today was shorter than yesterday, but it was higher and harder. I had planned to leave early to avoid the heat. Leaving before everyone else is a hard thing in a shared room - having your things organized and ready to go, trying not to make noise, not turning on the light. Tricky! But two of us, Cyri’elle and I, were both awake before my alarm went off because we were freezing. Someone else had opened the window in the middle of the night. And then Benedicta and Emilie were up too. (They both left today.) And there was a bit of getting ready chaos. I think B and I left at 7:20 or so. Pretty good! She planned to hitch hike to the closest place with a train station.

    We went to the boulangerie to get pain chocolate, something for lunch, and coffee. They’d run out of take out cups but let us use cups from their kitchen. When we were outside having our coffees I noticed I did not have my watch on. I’ll spare you the small panic details but they added two and a half kilometres to the start of the day, and I still left town with no watch. I lost the watch that today’s missing watch replaced on a backpacking trip. So this was feeling ridiculously familiar. End of today’s story - I found the watch at the very bottom of my pack when I got to the gite this afternoon. What was it doing there?

    All the fussing meant that I didn’t get away until about 8:20. I started out following the markings for a different GR. But not for long. And then the steep, rocky climbing started, as it has every day in this section, just outside the village.. The chemin went up in the morning. Way up before lunch. And way up again just after lunch. Today’s top was at 1000 metres. There was a lot of cursing at the GR designers. Biggest complaint of the day was that they drag you up what is the tallest mountain of the Massif Central on this route and the trail tops out in the trees! No view. What were they thinking?????

    There were views before that. Huge ones. But the highlight of the day was the hillsides covered in beech trees with their buds just about to break. And all the streams and little waterfalls.

    I played leap frog all day with Cyri’elle, one of the women I stayed with last night. We stopped for lunch at farm that was almost at the top and had something to drink while a very odd pig nosed around us and our stuff.

    And then finally we were out of the mountains into a green world. I can’t say I am not relieved. It will be nice to just walk!

    Staying tonight at a private gîte. Cyri’elle moved here when she found out she was going to be alone in the municipal gîte. There is another French woman here who is doing the whole Chemin d’Arles and the Camino Aragones, like me. But she is going to go much faster. She has a chart where she fills in her accommodation and mileage. The gîte has excellent heat!    Read more

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    Day 10 St M d’Orb to St Gerv. s. M, 25k

    April 6 in France ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Saint-Martin d’Orb to Saint-Gervais-sur- Mare.

    There was almost 700 metres of elevation today. My phone says I only did 11 floors! So mean.

    About 30 metres after leaving the gite, I was already walking on tip toes because the path was so steep. There was about 90 minutes of climbing up a steep rocky path, and then most of the day was spent on forest tracks that went up and down and in every direction. All day had spectacular views. Literally in every direction. Once the path got more or less at the top, the walking was relatively easy. Alternating ups and downs for about 5 hours. Over about 5 or 6 small passes. I felt much better than yesterday. Not quite peppy but not dragging. But the heat at the end of the day was definitely getting beyond my comfort zone. Today I left at 8:15. Tomorrow I will aim for 7:15.

    Lots of forests, even at the tops. Sometimes shade. Some of the valleys had no leaves at all yet. Gazillions of trees down. Mostly pines and mostly, but not always, in the plantation forests. There was some scrambling to get around some of them. Tons of birds. Excellent (and only one of two all day) picnic table in the shade for lunch. A cool shelter later on that I forget to take a picture of.

    The first water and buildings were 21 km in. This is Gronze’s favourite etape of the whole itinerary. I will reserve judgement but it was really good. The views were the highlight, of course. But maybe the North American is not quite as enamoured of the plantation forests. Though there were fantastic beech forests too.

    The usual steep, rocky descent to the village that goes on forever. I am staying with the three other women in a kind of family unit in a lodging place run by the village. One bunk bed, one fold out couch and a separate room with double bed. I was here first and just took the bottom bunk because I did not want to have to be part of the decision of who got the room.

    The only place open for food today was the local museum, which sells regional products. None of which were suitable for dinner! We bought a bottle of wine and some fancy crackers and then bought things from the little food cupboard at the gite. I got a weird and not entirely pleasant tuna and bean salad in a can. Not recommended.

    The big drama today was that the Irish girl from last night’s gite left without paying. The owners left a note for her on the kitchen table asking her to leave her payment there. I did not realize she had left before me. There was no money on the table. But eventually I caught up to her. I asked if she had seen the note, and she said no. Did she leave their money in her room? Nope.

    She did not seem prepared at all for the walk today. One of the other women saw her later and gave her a bottle of water because she had no water. She had also broken her sandals. The two women who came after that did not see her. The person who let me into the gite asked if I was Katie. So she intended to stay here. Worrisome and annoying.

    Tomorrow is shorter but higher. And then that is the end of these mountains I think.    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    11Fancy restaurant with a private bridge over the riverView from my room2Dinner for one

    Day 9 Lodeve to St Martin d’Orb, 25 km

    April 5 in France ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Another blue sky day with big hills and fantastic views. The day started early when the alarm of the guy who walks long days went off at 5:30. I did not get back to sleep. He was out starting his 56 km day by 6:00. The rest of us were much slower.

    Quick breakfast (banana and kefir) in the gite. Bad coffee at the boulangerie across the street. And then out of the town and pretty shortly going uphill. I was worried about missing views by taking the alternate route today. But the alternate did not start until halfway along, after the highest point. The climbing was mostly on a small track and was a good surface. It was long but not terrible. Though the lack of wind (!!!) did make it hot. Then a good hour walking along the top with spectacular views to the south. At the turnoff for the variant, the main route goes northwest, the variant goes southwest. On a north-facing slope I was back in early spring. Deciduous trees with their leaves just starting to bud. Another great view.

    Even the variant had a variant. I took the longer path that, I think, had easier walking and for which I had a GPS track. The other option was shorter, following a small river, lots of rocks. There were day hikers out on Easter Sunday. And a couple of groups of trail runners and a few cyclists. Tge most people I have seen.

    The main etape ends in the very pretty village of Lunas. I met up with Benedicta there and we sat on the terrace of a fairly fancy restaurant and had a panaché (the beer and lemonade drink). Then we kept walking for another 4 km, which means we cut tomorrow’s 28 down to 24. Benedicta is staying at a different gite with one of the young women who have a lot of blisters - the other has gone home (not because of the blisters). I am at a private gite just at the edge of the village, right st the start of tomorrow’s hill, which will go to 977 metres or something like that.

    By some kind of miracle I have a private room and I got to have dinner alone. And I was able to make a cup of black tea with milk! Very nice gite. There is a young Irish woman staying here too.

    The plan is to leave earlier tomorrow! We’ll see!    Read more

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    First view of the Pyrenees way in the distance1

    Day 8 St J Blaquiere to Lodeve, 15 km

    April 3 in France ⋅ 🌬 18 °C

    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

  • mary louise adamsChemin d’Arlesmary louise adams
    1
    23Caterpillars!11

    Day 7 St-Guilhem to St J Blaquière, 27k

    April 3 in France ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    Spectacular day! Blue skies, big views, impeccably maintained trail, a mid-day cafe, a good dinner, and a typical municipal gîte run by really kind people. All the guides said it would be 22 km today. But at the end of the day all the Apple watches and gps things (except my under-estimating phone) said it was closer to 28. It did feel long by the end — the last two kilometers are always endless!

    There was a lot of up today! Lots of stones. And a long, long down late in the day. But the trail underfoot this morning was amazing. No erosion. No obstacles. It started going up immediately. Up and over a small mountain? A big big hill? It took about an hour and a half to get to the highest point. The views on the way up were of green hills, some rocky ridges, a river. The views over the other side were of a wide flat plain with mountains way in the distance and, I think, a few flashes of the Mediterranean.

    Highlights — the broom, a weird long train of caterpillars that was more than two metres long — some tiny daffodils, a nice stop for limonade on a shady terrace, a donkey sleeping standing up, and this final village, Saint-Jean-de-la-Blaquiere. Stones, a big square, beautiful church, arches and alleys. Three of us arrived at the same time.

    The instructions were to go to the town hall to pay and register. Door to the gîte is always open. No key. Like everyone, the woman there was very kind. Full of information, making sure everyone was okay. A volunteer takes the reservations on her phone. And then a woman is paid by the village to clean. It’s spotless. Very simple, old building. Two small rooms. Mostly bunk beds but no one has to sleep on top.

    We are 6. All women. Two young women on their first walk. They both have horrible blisters. Everyone else is trying to get them to stay sitting. Only two of us are walking more than a few days.

    The dinner arrangements here: the woman who owns the small store makes individual servings of lasagna. Yesterday we called to reserve, and today we went and picked them up. Tiramisu for dessert. 10 euros for the meal. It was fab.

    It’s Good Friday but not a holiday!

    Tomorrow is short and ends in a small city. No food logistics to manage.    Read more

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