We Did It! First Walking day was Great.

We are now at Clemecy, a gorgeous little town, where we spend the night. We walked to Asnois and had a taxi ride to here - and we now understand why, as Asnois is tiny has no place to stay at all…not even a cafe that we could see.

Anyway, we set off still with a little trepidation, and to our joy the signs were quite good, and the written instructions and maps which sounded so complicated were actually helpful and mostly quite accurate! Phew. We were in theory wishing we were following the familiar red and white markers of the GR, but we are getting used to the blue and yellow Compostelle markers. Only once when we were walking through and round a field of sunflowers did we doubt our directions, but when we studied the maps again we discovered that in fact we were right, and found the little path leading us out and on to Asnois.

The beginning when we left Vézelay was through forests, very pretty. The weather was perfect for walking - cloudy, cool at first, then a glimpse of sun occasionally, and now even lots of blue sky. After lots of forest we came to the edge of the trees and had an amazing expanse of open fields - sunflowers (which are now at the stage of facing down and dying, but the fields still look yellow) and stubble of grain crops, rolled up hay, and some cows. Not a sign of a vineyard….I wondered if we had left the wine country…but no, when we drove with M. Rollin, our taxi driver, we passed many many vineyards and we are definitely still in the wine country! We had texted him in French to say where we were waiting for him, and I think he thought we understood more than we did. We got the gist, but sometimes the details went over our heads. There are several rivers and canals here, all very picturesque.

After settling into our room at the Hostellerie de la Poste, and doing our washing, we have wandered round a bit…some amazing ancient looking wooden buildings….absolutely nothing in these small towns is new or modern…I find it just so charming.

Anyway, here we are, having a beer in a bar, relaxing and feeling very good. We walked only about 16 kms for the walk and it was very comfortable. We have dinner at the hotel, and tomorrow our friendly taxi driver collects us at 9 am and drives us to Saligny where we continue our walk, and our bags on to Varzy where we spend tomorrow night. (We miss a few kms between Asnois and Saligny but that is fine!) So all is going smoothly, and we are ecstatic!!Read more