At Razac-sur-l’Isle

We finished our stay in Périgueux last night with a dinner at a small restaurant serving local food in the old city. We shared a foie gras plate with onion and fig jam, and then each had a salad - Amr with a Périgord mix and I had gésiers (giblets) which I remember loving from before (and I love offal!)…I think I have solved the truffle problem, which should have been obvious…it isn’t truffle season - have looked it up, and it is a winter thing here, starting in November and best in January, so no wonder they don’t feature at the moment. Also, as Amr pointed out, the truffle taste we get on pizzas etc is just truffle oil - delicious, but not the real thing!

It was cold - 8° - when we left this morning. I wore a jacket and kept it on for quite a while…and even when I took it off, I wasn’t hot, as by then we walked through trees and in shade for a lot of the time. It was a peaceful well-marked path today - perhaps the best. The people here have done a good job, and we rarely bother consulting the notes as they can be muddling or misleading. It took quite a while to leave Périgueux, through suburbs, or small satellite towns, and get into the countryside. It still is a well kept and affluent area.

Our first point of interest was a huge Abbey at Chancelade, where we paused and admired and wandered and looked in. Then we went up hills and down hills for a while, over little streams and then up again, but reasonably gentle and of course, beautiful.

We knew that tonight we are staying a little off the Way. And we easily reached the small town where we turned off and walked about a km to our hotel here in Razac sur l’Isle. And tomorrow we get a taxi transfer (with our bags) and get dropped so that we only have 19 kms to get to Mussidan, the bags get taken on to the hotel. Perfect. We stopped for lunch today and finished the cheese, and had muesli bars and chocolate, then stopped for coffee/chocolate at a bar just before reaching here. But find I am hungrily waiting for dinner which isn’t for 2 and a half hours!! Tomorrow we will see if we can buy a baguette and some cheese from the hotel, as it is hard to find grocery shops in these small towns.

This is a dear little town though. We did have a wander after washing to see if anything open…and had a beer as there was a bar, but no groceries! They keep threatening rain, but today it was lovely, and sunny, though clouding over a bit. Perhaps tomorrow will be the first rainy walk…we realise we are well over half way, and even approaching the end of this pilgrimage. Today is the first of 11 straight walking days, then we have a rest day in Mont de Marsan, and only 6 days after that…2 and a half weeks!Les mer