Therese lives near Saint Jean Pied de Port, France. She has walked the Chemin Le Puy in two stages. This year she is walking the two variants of the route as a loop. Next year she plans to walk from Saint Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, the French Way.
Herve lives in Paris but has a summer house near Saint Jean Pied de Port, a place he will visit for a day midway on his journey. He is walking the Chemin to Santiago as the beginning of his retirement. He reached Santiago May 27 with friends met along the way.
Today we left Figeac at 7:30 am after finding an open patisserie where we ate warm Chocolatiers and drinks for breakfast (Chocolatier is the regional name for pain au chocolat or chocolate croissant). Had we known what was ahead, we would have bought sandwiches or casse croute as well. There were no restaurants or stores for the last 15 of 30 km so we were without lunch. When we walked into our destination, Cajarc, another middle-aged village with a strong arts community, we were greeted by the Saturday market filling the town centre. The asparagus, both white and green, were all thumb size in diameter. Jean-Francois, from Corsica, bought strawberries for everyone to eat at the bar as us Canadians drank our usual Coca Zeros.
Christine is from France. Last year she walked from Le Puy to Conques. This year she is completing another long section.
Isabella is from Italy. She was taking a lunch break out of the light rain just outside of Grealou, France.
Considering we are walking 25-30 km per day, you wouldn’t expect the landscape to change dramatically but it often does. This morning was more of the usual hillside pastures and hay fields. By the end of the day, the distant hills were all forested. The volcanic landscape of the Aubrac has been replaced with limestone cliffs and caves not unlike the Bruce Trail at home. And today we had our first light rain.
Hans and Diederika are from Holland. They are completing a section hike on the Chemin Le Puy from Decazeville to Cahors.
We are staying at our first public Gite of this trip. A public Gite is run by the municipality and is often bare bones. This one is lovely with everything needed for Jean-Francois to prepare pasta for he and three other pelerins. Les Trois Canadiens, that’s us, took a chance on a Moroccan restaurant called Le Mirage for dinner. It was awesome! Tangine chicken and couscous for Mark D and I, and tangine meatballs and couscous for Mark K.