Day 7 St Chèly d’Aubrac to Espalion

We spent the second half of yesterday coming down the eastern side of the valley through which a small river called the Boralde runs (makes you wonder how such a small river creates such a big valley but that’s a different story!) and that St Chèly sits on. We briefly crossed the river yesterday to the western side just before St Chèly and you can see the eastern side in the picture taken from our room yesterday afternoon.

This morning, after getting a couple of quiches and some fruit we set off, just before 8, crossed the Boralde again on the “Pilgrim’s Bridge” and climbed back up the bloody eastern side again, spending the best part of an hour climbing up under the tree canopy before popping out onto the plateau briefly before descending again into the hamlet of Lestrade. Actually, although the first part of the climb was quite steep, and gave us great views back over St Chèly, for the most part the trail climbed reasonable gently and, being under the canopy, was cool and very pleasant.

Not long after Lestrade the trail got much steeper downhill, dropping from our peak of 922m down to 444m. At just over 10km and half way down we pulled out the chairs and had a 15 minute or so break to eat the nectarines we had bought and then resumed the journey down, mostly still under the canopy, before climbing again, first to Le Rozier and then to Grèzes where we had lunch just before 1pm after about 14km. We were both feeling very tired by this stage – it’s not too bad climbing up the rocky trails but climbing down is quite tiring and very hard on your feet – all the jagged edges point upwards!

Nevertheless we set off for what turned out to be the very lovely village of St-Côme d’Olt, situated on the Lot river (into which the Boralde runs). From St-Côme, the road into Espalion is very flat and mostly road but we really struggled the 6km along the Lot and had a couple of breaks along the way just to rest the feet and legs. As you can see, Espalion is a beautiful town, the first real “holiday” town we’ve come across this trip, and we are going in to town to tonight for dinner and a look around. Fortunately, we are getting driven in to town because our accommodation is half way up to the ruins of the Château de Calmont, shown in one of the photos. The walk up here from town just about killed us but all good now😁.

24 (long) km today and 169 km in total.