After a long day yesterday, I have to say the beer, food and accommodation at Golinhac was sensational and we both awoke today very refreshed. Overnight and early morning rain was forecast, so we were pleasantly surprised to find the sun shining when we got up, albeit with a few clouds around and a bit cooler than the last couple of days. We made sure we had a good breakfast (no doubt some of yesterday’s pain was self inflicted by not eating at the right times and in the right quantities!) and set off just after 8:15am.
Golinhac is quite high but it’s not at the top of the hill so we had a quick uphill to get out of town (heading SW away from the valley we overlooked) before a really pleasant 8.8km walk to Espeyrac for morning coffee. We are back in farming country again, with all the sights, sounds and smells that go with that! As far as I can tell we are still in the Massif Central, this morning’s walk on what I think is the Espeyrac plateau – not as high as a few days ago but still between 400m and 600m. The weather has changed though, and instead of very cold mornings and fairly chilly winds, we are getting more humidity, higher temperatures and warmer breezes.
From Espeyrac we had a relatively short walk to a similar size town, Senergues, where we bought some bread, jamon, cheese and tomato, which we ate just out of town at a very nice facility provided for the pèlerins by the town.
From there, again, a great (fairly flat) walk through the plateau to St-Marcel, where stopped again for a rest before descending into Conques, which is an amazing village perched into an almost vertical drop into the Dourdou river – we are here for two nights so more pictures of Conques tomorrow!
Just over 21kms today taking us to 220km in total and through the second stage of our walk!
steelewalking 