Day 10 Conques to Decazeville

Another great day of walking today! Breakfast didn’t start until 8am, so we got away slightly later than usual, about 20 to 9, after visiting the nearby epicerie to pick up some bread, tomato, cheese and fruit for lunch.

A very steep descent down cobbled roads out of Conques followed by an even steeper ascent up the hill shown in the second photo (taken yesterday). You can just make out the tiny Chappelle Sainte-Foy about 2/3rds of the way up. The photo just after Alison climbing up the cobbled path is taken from the Chappelle looking back to Conques!

After about an hour of climbing, we popped out at the top and enjoyed some easy walking through farm land, mostly along roads or good paths to the village of Noailhac, where we had a morning coffee From there more of the same past the Chapelle Saint-Roch and then on to an “aire pique-nique” that a kind farmer had put in at Fonteneille for lunch.

From there the track led through more farms, sometimes hardly distinguishable from the fields, before dropping down through semi-rural, suburban and then the urban areas around Decazeville before stopping at the Church of Notre Dame in the centre of town. This is the first town of any real size we’ve stayed in since leaving Le Puy 12 days ago! Conques was just outside the geographical boundary of the Massif Central, albeit probably still within the geological boundary, but we are well and truly out of that region now so expecting much different scenery from hear on.

20 kms by my watch today and now 240km in total. This is quite a bit more that the guide books indicate, but my watch does 3D distance, meaning that altitude changes are taken into account, whereas I think the books are using lineal measurement from 2D maps. The difference so far is about 10% – it should reduce with flatter roads but we’ll see!