I’m not sure whether today is a rest day or a walking day!
Alison’s right eyelid puffed up on Monday morning – it went down during the day but each morning since then it has become worse than the day before. We bit the bullet today and decided she needed to see a doctor – obviously this is a bit tricky for us but our kind hosts at our B&B not only booked Alison in to see their doctor (back in Figeac!) but offered to drive us to the doctor’s, from there to the pharmacy and then back to the trail. Neither Alison nor the doctor could tell what the exact cause of the swelling is but there was a fair amount of pus on the outside of the eyelid. The doctor cleaned the eyelid and she is now on antibiotics with strict instructions to see another doctor if the eyelid is not better in a couple of days.
We returned to the trail around 11:30am. Today was a short day anyway but it is extremely hot at the moment so we asked Paul, our host, to take us 10km up the road to Saint Sulpice where we had a drink and some energy bars and generally gathered our thoughts.
We decided to walk the 4km up the hill to tonight’s accommodation at Cazals, as you can see from the photos. As you can see St Sulpice,like many of the towns in the Cèlè, is very beautiful. Amazingly, there are houses above the town built into the rockface itself!
The vegetation has changed rapidly with the heat and what looked lush a couple of days ago now looks dry and more like African bush than French forest!
We go from here to Cabrerets tomorrow – just under a 20km walk. To beat the heat we plan to walk to Marcilhac and rent a canoe from there to Cabrerets. I’m sure it will still be hot but better than waking I reckon.
Only 4kms today but we were both glad to see our accommodation just before 2pm. We’re holed up on our room hoping the residual cool in the stone building will resist the very hot wind until nightfall. 278km in total now with the next few day’s progress dependent in Alison’s eye and the weather!
steelewalking 