Very nice day today after an extremely hot evening yesterday. Every day it’s a bit of a lucky dip as to the quality of the accommodation and what sort of room we get – yesterday’s hotel was lovely and the room very nice but it was west facing, which meant it got the sun full on until about 9:15pm with no air conditioning to cool the room down (sunset’s around 9:45pm but we were in the valley). Usually this means we find another cool spot in the hotel until dinner and then open everything up after sunset to cool the room down. However the eastern cliff of the valley was less than 100m from the hotel just across the river, so if anything the east facing parts of the hotel (bar etc) were even hotter than the room! Anyway, eventually things did cool down and we had a nice evening but for a while it was like being in a furnace🤯
We got away today just before 8:30am, with the air still cool and nice breeze. As usual, we hiked up the hill, past the church and then a cave called the Pech Merl, which has ancient paintings in it. Once we reached the top we had a very nice walk through forest in fairly cool conditions, passing the junction of the Célé and the Lot rivers and leaving the Célé valley after an hour and a half or so and then on to the town of Bouziés where we had a short break. The GR651 finishes at Bouziés and we joined the GR 36-46, which follows the Lot valley.
The guidebook said there wasn’t much apart from a fountain at Bouziés but it was quite a bustling place, with boats travelling up the Lot to Saint-Cirq. From Bouziés it is 4km east (the wrong direction!) to Saint-Cirq so we will have to retrace our steps tomorrow as we walk west and south to Vers.
The walk from Bouziés to Saint-Cirq was also very pleasant – mostly shady and mostly flat until the last 400m which rises 100m to the village of Saint-Cirq. By now things had heated up and we were wet through from sweat- fortunately our hotel was about 40m from the top of the trail, and even more fortunately our room was ready for us on our arrival around 11:30am.
The hotel has a Michelin plate restaurant that only opens for lunch so we had a fantastic meal and a bottle of wine and then a look around the village before crashing to wait out the heat for the afternoon.
Roughly 12km today for a total of 314kms!
No internet to speak of at the hotel and no mobile data either so pictures and maybe even this post tomorrow!
steelewalking 