The weather finally beat us today, reducing our walk by about 4kms! We’ve had very poor wifi and even limited mobile data since Figeac, making it difficult to get access to news or anything else for that matter, so we haven’t been able to read much about the weather in Europe other than getting the local forecast (and we couldn’t even get that yesterday). I just checked the news and all I can say is wow – unbelievable heat but it has not been too bad for us.
After our great lunch yesterday we crashed for a while and the room slowly got hotter and hotter and in the end it was probably the hottest night we’ve had so far. At about 4:30pm we started to hear people talking in the square just outside our room and by 5:30pm the must have been a hundred or more people having “aperitifs” at our hotel – as we found out, this was the first event in a multi-day wedding celebration – a bit like one of your birthdays Rod😀.
Amazingly we woke today to thick fog and set off just before 8:30am and made good time re-tracing our steps to Bouziès and then heading south and west along the Lot, with some amazing views along the way. After about 9kms, the trail turned sharply 220m uphill over about 1km and bringing us out of the fog. The sole purpose of the hike up the hill seemed to be a small cross and a buron and after about 2km on or near the peak, we dropped down a miserable rocky track to reconnect with the Lot again!
The walk along the Lot was again very nice and I’ll never know why the path doesn’t simply follow the river from Bouziès to Vers which would be lovely and a few kms shorter. We pulled into Pasturat around 1pm, planning to have lunch, and ran into a guy with a van dropping an older guy off in Pasturat, apparently having done some shopping in Vers. He offered to drop us in Vers and I said no thanks but after walking a 100m down a hot road and seeing nowhere to stop, we turned around and said thank you very much! Best decision of the day and maybe the walk so far – the thermometer in his car was showing 39C! He dropped us at our hotel around 1:30pm but wouldn’t take any money for the ride. Lunch was in full swing at the hotel so we had a couple of beers, a bottle of Rose and a 3 course lunch before going to our room, which is air conditioned (which is very unusual in France) and faces East – first time I’ve felt cool since we left Figeac!
There’s a photo of some of the locals swimming in the lovely Vers river, which connect with the Lot at Vers, and also one of a kiwi guy named Adrian who we had bumped into over the last 6 days and joined us for dinner (another 3 course job – I don’t think we’re losing weight!).
17 kms today to bring the total to 331kms and one day away from a rest day in Cahors – the heatwave is forecast to break tomorrow, let’s hope the forecast is accurate🔥
steelewalking 