We had a really nice stay in La Romieu, having a bit of a look around the abbey, which was founded by Pope Clement V before he became pope, and enjoying a very nice dinner at our small hotel, l’Etape d’Angeline, named after a local fable about a girl of the same name. Apparently the town survived a famine by starting to eat the many cats around the town – Angeline hid two away and saved them. After the famine ended, the town became overrun with rats because all but two of the cats had been eaten. Angeline then let the cats out and they, and their offspring, managed to get rid of the rats – now there are cats roaming freely around and several statues of them!
Anyway, we got away around 8:30am with not far to travel but wanting to beat the weather. Not the heat this time – thunderstorms rolled through yesterday evening and overnight, cooling things down considerably, and more were forecast this afternoon, so we wanted to get into Condom before they hit.
Over the last couple of days we’ve been walking off and on on very hard dry dirt tracks with many footprints on them – today we found out how the footprints got there! The tracks are the stickiest, gluggiest clay I’ve ever walked on! At times it felt like ice-skating as the clay/mud covered all of the tread on our shoes. Fortunately we weren’t on these tracks for as long as we were the last few days and, not for the first time, we felt lucky to have been on the right track on the right day😁
Early on in the day, after just over 4kms, we walked through the town of Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon, which was a centre for the resistance in WWII and had been almost destroyed during the war.
A bit further on we checked out the Chapelle Ste-Germaine, a lovely little church that looked like it had been recently renovated, before heading past Lac de Bousquètara, where we saw a lot of what looked like crawfish or yabbies but were obviously amphibious. Progress slowed around this area as Al tried to save the ones we found on the road!
We made it into Condom right at lunchtime – the outskirts didn’t look too inspiring but we’re in the old town which, once again is really nice and has a massive abbey, the Abbey St-Pierre, built starting from the 11th century.
We’ve checked out how to get out of town tomorrow, which has once again changed from the guide book – at least we know now!
We’ve got a booking at a Michelin star restaurant tonight, so looking forward to that…
Just under 14kms today, so 507kms in total👣
steelewalking 
Lovely pics of you having a well deserved, dressed up dining experience xx
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