ST 4: Not lost, just outside

We set off this morning with the Sun once again shining. We soon climbed out of Langogne and were looking down on the mist-filled valleys while walking beside sunlit fields.

A few years ago when we visited Africa we spent the first couple of days photographing anything that moved. After a couple of days we were all ‘Another zebra? Is it doing anything special?’ That’s where we are with fields and hedgerows of wildflowers. To an Australian eye the French countryside is alive with vibrant colors – but if we stopped to photograph every beautiful hedgerow we’d never make any progress. So, dear reader, just assume we are walking through amazing flowers until notified otherwise.

It didn’t take too long until clouds started massing ahead of us, and not much more until we were getting rained on slightly. But today was a short day’s walking so we weren’t too phased by the damp.

Today felt like we were going a bit more into the wild. We hardly saw anyone and the only places we walked through were hamlets at best. There were a couple of sections through fabulous old forests, which were even nicer when the Sun came out and dappled the moss on the forest floor.

Luckily we had planned ahead and brought lunch with us, so we stopped by the road and had quiche for lunch.

We only covered 16km today which felt like a bit of a break. When Robert did this section he got utterly and hopelessly lost. The couple of little hamlets we passed through refused to even answer their door to him lest he be a brigand or beast. We did not get lost but we did arrive at our destination at 12:30. Which left us with two hours to kill, until we could check in to our auberge, sitting outside in a tiny village amidst increasingly heavy rain.

So we were damp and cold by the time we checked in a got a hot shower followed by a cold local beer.