Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

The hotel I was staying in at Dourgne had eight rooms. Mine was the only one that was occupied.

I got chatting to the lady who served me breakfast. Yes business was very slow she admitted- due to the cost of living crisis in France people weren’t dining out or staying in hotels as much as in the past. It was the same story at the hotel at Les Bouildouïres which I’d passed a few days earlier. In years gone by September would have been a busy month, but this year it was dead. People were simply tightening their belts in the face of economic adversity. With a plate of asparagus being offered in the hotel restaurant for €11, I could entirely understand why business was slow!

I reached Sorèze by mid morning. A lovely little town dominated by a 14th century clock tower and pretty narrow streets with half timbered houses where the village hobnobs used to live.

Equally impressive was the 14th century halle of the bastide town of Revel, replete with a clock tower that was added to the original structure in the 17th century, which I reached by midday.

From Revel I followed a mini canal called La Rigole ( which means the joke in French!) for nearly 4 hours to my destination for the day, Saint-Paulet. The mini canal was built in the 17th century by Paul Riquet at the behest of Louis XIV ‘The Sun King’ as a means of filling the Canal du Midi with water transported p80km away in the Black Mountain.

La Rigole may well have been a monumental feat of engineering but it made for rather desultory walking. Too shallow and narrow to hold any fish or suport much in the way of wildlife I made good progress under the shade of the plane trees which lined the route of the water channel.

Ségolene, the proprietor of the Gite Villa Caline where I was staying in Saint-Paulet had left me instructions as to how to find the Gite and told me to make myself at home in one of the villas until she returned from work.

Ségolène certainly had her hands full. As well as holding down a full time job, she had three young children and a dog to look after as well organising accommodation and sometimes meals for over two hundred pilgrims walking the Chemin d’Arles every year. Now that is what I call multi-tasking!

At 7pm Ségolène and her husband Cédric appeared with my evening meal – cassoulet Castelnaudry and a pitcher of wine. I could see that in my case there would be no belt tightening required after such a feast

I’d walked 40km in 8 hours but wasn’t feeling any ill effects. It felt very much now as if I was on the home stretch. 11 days and 400km covered, just 4 days and 150km to go. On y va!