Category: Uncategorized
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Day 15: Figeac to Saint-Jean-de-Laur (41km) Mr.Blue Sky
Sun is shinin’ in the skyThere ain’t a cloud in sightIt’s stopped rainin’, everybody’s in the playAnd don’t you knowIt’s a beautiful new day? Hey ELO – Mr.Blue Sky Eagle eyed readers of this blog may have noticed with alarm9 that for some days there has been no mention of…
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Day 14: Conques to Figeac (48km) The Grand Reunion.
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow William Shakespeare – Hamlet Before starting today’s blog, I’m holding a small competition. Who, without using google, can name the flag below? If you can, then you are cleverer than I! My stay in Conques more than matched my expectations.…
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Day 13:Espalion to Conques (47.5km) Into Aveyron.
Get into the Carmichael car, Michael Carmichael. Stephen Fry – Moab is my washpot. Walking the best part of 30 miles in 10 hours, attending pre-prandial vespers at a praemonstrian abbey, sharing a 2 hour meal with 10 french people you’ve never met before and then attempting to write an…
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Day 12: Aubrac to Espalion (33km) Mud, wet and childhood tears.
Mud, mud, glorious mud,Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.So follow me, follow, down to the hollowAnd there let us wallow in glorious mud. The Hippopotamus – Flanders and Swann To say the weather was bad when I woke up and poked my nose out of the door would…
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Day 11: Aumont-Aubrac to Aubrac (36km) Return to the Tower of the English
The wise speak only of what they know. JRR Tolkien – The Two Towers I woke at 7am and had checked out of my hotel 15 minutes later. Armed with a couple of pains au chocolat and a chicken bap for lunch, I hoped an early start would let me…
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Day 10: Saugues to Aumont-Aubrac (46.5km) In search of aligot.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more clearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn…
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Day 9: Le Puy-en-Velay to Saugues (42km) Meeting Jean-Claude, the world’s greatest nut spitter
No great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness. Aristotle The day, which started with high solemnity, was clouded by tragedy and ended in high farce. I have little memory of the last time I was in Le Puy-en-Velay some 35 years ago when I embarked on the…
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Day 8: Chomelix to Le Puy-en-Velay.(37km) Full Circle.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely,”and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland What a difference a day makes. Whereas yesterday’s walk was sometimes an arduous trudge through apocalyptic weather conditions, today’s weather was largely benign and…
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Day 7: Marols to Chomelix (37km) Singing in the Rain
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! William Shakespeare – King Lear It was hammering down when I woke up and I was in no hurry to depart Jacques and Sylvie’s. The previous evening we had spent a…
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Day 6: Champdieu to Marols (31km) Thriving in adversity
Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything. William Shakespeare – As You Like It. The weather forecast…
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Day 5: Bully to Champdieu (46.5km) Every cloud has a silver lining
Water,water every where, Nor any a drop to drink The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Simon Taylor Coleridge Today’s challenge was to see if I could walk the best part of 30 miles in pouring rain, largely on tarmac roads without eating anything for 24 hours. Well I succeeded,…
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Day 4: Noailly to Bully (43.5km) In praise of communal gites.
C’est dans les utopies d’aujourd’hui que sont les solutions de demain Pierre Rabhi When I peeked out of the window at 6am, things looked pretty gloomy. Michael, whom I’d met in Cluny, and Renaud, had both warned me that the weather was due to deteriorate during the week. When I…
