Day 14: Limogne-en-Quercy to Laburgade

And after a long day of walking, and after a warm day of calm

And when the expected diversion endangers our bodies with harm

The pilgrims choose only to face it, in resolute strides do they march

And then they arrive to their hostel, inviolate attitude stark

10 May 2024, Friday

Distance hiked 30.4km (18.9m)

Ascent 607m

The swinging kilt, and a decision to make…

The walk through wooded trails, mostly, and alongside farmland, was beautiful. It was hot, some 30 degrees, but mostly we were in the shade and the walking was splendid, easy and inspiring.

But in the end it turned into a bit of a slog. I’d struggled booking accommodation and got a chambre d’hôtes from Booking.com in Laburgade. This is a village 2 or 3 kms off the Chemin. What I hadn’t realised was this place, O Trois Puits, was itself another 2 or 3 kms further outside Laburgade. It was a relentlessly burning 29 or 30 degrees too, so we arrived rather hot and irritable, especially as we’d had to hike down a main road for a few klicks, having completed over 30km (around 19 miles).

All along the Chemin there are signs and waymarkers, this one showing the white-and-red signage of the Way

But it was a lovely place to arrive at, and we were given a wonderful meal for 15 euros each in addition to what turned out to be a comprehensive breakfast the next morning.

We enjoyed dinner with a Belgian mother/daughter couple called Elisa and Juliette, who were doing a few days of the Chemin. They were very good company and an amusing vignette arose: a night or two previously they’d slept in a gîte dormitory room and had been kept awake by the relentless snoring of a certain Didier. Is he about 60 and tall, prefers to bivouac, and wears long leggings under shorts? Ah yes, well let me tell you he’s as a mosquito’s drone to the elephantine galumphing of Michel’s snoring!

After dinner we slept like babies. But not before deciding that what we thought might have been a 3 hour stroll into Cahors was in fact going to be a rather challenging 4 hours and since there was a deadline for a flight we booked a cab.

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