Day 15: Laburgade to Cahors (taxi)
- Simon Pollack
- May 11, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2024
The elegant bridge spans the water, turrets bright, angled and sharp
The Terminus art-deco hotel offers a splendid repast
The wine in this town is widely renowned, the malbec started life here
A chic little stop with its chic little shops, the market-calls catching your ear
11 May 2024, Saturday
Distance hiked: zero | Cheat day (timing) |
Cahors. The biggest town on the Chemin. And a day off as we cheated with a taxi. So we checked out the market which was very vibrant and bought some nice table linen that Cat could take home.
Thereafter a lunch at the very wonderful art deco Terminus Hotel (as expected, right by the train station) where we had stayed 5 years ago. I then packed Cat off in her car, which was waiting where she’d left it in the station carpark (to get a convenient bus that left a few times a day directly for Figeac) so she could get her plane from Toulouse this afternoon. I visited the magnificent mediaeval bridge Pont Valentré and wandered slowly back to the Logis hotel La Chartreuse. It was comfy enough and the dinner was very nice if a little lonely compared with the more atmospheric experiences in shared accommodation. But I had a few hours to kill so I could book up some more accommodation later in the walk.
This is quite a stressful and time-consuming exercise, balancing where you can stay and walk to each day against availability and where you’d like to be the following day. I made the decision about a week ago not to overburden myself with challenges, given how things were materialising then and the slight concerns I had about my knee. Originally I’d expected it to take 31 days to get to St Jean, but now I was planning on 32 days, and I believe the difference will relieve my knee a little and de-stress my itinerary. That said, owing to the distances between points of reasonable accommodation a little later on the walk, I will have a few long ones of 30 or so kilometres, but they’re interspersed with shorter 20km (or high teens) efforts. On balance this will average to under 25km per day from here on in, which feels eminently do-able to me, unless the weather continues to lob spanners.
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