Montbonnet to Monistrol-d'Allier

What a beautiful day of walking! The sun shone and the air was crisp as we wound our way along a red-dirt road and up out of Montbonnet. The fields were full of cows and horses and it all looked
pastoral. We walked pleasantly up, up, and up and then suddenly down, down, down to get to St. Privat d'Allier - a descent of about 400 metres on a very rocky, nearly unwalkable path. A hundred metres straight up over a rocky path and then we plunged down again to Monistrol-d'Allier. After walking along the edge for sometime we headed into the trees down a path so steep we had to hang on to the trees to prevent ourselves from falling. This day seemed to be all about MUD!

Another hard day of walking and once again we had to postpone our reservation. Not ideal for sure but it seemed to work out alright. We had met two young women from Nantes who speak some English and they phoned to change our next two reservations. We slept in a gîte with them at Le Repos du Pelerin which was up above a hotel. It was fine and had a kitchen but we decided to go demi-pension to include our dinner and breakfast. Our dinner that night was a lentil soup with ham, sausages and a baked lentil, egg and carrot mixture. All quite bland but very acceptable and we enjoyed being there. Dinner was topped off with a very sweet apple tart dessert.

Thought for the day: it has been said that what goes up must come down, but in this case it is definitely true that those who go down must once again go up!

Hard to chose sides here.