Saint Côme d'Olt to Espalion and Estaing

I wanted to say that it was a beautiful walk into Saint Côme d'Olt yesterday. We finally came down  about 1000 metres to spring! As we walked into this very neat little town the brilliant yellow forsythia was leaning over the rock walls and the flowers were blooming in purples and whites and yellows with pink, white and yellow blooming trees. What a delight after all of the cold, wind, snow and rain of the last few days. There wasn't a spot of cow manure for us to walk through anywhere in town!

We stayed in a gîte that was in an older home where the children had obviously grown up and gone away and the home was too big for the elderly couple who were left behind. We left our soaking wet clothes in the basement and then went upstairs to a warm room with an attached kitchen. Once we had warmed up a bit we walked down town with two borrowed umbrellas to buy some dinner to bring home and cook.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have been extremely frustrated that we have not been walking fast enough to meet the obligation of our reservations, and that it has been difficult that our phone hasn't been working and the Internet connections are infrequent so it's been hard to let people know when we are not going to be able to make our reservation.. This has been the first day when we absolutely could not contact the people in the town where we had reserved and I just hate that. I'll have to find a way to make it up to them somehow. In addition it is starting to look like the trip I have been planning for so long is not going to work out - is, in fact an impossibility for us to do together in the way I have been wanting to do it.  So the questions for me are: what am I going to do about the fact that it seems impossible for us to complete this trip in the way I had planned?

One thing I noticed had been really causing me some stress is trying to get us to walk as far as our next reservation - something we seemed to be having trouble with. Once we no longer had reservations and I was no longer having to go back on my word, it was a great relief. I plan to never make another reservation on this trip unless it is the day of the reservation and I know we can make it. That 's a big load off my back.

It's become clear that the two of us are almost certainly not going to be able to walk 1000 miles. I'm disappointed but I just can't see it happening at this point. We will have to take a bus or a train or a taxi from time to time or at least have our bags carried if we are to get out of the European Union within 90 days. So at the moment, the trip has lost it's significance for me and that's something I'll have to sort out eventually. But in the meantime I guess we'll just putter along and do what we do and then we'll go home - or perhaps a miracle will happen -what's your guess?

When we got to Estaing we entered town over an old one car bridge. Part way over a man met us and said he was the hospitality for the religious gîte and would we like him to show us the way to the gîte. I told him we weren't Catholic but he said neither was he and it didn't matter. La Halte Saint Jacques is one of the older type of gîtes where there is no set cost. They prepare a meal for dinner and provide breakfast and you pay what you can afford. This is the way they live. As it happened we were starving at 5:00  and because dinner wasn't served until 7:30, we went to a restaurant to eat, but the food in the gîtes smelled good. The priest who had helped prepare the food must have given a good sermon because the people were laughing their heads off through the whole thing. They were really very nice and the whole experience was really quite enjoyable.

Estaing is a lovely town with a wonderful church and very dramatic buildings. I really loved it.

It seems that every available space is used for gardens. The land is probably pretty rich here by the river.