The Journey of a Thousand Miles..starts..Le Puy to Montbonnet

Well here we go. We stayed up in the haut village, close to the cathedral and the old part of the city. It would have been a more rational decision to stay at the Gîte des Capucins at the far side of the city but we wanted to start our trip by going to Catholic mass - a strange decision for two non- Catholics. We did attend an unfortunately bland mass at 7:00 and were back at our gîte, Saint François, and walking the 113 indoor steps up to our room by 8:00. By the time we found our way around the maze of the haut village and down to the traditional starting place for pilgrims in Le Puy it was 8:30. A bit of a late start but so it goes.

Down the stairs from the cathedral into the village.

And here we are - at the official starting point. 1522 km - will we make it?

The camino path runs along a walking path known as the GR65. These red and white markers will show us our direction as we make our way across the French countryside.

It was a long, steep and car/truck exhaust-filled walk out of Le Puy. I guess we caught rush hour because the whole town seemed to be rushing somewhere in cars. But most of the elevation we would have to climb that day (about 450 metres) seemed to be in that first part getting out of town. We walked up to and along a flat bench for the next few kilometres.

The bench had some interesting jagged rocks along the edges and we seemed to be hanging right on the edge for much of the time. It was beautiful for me but probably a bit less so for anyone with vertigo like my walking companion! Not surprisingly, the next town was called La Roche (the Rock). The path up to and for several kilometres past was extremely rocky- and I'm not talking about pebbles. They were great big things that definitely got in the way and slowed us down. The land rolled down from us in all directions making for lovely panoramic scenes but it is very definitely along the edge and therefore difficult for some. This led us to several kilometres of walking downhill through mud and rocks all covered by a flowing stream. The river definitely runs through it!

Not a hard walk unless you are imagining that any minute the abyss will pull you down into whatever is at the bottom to terrify you. Fortunately for me the whole abyss thing and vertigo are not in my experience but it's very real for some people.

The green moss was so green it was almost unbelievable.

Yup - the river runs through it.

We were both sore and tired by the time we got to Montbonnet - a few km short of our original goal of St. Privat d'Allier. We phoned to apologize and lost our deposit but that's the way it goes. We stayed at Gîte l'Escole which was very pleasant. The hostess provided us with a cold meal of a variety of different cheeses, pasta, bread, eggs and fruit which seemed perfect at the time.

So there were a couple of lessons here for us. The first couple of days of walking are always the hardest and in this case are, in fact, harder than what follows. So it would have been better for us to plan for shorter days in the beginning because we were unable to stick to our schedule.

Another thing that didn't work for us (and still doesn't) is the telephone. We got a pay-as-you-go SIM card and a new phone from the company Orange, which is the one everyone has been recommending. For us, and three other people I talked to that day it is completely useless. We have never been able to make one phone call for the money on it. One man we met, Frank from Montreal, did the same thing only he put $100 on it and still couldn't use it. He was angry to say the least.

And the last thing for now- don't count on having Internet access. It is scarce up here in the Haute Loire, at least from a public point of view and even when a place has wifi they often can't make it work. So if you're heading off and your family is expecting to hear from you often, you may need to caution them to be patient.