- Distance: 17.0km (117.4km total)
- Ascent/Descent: 927m up, 479m down
- Time: 5 hr 2 min
Back on the trail. Today has a lunch stop at a restaurant, then up the hill to a gîte for the night.
A moderate day, starting semi-early. Chris dragged me through the pilgrim district of St-Jean, and it was kinda what I expected: 20-somethings hanging out in front of cheap lodging, getting ready to head to Santiago de Compestela. We were going the other way, to the east, to the Mediterranean, along with half a dozen Spanish women (what's their story) and an older man who responded "GRAAAAK" to our cheer 'bon jours'.
There are more people on the track, many more than we saw on the first six days. After an hour walk to Caro village, the trail headed up yet another hillside covered in bracken ferns, and it was already over 30C, ugh, and not even 10am. I'm hoping this is not another dreary hot dusty marching day.
But by 11am, we had emerged high on a hill overlooking a nice hotel-place with a swimming pool, and then walked down into the little settlement of Estérençuby, which apparently has a restaurant that's open from 12 to 1? Well, we'll see if they do Tuesday lunch. And yes, it was the hotel we spotted from the hill, and the menu looked good (getting tired of baguette with pate or ham/cheese), so we waited until opening, put our lunch order in.. a tour bus pulled up, oy, good thing that we got that it in before the two dozen elderly folks.
Lunch was great--I loved the grilled trout we had, so much so that I want to learn how to do that at home, it was undoubtedly fresh and probably caught the day before.
The rest of the day was just an uphill walk through oak woodlands, and we stayed the evening at Gite Kaskoleta, which was very modern and 'new' with not only air conditioning, but screens on the windows. We're still not out of farm country, so yeah, flies have been an big annoyance since we arrived in France, but that will change over the next few days as we move into the middle elevations, and then the high 2000m+ country.