Oh, that was such a wonderful sleep in the air-conditioned room overlooking the valley, only our third night of air conditioning since late June.
Breakfast at the Parador Vielha was just a big huge spread of meats and cheese and local products and fruits and little coffee carafes they'd bring to your table, no jostling for that one fancy automated machine with the mysterious symbols, where I'm never quite sure if I'll make a dumb tourist error and choose a beverage that will over/underflow whatever coffee cup I put underneath it. No, just coffee, good brewed coffee. Just treat the buffet as brunch, I told myself. Don't eat it all.
We'd picked out a moderate hike near Bausen, near the French border, a few hours, see a cemetery with one grave, go up into the forest, and then back down. I couldn't do it. For some reason (car-sitting?) the muscle at the very front top of my right leg wasn't having it, right at my beltline, ow ow ow, and after 500m of walking I said "nope, not doing this". I was already going to cut it short as the hillside village faced south, and it was already 31C at 10am, the hip really decided it for me. This is the first time on this entire trip where I've said "nope, not today". It's been 36 days of hiking, with some rest days, and I'm a bit surprised that today is That Day To Take It Easy.
Back down the river into France, then up and over one col in the car, and another, and down to a little restaurant for lunch, Chez Jo. Lingered a bit, good food, then up to the Gîtes of Eylie
Now this gîte did get a 4.4 rating on Google... maybe it'll be good? Nah, I was disappointed from the start. They're a collection of 100 year old miners cabins, kinda clean but kinda cramped, more bunk beds and shared sleeping, and the main dining area is across a little ravine, maybe 200m away, a room with space for maybe 8 people outside.
And we had arrived early just after 3pm, so we watched everyone come in, get their bunk assignments, smoke a cigarette or three, and ask the same questions about dinner and breakfast times. Hmph. Four hours of waiting and waiting for hopefully a good dinner. At least I can write this to break the tedium, and we both looked at other hike things and tourist attractions to do (not much as it turns out.) Hmph hmph.
Dinner was not great: I guess the entrée was thin chicken broth with green vegetables, the main was a big pot of lentils with slices of sausages thrown in. Deserrt was good, a sugary thin apple torte thing.
The beds were the worst, I got a top bunk with a beam across the feet and a small ladder at the end (not side) of the bed. It was a challenge to fold myself to get down, and I knew at night I'd need to pee. And worst of all, yet again, it was hot up there, so I just sweated on top of the sheets all night, slept an hour or two here or there, turning over my pillow so I'm not laying my face in a puddle of saliva. A couple of the others (there were six of us in that one dormitory) also got top bunks and woke me up through the night as they had to visit the toilet.
Around 4:30am, I had an odd dream where I was trapped in a hot prison cell, was startled awake, and then I realized I was in a hot prison cell. Enough.
After my achy hip, the heat yet again for the last two days, the lousy dinner, and sleepless night, I'm pretty much done with doing this hike, and I thought "I really don't want to keep doing this for four more weeks." Gotta replan this and make this more comfortable and not more miserable.