Off Piste

Another two days have passed since our last post, so it's time to report back in. We hope you're reading our minders' blog as it gives the full picture and all the detail. Rather than duplicate, we're just planning to give you a brief run down of events from a bear's perspective and pick out some our highlights.

Yesterday we did another long walk of just over 17 miles which we had to do because of where the accommodation falls. The scenery was as wonderful as before, but a little different. So far we've had the volcanic hills of the Auvergne, followed by vistas which have reminded us in turn of the Alps, Nortumberland & the Scottish Borders, the Dark Peak of Derbyshire and more recently the White Peak. These are all favourite places of ours to walk, so as you can imagine we're loving this walk although we could do without it being quite so hot. We've also made a new bear friend ...


Last night we got our own room in a gite attached to a school. It only cost €2 more each than a bed in a dormitory, so was well worth it.

Thinking we should give our female minder (the nearest thing we've got to a French speaker) a break from phoning ahead for accommodation, which she finds quite traumatic, we decided to ask the nice man in Tourist Info to do it for us. It was as well we did, as after loads of calls it turned out that St Chely d'Aubrac, where we were heading today was full! This is why we are currently off piste at a very basic hotel - more of a gite really - 9km from St Chely. Don't worry though, to preserve our paws, we did the extra 9km by taxi & will go back the same way tomorrow after breks.

Before our taxi ride, we had a more leisurely walk today of only 11 miles. We slowed our pace and did lots of nature sightings -Chelmer will be proud. We've seen a stoat (or weasel), a slow worm, lots of birds of prey, and the highlight, a red squirrel.

We have shorter days for the next few days, to shake off the crowds only going to Conques, and to maximise chances of getting accommodation. After getting telephone tips from Mike, our Australian friend, our minder has successfully booked us a room with some nuns in a Convent tomorrow night. Should be fun! She did end up talking to a man, and we're wondering who he was!

It's now getting close to dinner time and there are delicious roast meat smells coming into the bar, where there is wi-fi. We wonder if we will have aligot again. It's a very elastic-like cheesy mashed potato which is a speciality of the region.

Love from the Camino Bears xxx