Estaing in the morning fog is like a post card picture of a chateau in medieval time! It’s stunningly beautiful.

We woke up and ready to go again. It’s a strange thing. At night our body is sore then in the morning we wake up and everything is fine. We can walk again. Actually it feels better once we start and get going.

We have all our routine down pack by now. When we wake up we go get a cup of coffee, then get fresh bread, then fresh cheese then 2 pieces of fruits and that’s out lunch. Of course we have to go to different store in the village to get our picnic lunch because they don’t sell everything in the same store. Unfortunately, I guess the baker was not told that we are in town today and Wednesday is his day off! We got everything except for fresh bread. It’s a disaster! All the pilgrims were in the same boat. Most of us wondering about like lost souls looking for some fresh bread for the road. No such luck. We then decided we can get some dry biscuit to replace the baguette and that’s when we discovered the dry toast. They are light weight, they go well with the cheese. No fresh baguette, we will now switch to packaged dry toast.

We also discovered how to order the perfect cup of coffee for Ed. Ed has been lamenting that the French coffee is not as good as Italian or Spanish coffee. I am not a coffee drinker and my cup of hot chocolate is very good. I have no complaint. But after much thought about the “grand cafe creme leger” yesterday, I think Ed needs to have an strong espresso coffee with cream, not a light coffee. So we ordered simply “in grand cafe creme” and today that’s was the winner! It’s perfect. Exactly what Rd needed and he has a big smile on his face. Ok, the coffee issue is now sorted out!

We head out of Estaing with a one hour walk along the Lot river. That was nice! Beautiful walk in the fog! One side is the river on our right, and on our left is high steep mountain with wall of rocks. We were enjoying our morning walk when the joy ended. The white and red maker had an arrow pointing to the left. It’s a rick wall, how can we turn left. I look over to the left and sure enough, it’s a narrow path going straight up the rock wall. We shook our head, more climbing!!!! We climbed the next 2 hours. Getting higher and higher. The view is bigger and bigger. The whole valley floor underneath us. It’s so beautiful. The climb was well worth it but it was very very hard.

So now it’s day 11 for us today. We are beginning to settle in our routine with everything. First the food. Except for the problem with the bakery closing on Wednesday, we love the picnic lunch every day. It’s small and light and fresh and very healthy. I am also cutting down on bread so I eat vey little bread now, mostly the fruit and cheese. For breakfast I am still working things out a bit. This morning I was going to skip the bread and jam routine, just drink my chocolate drink and went on my hike. Big mistake. I did not last long. An hour into the hike I faded. It was so hard to go on. I started complaining. So we had to take a break early. Ate some fruit so I can have energy to move on. So I think a good hearty breakfast is still important. We can’t cut down on breakfast or the day won’t go well. Then for dinner, I now realize we don’t always have to eat the whole pilgrim menu. And there are a lot of meat being offered in this region but a vegetarian person can still survive. Bread and pastry for breakfast, bread, fruit and cheese for lunch and salad and side vegetables for dinner. They do serve big salad here. I am starting to see people asking for big salad with either tuna or ham or chicken on top, with hard eggs and a whole lot of other vegetable and stuff. I am going to cut down a bit on dinner too. We are usually very hungry so we are just eating too much every night.

Another thing we have been cutting down on weight. Not our own body weight, not yet. It’s put pack weight. We brought not very much but we can still do better. So I brought along a yoga mat because I wanted to stretch my muscle out every night as we arrived. The thought was great but we never could move after we got in every night. After 5 days lugging around the yoga mat and not using it, I decided to leave it behind.

Next is the body cream. I like a jar that I brought along. I had to leave it too. Too heavy. I bought a small tube of cream but I have not use it in 3 days. I am leaving it behind too.

Next is the Conditioner. I have long hair and they tangle up. Conditioner is nice. After 4 days the conditioner got thrown out too.

Next is the shampoo. You need to always have shampoo because some sleeping place do not have shampoo. I had to throw out the shampoo I brought along. Too big. I bought a small container of shampoo.

The shampoo is often used for body wash too and for washing the clothes too. So all my beauty and cleaning supply had dwindled down to 4 things: one small bottle of shampoo that does everything, a hair brush, a tooth brush and a small tube of tooth paste. That’s it.

Make up? If you need to be seen with make up, mascara and lip stick, you need to rent a donkey to carry your pack. I have not seen a lady pilgrim with make up yet.

We are now settled into our minimalist life. But it’s not too bad. Comfortable and clean but very simple and stripped down.

The pilgrim story today: we left town and walked on a little bit and met a man from Austria. He does not speak anything but German. A little bit of English he said. So he tried to carry a conversation with us in English. We asked him where he slept the night yesterday. He said in English “I sleep in the shit”!!!! Wow what happened to him? We tried to asked him. After a lot of explanation in broken English we found out he slept at the “gite”. The French word for pilgrim shelters. It could be a farm house, a local person that rent a room out for pilgrim, a bed and breakfast. In general, there will be a sign outside that says “Gite” or “Gite de France”. It’s pronounce “geet” like beet. Somehow lost in translation, our friend told us he slept in the “shit” last night!!!!!

We met many more pilgrims today. We had our picnic lunch in the field. I almost got us lost a couple times, when every we got to a intersection,y body just wanted to take the downhill section because that’s easier but most of the time, we needed to go uphill.

The day had a couple of nice stretch of walk, passing many many nice churches. We also learned about the crosses that we thought were randomly put on the trail, but instead there is a story behind them. In the old days, the funeral procession, with 4 people carrying the casket, had to walk great distance to the cemetery. So the priest would take a break at each cross on the way and the whole procession can stop and get some rest.

We arrived into Golinhac, a very pretty village with awesome view. The church St Martin is right in the middle of the village. A sunny day for the most awesome view.