Cahors – Lascabannes: 24 kms – Wednesday

A fairly easy day of walking – fairly flat and non-descript. Arrived at our gite by 3pm, and for the first time were placed in a shared room with two other people. When one of the guys took off his shirt and exposed his large wine induced gut, Les let out a moan of desperation….Despite that introduction to communal gite living, the gite was spotless and quite nice.

Before dinner we bought a bottle of local Rose and sat outside….with the half-drunk bottle of wine, we decided to enter the adjoining little church – I had the sense that this was quite not appropriate, but what the heck – I surmised that priests were fond of vin, so…..Before I could test my hypothesis, we realized there a service was underway for the few pilgrims so we did not enter. When I subsequently recounted this to a couple of the pilgrims they were aghast at the consequences of my ungodly behavior….No problem – St Jacques would have understood.

The gite caretaker was a fabulous cook – a lip-smacking chicken dish and a apple crumble with raspberry sauce to die for. Sitting around the table with the other 10 french-speaking walkers and occasionally chiming in with my limited French – a delightful evening. The evening was not too bad – that is until 4:00am when one of our sleeping companions decided he wanted to read and turned on his red-headlamp - which shone directly at me. He left early. I slept in.