Saturday, Sept 28
To Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon; 23km
The second last day of our hike and what could be the longest distance!
Having booked all our accommodations along our planned route long before we left home with all the convenience of a computer and translation apps, and at the recommendation of Linda Lusmore who wrote the guidebook.
I had originally booked a quaint looking place in what was described as “the most beautiful city in France”, called Romieu, but…
About 2 days before our planned arrival I received an email through Booking.com from the host asking us to cancel our reservation, no reason given.
There are no other accommodations available! Everyplace in “The most beautiful city in France” is booked: “Complet! Pas de vacance!”
I contacted Booking.com and they offered immense apologies and assistance but by then, being desperate and not having access to a computer, and with a vision that we might be sleeping that night under some bushes somewhere, I had quickly booked the only place I could find. It was another 6km farther on, bringing the otherwise 18km to 24 (plus?)
As it turns out. After checking the Booking.com website and some of the recent reviews…it was probably a good thing that we DID cancel. More about that if you really want to know. Just ask me.
Reposted: from my Facebook entry:
Due to one place “cancelling” our reservation a couple of days before our arrival. The reservation that we booked MONTHS in advance and that she confirmed, and the only other accommodations I could find on short notice being 5km further down the trail, and about 4km further off the trail, so…about 15km into our hike, after leaving Lectoure, and walking through slick, muddy, sticky, clay, we came out to a road and noticed that the person ahead of us missed the turn and was continuing down the road. Hmmm? 🤔 Pulling out our map we realized that we could save 7km of hiking muddy trails by staying on the road and bypassing Romieu which is where we got cancelled anyway.
And this enabled us to to walk (and hobble) to tonight’s fantastic accommodation, a real castle!!!
Entering the village of Castlenau sur l’Auvignon. We were planning to stop here and have buy some groceries and have a picnic lunch and some “refreshing beverages” but There’s NOTHING here ‘cept for some houses.
So, foregoing a much anticipated lovely lunch with a glass of wine on a sidewalk patio…we made sandwiches from the food we were carrying and drank water sitting on a picnic table it the park.
Looking all the way down.
So tomorrow is our last day on the trail, although we deviated slightly from the GR 65 due to an “event” as mentioned earlier. Tomorrow is a “short” 8km along the road back to the trail and onto our final destination for this year’s “Camino”, the city of (I’m not making this up)…Condom.