Sept 14th St. Chely-d'Aubrac through St. Come-d'Olt to Espalion

We did not have a restful nights sleep as we realized that we had not communicated with Malle de postal, the company moving our bags, as to the next destination, so we fretted most of the night about how to remedy the situation. Our French SFR phone has been unreliable to say the least, and when we tried to make a call or send a text message it said we had no money or credit on the phone. This meant we had to wait till the breakfast hour to address the situation. We asked the proprietress of the Hotel d'Chambre to call the company, but there was no answer as it is a weekend. So we marked the bags with today's hotel and left them out on the street in a very obvious place for the Malle Postale's van to see. We got a call on our defunked French phone from Jayo at Malle Postale. Someone had picked up the bags, but he wanted to be clear as to where the bags were to be taken and let us know we must call the night before to confirm the next destination. We apologized and gave him the information for our gite accomodations over the next few days. So glad he called!

From St Chely d'Aubrac it is straight out of  the village up a hill followed by fairly slow decent on the wide drove roads until 7 km, and then steep consecutive drops and climbing for 5 kilometers. David had put on his hiking boots today with full ankle support and was very happy. Leslie had boiled some eggs in another little gadget she is carrying and we were delighted to have them as a snack as we walked along.

Lunch was at the one and only place in the small town of Le Roziere, which we arrived at just before 2pm, so lunch was still being served. We met up with our friends Martine and Jean-Luc there. We had the most delicious thick crepe called Farcous with an amazing view while we cooled our feet. We walked the next 4 km to Saint Come-d'Olt easily as we were coming into the valley of the River Lot. The town of St. Come-d'Olt was charming and has some old pilgrim buildings that are over 1,000 years old, and a very unusual 16 th Century church with a twisted spire like the one in Chesterfield, England.

After buying some more credit for our French phone, we took a taxi with Jean-Luc and Martine about  five km to our hotel in Espalion.  We had covered about 17 km of what is considered the hardest part of the Camino, and Jean-Luc had developed bad blisters which could jeopardize the rest of his hike to Conques unless he took time to tend to them.