Our First Full Day of Walking

 

Day 2 - Monistrol D’Allier          

We had a simple but nice breakfast (toast and coffee) with Bruno and Lionel’s family.  We left the gite at 8:30 and headed out on our first fifteen mile day.  The weather was cool but sunny and we soaked in the landscape of rolling hills and old country hamlets. Since we were out of sync with the bulk of pilgrims, we basically had the trail to ourselves. We met Lionel and his children a couple of times, and Unella who was hurting with a sore heal. The trail was extremely varied today with deserted paved roads to steep mountain trails; wooded forests to river canyon towns.  We ate lunch after 10 miles in Saint-Private-d’Allier and had a strenuous 5 miles to our evening destination in the canyon village of Monistrol-d’Allier.  The highlights of the day were stopping at millennial old chapels that were still operational.  The lowlight was missing a trail marking and adding a mile to our already long walk. We stayed at a small gite right on the river.  Andre is the older gentleman who runs it.  There was only one other guest so we ended up with a nice private room. Dinner was some very good spaghetti.