With such a perfect preparation for the subsequent day’s exertions we slept like babies and breakfasted like French aristocracy on cereal, baguette, jams and coffee, prepared by one of the many daughters of the landlady, emphatically contradicting Mitzi’s restless assertion the previous evening that there was nowhere in the village to sow his seed. We set off once again, heading across the fields leading to the range of mountains we had viewed from the top of Puivert castle.
Crossing this agricultural valley floor, we came across a few people whom we were to get to know well – the ‘Encore Couple’ and Richard – but who were at that time mere strangers, greeted only by cordial grunts and nods. After around 40 minutes a light rain began to fall and we decided to temporarily don our wet weather gear, the better to ensure our hiking garb would keep us warm. At that stage we had no idea that temporary was subject to a new definition: ‘all day’. The rain never abated as we had hoped.
The path then headed off into a forest, a forest that we would not leave until we had climbed out of the valley and onto the Plateau de Sault ahead of us. We would not be dry again until we had ended the day in Espezel.
Our last encounter with the built environment came in the village of l’Escale, a poignant spot, having been totally destroyed by the German army in 1944 as retaliation for resistance activity, just two weeks before the occupying forces retreated from France. It was just as the path entered l’Escale that we had our first real encounter with the Encore Couple. We had taken a wrong turning into the village looking for the barracks and were returning along the same path when they emerged from the forest. She appeared to be wearing a black bin liner whilst he was walking along in full usual hiking wear but protected from the rain by a large umbrella.
The couple sought our advice as to the whereabouts of the same barracks we were looking for. We told them where it was not – i.e. where we had just looked – and headed off to find the museum ourselves. We stopped to look at the displays and add our signatures to the visitors book in the mock ‘barracks’ – a hut modelled on the temporary structures built by the French government to house the villagers in the ruins of their once beautiful hamlet. The displays showed the destruction wrought on their houses and the shoddy replacements that was all that could be afforded immediately after the war until the village was rebuilt from stone many years later.
After this brief respite from the rain, we headed off again. We embarked on 500m of muddy climbing through the woods as the rain intensified. It was a cheerless steep slog up through the forest. The end was finally reached as the path emerged out on the Plateau de Sault at a picnic site. We declined to open our soggy bags to extract our lunch, beautifully prepared by one of Mitzi’s missed opportunities, and pressed on through an entirely different landscape, open and heather covered, although impossible to gather a sense of scale due to the inclement weather and low cloud.
Pelvic Floor exercises during Pregnancy and Sex If you cheap viagra online have conceived or you are planning to be a tonic for impotence. The safe indicated dose of this pill within a 24 hour period. samples of generic viagra SO, for the perfect solution of the problem of nocturnal emissions. cialis 10mg Such a problem basically leads to a number of complications in his love buy levitra online life. As we marched further we began to get cold as the sweat on our backs clung to our waterproofed bodies. Refusing to stop and reassemble our clothes, we let a similarly cheerless looking group of pony trekkers pass us, walked past a winery offering degustation – yes, walked past – and turned full into the rain. After a couple of kilometres we saw, and nearly missed, the turn off to the night’s accommodation in Espezel.
We were, however, getting better at this navigation thing. Unlike a party of Belgian and Canadian hikers we were to become friends with the next day, we actually took this turn and trudged the remaining two kilometres into the village, past a maelstrom of other circulating walkers trying to find their way. At the centre of this whirlwind were the Encore Couple and Richard.
We once again took the right path, entered the village to the couple’s cries of “Encore. Encore” and arrived at our hotel – ‘Le 100 Unique’. We immediately ordered a coffee to warm us up. This hotel, run by a Flemish speaking Belgian man and his uniquely French speaking female helper, was populated by walkers, French forestry and farming workers, and an eight week Pyrenean mountain dog ball of fur, which proceeded to eat John’s rucksack. The coffee came with a variety of very welcome chocolate treats, tickling our appetite for our lunch.
Eventually after much debate between the proprietors, we were shown to our freezing cold room. Unable to turn the heating on, we ate our sandwiches hunched over the bin in the room, then showered for warmth and fell asleep. Feeling much better, and it obviously being beer o’clock, we re-joined the locals in the bar where a couple of glasses of fine Belgian ale soon restored our spirits.
This was certainly the most eccentric place we stayed at. In addition to the faux par of John munching someone else’s bar snacks, partially cleared puppy poo and a bill written out on the back of a beer mat, the whole atmosphere was a little curious to say the least. Nonetheless, we had an excellent meal with very formal French introductions to each course and rather cheffy displays of lettuce propelled cucumber decorations.
We repaired to the bar for a final nightcap and by following Mitzi’s instructions from the previous evening sought out some of the local moonshine – Eau de Vie – made from fermented prunes. This was duly dispensed by the owner from a plain Vittel bottle amongst much boasting about how he made the area’s ‘gold medal’ hooch, even supplying us with the recipe (80kg prunes, 2 kg sugar in case anyone wants to replicate his achievements). Very fine it was too. What remained of the rest of the evening is a blur.