After coffee, croissants, and yes,
some cheese, it was time to say goodbye to our lovely green attic room and head off for the next town. Leaving our bags neatly piled up in the foyer, we set off...
and immediately got lost. This was the morning when we started to discover the occasional tricks and errors in our walking instructions. Arriving at the 12th century church of
St Hilaire (we saw the inside last night), we realised that there was no sign of the path markings. Thoughtfully we retraced our steps to the point at which we had left the trail the afternoon before, and soon realised that what we needed was the 12th century
nave of the church of
St Nicholas.
Re-oriented, we were on our way. The morning was uneventful - farms, fields, farm cats and sleepy country roads. At lunchtime we climbed up a steep hill (accompanied by the gentle clonking of a bell wether), to find ourselves at what appeared to be the top of the mediaeval town of
Limeuil . This beautiful walled town wraps around a steep hill next to the river. Predictably, while we were at the top, the only available lunch was at the bottom next to the river. We ate goat's cheese salad (only a
little cheese) in the company of all the British tourists. You could see they would get to the first turn in the winding street up the hill and collapse panting, before returning to the river bank to buy the view from the top on a fridge magnet. We, of course, were made of sterner stuff. We got to the top of the town and realised we were only halfway up the hill before we too collapsed.
The rest of the afternoon was a slow-motion rollercoaster, as the GR markings led us up vertical limestone goat tracks and back down them again, with the occasional respite as we crossed fields of cows. We were immensely grateful to find ourselves on level ground at Le Bugue, and in the decadent 17th century surroundings of Domaine de la Barde.
