Day 1 Le Puy en Velay to St Privat d Allier

I set my alarm for 0600 as we had arranged to meet in Barney's room at 0625 for breakfast, when I say breakfast I mean two chocolate brioche and a tepid yoghurt, sadly he had overslept, so after hastily getting ready we had our breakfast which I have to say made me feel sick, we checked out and made our way to mass.

We had time for a few photos before we went in.

We sat down for mass and noticed there was about another 50 walkers attending, I have to be honest after 20 minutes my boredom threshold had been breached, I could not understand a word that was being spoken so we decided to beat a hasty retreat as the open road was beckoning us, if we had known what was ahead perhaps we would have staid a bit longer.

It did not take us long to clear the suburbs of Le Puy, scallops guided us on the pavement.

If you look carefully you can see Barney's banana, the view back into Le Puy was stunning.

It was not long before we were into open country and walking on tracks.

We were steadily climbing.

The views were just breathtaking as was the constant climbing !!!

Not all that set out make it home.

Unlike the other Camino's I have walked  there are very few cafes along the way.Still we climbed.

We eventually arrived at St Christopher sur Dolaison and had a well earned break.

After two bottles of water and a twix we set of again and continued to climb.

It is impossible to put into words how beautiful the views were, this was proving to be one of the loveliest walks I had ever been on, my rucksack was beginning to bite and I knew that I was carrying far too much kit, the climbing was beginning to tell and we were only 8 miles into the walk.

Thankfully it was not too hot.

By now the little toe on my left foot was really beginning to hurt as I had worn some shoes on a walk last week that were too small and I was beginning to pay the price.

Dog on a blog time, my kind of dog.

We stopped for lunch in Montbonnet, we had been climbing for some 5 hours, after 20 minutes rest we started to walk again.

At last we began to descend towards St Privat D'Allier. The going underfoot was treacherous,

I was beginning to think that maybe we had taken  a wrong turn.

But my sense of direction prevailed. 

We had now been walking some 6 hours and all we had been doing was climbing and descending steeply.

We passed through St Privat D'Allier and started our final descent into Monistrol Allier.

After 7 hours the end was in sight!!

We checked into our hotel, which is run by an Englishman much to our surprise.

We have have just eaten and it is time for bed.

Today has been tough, to put it mildly, the views have been magnificent, but we have been tested, I hope the rest of the walk is not as hard as this.

We have another tough day tomorrow, Peter the owner of the hotel has just told me that the first two days are the hardest, cannot wait for day 3 .

Stats for today 

Walked 19 mile

46000 paces 

437 miles to go.