Apparently it’s been a long, hot summer with heatwave after heatwave and today meets that standard. A hard climb out of Conques to start the day and we manage the 300m ascent out of town in a reasonable time before the heat really gets up.
It doesn’t take long to get to Noalihac where we can drain some soft drinks to keep the legs moving.
We keep pushing towards Decazeville but it’s a tough walk – Mostly due to the heat, as it gets up towards 35 degrees. We also have to pass some gag worthy chicken farms. The stench is overwhelming combined with the heat. We are doing it a bit tough today but everyone is determined and powering through.
Eventually we drift into Decazeville and it feels like a rough, industrial area which we want to pass through quickly. We haven’t found a lunch spot so a pilgrim shelter on the side of the main roads offers us shade and water as we quickly eat our roughly thrown together picnic and ambulances roar past, sirens blaring. None of us are keen to drag this day out so we don’t sit long.
The guide book severely undersells how hard the climb out of Decazeville is and by the end we are all dragging. The last 5km to Livinhac are brutal and we stumble in to town a little bit of a mess. Arriving at the campground on the edge of town we find it’s also a bit rough around the edges, too tired to care however. A quick swim in the river for some and early bedtime, please.
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