My Compostelle 2 : the Via Tolosana: Part 2, day 5 : St. Gervais-sur-Mare to Fagairolles

St Gervais was a lovely little town. The main street was pretty unimpressive, but as I walked around I discovered an older town with charming stone houses and some artsy elements. It also seemed to have a fair number of tourists as many people did not seem to be locals, and I had heard English spoken on at least two occasions. I had dinner, and later breakfast, with the two men that shared my gîte, in the pizza place which seemed the only viable place for real meals in town. There was also an upscale restaurant, closed for the season, and a brasserie, but it wasn't open for dinner.

Yesterday's walking had been a nightmare, but today's was fairly uneventful until a few kilometers before Ginestet where there was a stretch of frightful rock scrambling. At one point I expressed my disbelief in the difficulty quite loudly and two young German girls peaked out from the rocks above laughing as were they were taking a break nestled there in a crag.

I ran into them again and this time related my sad story about the lack of a telephone charger, and the third time I saw them that day they insisted that I have one of theirs because they had a second one. They had been walking for 8 days, and were ready to return home but couldn't see me functioning without one. I was so touched by their offer, being willing to buy it from them, but they insisted on giving it to me. Thank you so much Katarina and Josefine ! Talk about Camino angels !

I arrived at my gîte in the tiny off-piste town of Fagairolles in good time. There was no one around and I could only get a cell connection by standing out in a field, or so I learned from one of the inhabitants. Imagine to my surprise when later that afternoon, around six, Hervé and Bernard showed up in my gîte. They were much faster walkers than I and used some GPS mapping system, but had managed to get lost. The look on Bernard's face when I told them I had arrived about 2:30 pm that afternoon was priceless. They had planned to walk all the way to Murat sur Vebre, my next-day's destination but decided on the shorter walk to Fagairolles instead...