Chasing After Jess

Today was a tough one. I barely slept last night because our gîte was right in the town square, facing the cathedral’s clock tower. And guess what? The bells rang every hour, in 24-hour format, with two extra rings on the half-hour. So, for example, there were 23 rings at 11 PM and 24 at midnight. After the single ring at 1 AM, I think I must have drifted into a half-sleep, only to be jolted awake by my alarm at 5 AM.

Feeling exhausted and a bit grumpy, we set off at 7am for the long road ahead.

It was a day that wasn’t physically worse than the others, but we felt mentally drained. We were used to the rain, mud, and tricky tracks by now. I had no particular aches or injuries to complain about, but my motivation felt non-existent! The only thing that really kept me going, was knowing how much other travellers have loved Conques from what I had read online.

Thankfully, after a few kilometers, the sun came out and things seemed a bit brighter. We had been able to start ditching a lot of the winter clothes at this point, and rotate through some of our summer wear! This was particularly nice, as during the first week it felt like I only wore one outfit on repeat!

But, just as we were about to start the steep descent into Conques, it started raining again. Halfway down the rocky path, my mum slipped on some wet rocks. Thankfully, her backpack cushioned her fall, and she escaped with just a bruised elbow. It was the first fall of the trip between us, and it was on a bad mental day, so I guess it was to be expected, right?

As expected, Conque was absolutely STUNNING! Here is a video of our walk into town, just amazing!

Knowing we were staying in a dormitory tonight, I went ahead to try reserve mum a bottom bunk. Seeing beautiful medieval village of Conques and the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in the valley, our home for the night, was a huge relief.

Our Gite was inside this old Abbey, which was absolutely amazing. I was able to get Mum a spot on the bottom bunk, and I slept above her.

We got settled, hard a warm shower and spent the afternoon sight seeing and doing some chores. We had a large load of washing in the basin, with optimistic hopes of it drying overnight (spoiler: it didn’t), and looked at some of the beautiful stores in town.

Of note, there was a beautiful bakery store selling cookies and nougat – the smell of the store was basically all throughout the town!

I had been really excited to try some of the sorbet that I saw ahead, which ultimately didn’t work out for me too well. I dropped my first cone straight on the ground and had to buy another one for 3 euros. I sat down at the table and was shoo’d along as we had a coke zero with us that we bought at the bakery and the sorbet stall owner didn’t want us eating other food there.

During our preparations, we had only booked accomodation up until Conques, we were hoping that the business will have thinned out enough to start booking the day before – but this was not the case. We spent the afternoon trying to plan our next steps, and then attempted to get an early night, curious for what tomorrow and the next stages might bring.

Jess x