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Thursday, Oct 4th, 2007
Our accommodation challenges continue. Unable to contact the only place I had found to stay in Coursegoules (nobody ever answered the phone!), we instead came to a B&B in the little village of Bezaudun-les-Alpes, about 7km east of Coursegoules. And for various reasons this has turned out to be a good thing.
The first reason is a direct result of yesterday's heroic hike: I was still tired when I woke up this morning. My heels and knees hadn't recovered and I felt even slower than I had felt the previous day. Memo to self: don't take breaks longer than a couple of days when on a long hike -- when you start again it is almost like starting anew!
And so it was with some pleasure that I realized that today's hike would be much shorter than the planned 9.5h -- in fact it took us under 6 -- in part because we had done some of the hike the day before, in part because Bezaudun was closer than Coursegoules, and we took different trails in order to get there which turned out to involve less up and down.
The second reason is that the B&B here is just charming, as is the owner. Ruth McIntyre is an American from Missouri who has lived in Europe for 40 years, most of that in Barcelona. She and her then husband, a French painter, bought this place several years ago -- it is a classic medieval village house, with many doors and steps and courtyards and thick walls -- and renovated and redecorated it with excellent taste.
She has also offered to take us to the nearest restaurant for dinner (there is none in Bezaudun, nor, for that matter, is there any other shop that sells food -- there are only 80 inhabitants and that is much more than there were 30 years ago). And it turns out that the nearest restaurant is in Coursegoules, so we'll get to see it as well.
Tomorrow, however, will almost certainly again be a long day, since our goal -- the village of Aiglun -- is far to the west of Coursegoules, and we are 7km east. We'll take a different route, which will save us some up and down, but I'm still expecting at least 7 hours of hiking. On top of that, it is supposed to rain and there may be thunderstorms. Hope I feel better tomorrow morning than I did today or else it is going to be one of the worse days on the H2H!
