Wednesday, October 22, 2025
End: La Bastilde-Puylaurent
Kilometers: 22.6
Total: 74.5
It rained hard overnight, and I was happy to be dry and warm in my sleeping bag, though the children pressed up against me continually. The rain died down in the morning, and we got up and got moving.
It was a breath of fresh air to start the day with blue skies. Every morning up until this one has been rain. We wore our rain gear anyway, not trusting the weather to stay good.
The path continued on into the forest and we hiked through a bit of mud and dodged some big puddles. I was hoping that we would soon come across some pavement, apparently plentiful on the Regordane.
We had a ways to go to make it to Luc. We took a break at a nice little pond with benches, and saw a notice that we were hiking a trail which dated back to the Middle Ages.
The children wanted to stop for lunch, so we afforded them that luxury, hoping it would boost morale for the rest of the day. We continued on pavement, saw the castle, and hurried down into Luc.
In Luc, we got water and pushed on, looking forward to the store in La Bastilde-Puylaurent. To get there, we had considerable ground to cover.
We saw the river Allier on the way, and took the path out into the hills. We took a short break while the children ate some more food.
On the way to La Bastilde, I felt my heart beating irregularly. This was a problem for me years ago, but I hadn’t experienced it recently. I informed Alex and we did our best to take it slow but push on into town.
We finally made it into town after climbing up and down the hills. I went straight to the pharmacy, but the pharmacist wouldn’t give me any heart medication without a prescription.
We tried to get a hotel in town to take a deserved break from the rain, which had picked back up, but there were no rooms available in town.
I went back to the pharmacist and had a video meeting with a doctor, who refused to prescribe me anything, despite my explanation that it was not possible to do further tests or make it to an emergency room in this remote village.
Thoroughly disgusted, I asked that we leave town. Instead, my wife insisted that we look for a hotel room again, against my wishes. This turned into her throwing a tantrum and spending the rest of the evening belittling me and verbally abusing Daniel when he dared to speak up and ask her to stop.
We camped just outside town. This was the worst we had ever felt on a hike. I didn’t want to be on this hike anymore, I just wanted to be alone.
