Day 5: The Music Video

The Music Video

Day 5: Bigose to Labros

April 18, 2017

Statistics: 20 - 30 degrees, blue skies wlth clouds, 14.9 km/ 9.2 miles, 25,352 steps, elevation climbed: 1,100 feet, 10-15 pilgrims, 1 cute church

Slideshow:

Breakfast is one small piece of bread. That's it until we reach Aumont Aubrac. Fortunately it's only 5 km away.

The 99 km over the past 4 days is a considerable increase in exercise and my right knee is in some pain when I awake in Bigose. I take two Advil and it's still a little tender after 30 minutes.

Sometimes this kind of pain will recede when I walk plus we are going a short distance today. So I decide to give it a try and walk. Right away the same leg is my Parkinson's leg and it's not working: I take my first dose of medicine at 8:30am and I employ the walking backward technique but the right knee pain keeps my strides short. I walk backwards for a kilometer. I also use the high step technique but progress is slow. I take second dose at 9:30 am. It's cold. Too cold.

For some reason, probably the cold and windy day, the medicine isn't working. Decide today would be better to take a third dose to increase the concentration in the blood so I take a third dose at 10:09 am.

That’s three doses in 99 minutes when usually two doses work. Within 30 minutes, the right leg is working great.

The path meanders along open fields. Not a pilgrim all morning. The skies are blue with lots of clouds.

At 11:30 am, we enter the town of Aumont Aubrac. We eat breakfast which is coffee, juice and croissant. I was hungry.

Everything will close in 30 minutes, so we go to the grocery store and bakery and buy our staples: bread, cheese, chocolate, beer and juice.

We look at the schedule and decide that tomorrow we should rest and skip a couple towns to Conques. Conques is suppose to be very beautiful. We arrange for a van pickup for tomorrow.

We leave town with full stomachs, short distance to our Gite and knowing that tomorrow will be a rest day. Our spirits are high. Plus it's warmed up some. We make a quick music video to the Happy song. Good times.

We are almost to our Gite in Lasbros when we stumble across a stunning little 20 person church from the 1500s, Chapelle de la Bastide. We take refuge from the weather for ten minutes then the final push to Lasbros.

3:00 pm we arrive at our Gite. I elevate my right knee. Even though I took 3 doses in 99 minutes, I did not take a fourth or fifth dose which I normally would.

I am in heaven - great internet and delicious chocolate!