GR653 Via Tolosana Day 7: Serviès - Saint-Gervais-sur-Mare

Serviès - Saint-Gervais-sur-Mare 13 km

Walked only half a day today, and had an afternoon of rest in a lovely gîte d'étape in Saint-Gervais-sur-Mare. 

The guide of the group we shared the gîte with in Serviès told us a shortcut to Col de Layrac which saved us some ups and downs. A local man repeated the instructions to us from his balcony as we left the gîte - at first I thought he was telling us off for making noise at 7 am, but then I realised that despite the gruff tone of voice he was actually giving us advice. So we had a (comparatively) leisurely day, hiking only 13 km and spending the rest of the day in the large, newly renovated gîte in Saint-Gervais, which we have all to ourselves except for one other couple, and at a sidewalk café in the village, watching life go by. Which is what one does in an out-of-the-way French village on a Sunday afternoon! C'est la vie!

GR653 Via Tolosana Day 6: Joncels - Serviès

Joncels - Serviès 26.5 km

Left the quiet little village of Joncels at 7:15 to get an early start on the steep climb into the Monts d'Orb. 

We passed through the still-sleeping village of Lunas and climbed to Saint-Martin-d'Orb, the last settlement before heading into the mountains. Here I asked a woman out on her balcony where the nearest shops were, for supplies for the next two days' lunches, and discovered we would have to go back downhill to Bousquet d'Orb. So Jiheun and I left our backpacks with Mariella and went down to the village, a 10-15 minute walk. Luckily, the bakery and the Saturday market offered everything we needed: cheese, fruit and vegetables, bread - and some cakes for energy to climb the hill! There was also a fountain in which to wash the fruit and fill our water bottles, for there would be no more water sources until the end of the day. With three litres of water and enough food for two meals added to the weight of our backpacks, we set off up the hill.

The trail soon began to climb... and climb... and climb... very steeply indeed. We proceeded slowly, in parallel with a group of ten hikers from a fitness club in Arles who were spending a weekend walking three sections of the Way. We have in fact been encountering them from time to time all across the Orb mountains - a place where it's good to have company! There are no towns and no people around... I definitely wouldn't have wanted to do this part alone!  The group's instructor and guide has also been able to offer us plenty of useful hints, in very good English.

We passed the group and stopped in a picnic area under the pines at the top to enjoy all the local produce and cheeses we had bought at the market far down in the valley.

For the rest of the day we followed forestry roads - complete with occasional logging trucks - sometimes losing elevation only to gain it again.

Finally we came to Col de Serviès, where we left the GR653 to descend to the village of Serviès and our gîte d'étape. We shared it - and the dinner our hostess had left for us to heat up - with the group from Arles. This evening in company also included a surprise birthday party! 

GR653 Via Tolosana Day 5: Lodève - Joncels

Lodève - Joncels

26.3 km

Left our airbnb flat early in the morning in our nice clean clothes and went into the village, stopping to see the Gothic Cathedral of Saint Fulcran.

The trail then climbed high up to about 700 metres and stayed around that level all day, so even though we were in full sunlight we didn't suffer the heat as much as we had in the past few days. 

But what goes up must come down... and eventually we did too, winding our way into the valley and to the village of Joncels, once the site of an important abbey on the pilgrimage route but now so small it has no shops.

No shops! And we had eaten all our supplies for lunch... luckily the owner of Gîte La Forge provided us not only with beautiful rooms but with rice and salad with which to put together a frugal dinner! 

GR653 Via Tolosana Day 4: Saint-Jean-de-la-Blaquiere - Lodève

Saint-Jean-de-la-Blaquiere - Lodève 

18.5 km

Today was supposed to be an easy day. My guidebook said 13 km... which turned out to be 18.5! Admittedly, that includes a detour to cross a bridge rather than ford a stream, another short extension to visit a priory and a dolmen, and a turn about a labyrinth! Every day on the Way is full of surprises.

The first one this morning was coming upon this: 

So we took off our boots and waded across. Here is Jiheun putting hers back on, in a ray of morning sunshine: 

The next village, Usclas-du-bosc, turned out to have a collection of interesting 15th century round tombstones in the local cemetery.

A little further along the trail was the late twelfth-century priory of Saint-Michel de Grandmont, on a site that has obviously been sacred since prehistory, as the grounds also contain a dolmen and a number of stones carved for mysterious pagan rituals.

A little further along the way, this was followed by a stone construction for more recent rituals:

The labyrinth is a symbol of pilgrimage, and so of course we had to walk all the way through to the end! 

Spent the evening in our airbnb flat in Lodève doing laundry (the owners let us use their washing machine! Truly clean clothes tomorrow, not just rinsed out under the bathroom tap!) and planning our itinerary for the next few days. We have three days in the Hérault mountains ahead of us, with no drinking water and very limited possibilities for accommodations and meals, so we needed to do a bit of preparation! A few tricky phone calls in French later, we have our accommodations for the next two nights booked and have managed to divide what would have been two very long, steep stages into three shorter ones. We have bought some supplies for tomorrow and ordered our supper cooked for us when we get to the refuge at the top of the mountains the next night. 

If you don't hear from us in the next few days,  either there's no cell phone reception in the mountains... or an eagle has carried us off to its eyrie!