Ariége-Pyrénees.

No my brain doesn't work today! It's impossible to switch into French mode! That's beer, but it's not the end of the world as the couple understand one too many beers. It's a hazard of towns on a Saturday during harvest season in France: they like to celebrate all weekend: and this is fair. It's going to be a hot one! I must depart shortly. Once my bowels have had their say!

Walked all day, except for two brief "snack" breaks. Now having a sablé biscuit and hair of the dog! I'm tired beyond words. Why is it 31°C at the end of September. Break weather... Cool off please. Not a cloud in the sky. Luckily from noon it was not relentlessly up; calm down and not sadistically up. The Halte Saint-Jacques is next to the Cathedral, but I think I'm very early to get in. It says 6pm on the Office de Tourisme door. That's fine! I'm in the shade of the Linden tree here. The rest may wait! The custodian tells me I've an hour to wait before the person with the keys arrives in place. In the shade of the Linden tree at La Grange de la Cité. The Comté cheese I've carried for two days was sweating, but I ate it anyway.

All of the feelings, the interior monologues and the pain, carrying emergency items in the sack, were worth it just to pass through the Grotte du Mas-d'Azil at dawn. Dawn definitely is my favourite time of the day.

My legs are burning again and I'm itching seemingly l everywhere. If you stop at all those bastards descend as a plague. It's a real problem here as they've nothing to stop then. They'll spread north to the UK eventually and that will surprise folks I'm sure. Someone down here has had dengue fever as a result of having been bit.

Tomorrow is a short one: only seventeen kilometres, so I think it's best I get to bed early. I've moved out of the bed room to give the elderly couple some privacy and plonked myself on the pull out sofa. No curtains on the door, but guess it'll be dark up here in Saint-Lizier?