GR10 Day41

Today could be summarised as dry, drizzle, dry, drizzle, rain, dry, rain, dry, with lots of low cloud.

We crossed the stream and walked through the forest, which was a mixture of silver birch and pine.  All the beech trees have disappeared.  We walked through the middle of a herd of cows and one went down the track in front of us.  We looked round, and the entire herd seemed to be following us.  We crossed a small stream and were relieved to see the cows go off to investigate some campers and their tent.  Then the climbing started, up through the trees, on a mixture of straight up and zigzags.  We stopped to put our rain jackets on, cleared the trees, and walked up the grassy slope to the col in the rain.  There wasn’t much to see because of the cloud so we carried on.  The path led across the hillside and then started to descend.  We took this slowly, as by now all the stones and tree roots were very wet and slippy.  We got down the worst of the slope and then walked through a large old terraced area, on an old path.  We could see hundreds of terraces on the hillside across from us, around the village of Mantet.  There was no water covering the bridge (ford) in the valley bottom, so we walked straight across, and then up the track to Mantet.  We found the gite, and then went to a neighbouring restaurant for some late lunch.  The sun came out and we were able to put our clothes, socks, and boots out to dry.