Well, the SNCF strike disrupted not only my sleep on Tuesday night (as I caught the only train to Clermont obscenely early yesterday) but some of our hiking plans: Originally Meredith and I thought we'd rent a car and drive to the base of the Puy-de-Dome and explore the trailhead from there. There were no rental cars to be found -- which seems very logical in retrospect -- so we had to think of an alternative plan. The Puy-de-Dome is 10 kilometers outside of Clermont so that seemed too far to walk, but the tourist information office directed us to a different trail closer to town. Compared to the other mountains surrounding Clermont, this was one of the smallest but, after a few wrong turns and some short-term trespassing, we found a side trail with a gorgeous view of the city.

We walked down the opposite side of this mountain with our eye on another in the distance. Unofrtunately, there are no signs that explain which roads go up so at every intersection we had to guess. Somehow we made our way to a little village just outside of Clermont where the chocolates in the patisserie we begging to be eaten. I had something called a Puy-de-Dome which was so amazingly rich sometimes I forgot that breathing should have been a higher priority than eating. The woman at the patisserie had given us rough directions so we followed the road through the village, but really, after about five minutes, we were just wandering aimlessly around these country roads and villages, just looking for a route to take us up.

When we got to the point of the day where we needed to turn around and head back to town we had managed to climb probably twice as high as the original mountain we'd hiked that morning. I wish it hadn't been as hazy, but the surrounding farms, mountains and distant buildings were beautiful from that height. Later we realized that we'd walked for nearly seven hours and had probably covered 20 miles. It was really quite an amazing day of aimless hiking and conversation.

I am feeling an even stronger pull now to hike the Puy-de-Dome.