Excellent! Poor wee wet one 
It was good weather. A cool 15 C when I set off and ended at 18 C. About two hours, not sure how long but I recorded it on my phone so I can find out.
Incidentally, saw only my second ever wild boar yesterday. I was surprised because it was very close to a well used footpath through the forest. I heard it bolt and when I looked towards the sound it was about 20 m from me running away. It wasn’t very big and so was probably one of this years young boars. Didn’t stop to find out if mother was nearby 
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Today was a very different walk to last week’s, with today’s temps 30° plus, even high up in the Cantal, so most of the walk was in the forest high above Junhac (which is a lovely village , though perhaps not in winter) .We started at around 550 metres and went up to just below 800m but all the climbing was in the first part of the walk and after that it was easy (until I decided to do the optional extra 5kms at the end).
Starting out with views over typical Cantal landscape, except up here the valleys tend to be deeper and the countryside more ‘rolling’.
This photo was taken at the end of the long steep climb in the heat, looking back and waiting for the ‘others’ to arrive. Ten minutes! There was a lot of heat haze but you can just discern where we’ve come from.
Sure I took an almost identical picture a couple of weeks back when walking from Calvinet in the Cantal
Newly planted maize, liked this photo cos it’s got just enough in it, but also has a lot of space.
Don’t know why it’s resting there, but will resist the temptation to make tired puns…
Simple and strangely soothing… In retrospect the skyline resembles the sweep of the Coca Cola logo that was designed to gently carry the eye upwards as we ‘read’ from left to right (less effective in some non-Western cultures)
Starting to descend, but there’s still a long way to go - right down there and beyond…
But some interesting encounters en route -
An impressive log collection -
And another somewhat smaller, but rather charming collection…
Gives an idea of the ‘rolling’ landscape
First glimpse of Junhac down below.
However, Paul is striding out in front very determinedly and is about to suggest that when we get to Junhac, we could do an extra 5kms before lunch.
Like a fool I agree and set off in the wake of three strapping fellows all of whom are more than ten years younger than me. And to make it worse now that they’d shed the slow walkers they could go a bit faster. The photo below is the last one because after that I didn’t have time to stop to take any more.
But I did it!
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Thanks Mark, I’m really looking forward to a chance for walking in France again after seeing this.
Thanks Toni, I posted accidentally before I’d finished, so what you saw was not the full set.
Thanks too to @Susannah who also liked my incomplete post
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Another Weds another walk.
Today we were walking from a house near the double village of St Santin (the one in the SE Cantal) not the one in the Aveyron. It was a new walk that incorporated some bits of other walks in order to get a decent distance (12.75 kms) for the ‘fast group’.
Setting out towards Monmrat
The young guy in the foreground had just completed 220kms of the Camino starting from Le Puy, so today’s rando was just stroll in the park stuff with a bunch of pensioners.
Monmurat comes into view.
Four years ago we started a walk from there the day after my first Covid jab, but after an hour of walking, I was feeling a bit spaced out and walked back to the car by myself. I then spent the next hour or so wandering around trying to find the car before realising that I was in the wrong village!
Montmurat’s a lovely mediaeval village with some fine property, by contrast our village is much older, and more historically important, but is rather decrepit in comparison.
The view from the ramparts - most of the older SW Cantal villages were built on hilltops with a good view over the surrounding countryside.
Laurie’s not rifling the collection box, he’s just trying the unfortunately locked inner door…
Beyond which…
something immanent appears to be going on above the altar -
The church stands in a small place that has a central fountain - the dogs loved it on an already hot day.
The fountain is interesting because it’s been designed to change as limestone solidifies and accretes below the spout.
The square at Monmurat
After Montmurat, there was a lot of this typical SW Cantal landscape - pleasant, but seldom dramatic. I’m also conscious of having posted so many similar photos so many times before
Interesting streetlights at the camping van site on the edge of the village, obviously designed to reduce nocturnal light pollution
This photo cold have been so much better, but my phone kept jumping into selfie mode (I’ve never in my life taken a selfie) and meanwhile the rest of the group were becoming ever more distant/
And then to slow me down even more, there was this watch tower to photograph
Too many photos - falling behind…
File under ‘bucolic cottage.’
This week’s ‘fine barn’ photo:-
‘Le Chapeau’ seems to crop op in every walk we do in the SW Cantal:-
Some locals will go to great lengths to get a decent head of water…
Finally Montmurat comes back into view which means there’s not very far to go.
Very welcome, as it’s the first walk in ten or so years where I’ve drunk both my water bottles (kept in the freezer overnight, then filled with Badoit from the fridge).
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Love that fountain, what a great idea.
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Totally agree!
Thank you for taking the time to post these, Mark, they give a great sense of different places seen while passing through the countryside.
Thanks Toni, my original intention when starting this thread was to get a better idea of where other SFers lived and how their surroundings looked
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Superbe as always and many thanks for sharing.
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I’d planned to take some pictures this evening for our ‘after the heat of the day’ walk, but left the phone in the car. However we did stop on the way back to Cussy because the light was nice.
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I’ve seen streams like that in the Auvergne, but yours looks so different to our local ones, that usually flow down steep slopes in the forests.
Last thrsday at a bookshop in Conques, I bought a book on mediaeval French forests that I’m now reading fairly slowly, but fascinating stuff. I want to learn more about the environment in which we do so many of our walks?
That book looks fascinating - maybe something I might aspire to read one day.
As for the stream, many valleys around here look like they have acted as flood plains at times, with a broad flat and gently sloping bottom that I’d guess was created from silt deposition, and a narrow channel for a small river that curves through it. This changes a little higher up the valley, with steeper slopes and a bottom no longer flat.
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Did a short rando tonight up the ‘Taco chemin’, which is on a section of decommissioned railway line that ran from Autun to Chateau Chinon, this bit being near Anost. Took about 1.5 hours in a loop, starting roughly at the old station - now Avant Gare cafe - running up to a chemin that runs between a few small Hamlets so that we could loop back to Velée instead of out and back.
Avant Gare
Trail start.
The trail - it’s all like this, more or less, though there was a section under trees where the path was alive with large wood ants.
Getting arty.
This ancient church is on the way in Velée - there’s a 'healing spring ’ nearby
Managed not to tread on Alexander.
Back round by the road to Velée.
It was a blissful 18 degrees by the time we got to the car.
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Very envious that it was cool enough for walking further than the terrasse - here it’s still C27° at 11pm. Lovely, mellow light in your photos with that characteristic slight early evening rosy cast.
Don’t know anything about your local architecture, but that church looks very old indeed (C9th-12th?) and no windows apart from the oculus in the apse? Would be interesting to see the porch - might try to find it on Google Earth.
It is very old, as you say. We’ve been there before with a friend and here friend from the hamlet, but I don’t have any phone pictures. It’s the Chapelle Sainte-Claire.
Thanks for the link -C11th. Interesting that there are only windows on one one side.
Wonder why?
Lovely building and interesting interior - love the radial beams of the apse, though less keen on the murals by Dom Angelico Surchamp - they’re not quite in the same league as those of his Dominican namesake, Fra Angelico.
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I have seen churches like that before, mainly in the east I think, built with a solid face towards the prevailing wind I believe.
Mention of Anost caught my attention, and I wondered why for a moment, then remembered that Fran and I used to go there every year for a traditional music festival. The campsite was at the bottom of the village and, as many of the musicians were amateur, or perhaps semi professional, they also stayed in tents and caravans around us. Thus there was music all around us on the site as well as here and there all the way up into the village.
We couldn’t get on the site the last year and were camped several miles away, killed it for us after that.
I’ve heard of the festival, but it seems to be finished now.
We’ve been inside, but I think it might have been autumn 2023, and don’t have any pictures with me this week. The building was locked when we passed it this time.