pocket-full-of-seaglass

-Espalion-

I slept almost uninterrupted, only once getting up to get water and have the absolute shit scared out of me by this creepy fucker right here hiding behind the wall to the potable tap.

Sweet fucking Christ. Why would they put that there?! Heart POUNDING I walked back through the dark to my bench, waiting for him to start running after me. Luckily for me, he stayed a statue. A few hours later, I woke up for real; and it was,, dark? Or raining? Or both? Or neither? Was that smoke???

It was not. It was, though, the thickest fucking fog I’ve ever seen in my life. My bench was about three metres from the closest tree, and it had vanished. I couldn’t see a thing. I could hear cars, and a check of the time revealed it was about 7.00am, so I knew people would be arriving soon – but what!? I rolled up my sleeping bag and repacked everything so I didn’t look too obvious, then I went straight to the water.

It was clearer here, the branches of the weeping willows opposite reaching through like spectres. Bright purple flowers dotted the grass, so bright it seemed indecent – could they not tell today was muted? And then, who should appear out of the fog but grape guy, who takes one look at me and bursts out laughing.

“You did sleep here!!!”

A little laugh, a wave, and we part. I do hope to see him again :]

A quick visit to the toilet seat made solidly of ice and back to my pack – I have people to see (not), places to be (yes). So I begin my wander, damp and cold, like all good ones do. Past some cool street art, past the creepy statue guy again, and past so much fog. After taking roughly forty photos of the town emerging through the gray, I turn the corner and almost run face first into a rack of sausages. It’s market day, and my god.

Big wooden slats stacked high, each nestling precious cargo; guavas, nectarines, grapes, plums, peaches, bananas, kiwis, apricots, pineapples. Any fruit I’ve ever seen is there, sandwiched between butchers’ stalls, meat strung on metal racks, giant slabs and tiny little baby portions for people to try. Fromagers’ populate the corners, peddling massive cheese wheels aged for years, hard shells of mould, with softer, smaller rounds of camembert, brie, and one Craig told me was his favourite in Chaumont. There’s some crazy looking ones, mottled green and red, and the smell is,,, intense. Artists too, tables with mishmash cards and bags, setting up pins and badges in tiny shelves. A man selling fresh seafood takes up most of the far corner, between me and the bridge, and I can’t help but inhale as I pass; it smells like Christmas. Prawns and snapper, stacked in those same blue bins, ice on the cold laminate floor in Ballina or Byron or wherever the year took us.

I’m halfway across the bridge when a kind man stops me, points me back with his cane. I’ve missed an arrow – I get to keep going through the market :] I thank him, turn back into the slowly swelling crowd, past the not-Christmas-Christmas stall and into the hubbub. The first customers are perusing, loud and French, hollering greetings across streets and weaving in to their friends, kisses on cheeks and claps on backs, blokey roaring. The bakers have begun to trade, and they earn themselves the biggest tables; not that it’s enough. Rounds of bread, seeded and deep brown, scored with flowers and dusted with flour sit on the corners, holding together the golden croissants, buttery and glossy, the pain au chocolates so fresh they bleed onto the white plastic, dripping down. Pretzels and focaccia bites and sourdough and cheesy fromage squares and apricot turnovers and danishes and twists that smell like vanilla and cardamom, baguettes and flutes and pain sit slotted in large barrels by the side. I’m just about floating with the smell. Mmmmm fresh baking. God.

But I pass it by – I don’t trust my French enough yet – swearing that the next one I pass, I’ll get some goodies and eat fresh bread by the water. The warm lights fight out the gray, and the further away I get, the more it glows; all bobbing heads and fairylight strands. Beautiful :]

Leaving Espalion is bittersweet; combined, it’s given me my most beautiful night and morning so far. It deserves a better send-off than the back roads out, but that’s what it gets. The fog helps, lays languid over the houses, gives it the feeling of the unknown, of pure earliness – despite the fact it’s already close to 8.00am. I follow the distant outlines of two pilgrims in front of me, listen to the clicking of the trekking poles to tell me where to go. I know there’s three behind me too; their clicks come quick, and constant. Click-click-click-click-click-click. Six poles, a disjointed titanium insect, a second. Without us, the streets are silent.

A short uphill stretch, then you follow the road. It’s something special, this fog. It refuses to budge, clings to everything it touches; I eat the last of the grapes as I walk, spit out the seeds – they vanish into the abyss. And still, it’s just me and the clicking. I can’t see anyone anymore. A car comes out of nowhere, white lights pulsing, swerves around me, disappears a second later. I press as close to the thorny bushes as I can; then I’m in a tunnel. Keep left, always, pray no cars come through. They don’t.

I’m passed by an older guy here, who tells me my raincover pocket is open, and I pause to fix it as he goes on ahead at breakneck speed. Seriously, fastest walker I’ve seen so far – he rivals Kath but like,, he’s just walking, not intentionally fast at all. I’m intimidated.

From here, there’s a path again, beside the road – breathe easy. You follow the gravel till you reach a cemetery, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that they’re entirely designed to look sick in the fog. Looming crosses, fake flowers faded. Incredible. From here, it’s only a few minutes till you reach the still-very-much-closed town of Saint-Pierre-de-Besseuéjouls, where the true climb begins. I pass the older Speed Demon here, as he reties his shoes, and begin to make my way up.

This one is also a little brutal; short but sharp. Speed Demon overtakes me less than a third of the way up, as I pant against a tree. Fair play. I chase the sound of his clicks until he escapes my earshot, which I’ll pretend isn’t because of my pace, but rather because I just super casually stopped walking because holy shit?? The fog still isn’t gone – at least, not for the valleys. It’s been clear here for awhile, sunlight peeking through the leaves. But down below, the blanket stays snug – even at 9.00am, with full sun.

I’ll skip the finer details of the next five kilometres solely because they’re verging on repetition (I would never), but I will give future me some dot points to help him remember;

⁃ you make it to the rest stop where you originally thought you might spend the night, and it’s an exposed field (great for sunset views, not much else)

⁃ to get to Trédou, it’s a zig-zag wander through a cute little forest, then you pass One building and go by the church and you’re back on the road

⁃ after a little while, the road splits and you follow the longest straight stretch you’ve probably walked since starting (a kilometre with no turns? Are you crazy?

⁃ You get to what you think is Verrières, but is actually Les Camps – still pretty, but it means you’ve got another kilometre till almost-Estaing (ouch)

⁃ When you get to actual Verrières, you notice a pilgrim rest stop, and, for the first time, stop to read the menu (maybe you’ll buy something???), but Speed Demon will come barrelling out and tell you they have great coffee and you’ll get competitive and try to race him

⁃ He stops by the bridge to take a lovely photo you probably should have also taken and BOOM you’re ahead

⁃ Roadwalking roadwalking yada yada yada

⁃ One more tiny climb filled with the flowers you saw on the highest point of the Gebennensis, a little nostalgia, and a descent to Mumford and Sons

⁃ Is that,,, is that a fucking castle?

-Estaing-

Yeah. Estaing has a castle. It’s probably the church too, but it has a castle. Gorgeous, and cool, but how are there just,,, so many castles in France. Why don’t we get castles???? All those colonising bastards couldn’t even bring over the castle-making skills for their convicts ?? Pah!

The way follows a wind in the river Lot, then sends you up and to the left, directly away from Estaing. I choose to go into town though; I really need food. I’m back to cashews and pesto and,,, not much else. Plus I need something to eat the carrots with! I don’t find much, but the épicerie has some cheap shitty pain au chocolates and ‘aussie lemonade style’ Monster, so I buy those (sorry father – I need to know what that tastes like). And a baguette, while I’m at it. I get handed the crustiest baguette I’ve ever seen in my life. I think the actual bread part consistutes maybe an eighth of it – the rest is just crunch. Jesus.

On I go, with a pain au chocolate for the road; my true lunch break is two odd kilometres from here, where I’m told there’s a rest stop right by the river. I’ll be honest, I’ve passed several major rivers since starting, and at the moment, the Lot seems to be the grossest. Sorry Lot. At least the fishers seem to love it – I can see five from the bridge alone, drifting around in their little kayaks.

As I leave Estaing behind, I smile at the pilgrimness of the place – this is the thing I do love about company. I wander by a playground near a pool, both shut, and see the outline of a tent in the grass, with a rugged man smoking ciggies while drying every item of clothing he seems to own. Someone else is clipping their toenails on the church stairs, grumbling about the light from the stained glass. My close-shaven friend from the other day is brushing his teeth in front of the water fountain, and he smiles at me in recognition, white and bubbly.

Smiling to myself, I rejoin Speed Demon as he turns off towards Golinhac, the end goal for today. It’s another 14km from here – I’m just under halfway for today, 13km in. Not feeling too bad; maybe even a little overconfident, if such a thing existed for a teenager. As it would transpire, the rest stop by the river just means a table in the vicinity of the river, and sorta smells – I think I caught the Lot on a bad day.

And then a little lightbulb goes off in my head, and I remember that the entirety of France is in a mass drought because of the whole, y’know, climate change thing. Awkwaaard. So sorry France I will stop teasing your rivers!! Our droughts just look very different. Regardless, I move on, determined to find somewhere pretty to enjoy my lunch.

That somewhere pretty,,,, sort of arrives? To get to it though, all I have to do is scale a mountain. Pssh baby stuff. Toothbrush guy (Close Shaven has a new name) passes me halfway up the climb, and any shred of my that would possibly want to race him has long since curled up and died because this one fucking Sucks. It’s 600m of elevation over 3km, and my calves are jelly (jello, again <33), and the wind is being very helpful and trying to shove me against the trees and take my hat. Not a chance wind, not a chance.

Gripping both sides of the sunhat with the type of strength that comes solely from desperation, I gasp and heave my way to the top that isn’t the top because there’s one last climb and Jesus Christ why does so much of France’s natural beauty have to involve mountains?? Pros and cons though, because halfway up this one I meet a lovely woman from Belgium, who, thankfully, speaks German, and we talk the whole way up.

If nothing else, being Australian is a killer conversation starter – nothing excites the Europeans more.

“You like to surf?” They ask, eyes shining like a puppy.

And then you (metaphorically) kick them and say that you don’t like surfing actually and then they look wounded and it’s all very funny when you’re exhausted.

Anyway, she doesn’t bring up surfing, which I’m grateful for, and instead we talk about school and the heat and not much in particular. But it makes the climb go faster – I take a photo of her at the top. Together, we trek the last 200m to the rest stop and collapse; her on the bench and me in the tree roots. I fill up water, air my feet. She hangs her clothes out to dry, jokes that they finally might smell good. It’s quite nice.

There’s a dog who really wants my food, and will not leave me alone for anything, so much so that the next people to arrive ask if he’s mine. Not likely. Speaking of the next people; they arrive quickly. Two French-Canadians and who else but Speed Demon. He nods at me, waves. The four of them converse in French, which I’m happy about because it means a little pause in conversation for me. I’m more of a micro-dosing human interaction type of guy, and I like to eat in peace.

As I nibble on the Worlds Crunchiest Baguette dipped in pesto, savouring my final three cherry tomatoes, I flip through the book, thinking about where to end up tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after- okayyy book closed no more thinking! I’ve made at least six seperate “””plans””” of when I’d be finished since leaving Le Puy, and they changed daily. No use worrying about it yet, I know, but I always just wanted to guess, to figure it all out.

I took instead to nostalgia, hopefully, and tried the ‘aussie lemonade style’ energy drink. It was, and I do mot say this lightly, fucking delicious. Aussie style lemonade just means solo, I guess, and oh man cold solo after a long walk? It was perfect. Probably not a thing I’d get again, given that one can cost the same as like a litre of juice, but I’m glad I tried it. Now I can add solo to the list of things I’m craving <33

After a few more minutes, I pack up, leave quietly. I don’t want to disturb the conversation so I don’t say goodbye, and I regret it – I liked the lovely Belgian lady. I was hoping I’d see her again, but she was stopping a few kilometres before me, so the chances were low. Damn :[ I walk up the last of the hill, following the bouncing backpack of the pilgrim in front. I was getting used to the people now, I think – staying in campsites made it far easier to recharge.

-Fonteilles-

She and I split ways at Fonteilles, where there was a gîte that looked very comfortable,,, but not for me. Plus, I was ahead of Speed Demon – I couldn’t stop now! My enthusiasm was starting to wane just slightly now, my feet starting to feel the endless thud-thud-thud. Ouch. I needed something bright to push me along, some delusory force to make me feel too bouncy to care.

I needed the Beach Boys.

I slowed – not stopped, we’re still racing – quickly downloaded the best few songs. And then I was fucking off, shittily dancing all the way, wavy arms and weird steps that definitely probably fucked up my spine more but ignore it. It was summer and childhood and sticky hands from that long-discontinued smartie ice-cream push pop thing, blue skies and red earth, past Sphynx Roc Cafe and down into Nimbin, or out to Cabba, 50¢ popping candy from the Uki general, those awful pink and blue lollipops that weren’t really lollipops they sold at every public swimming pool I’ve ever been in.

I was reminiscing, and reminiscing hard. It was impossible not to – I fucking loved the Beach Boys. Jaunty little steps, a few more corners, the last push. So busy flapping about I didn’t notice that the guy in front of me had a 360* camera filming the whole fucking thing. Then I was moving much quicker for a very different reason.

-Golinhac-

Pure embarrassment (and a little dididleeleedee guitar) sent me coasting towards the first few houses of Golinhac at around 3.15pm – eons early. I was greeted with a white horse, a beautiful garden of gardenias being picked by a beautiful woman who smiled at me, and an old guy in a mechanics going ‘OUUUEEYYY’ as I walked past. A strong start, that’s for sure.

I followed the signs for the campsite, misread a few but ended up at reception. One pitch, €8.40. Thankyou lovely French man with Very Tight Pants. I set up quickly, leaving most of my stuff outside while I went to wash my clothes. I needed them to dry, I missed dry clothes s o bad. Hung them out, prayed, set up fully. Tried to do taxes, but the ATO hates me. Jokes on them, they could never hate me as fully and borderline violently as I hate them. I gave up – my SIM made it impossible to call and fix anything. Add it to the list. Christ.

It was getting cloudy, and my clothes had no hope of drying, so time to fork over €3 and dry them – oh? I pressed the wrong button, and the machine starts without the money. You win some, you lose some I guess. Went into the bathroom to plug in my powerbank and glanced up in the mirror to find the guy using the urinal making the most crazy intense eye contact I’ve ever seen – it felt rude breaking it. Even though, to reiterate, he’s in a fucking urinal. Maybe I just haven’t got this whole being-a-man thing down yet, but that seems like the last possible place I would ever want to look another human directly in the eye. And, bonus points; as I went to leave, I passed Speed Demon. No shot – we smile in recognition. I’m never going to see him again, not a chance. I regret another almost-goodbye.

Anyway, besides that, it was a rather fun night. I was sandwiched between two tents, and one of them I recognised from Saint-Chély, which was nice. I sat inside with the outer layer open, just watching the clouds roll on in. Being somewhat at the top of the hill, Golinhac gets a fucking beating in the wind, and my tent has a few folding-in-half moments that concerned me just a bit, but it’s all fine. I wait till the dusk steals the sky, till all that’s left are camper-van lights flickering through the slits in their window-shields.

It was peaceful, bar the barrage. I loved storms – I was hoping this one would break before I succumbed to the comfort of my sleeping bag, but it wasn’t meant to be. I hope you have better luck with yours – I hope the anticipation is worth it :]

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Day 26 – September 15th

Espalion to Golinhac

27.1km (again)

~ 184.3km total

€16.25

~ €190.63 total

(549.0km combined)

(€819.86 combined)