pocket-full-of-seaglass

-Trigodina-

So my roommate last night seemed intent on winning the Worlds Loudest Snorer competition, and has, so far, thrashed the Danish couple from earlier. They seem like little mice in comparison; I found out later that the Whistling Guy had actually left in the middle of the night and moved into another room because it was so bad – not me though! I : did not know that was an option.

Anyway, after finally managing to sleep around 3.00am, I’m up at a prompt 6.35am when Snorer gets up and turns on the fluorescent overhead lights and starts loudly packing. What a guy. I close my eyes until he leaves and pretend that counts as sleeping, listening to the clinks and half-hushed laughter of breakfast downstairs. It feels weird to go down and cook while they eat, so I fake sleep till they come back up, and then it’s beans time baby!! They have spices here so I add in a bunch and finally, finally, I get punched in the face with flavour. This is the best morning of my life – I feel warm and am eating something that tastes like something. Right now, I cannot name anything that tastes better then these Heinz baked beans do, sweet god.

I do panic because the host looks a little impatient though and proceed to scarf them down, almost giving myself heartburn in the process, can’t finish them and have to tip half of the delicious goopy mess out :[ But what I did eat revolutionised the rest of my week – how could I ever be miserable again knowing I had had a warm breakfast??

I run back upstairs, pack, fill up water (wrong order as usual), go downstairs and sit by the entrance trying one last-ditch attempt to get the SIM to work, where I am very politely to “MOVE” by the host who, to be fair, just seemed enthusiastic to clean rather than aggressive, but still definitely scared me. I migrate outside but no luck – I continue to literally repel technology (Renèe I understand you now), and decide I need a new plan; everyone will just have to deal with little to no communication for another two weeks. Again. Ahhh well.

I set off again, avoiding the freezing shadows like the plague, watching the sun rise through the trees feeling generally optimistic about the state of my world. Amazing what sleeping Not On The Floor can do for you! The sun slowly takes its place in the sky, and the warmth finally arrives – the days definitely getting hotter again, which I’m selfishly quite glad about because walking while cold is a w f u l.

This morning was similar to yesterday, in that it was mostly long, long, long gravel roads, but I’m alive and awake and good, so this time they feel much nicer, much more beautiful rather than draining. I want to enjoy them – so I do :] It’s cool long grasses moving in the breeze, and old twisted trees and pine forests but new ones again, these ones more coastal than anything, which is confusing given that there’s fuckall coast remotely near us. For a moment, there’s a hint of Tassie in them, a flicker of recognition that sends me back to last May, but I can’t identify what it is, where it comes from.

I pass a small town, where the host guy from yesterday is driving past which is funny so we wave and smile, and I carry on, nibbling on sweets (it never makes sense, but today I’m fine I guess??), and eventually wander through another two smatterings of houses to see Lascabanes on the hill opposite.

-Lascabanes-

Shocker, but it’s relatively small, but there’s a bathroom straight away which absolutely sky-rockets it up in my books :] As I leave (the Way essentially goes through one street and straight back out), I pass by not one but t w o pilgrim rest stops with absolutely heavenly smells emanating (it’s definitely just omelettes), and it takes everything I have to hold back. My goal for today is less distance related and more financial; it’s a zero day. I haven’t had one in a while, so I may as well go all in! It’s quite fun to see how little I can spend, how far I can bend and be resourceful before I actually need something – so we’ll see!

The afternoon brings with it more gravel paths and sun, beating down on the back of my neck as I top the latest hill; a little over 100m of elevation. Once I clear it, I’m in for a treat – the gravel gives way to asphalt. Oh baby that’s what I’m talking about! You follow it for a long time, but all the better; you’ve got music to listen to and daydreaming to do :]

And you have realisations to,,, realise? Leave the phrasing alone, this is important; you’re almost done with France. Yeah, sure, I’m still only about halfway through the Podiensis, but you could also think about it in terms of combined distance, ie. 750(?)km odd. Which, ignoring elevation and the rest, is also like I’ve already done the Podiensis, and all that’s left is the Gebennensis!! And I know there’s still a rough 350km to go, but I’m so much quicker than I was when I started from Geneva – it won’t take me that long at all. My guess right now is that in roughly two weeks I’ll be in Saint-Jean :]

And let me just say, great time for you to realise that, because you’re about to pass by the Chapel of Saint-Jean! It’s the middle of nowhere – perfect place to explore. This ones a little different, small and squat, every surface covered in offerings; it was fascinating to see what people considered valuable. Not to sound immensely pretentious, but there was poetry to it; it’s everywhere, I’m telling you. Poetry is cheating literature; all you do is list a bunch of achingly human shit, and it speaks for itself.

Fake flowers faded after months of dust and sunlight, real flowers wilting in gray water, old white string tied in knots, severed friendship bracelets, a single ring with a little chip missing from the side, necklace charms, rosaries, a small koala teddy keychain, an old black and white picture of a couple smiling at each other, one of those wooden croaky frogs, a polaroid of three girls holding each others waists and laughing, paper stars folded with a beginners hands, improper creases still clear on the sides, a small pile of rice, dried lavender tied in wreaths, endless ribbon loops, a single crumpled American dollar bill. A small picture of a very young boy, only three or four, with an unintelligible scrawl on the back. The things people left behind, the things people offered up.

(I particularly liked the dollar bill – ‘sorry for my sins, I got a one for you though, if that helps!’)

I feel like an intruder in this place of abject worship, even though I do really enjoy looking at the offerings; I don’t belong here, not with the rings and rice and reverence. I’m made of something else entirely.

I step back outside, rejoin the sun and the air and the warmth – the gravely asphalt. Wander along rocky ways, past new pines, and bright, bright greens that clash against the sky. For the first afternoon in a very long time, there are no clouds in the sky; it’s blue. After a time, right as bouncy beach guitar starts to wear off and the heat sets in and you consider a rest, you’ll enter a forest way.

It’s cool (in both ways) and shaded and secluded, and, like the rest of the day, you’re the only pilgrim to be seen. It’s a bit of a steep climb, that, at times, leaves you pausing in the shade to swear and wipe the sweat from your brow and press on, but the houses you can see through the thick green shove you forward.

And yeah, they’re the wrong houses, and yeah, Montcuq is still an hour away, but that’s so besides the point! Because as you pass a little rest stop with donativo mint tea (that they have run out of – thankfully, else my zero day would be OVER I love mint tea <33), you’ll rejoin the hot, hot asphalt, and after a few minutes you’ll pass a sign you almost don’t read. But something in your stomach goes ‘mmm actually turn around for that one’, so you do and what do you know?

You’re halfway there :]

A quick lame celebratory air punch and a woop, and your spirits are back to sky high – I’m halfway !!! And then, just as if I couldn’t be happier, I glance over to my left – and see alive sunflowers for the first time almost all trip. I jump the ditch, slip under the fence, grab a photo on my little camera. That was definitely worth the photo <33 And so the last little while passed lightning-fast, and I walk into Montcuq with a smile on my face :]

-Montcuq-

It does immediately vanish at the descent because my knees are little bitty babies who can’t handle a downhill to save their lives, but still, I manage to resist the urge to stop early at a lovely looking gîte covered in flowers with camping for €5, and instead make my way downtown. People are everywhere, clearly packing up from the mornings’ market, which I seem to have missed by about an hour – fuck – that, from the remnants, I gather looked incredibly fun.

And honestly just in general, Montcuq is super pretty, and it’s architecture is s o interesting, somewhere between this beautiful old ornate style buildings and concrete brutalism. I love it. I’m kind of regretting not staying at the €5 place earlier, but alas, it’s only 2.00pm and a zero day is a zero day! So I weave past the last of the delicious-smelling restaurants, wave to a pilgrim having a rest and settle down in the grass outside town with my pesto and tomatoes.

As I eat, I flick through my little book, see my progress. I’m a little over halfway through today, having walked just under sixteen kilometres – Lauzerte is only another fourteen away. It’s a somewhat bigger town, 1,500 inhabitants and all! So I’m leaning towards a bench for the night to avoid having to walk past it, and there’d definitely be a bunch because it seemed to have a bunch of parks – at least according to the little maps of the area I kept passing. So after a few choccy bikkies and a mini-nap, on it was!

-Rouillac-

For the first time, an hour actually vanishes. I climb the hill behind Montcuq, walk on a spot of gravel, enter a little wooded area with caves and an absolutely massive estate house, and then boom – Rouillac. As I get closer, I’m expecting the name shield to have anothers – I can’t be here already! I don’t see much of it, though it does just seem to be houses, because the church has water! Something which I do not! I swear I’m getting better at this!

After refilling, I duck inside for a stickybeak. This one is Ancient, all crumbling pillars and centimetre thick dust, rickety wicker chairs and a few lone candles. Some part of me always feels so fucking aggro in churches, like the little snake from what feels like eons ago, always striking at the air. I want to get confrontational, want to go into the confessional and ask if I’m really going to hell, want to write GOD LOVES QUEERS in the little greeting book and just generally disrupt it all. I don’t know why it’s so intense to me – I mean, I have my fucking guesses – but it just feels so disgusting inside churches I think. Solace is about the last thing I feel, not in a place were everything is weaponised, and yeah, it’s a bit fucking awkward to feel like that on an ancient Christian pilgrimage route through the most religious areas of the country but hey! Why should only the Crizzos (or Bappos) get to experience the natural beauty of France??

I step out feeling gross, trying to shake the metaphorical dust from me. Yuck. Then I walk, and walk, and walk. Right about here is where the mental fatigue hit again, and the constant grass/gravel/road loop was starting to drive me a little nuts. I’m starting to think maybe this whole obsession with distance is making the walk less fun,,,, nah, surely not.

Anyway, we’ll skip ahead a bit to me weaving uphill and being passed by the guy I waved to in Montcuq! He’s got a silver mat, and will henceforth be known as Silver Mat Guy – and he’s quite lovely. We joke about jumping the fence to one of the houses and using their pool, and my g o d does that sound like a good idea; it’s so fucking hot. But I don’t experience him for long, because he puts Speed Demon to shame. No, dead serious, he called Labastide-Marnhac “about an hour and a half from Cahors” – he was making solid 6.5km hours. Lunatic <33

After another brutal little climb, and some draining walking, I decide I need external help; it’s time for the cops theme. Not sure why that’s what my brain was demanding, but as soon as it was on, it refused to let me switch it to anything else – so for the next hour and a half, the cops theme it was. Bad boys, whatchu want, whatchu want, whatchu gon doooo. All the way down into the valleys, all the way back up to the top of Montjoie. Directly down the first descent so far to have a danger sign – backwards, because my poor knees couldn’t handle it. But then, after a few minutes of painful manoeuvring, I’m at the bottom walking through a lovely little forest way, only a kilometre away now and – oh it’s on the top of the mountain, awesome.

-Lauzerte-

Jesus Christ. My legs feel like complete mush, and I’m just staggering on uphill, dejected and ready to find the Perfect Bench. A lady I pass goes ‘WOOO! :D’ and pumps her fists at me, which brightens my mood considerably, and I’m once again grinning as I make my way into town. And who beats me to the centre but Silver Mat Guy, who has his pack on the ground regaling locals and tourists alike with stories of where he’s going, what the Chemin is. I love him.

But right now, the sun is starting to wane, and my first priority is a place for the night. Pilgrim gardens sound promising, so I head there first, but they turn out to just be a steel bench on a concrete balcony with some art of pilgrims,,, okaayyy. Well, the city map has the GR65 going by some green areas anyway, so I’ll just stick to it. But the further downhill I go, the more I realise the ‘green areas’ are just peoples’ backyards. Sweet. Another gîte has camping, with an orange-gray tent already comfortable outside. Zero day, zero day, zero day. There’ll be a bench.

There is not. Genuinely none, none that are sleep-able anyway, and I keep walking till I’m fully out of the city, fresh out of luck. Fuck. It’s 7.25pm now – the sun started setting fifteen minutes ago, and the closest town is an hour away at full speed. Time to run! Nah, I’m kidding; speedwalk though, definitely speedwalk. Down across the highway, over the little bridge over the river and up into the tree-line, doused in red waning light. My water stops working, as do my lungs and the sun is officially gone, the sky-light slowly fading. Shit shit shit shit. Just let me get there, please – is that,,, is that the Perfect Bench???

-???-

Oh yeah baby, Camino provides. It’s big, and clean, and, as it’s perfectly at the top, has a perfect view of Lauzerte on the hill opposite. I dump everything and promptly strip, waving myself off with my folded up hat as I get changed, mooning anyone looking in my general direction with,, binoculars I guess?? Ready for bed in a heartbeat, I sit down, go to eat but reconsider, and instead, for the first time in an exceptionally long time, draw.

To be clear, it’s a horrific squiggly kiddie scribble, but I love it. It’s cute and bright and fun. But I am really hungry now, so I ditch my four year olds’ scrawl in favour of a well rounded nutritious meal – ha! Nope, gotta save the real stuff for breakfast; tonight it’s pringles and some cherry tomatoes. I write, but I’m just so fucking tired that I do have to admit to writing this a day (or three) later now.

It was not a smart idea, to just leave it for later. I’m so behind now, sorry!!! I promise I’ll catch up eventually, but it might be a few days again before I can post next, so we’ll see. Anyway, I hope you’re well – long time no see <33 Hopefully it’ll be quicker next time!

---

Day 35 – September 24th

Trigodina to ???

32.5km

~ 392.8km total

€0

~ €484.49 total

(757.5km combined)

(€1,013.72 combined