pocket-full-of-seaglass

-???-

This might shock you, but I woke up freezing. I also woke up to the pitch dark, despite my very overeager alarm telling me it’s now 6.45am – but the stars don’t care, just continue glittering on in the cosmos. I forgot days got shorter in winter, so that’ll definitely make for some interesting walking!! Gone are the days of 6.30am sunrises – it’s shifted more than an hour since I started :] But hey, pros and cons, right? Maybe people will still start at sunrise just,,,, later!

Click-click-click-click-click-cli – yes, okay, I get it, people still start early, fuck me. Today it’s two older women with headtorches that jump slightly when they make contact with my no doubt grotty-and-full-of-sleep eyes; but they’re in a good mood, laughing at my bedhead and asking me if I slept well.

‘Yeah, great!’ I say, lying straight to their faces.

The sun does start to light up the sky again as they leave, enough that I do have to think about getting up. Unfortunately. I fucking hate mornings, I take back anything I’ve said so far about becoming a morning person, I will never be one as long as I live. A few deep breaths, a psych-up – like right before getting into cold water – and I’m up and out, breath fogging as I tug off the thermals and replace it with a wet t-shirt. Y’know, as big of a fan as I am of routines, the current morning one does leave a little to be desired.

Two new people arrive as I’m repacking my bag, joining me on the bench to watch Lauzerte be hit with light. If anything, it’s even prettier in the mornings <33 And, another pro; all of this cold is a gr e a t motivator to move faster! I hobble my first few steps, get used to walking again, then I’m off into the shade. Excellent.

The first hour or so of today is spent in the valleys which means cold and mozzies – killer combo. Great segue, actually, I haven’t talking about the mozzies yet, and w o w no-one mentioned that ever ??? They’re fucking everywhere here, I’m itchy on approximately Every inch of my body, covered in bites; every time I stop I feel like live bait. Hate the fuckers, my god.

Anyway, a few minutes sends me past the ‘town’ I was trying to get to yesterday, which is just a single house by the side of the road, and a little further down I reach the Chapel of Saint-Sernin, which does have a picnic table but would’ve been a miserable spot to sleep. See! I trust the Camino (or maybe more accurately, the French people who set up the trail).

It’s becoming a crisp little morning, and I’m making good time as I weave through little farms and barns, making my way downhill to the motorway. I pass by a few more donation stalls which have fruit rather than coffee, which is very nice, but I’m fairly stocked, so I shelve getting some for later.

The sun is really starting to get going now, shadows dwindling, especially as I reach the newly designated Stretch of the day. Lately, it’s seemed like every day is interesting and beautiful (of course), but that there’s one solid stretch without many turns that just takes fucking forever; today, said stretch takes place on the side of the D57, for about two kilometres. I will never understand the Podiensis – sometimes you’ll climb a mountain to avoid crossing a street, and sometimes they’re like ‘ehhh highway’ll do’. The fucking French !!!

But soon enough you turn left, fork away from the road and back into the hills, passing through fields of crops and very cool flowers that look like spiderwebs while you do. It’s another five kilometres till you reach your first stop, but they’re flying. Something about the cold, the early start, something something something. It felt like they almost didn’t count, like until it hit midday none of the steps mattered to my legs. So I took that firmly misplaced confidence, and went even faster, coasting over the last few hills.

I passed by Nouvelle, a place that is just one house that doubles as a hotel that triples as a restaurant that dabbles in a minipicerie. Really – literally – doing it all. It also had the wimpiest shaky little chihuahua guard-dog who got scared whenever I stopped walking but barked very confidently when I was moving. Hilarious. Then I got approached by this big old sheepdog without a collar but with some absolutely crazy eyes who started barking and jumping and generally freaking me the fuck out which was a little less hilarious.

It followed me all the way past the hotel-restaurant-house-minipicerie, past orchards of plums and apricots and,,, kiwi fruits ?? I’ve never seen kiwi fruits pre-harvest ?? Kiwi fruits grow on trees ?? I don’t know why I assumed they were a vine-fruit like passionfruit ?? I’ve said fruit too much and now it doesn’t sound like a word anymore ?? Fruit fruit fruit ?? Why is there an i in fruit ?? English is so weird ??

-Dufort-Lacapelette-

Anyway, fruit-based confusion aside, and passing some lovely amalgamated sunflowers, I arrive in Dufort-Lacapelette (with the nutter of a dog, who thankfully vanishes with the first car) and it is deeead. It’s somewhere around 10.00am now, and to be fair, it is a Monday, but come on!

I duck into the public bathrooms and (insert appreciative wolf-whistle here) they’re nice. [AN : as I’m almost a full week behind in writing this I can now give you Exclusive Future Information that this entire department is fixed in my brain solely because of their lovely public toilets]. And after that, because I’m working with a solitary few cherry tomatoes, a half-jar of pesto, and just about nothing else, I duck into a proper rest stop for the first time.

Not to get something to eat, god no – €6 for what will inevitably be a ham sandwich??? Over my cold, dead, incredibly malnourished body – but because the sign outside says épicerie. It is definitely minipicerie territory; one shelf of non-spoilable items. Hmm. Okay, time to go a little crazy and expand past pesto sandwiches (!!!). Let’s try the baby food again – banana and apple sounds easier than Just Apple Mush, so we’ll go with that. I guess we can try tuna sandwiches again?? They were a bit rank in Le Puy, but still – and then I see it. Thon du Mexican Salad. What?

I buy it, mostly because it’s the most palatable looking thing to be seen, and I do actually need to eat something, and it’s a bit more expensive than my usual,,, bread, and I’m anticipating a pretty gross experience. To help wash it down, I grab four hard-boiled eggs and a small thing of peach yoghurt, totally not knocking over their little yoghurt tower and making an apricot tub explode on impact with the floor, no way!

I go to pay, realise there’s fresh bread, and grab some of that too. We’re sorted. I always forget that if they aren’t already in bags, they’ll just give it to you. Like,,, thankyou for this Massive Stick of Bread, kind French man; where the hell am I meant to put this. Like yeah, obviously it’s getting strapped to my pack, but sans little wrapper it’ll just split and fall out !! I can’t tell you how fun it is to have ‘but where do I put the fresh baguette???’ as my logistical problem for the day, seriously. Anyway, it’s all fine because I have an old bread bag I’ve saved specifically because this dilemma keeps happening, so I attach it no problems, all my stress is gone, man sometimes everything is so nice :]

I curl up on the seats outside, have myself a lovely little breakfast. I start with the salad, and I’d like to address a few things. Namely, if you’re thinking to yourself, ‘canned tuna salad sounds quite gross actually, and the vegetables are clearly the mushy frozen ones, and paying €3.50 for a little can seems extortionate, and what even is the mexican part of this mexican salad-‘, and so forth, then fair enough. But what you have not considered, my sweet, sweet, naive friend, is that this will be the most mind-blowing can to ever exist.

Seriously, I cannot explain the flavours going on at all, but it’s incredible. And filling? Crazy. As I eat, I watch everyone start to arrive, and holy shit, someone please remind me to stop at these little spots more because the amount of people-watching I can do while not looking very creepy absolutely skyrockets.

There’s the older guys, who, naturally, wake up first thing on a Monday and want a beer (oh yeah, the rest stop is a bar), and they’re scattered throughout the inside; minus the ones that are smoking outside. They’re huddled up, covered in thick smoke, holding borderline comically large cigars, talking with Italian accents (in my mind). At one point, one of them leaves, retuning in a few minutes with a MASSIVE box of fresh bread, and just brings that inside and sits back down. He’s joined by a woman who has been steadily bringing box after box of veggies in, so has a bit of a sit down.

And there’s pilgrims, of course. A swarm of them. It’s probably around 10.30am now, so everyone who set off a little after sunrise from Lauzerte is starting to arrive, and most of the tables are full; I feel a bit bad hogging one, but if anyone was visibly looking for a place to sit, I’d leave. Or offer them a place, that should be my first call probably, but anyway, the point stands.

The table right by me is crowded as anything; there’s probably ten people around a table that can fit roughly six. Amongst them is a woman with a dark blue pack, with trekking poles strapped to the side. She’s got dark hair and looks like every middle-aged Australian mum to grace the face of the earth mashed together and my hopes are skyrocketing as she says her first words; but alas, she’s British </3

Either way, she catches my eye because she’s the only one speaking English at a table full of French speakers, and she looks a little lonely. The woman next to her is definitely trying to translate, but the jokes are getting a little lost; at one point they’re saying a bunch of cheese-related words and losing their minds laughing and she leans over and goes; “it’s because of babies!”

which is funny but definitely not for the right reason.

The one translating smiles at me when she catches me staring into space directly at them, so that gives her points! She’s got gray hair and a very kind face, and I smile back as she turns to face two guys; one in all black and one with a army-green coloured backpack, both of whom are getting ready to leave. I follow their lead, pack up my things (the yoghurt was delicious as usual and the egg was yum and the baby food was,,, baby food), set off again, before realising I need water, of course.

I unpack everything, refill, repack and then I’m on my way, following the bouncing backpack of a woman with a pink and green headband/sweatband thing, whose pace is awkwardly close to mine; just enough that we half walk in sync and then one of us gets ahead and rinse and repeat. We tag-team up the hill, passing a woman in all black who I imagine is having a miserable time in the heat, and looks appropriately deathly. I almost understand the all-white group,,, though maybe I should phrase that better.

Anyway, we make our way uphill, past some more fruit trees (apples and pears mm), following the side of the road for a few kilometres into the little town of Saint-Martin, which isn’t getting it’s own heading because you just go through one (long) street, but is getting it’s own paragraph because holy shit? The first few houses actually made me stop dead.

Eucalyptus !! Holy fucking shit !! I let Headband Lady pass me, didn’t even try, just stare at the gum leaves. Man I forgot how beautiful they were – I’m not biased, I swear, but nothing beats Australian trees, all colossal, perfect for climbing and jumping off of and falling out of. And then I was thinking about right before I left, down in Bruns, out by the river. About how many times I’ve scaled the twisted old gum tree, sat in the cup of its mottled gray-white branches, watched the world pass by, the smell of fish and chips and pub pizza wafting down to meet the squawk of seagulls vying for crumbs, the shouts of the kids jumping off the bridge into the water. The sway of leaves in the breeze.

Or scribbly gums, my favourite, little stories the bugs tell etched in ancient wood, always shaded, peeling with the weight of its history – or gravity, if I have to be practical – bark unspooling at the base like a chrysalis. Massive palm fronds swaying overhead, shadows down at the bottom of Minion Falls or out the back of Sheepstation Creek, or even up past Nimbin, rainforests and mozzies and cold, cold water.

But I was getting ahead of myself; I’m on the other side of the world. No climbable gums, only soft peeling bark separated from me by fences too high to jump. So I settle for second-best, and think about all the things I’ll do when I get back; god it’ll be summer. Not even that, but January, best month of the whole year – I was so hyped. I can barely wait to swim in water that isn’t cold !! The Norte (I had made my decision the minute I started talking about it) was going to be incredible, but the Atlantic in November? That was going to be an experience – not that it would stop me (probably).

Aaaa! Ahead of myself again – pull it together! I’m never in the present, always flicking back and forth between the past, the future, the past, back to the future ; holy shit soon it would be Back to the Future time !!!! And then I gave up completely on trying to reign in the daydreaming, and just let myself run wild on Christmas markets and the flight back over and the realisation that after everything, after this entire trip is done, once I touch back down on my pretty red soil, I’ll have been gone just six months.

That was crazy – it already felt like a world away. I felt like a world away; it was the whole thing with change, where you never notice it as it’s happening, and then you look back at the photo of a dude with blue hair and a (literal) mask he never took off next to his dad and you’re like “who the fuck i s that???”

Not that this me was exempt from it, by any means. Give me another three months (had it really only been three months??) and I’ll be doing the same damn thing. Hopefully. It’d be fucking awful if I wasn’t.

Anyway, I finally eventually tune back in to Planet Earth, and find myself walking down a fairly steep rocky hill, surrounded by massive chestnut trees (maybe – I didn’t actually know the difference between any of the Nut Trees, so I’m always just guessing, don’t ever believe me I am a liar) and bright, bright green fields. I had no idea what sort of weird little bushy plants France produced, but something about them made them the most insanely vibrant emerald I’ve ever seen.

At the bottom of said relatively short hill, you cross a road and go across into the shadows, where what once was a river waits for you, now just cracked and dry. You’ll follow the little shaded tunnel for a few hundred metres, where you’ll reach a ‘private property, do not enter‘ sign and turn right, follow the asphalt road all the way back to,,, the,,, road – hey hang on a minute! Headband Lady speeds on ahead, not even reading the sign, and I guess I am the fool, because when I saw ‘property private, do not enter‘ I thought to myself ‘ah that property is private! I Should Not Enter‘.’ Completely forgetting this is France, and nothing ever makes sense in this fucking country.

Anyway, you dip back into a second tunnel of shade which eventually opens back out into a lovely little forest, complete with chirpy little warblers and red squirrels. I loved having squirrels everywhere, they were so cute with their silly old-man ear tufts; every time I saw one I was back in the Gruffalo’s art style, reminiscing about Stick Man and all the childhood classics. Not helped by the continuous footsteps you’re following, but I digress – I’ve already rambled about this once.

You’ll climb, but not much, just a little slope with a rest stop at the top, currently home to Headband Lady, who laughs and makes the motion I assume stands for, ‘woow didn’t get lost while walking in a straight line this time?’. I laugh and half shrug, pull a face that could be interpreted in about eight different ways. It’s the cheat codes to navigating a country with a language you don’t understand with no internet and therefore no translation ability; a face/shrug/laugh combo answers 9/10 questions you don’t understand. And you never have to say a word.

I’ve been practicing my shrug/face/laugh for the past three weeks and I guess the saying is true because she wishes me good luck and waves me on, smiling. Nailed it. I decide to take a break at the Espis church, which should be another almost-two-kilometres away now that I’ve cleared the climb, and my little signifier is going to be a ‘pony barn’ about a kilometre before I reach it – do me a solid and keep your eyes peeled (gross).

There’s an old building at the end of the road, and for a second I think maybe that’s – nope! I guess that makes sense, Hartmut may occasionally be off about a few numbers but he’s never been t h a t off. I turn left, wind back down the road, but wind just a li t t l e too far without the markers and convince myself I’m lost again, start to walk back but get scared-yet-relieved when Headband Lady shows, sort of half-jump/monotonously say ‘AH!’ and run away. It’s rare that I fuck up first and third impressions but nail the second, but a win is a win,,, I guess ???

I follow the road down down down till it connects to an Actual Road with cars a kilometre later, where the arrows fork left onto a ,, grass path – where the fuck was Espis?? The trodden grass winds through a few fields full of slowly grazing sheep who all make weird beady eye contact with you, like the creepy little freaks they are, and takes you under the shade of a few more towering Unidentified Nut Trees at the base of a steep hill – the climb after which said pony-barn will appear. You mistranslated the guidebook, skipped ahead a few kilometres. Absolute genius.

It also takes you to the home of the two most irritating dogs on the face of the earth. Real testy bastards, jumping and barking at full volume, feral and snarling, spitting with the force of their rage at you for,, existing near them. You’ll start to climb, cursing your legs and the uneven ground, and for every step they’re clawing at the fence, not shutting up until you’ve left them far behind, their barks still echoing off the hills four minutes later. Fuckers. I hate dogs !!!

Anyway, blind hatred and grumpiness aside, the top of the climb greets you with a cruelly placed house-complete-with-ponies that is not a pony-barn, and a lot of fantastically placed shade that is being taken advantage of by what seems like every pilgrim from the rest stop. Lounging in the cool air, swapping snacks and stories, napping in the sunspots. Oh I wish, but stubbornness is stubbornness and I am not stopping till I hit this stupid church!

A few hundred metres down the road I meet Kind Face Woman and the Dude in Black sitting on a shady bank beside the road, and they kindly point to a mini-shortcut; cut across the bank and you save yourself fifty metres of winding. Not much, but massive on a day like today; long gone is the chill of the morning, it’s officially roasting!

Legs, neck, face, and general body burning, I march on into the sunlight, asphalt stretching off around the next corner, feet furious with each step. Soon, I tell them, but just give it a fucking rest for a second!

I’m passed by Dude in Black and a friend of his, who mosey on down, leaving me in the dust. The longer I go without breaks, the slower I walk. Crazy, mind-blowing even, has anyone thought to link those two things together before? I really am going to be a scientist !!

After far too many turns, roofs start to appear and – for f u c k s sake how are we only at the pony barn ??? Exhausted and probably developing heatstroke and/or skin cancer, I pause by the side of the road to catch my breathe, debating just walking into this barn and asking if I can sleep on the floor (it does actually double as a gîte, so it wasn’t impossible).

Only another kilometre. My feet are ready to fall off, but there’s only one more kilometre. Everything hurts. One more. My face is absolutely pearling with sweat.

One.

More.

-Espis-

When I reach the church, there’s a moment where I think there isn’t any shade – and it almost breaks me. I would have lost my m i n d if I had to keep walking, but thankfully, I am just blind !! I duck around the corner, find a beautiful metal bench perfectly in the shade and practically melt onto it; don’t ask me how the comfiest bench so far is made of fucking m e t a l because I don’t understand it either.

It’s an absolute classic rest – shoes off, socks off, drink most of my water without checking if I can refill it, you know the drill – and as I’m making my first proper sandwich of the day, two women join me, shuffling my things over. We swap the standards, but our language gap is a little dicey; they are not getting the ‘L’ part of Australian, and even though Austrians speak German, are speaking what sounds like a completely seperate third language and looking mildly offended when I don’t understand. Sorry!!!

Eventually they carry on, and I catch a break in the form of a nap – for about five minutes. Then I immediately reconsider, remembering campsites also close, and I’m not even sure this one is open!! It’s the end of September now, which means most of them are shut for the season, so from here on out camping is going to be a little more,,, hit and miss, shall we say. Complaining all the way, I tug my boots back on, wincing at the blisters I’ll have to pop again tonight and repacking everything. Forgetting to refill my water, naturally!

I also forget to put on sunscreen, which I realise a few minutes later, and at 2.45pm, it’s still a long way to go till it cools down – but if I stop now I’ll never start again, so onwards it is! I’ll apologise to myself with a cold shower at the campsite; oh man what I wouldn’t do for a shower right now,,,

I’m joined by a woman in a green dress as we start to climb the next hill, and I move to let her past as I flick through the guidebook, checking one last thing,,,, there! In Moissac, there’s a place with eighty beds. Not eight – eighty. So far the biggest place I’ve seen advertised had twenty four, and that seemed extortionate for the Podiensis. Surely,,,, surely that’d make it cheaper, right? I took a leaf out of Kate Bush’s book, made a deal with God, called the place. If it was under €14, I’d stay there instead of the campsite, but – €19.76???? To sleep in a room with eighty people??? I hate France!!

I crest the hill and go careening down into the first houses – €19.76, are they delusional ?? – past green dress lady again, just madly stumbling to get to the campsite. I’m so tired, and so hot, and Green Dress Lady promptly leapfrogs me the second we hit the downhill and I have to slow for the sake of my old-man knees.

-Moissac-

Because it’s the biggest city so far since Le Puy (13,000 people, wow wow wow), it takes roughly a million years to actually reach the centre, a hundred false hopes – who needs this many shopping hubs??? You follow a stretch of road for maybe forty minutes, cars and trucks whizzing by as you pass furniture stores and suburbs and a massive, successful fruit shop right next to the local cemetery – guess they’ve got the best fertiliser!

Finally, you’ll reach a Casino on the outskirts of town, and for that you will stop – you’re fucking hungry. Grab some tuna salad (new staple food alert!), some bread, some Haribo. All equal essentials, clearly. Completely forget to get any form of vegetables because you set them down when you grabbed the tuna and forgot to pick them back up, you little genius.

Pay and walk out, cursing Casino prices even though they’re cheaper than a lot of places – more child labour, please!! As I’m repacking my bag, I get laughed at by a large gaggle of fifteen year olds smoking ciggies in the shade, making fun of my hair and my clothes, and it’s so familiar it makes me laugh – sorry, mean French children, I spent my formative years being weird in Murbah; you haven’t got a fucking thing against the eshays.

After another evilly long stretch of busy road walking, I finally make it into the actual centre, which is somehow more dead than the outskirts (huh??) and who should I (almost literally) run into but Silver Mat Guy!! He laughs in recognition when I wave, then we both pause, cock our heads at the same time. Heyyyy; why are we going in opposite directions?? It feels very movie-scene – we both look down at our maps, back at each other, oddly synchronised. Shrug, move on, each selfishly hoping the other is the one hopelessly lost. Or at least, I assume so; maybe I’m just an arsehole. I definitely am, given that I – for once – was going in the right direction, and upon realising he was lost got excited. Dickhead!

He’s following them backwards, and I turn to call out but given that he is lightning in human form he is so far gone I can’t see him anymore. Mmm okay mate, good luck to you! I walk down the boarded up streets, past young men smoking in thick clouds that blow away with the breeze, directly into the map of Silver Mat Guy as he comes barrelling out of a side street. Hello again! He jumps, apologises, realises his mistake at the exact second I go to tell him and speeds off again! Jesus Christ how do people have the energy for that??

Moissac gets progressively more beautiful the closer to the river you get (shocker), and if my feet weren’t so ruined I’d be in one of those ‘wow life is so great’ moods, but alas; ruined they are. A hop and a non-literal skip later and I’ve crossed the mini canal I’ll loop back to tomorrow, and am on my way over the Big Bridge. Here, a problem is realised – I’ve got no clue where the campsite is. There definitely is one, but the most Hartmut Engel has to say about it is that it’s on the island across the bridge. Sweet as, my man, but where?!

After ten minutes of wandering the streets, trying to find any indication that it does, in fact, exist, I backtrack to the main roundabout, start to work backwards from the cars – if they’re coming across, they have to be coming from somewhere, which would probably have a sign,,, right?? Right!! Bada bing bada boom there’s that lovely highway I’ve been hoping for, complete with camping symbol and arrow. Yes!

Three (long) streets later, I arrive at a campsite that is not closed, as I’d feared (just about 5.47pm), happily pay and wheeze my way to a shady spot, spending a little too long deliberating while not realise I’m staring directly at someone who is understandably a little creeped out. Fuck – sorry???

Either way, I drop my tent, drop my hat, drop my bottle; it’s time to go to the bathroom and breathe. It takes me far too long to set up tonight, just achey legs and grumbling, but hey, at least I have company !! Next to me is the orange and gray tent from the almost-gîte in lauzerte :] She’s also taking forever to set up, both of us just sitting on our phones, seperated by the spotty hedge, slipping between worlds. I wonder about what she’s reading about, who she’s talking to. Wonder if she’s thinking the same.

But not too much time is spent wandering, because I need water, and I need it now. I do one quick wash of everything and hang it out to dry before the light vanishes, then it’s pool time. Not even close to as nice as Actual Swimming, but I’ll take what I can get! Although, French pools do have something I hate quite a bit; no boardies. None. Nada. They’re banned. ‘Well what do they want you wearing?’ I hear you ask. What they want you to wear, reader who I imagine will most likely not be offended by my following sentences, are fucking speedos. Budgie smugglers. They want you wearing budgie smugglers.

Who the fuck owns budgie smugglers?? Not one person over six and under seventy, is the fucking answer to that. And why, for the love of God, would you want people to wear speedos??? Seeing men in speedos tends to be the worst part of my swimming experiences, and you’re telling me the French actively encourage it? Fuck me. This country is insane.

Shockingly, I’m not carrying fucking speedos, because I would probably rather be shot at point-blank range, so I go for my boxers instead, hoping no power-hungry French lifeguard is going to police my choice. Feels a little odd, but more than that, it feels fucking COLD. I made a brutal mistake by getting set up and ready first – I should’ve jumped in the pool the second I saw it. I’m not as hot and bothered now, which makes this a test of my cold resistance, one which I desperately fail.

A very lovely woman and her husband are sunbathing by the side of the pool, and smile at me, tell me to just jump in, do it all at once, it’ll be fine once I get in, etcetera, etcetera. All fantastic advice I know to be true, but this pool is 80cm deep; does not exactly leave a lot of room for jumping, nor the subsequent underwater flailing. So I inch in instead, slowly slowly slowly, really prolong my freeze, massing my aching calves as I do. Then I remember my brother calling them “beefy” and shudder, submerge. Horrible.

I fucking love water, but my g o d pools are so weird. All of them are, to be fair, but the French ones get bonus points – and not just for the speedo thing!! They,,, don’t have chlorine?? It’s fucking bizarre, seriously, to get in a pool and have it smell like nothing. Where is the public pool smell?? Where is the subtle burn behind your eyes?? I’m going back and forth, end to end, deep breaths and dives, the same thing I’ve done forever, mulling over the differences.

Primary school swimming lessons, the big indoor pool so weirdly warm – always a little uncomfortably so – the screech of kids paddling on the steps. Laps of breaststroke, backstroke, freestyle, butterfly (when they felt like killing some children in their free time). The line up at the opposite end, playing tense games of ‘how many used Bandaids can we find at the bottom before the coaches get here’, quietly (and eventually loudly) hating the lessons because I didn’t like being told what to do, wanted to swim how I wanted to swim. Problems with authority starting young, or whatever!

Anyway, at some point I come up from a long dive and the lady very sweetly goes ‘Woooww!’ and claps, asks if I’m a professional swimmer, which is very adorable. They pack up to leave, wish me good luck with my swimming, and a few dives later I follow their lead – it’s time for some warm water now! I shower, and it’s hot and strong and has actual pressure (luxury) and I have a great time sending off pictures of Bernard and watching the sun set over the campground and my still-damp clothes that I’m sure will be dry by morning,,,,

This spot is one of those ones where the lights never turn off, so we’re in for a bit of a bright night! But here’s hoping the sleep mask helps – you did remember to bring yours, right ?? I feel like I definitely told you to bring it before we left !! Y’know, this is what happens when you don’t listen to your father when you’re packing (insert unintelligible mumbling fading into the distance).

---

Day 36 – September 25th

??? to Moissac

25.0km

~ 417.8km total

€33.65

~ €518.14 total

(782.5km combined)

(€1,047.37 combined)