Up for 7.15am breakfast after a cool night. Big bowls of coffee+warm milk, toasted baguette + nice butter + greengage jam. Lots of macho stomping around in boots as fellow travelers chatted and planned and paid their bills. On the road by 8am.
When people write such things as 'My Year in the Back of Beyond with a Great Climate, Strange Food and Recalcitrant Natives' they tend to assemble it to a bit of a formula. The diary of a walking holiday is also by its nature a bit repetitive. Highlights of today for each of the senses:
Sight: the blinding yellow of fields of dandelions matched by hedges of blooming broom.
Sound: The never-ending birdsong but also the scrunch of boots on the gritty granite path; also the sound of the wind in the pine woods to the exclusion of everything else.
Taste: The pate for lunch, coarse and meaty was good; but also, after a sweaty morning, the sea salt on the tomatoes.
Smell: Quite a choice and being far from sophistication there are few unpleasant smells. Cows that smell as they should; also coffee and cold Stellas, but also that broom and those pine trees.
Touch: On a masochistic note, the cool breeze on your back when you take your backpack off, but mainly that fresh shower after you finish for the day!
Today was good.
The upward bits seemed fewer and less steep, with plenty of flat and gentle downhills. We are still in marginal dairy farming country which is endlessly picturesque. Occasional holiday homes to counter the tide of depopulation.The menu tonight (Hotel Prunieres, with a lift!) was a bit of an adventure. Sac de d'os is a local delicacy: scraps of mutton/pork boiled in a pig's stomach. V.tasty. 'Lingue' (fish) got confused with 'Langue' (tongue). Limited control of a language can be so broadening.
Bed by 10pm.
