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09:58: Up and washed and dressed. I’m going to prepare a porridge breakfast now. It’s been raining non-stop, AFAIK since 07:30, when I first checked my watch. I had a comfortable night’s sleep in the bag and bivvy.
10:36: My gas canister ran out while I was cooking my porridge. I hope I can buy a new one in the SPAR up the road. I ate the warmish mix anyway, and it was quite easy to chew. Let’s see how it sits — it might not be necessary for me to boil the shit out of my porridge every time. I certainly think I cranked through this canister faster than the previous one — but I don’t know when I started using it, so who knows. I did crank up the flame much higher to avoid hanging around for hours waiting for porridge and tea to not-quite come to the boil.
It’s due to clear up today for a couple of hours around lunchtime, so I’ll go shopping then. I’ll need lunch, dinner and breakfast and I can stop by the shop again tomorrow morning when I finally hit the road. It’s going to be fun trying to avoid the rain over the next week and a bit into Slovenia.
Aisling flies in to Zagreb in eighteen days. I wonder could I be there by then?
11:37: The proprietress tells me there’s a shop in Bischofshofen that sells camping gas canisters, named OBE. I’m heading there now. It’s due to stay dry.
11:53:58
12:03: Outskirts of Bischofshofen.
12:31:52
12:43: €95.99 for a new pair of Merrel Moab shoes1 at Hervis Sports. 20% off!
12:45:17
12:55: Got lured into a café by the promise of ice-cream, but I’m having a mixed salad instead. It’s so nice to have a new pair of shoes on!2
13:02: Wow, this mixed salad is good. It’s packed with pickled veg as well. Small bowl, but dense and delicious. €7.80 altogether. (The Apfelsaft was €3.50!)
13:22: €4.20 for drei Kugel in Waffel. The girl put them in a giant cone. It ought to have been €3.60. Grrrr. Anyway I got my glasses tightened up for free. Now to buy a gas canister.
13:43: €6.29 for a new gas canister. Next, ALDI (or Hofer, as it’s called in Austria)
€14.55
15:23:22 
15:23:46 
15:23:56 
15:34:18 
15:35:09
17:38: Back in the campsite, getting organised. I’ve planned where to get lunch and dinner each day over the next several days; I’ve put the addresses of the people to whom I must send postcards into a Google doc and I’ve transferred all of the food I bought into more sensible packaging. I fucking hate having to carry food. It weighs a ton. I’m charging my phone and headphones so I have the option to listen to podcasts over the next days. I fetched shitloads of them yesterday.
It’s been a gorgeous afternoon, such a contrast from yesterday and the day before, when nothing dried out properly. I’m planning on having scrambled egg for dinner with bread, butter and rocket. There were no carrots in Hofer. Feels like spits of rain are coming down. I also seem to have a slightly upset stomach, possibly from this morning’s raw porridge. Might have to play dinner by ear.
20:54: Dinner of three scallions, a knob of butter and five eggs scrambled with delicious dark brown bread buttered was very good, but I cooked it on the Gaz stove of the Italian dad, because the canister I bought today doesn’t work with my Pocket Rocket — no gas comes out. I stuck a piece of wire into the canister valve and gas came out, so I’m guessing the valve is just too far from the tongue on the MSR Pocket Rocket. What a fucking pain in the hole. No cooked porridge for the foreseeable — just when I want it going over the mountains! Nothing much to be done; I’m not going to go miles out of my way into Bischofshofen tomorrow morning to test all of the other canisters in the shop. I’ll abandon the canister and the rest of the eggs (five of them). I have fish and bread and butter and honey and nuts and chocolate.
I also had a call with Aisling and was shocked at how grumpy I sounded. I’m nervous about the next few days and the egg-caked cooking pot and failed canister irritated the fuck out of me.
21:22: I’m getting into bed after some time reading the Robertson Davids novel. It’s holding my attention and requires far less effort than the “Software Issues” History of Computing proceedings. Tomorrow I head towards Slovenia. I’m looking forward to arriving there. Let’s see what the next days hold.
