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07:07: Awake. I slept like a king1.
07:27: On my feet. My soles ache. Yesterday evening I peeled a giant disk of dry skin off the Les Andelys blister. It was the size of a Euro coin.
08:07: Washed and dressed, about to make breakfast.
09:32: On the road! Joelle, my hostess, tells me she’s been doing AirBnB for one week!
09:32: At Lidl, shopping for lunch.
09:50: Lidl in France doesn’t sell butter. They sell a million cheeses and margarines, but no butter.
I’m going through the town centre in order to cross the Moselle river, so I’ll find somewhere that does the tomato and baguette and cheese that I’d chosen, but put back on the shelf.
10:24: On the way into the town centre. I pass the remains of an old moated fortress on which sheep are grazing. In the background looms a spectacular Gothic cathedral with ornate towers. Feels like Rome after the sack.
10:37: At the post office, posting my last map home, but there’s a heck of a queue.
11:10: Finally found a Spar. Their vegetables are rubbish but I got some butter and cheese. I also picked up a grainy baguette. The town centre is tiny, considering the size of the sprawling suburbs.
A drain cover snatched the rubber tip from one of my walking poles, so now I clack-thunk along.
11:27: Crossing the Moselle river at last. I’d hoped to do this an hour ago.
The day is bright and warming up. The sky is populated with flat-bottomed cumulus amid plenty of blue.
11:32: Crossing into Dommartin-les-Tour.
12:04: Crossing the motorway after a steep climb out of the river valley.
12:14: Finally among fields.
12:38: Right in the forest, criss-crossed with forestry and walking trails. They allow me to follow almost a line-of-sight path to Villey-le-Sec, the only village I pass on the way to Villers-les-Nancy on the outskirts of Nancy, where tonight’s AirBnB is. Right, time for lunch, sitting on a log in dappled shade at a junction of five paths.
13:18: Grainy baguette with unsalted butter, camembert and honey in various combinations. I’m really going to miss baguettes when I leave France.
14:02: Villey-le-Sec.
14:17: Stopped to put Factor 50 on. I feel a bit light-headed today. Maybe it’s because I know I have a week-long break from walking coming up.
14:22: Villey-le-Sec is behind me.
15:14: Just pausing for a minute. I’m on a forest trail.
16:19: Chocolate break.
17:48: Coming out of the forest. I can see Villers-les-Nancy on the opposite side of the valley.
17:59: Slogging up a steep tarmac road among suburban gardens towards the city.
18:30: Quick stop for a tarte-au-citron-vert at a boulangerie that’s still open (we’re in the city now!) — average — €3.00 and now I’m just around the corner from tonight’s AirBnB.
18:39: Getting the answering machine of my AirBnB host’s neighbour, so I’ve messaged my host. If there’s no reply I might crack on to the train station so I can2
18:49: Happily ensconced in dead-basic 30m2 1970s student accommodation. Mr Sadeg3 sorted me out moments after I had phoned him.
I’m going to make my way to the train station anyway because I don’t want any faffage tomorrow.
Great chat with Aisling on Skype arranging to meet in Reims tomorrow. I’m going to get some food, then walk to the station. I fancy listening to a podcast — I’m downloading a bunch of them now.
21:26: So I found myself walking to the station to find the place where I get transported to the TGV Lorraine station, wherever that is. I’d expected it to take 20 minutes but in fact it took 34 minutes including a pointless tour of the train station — following the signs — in order to find myself at a bus stop a hundred metres further along the pavement from where I’d entered the station. I’d have missed that connection if I was reckoning on 20 minutes.
The town is deserted. I passed virtually nothing that was open on the way to the train station. A 30 minute walk through the city and I found one pizza joint, a games meetup happening in a shop, a couple of supermarkets. That was it. Not a bar, not a café. And this is Nancy. It just feels like any other rural town where everything is closed by 18:30. I’m starting to find this tiresome, frankly.
I’m now in the pizza joint on the walk home. It took me 17 minutes to get here. The pizza’s just arrived, it looks good. Hope it doesn’t kill me — the restaurant is deserted though the proprietor looks healthy.
That was tolerable. €13.60.
27 minutes to walk home from the shuttle bus stop.
22:42: I need to make my bed and figure out what time to get up at tomorrow.
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…with an utterly subjugated court.↩
As I was scribbling this sentence, my host appeared at the door. I was going to write “…figure out how long it takes to get to the TGV platform from here.”↩
Mr. Sadeg manages the guests on behalf of my AirBnB host, and only introduced himself by his surname, despite being half my age. 
↩
