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I woke at 07:49 bursting for a pee so gathered my things and went to the heated toilet block for ablutions and hot hot shower water. It was a divine experience. I rinsed some clothes (socks, jocks, top) and experimented with drying myself with the tiny microfibre towel I’d bought in Cherbourg (and not used since). It works very successfully. Right now it and the clothes are draped on a hedge drying in the sun. I’ve had Ben’s adventure porridge and next I need to wash up the breakfast things and pack my bag. I’ve decided to skip staying here another night and just move on towards Le Neubourg. If there was a pleasant café where I could park myself for the day, as I did in Carentan, I’d be inclined to stay. But the business of updating the blog interferes with making progress eastwards. I’m enjoying almost every moment of this, even the potentially tedious and uncomfortable ones like squirming out of my bag in the mornings and doing gymnastics to climb into yesterday’s dirty clothes while mostly prone. So it’s not as though I feel I must keep moving eastwards irrespective of the cost because the whole thing is so awful oh God let it end - no. It’s because I experience what I can only describe as a kind of sublime calm and joy when I’m moving. Everything else I do on this trip should enable that movement, so things that don’t obviously add to the experience I consider a waste of time. Shopping? No problem: I need food to power me along. Poring over maps? Sure. I need to have a sensible route planned out. Managing photos and notebook entry backups? Not so much - though I do take as much time as I need to make written1 notes. I’m really enjoying that part of the process and enjoying becoming more discursive as I settle in to the journey.
10:47 Finally packed and ready to go. I’ll follow the cycle track to Le Neubourg, I think. More straightforward navigation - but maybe strangely isolating environment? We’ll see.
11:00 In Carrefour Market shopping for lunch and maybe dinner.
11:16 €5.16 for three little gems, a baguette, a cheese, two apples, a shallot and a plastic bag.
11:39 Stopping to eat a mille-feuille in the sun at the river through the town centre. Then a climb out of the valley.
11:46 Right, a mille-feuille isn’t the type of thing you bring on a picnic. It’s almost impossible to eat from your hand. I got all the custard in my mouth though - only a few flakes of pastry escaped. I’ll have a sup of water and then head out of town. Jesus that was rich.
As a side note - my clothes didn’t get dry despite the sun and my slow start this morning. I have my shopping in a Carrefour carrier bag secured to the outside of my rucksack with carabiners and my belt and the still-damp clothing draped over that. The combination will work well to keep the food shaded and cooled by the evaporation from my top.
Prunes. I ought to have bought prunes to put in my porridge.
11:59 Up and moving again, trying to find the right road out of town.
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12:16 A detour to take a look at the remains of the 11th-12th Century Norman castle on the hill.
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13:21 Stopping to take my trouser legs off in the bright sunshine. The GPS has brought me on a path through a field, which is a place I could stay reading and daydreaming for the rest of the day. I hope I find more spots like this on the journey.
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13:49 On the green way. I’ve found the place to have my lunch. There’s a break in the trees lining the arrow-straight green way, at which a vista of deciduous-edged meadows and rapeseed rises to a crest.
14:42 Lunch things packed away, dry clothes packed away - except for the socks on my walking poles, damn - and the remaining groceries attached to the outside of my bag. Lunch was half a brown baguette with a tin of tuna in sunflower oil and three little gems. I didn’t try keeping some of them until later this time - better in my belly.
15:19:49
15:47 Stopping to get my headphones out so I can listen to a podcast. Listening to my sticks tapping out “Ricky-ticky-Taylor” is driving me insane. Walking along these old train lines is soul destroying in a way - I’m in a beautiful natural environment, but there’s no navigation to be done: just pound out the kilometres.
16:07 Just came to a junction between the green way and a road. A van marked “Gendarmerie” sailed through the zebra crossing, the driver with a phone planted to their ear.
16:34:36
17:55 Sevrine from the tourist office is bringing me to a B&B. I’m at Le Neubourg.
18:10 So I arrived at the tourist office in Le Neubourg at 17:50, but it closes at 17:00. I find a booth that lists hotels in the town but they look super-expensive. I’m about to head into the town centre to start looking for them when I notice a delivery van at the tourist office and the door is open. I pop my head in, being very cheeky, and ask “Savez-vous un hôtel grand marché dans la ville?” A smiling woman in a wide-brimmed hat with round John Lennon glasses and a handshake like Mike Tyson switches to English and moves behind the counter to find me a place to stay. We introduce ourselves - she’s Sevrine. I tell her my budget is €40 and she names a B&B 5km out of town. The proprieter answers neither the landline nor the mobile, but Sevrine offers me a lift there! We drop off the delivery van at a depot, hop into her car and drive north and west to Épégard. We pull up at a farmhouse among a cluster of buildings. There’s a gîte with a bunch of young guys drinking and kicking a ball around and no answer at Mr Lothon’s residence. Before we set out at six o’clock, Sevrine had told me she needed to pick up her kids at 18:30, so when there was no reply at the Lothon residence she started to get quite anxious about finding me a place to stay. I told her that I have everything I need and that I can camp in a field and that she’s already done more than enough in entertaining my request and bringing me here. She suggests blagging a room from the boys in the gîte, which is a bloody great idea, but I guess they’ve started as they mean to continue! I don’t want to be a party pooper. Sevrine has headed away. I’ll stick around here for another half an hour or so and bail off to find a field if Mr Lothon still fails to show.
18:51 Putting my trouser legs on, I investigate a tingly foot pad and discover a new blister! What the hell?
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