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09:30: Washed and dressed. I first woke at 07:10 but didn’t get up until 08:40. Making breakfast now. This campsite is situated on a lake in a valley so it’s cold down here. I was warm all night with my t-shirt on. Apple, honey, fruit and nut porridge coming up.
10:57: OK, gotta go. No loopaper in the jacks. I’ll go in a field or a café. Need to pack the tent. I’ve picked out a route to the next two towns. That’s a half day and a full day walking respectively I estimate. Not feeling very resourceful at the moment. My power bank has run dry.
11:53: Ready to move. I’m not feeling the love today. Need to buy glue, dinner. Next stop Chaumont-en-Vexin. I’ve decided to skip visiting Gisors — it’s too nuch of a detour. Chaumont-en-Vexin is 12 or 15km away.
12:11: Top layer off, slurp of water. Remember to write about the hordes of motorcyclists, alone and in groups, on tourers and race bikes, roaring around Les Andelys at all hours. The one thing they all had in common was no silencers.
12:22: At the boulangerie in Dangu. Utterly joyless. I bought two demi-baguettes for €0.80 or so. Nowhere to stash them in the bag.1
12:34: Still in Dangu. Pausing in a park opposite the church to eat some baguette. Still not feeling the love.
13:10: Almost packed away. Ate both demi-baguettes — the first with butter, cheese and apple — a bit weird — and the second with butter and honey. The apple would have worked better in demi-baguette number two. Maybe not. The apples are local but are a bit too floury.
I’ve decided to dump the tin of tuna that got superheated to 60 degrees C on the day I left my bag in the sun at Les Andelys.
13:20: My t-shirt is dry, my socks are almost dry and so are yesterday’s jocks. Another ten minutes consumed getting that stuff packed. Right, let’s lay down some kilometres.
14:44: Stopped to put away my dry clothes and glug down some water. My mood has improved no end. I’m trekking along little boreens between fields on the way to Delincourt.
16:07: Stopping to sit down for a rest between Lattainville and Delincourt. I’m going to drink some water and massage the sole of my left foot. It’s really suffering. It feels like it’s sliding around on the sock, being abraded all the time.
16:19: Ready to start moving again.
19:47: Parked in an AirBnB in Loconville. 3km east of Chaumont-en-Vexin, with Delphine and Xavier.
I arrived in Chaumont-en-Vexin with really sore feet. I’d texted Aisling a couple of hours earlier to ask her to try to find a cheap hotel or AirBnB in the town for me. Aisling hadn’t found anything for less than €50/€60 by the time I arrived in the town. I did pass a place called the Saint-something which advertised itself as an auberge, restaurant and hotel. I called the number on the door and got through to a man of whose conversation all I could understand was “not hotel”. I went up the street and found a bar. I asked the barmaid if there were any cheap hotels or chambres d’hote in the town. She mentioned Saint Jacques, or whatever it was. I told her I’d called them and communicated that I wanted her to try and find out the price of a room for me. Turns out I’d been ringing the wrong number: the restaurant, not the hotel. A room turned out to be €58, which I said I’d take. The helpful bar lady gave me directions to the hotel, which is around the corner from the restaurant of the same name. On the way, I passed a Carrefour convenience store where I stopped to buy some food for dinner (€13.85) and lunch for tomorrow. Aisling came back to me on Telegram with an AirBnB for €30. I called her back and she’d already booked it. A glance at my map showed me it was just 4km east of Chaumont-en-Vexin, so that was a total winner.
It’s now 20:46 and I haven’t lifted my feet back onto the floor since Xavier gave me the tour. I’m in my own separate cabin in the garden. I’ve already decided to stay two nights. I can catch up on backing up my notebooks to blot.im. Now to make a kind of false soup from spinach, shallot, chick peas and stock cubes.2
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