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08:30 Awake at 08:10 but it took me twenty minutes to talk myself out of bed. This is the last dose of urban life I’ll have for a while! Oh, for the first time, I hear my hosts coming down from their attic bedroom. Someone’s just gone into the bathroom.
09:15 Washed, not packed. Ready for breakfast, but I’m going to wash yesterday’s socks first.
10:33 Bag packed, breakfasted, socks washed. I’m a little mortified at the devastation I’ve caused to my hosts’ supplies of bread and sweet spreads - Philippe had to defrost an emergency supply of baguette that Virgil and I shared.
10:50 Walking out the door. Philippe took a couple of snaps of me and one of me walking away.1
Stopped at the nearby veg shop, which is a bit precious: €6.51 for 2 Boskop apples and 8 mandarins. (Expensive!)
11:00:57
11:10 Sitting on a bench in a suburban square to eat my fruit elevenses.
11:25 Demolished the mandarins. Apples stashed for later. Put hat and gloves on, and another layer.
11:43:38 
11:51:24
12:05 First view of fields for a few days. I can feel something unwind in me when I move from urban - even suburban - to rural.
12:08:09 
12:10:58 
12:13:08 
12:22:52 
12:23:13
12:25 I’m in Giberville. I’ve passed the charcuterie, now I’m at the boulangerie, so I reckon here is a good place to get some lunch. Up ahead the street looks resolutely suburban - can’t expect a supermarket here.
12:31 Nope - only sweet things available. She2 suggests the bar a couple of hundred metres back.
12:40 €6.70 for an Avoca-style ham plait and a big packet of crisps. The sky is clouding over so rain does still look like a possibility for the afternoon.
12:55 Moving again. The clouds are darkening in the East but the sky is still open in the West.
13:01 €1.67 for a giant biscuit (sablé) and a pain traditional.
Shit, the biscuit just slipped out of its bag and dandled like a coin on the tarmac. I’m eating it anyway sitting cross-legged on the ground.
13:08 Now it’s just a matter of tracking south for a few kilometres, intersecting a few major roads.
13:30:12: I think I took this snap as an example of an ideal camping spot. Looking at it now with a more experienced eye, I think I’d look for something distinctly more discreet. This is way too close to the road for a start. 
13:30:59 
13:32:09
13:38 Stopping to get fresh earplugs out. The ones I’d worn on the walk from Wexford to Rosslare had only had a single use, but they’d been rattling around in my pocket afterwards and had picked up all kinds of muck. Time to take a new pair and keep them in a ziplock bag. I get a couple of uses max out of them anyway.3
13:41 That’s much better. Tyre noise reduced to a hushed swishing. I’ve also packed my dry socks away. The weather’s not looking so ominous anymore, but the sky is still full of flat-bottomed cumulus.
13:54 I’m actually passing the Decathlon store I visited on Thursday. If I’d known that, I could have saved myself half a day! Doesn’t matter, I hadn’t planned my route out at that stage.
13:58:18
14:05 Taking a shortcut across a corner of a field where the soil is already cracked and dried like concrete. Shedding my top layer for what feels like the fifth time today prior to climbing the short incline up to the bridge over the railway line.
14:15:17 
14:15:57 
14:16:31 
14:16:55 
14:37:49
14:47 The sky to windward looks unthreatening, full of ragged cumulus, but to leeward of me I see showers falling from a heavy grey cumulus.
15:02:37 
15:18:28 
15:38:29 
16:00:27 
16:02:46 
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16:24:32 
16:25:02 
16:26:22
16:27 St-Agnan-de-Cramesnil. Found a Renault 4 parked in the courtyard of a gîte with a map of the Asia overland route on the side: “Route de Soleil”.
16:35:28 
17:18:05
17:29 Here comes a shower. I saw a lightning flash in a dark cloud ahead and suddenly felt very exposed in this open landscape, Plein du Sud du Caen I think it’s called.
OK, false alarm. No more rain. I’m also taking the opportunity to investigate one of these islands of woodland which are scattered around and between the vast fields here. This one says “Defense d’entrer” but that’s just a sign board that I’ll take as a guideline, not a rule.
Eating a nyomp of bread and carrying on. I’m on the leeward side of the copse so I can’t see the weather arriving.
17:44 Wow, I just ate half the rustic pain dry with no butter - it’s that good. I also had a bite of chocolate. Moving!
17:52 This is a fast4 stretch of road. Earplugs back in again.
18:03:25 
18:11:24 
18:13:47 
18:14:07 
18:27:40
19:00 Earplugs out! I’m on the final stretch to the town where I want to get breakfast tomorrow. It seems to be about 6km away. I’ll sleep between here and there. Amazingly I missed every shower that fell so far. In this huge landscape I can see them from miles away. It looks okay now.
19:12 First wood option contained a huge complex of large burrows. I’ll leave that well alone. I’m inclined to go and sleep up a lane where the turbines are - they’ve been my friends and way-pointers in the landscape. Plus no-one will visit them on a Sunday.
19:26 Found a spot opposite a candidate turbine and backed by a wood. Gonna check if the ground is flat. The evening is fine.
19:45 I’ve set up the basha and a farmer sailed by in one of those rigs that looks like a horizontal electricity pylon with four tractor tyres.5 He gave me a good look. We’ll see how this pans out.
19:58 The turbine has speeded up and I can see some very dark clouds in the direction which I’ve set the basha facing - that’s to say, the large open end. I’m going to eat the last of my bread and butter under the basha in the last half hour of daylight.
20:12:18
20:15 Amazing luck. The sun peeped out from behind the clouds low on the horizon just as the first rain began to fall. I’m under the basha with all the gear, safe and dry. The wind has dropped again.
20:16:41 
20:18:51
20:21 That was a light one - it’s stopped already. OK, one apple left over that I’ll pack up so the foxes don’t get it, final wizz and then into the bag for the night!
20:33 Taking off my shoes now to climb into the bag. There’s still plenty of light despite the heavy cloud cover. I expect it’ll be dark by nine.
Philippe and I shook hands warmly. I remember my stay with the family with great fondness. They were wonderfully tolerant of my rabid hunger and gnawing anxiety.↩
…the lady behind the counter at the boulangerie.↩
I learned to take much better care of my earplugs, washing them with warm soapy water to get several uses out of them.↩
…meaning the cars on this stretch of road drive fast. Which means they’re loud. The sound of traffic really got in on me during the course of the walk. Thankfully I’d packed enough earplugs and also had a pair of bluetooth earbuds.↩
I later learned these were crop-sprayers when I saw one in action a few days later.↩
