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09:40 At 19:00 yesterday, just as I was making my last attempts to contact M. Lothon at La Ferme du Gonthier, he answered my call. Such a relief. He drove over in his big old Mercedes and greeted me warmly. We spoke a melange of French and English and he showed me to a spacious room in a traditional farmhouse. €40 for the night, including breakfast. He gave me a glass of pop and some biscuits in the dimly-lit common area. We chatted for a while and soon he left me to my own devices. I began to assemble my dinner of the rest of my baguette, cheese, butter, shallot and an apple for dessert.
As I was putting this together, Philippe, a long-term guest of M. Lothon who’s a professor teaching at a nearby college, came back from work and we chatted genially. Neither of us had much of the other’s language, but we made up for it in enthusiasm and a disrespect for the rules of grammar and boundaries of vocabulary as we prepped our food. He had a fish salad and we shared his lettuce and my shallot.
After dinner I transcribed and uploaded the log entry for 31 March to blot.im and chatted to Aisling via Telegram. I was in bed by 23:00.
I woke at 07:11, but didn’t get up until 08:30. I was washed and downstairs for breakfast with M. Lothon at 09:00. We chatted about my previous and next destinations, the weather, the bird life and the local sights. Now I’m packing my bag. It looks like it’s a beautiful day. I’d like to make Acquigny or beyond today. The walk seems to be mostly through woodland, which will shade me nicely from the sun.
10:14 On the road. Birdsong. Bright blue sky but still chilly.
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11:32 Lunchtime shopping done in Le Neubourg town centre; €1.20 for a tradi-grains, €3.66 for a pepper (le poivron) cucumber and a pear - whose French name I’ve already forgotten. It sounds too much like ‘pear’ in other European languages so my brain just dropped it into an equivalent pile of mush suitable for comprehension but not communication.
Securing my day’s shopping to the outside of my bag with carabiners and my belt seems to work a treat. The most important thing is not to have stuff swinging and swaying on my pack as I walk.
11:54 €6.60 for a new notebook and AA batteries.
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12:06 Stopped in the tourist office to say a big thank you to Sevrine. She looked at my map and we stepped outside where she pointed out the road I need to take.
12:19 Quick stop in Aldi for tuna in oil and those incredible chocolate biscuits. A lady asks me if I’m doing the Camino; surprise and delight and goodwill from staff and customers as I tell them I’m on my way to Istanbul.
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14:14 Stopping for lunch finally. I don’t have much of an appetite but my shoulders hurt from carrying a big bag of groceries and three litres of water. I’ll quaff a litre over lunch and demolish most of the groceries. I’m sitting at the edge of the woodland between St-Aubon-d’Ecrosville (a grand name for a shitty town) and Feuguerolles. I’m not halfway to Acquigny and the day is hot. No wind to speak of. Plenty of insects. I’m a little bit cranky for no good reason. Maybe because I don’t have an appetite.
14:49 That was more appetising than I expected - a whole fresh giant gherkin of a cucumber to start with, then cheese on buttered multi-grain baguette with coarsely sliced sweet green pepper and eight milk chocolate sablé biscuits.
The fly and insect density has trebled since yesterday. They’re not far off becoming a nuisance. I’m also going to have to slather myself in SPF50 now in order not to get scorched. Sun hat all the way - I’d be suffering without it. I’m sitting in the full sun right now. I don’t think I’ll be doing that in high summer.
15:05 Packed. No more external groceries. SPF50 up the wazoo - head, hands, legs, ears, nose, neck. Acquigny or bust.
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18:27 In Acquigny. I found a chambre d’hôte for €43.
18:40 Sitting in the garden absorbing the evening sun and sipping a cold glass of water. My hostess has booked me into the local restaurant for 19:30. I walked just over 32km today in bright sunshine across wide open landscapes of vast crop fields and through wooded, shady river valleys. Totally sublime.
I’ve decided that for every kilometre I walk, I earn a euro towards a bed for the night. I think I’m still in credit - I’ll have to check. I’m planning on putting together a statistics page for the blog that shows my daily progress, start and finish places, kilometres covered and euros spent. I’ll start with times and distances from Google Fit.
19:57 There’s a toe-curling Irish theme to the restaurant and a nutty singing woman in the kitchen from Birmingham whose parents are from Tipperary. The prices in the restaurant are somewhat on the eye-watering side for me - starters averaging €14 and mains for €20 up to €29 for a piece of veal. Omelette and salad for me!
22:14 Restaurant La Chaumière - head chef Bernadette (from Birmingham). Despite being a vegetarian cheapskate I was treated to two rounds of amuse bouches - an egg mayo cracker and a cheesy puff pastry followed by a miniature portion of fish and chips and mushy peas before getting my mixed salad starter and mushroom omelette main. I was given plenty of time to enjoy and digest my food. (In between courses I was madly transcribing this notebook into blot.im.) Afterwards Bernadette and I had a chat about the Camino to Santiago di Compostela. She introduced me to her daughter (also at work in the kitchen!) who’s done a couple of stretches of it, and she then presented me with two miraculous medals - a silver coloured one from Lourdes and a gold coloured one from Medjugorje. We spoke about the spiritual aspects of pilgrimage, even an ostensibly secular one like mine. She said “You probably won’t discover the real reason you’ve made this journey until after it’s over”, which is likely to be true.
The bill for the meal was €16. I couldn’t take change from €20.
