WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago: Day 35

Gradignan to Le Barp: 27 km

It’s dark when I set off. This will be a new discipline for me, with the 2pm curfew in the forest here. But before I leave, I have a chat with Gérard and Chantal. Chantal likes to practise her English with me. I like to do anything that will make Chantal happy.

At first I’m a bit unsettled in the dark, but the light grows by increments almost immediately. I use my torch for the first hundred metres or so, and then I can pick out the white path with the little light there is. By the time I get into the woods themselves, it’s properly light. As the sun starts to rise and the vapours from the clearances rise from the ground. The temperature is perfect.

Walking out, all of the side roads are closed because of the fear of fires, but I get to walk around the side of a woodland lake, see the horses in their paddocks, and then it’s a lovely, happy walk, but pretty hard to blog about: long, long straight roads and paths, occasionally, through the forest. There’s bracken, there are trees, some oak, some holly, a lot of pine. But pleasant as it is to walk through, there’s not really much to describe. When I come to the occasional field, which has been cleared in the wood for a bit of agriculture, that becomes a point of some excitement for the day.

I guess another high point, or possibly low point, is when I take the wrong path right at the end. After a day of almost too-easy walking, I find myself pushing through brambles along churned-up tracks, through a field and into the village of Le Barp. I wonder if I will be arrested for breaking strict forest rules. But it’s almost 1pm. France has knocked off for lunch.

When I get to Le Barp, I’m two hours before the gîte is due to open. This is because I’ve been good, I prepare to explain, and I’ve walked to arrive before the curfew. As it’s five to one, I quickly make a call and catch someone before lunch officially starts, and I’m given the code to get in, no questions asked, to my great disappointment.

“You’ll be alone”, I’m told, which I’m surprised at. But I settle down with a whole afternoon ahead of me, with very little open in the village, very little internet in the gîte. I revel in it for a bit. I’ve got my own garden, the gîte is very smart and new, and just as I’m loudly listening to my podcast with all of my things spread out around the communal areas, there’s someone at the door, and François arrives.

Although I’m always glad of company when I know I’m going to have it, or when I don’t know what’s happening, because I’ve been settling in to a night on my own, it takes me a moment to readjust and get my French-speaking head back on.

After the usual niceties, I doze until the hospitalière arrives. I say a few words in French until she says, “Someone told me you’re English,” and it turns out Elaine is a Scottish woman living in the village for twenty years, having married a Frenchman and raised a family here. She does a lovely job of switching between languages. It’s nice when it’s someone else for a change.

After an hour of discussing pretty much everything, she leaves to get her children. François leaves to find some food, and I leave shortly afterwards and see him in the same place, at the lovely, friendly pizzeria on the square.

He has come out to find a “coup de gras”, he says. He wants something fatty and disgusting, and he’s done quite well with his Savoyard pizza. We sit and eat, and I’m pleased to see the mosquitoes seem to prefer him. It seems I appeal mainly to flies of the wood and ankle-biters.

Overfull, we retire for the night to our luxurious two-dorm, two-bathroom place. It’s a very, very good night’s sleep.