Travelogue/monologue/sleeplikealog

NB Remember to check out the previous blog, too!!!

This was written last night before I switched off the light and went to bed...

“This is our first night in France. The crossing was good even if we did get up very early and wait quite a long time to get on the boat... none of it was difficult or even taxing. In fact it was very easy. Then we arrived and strolled through quite, sunny streets until we reached the bus station where we asked for the next bus to Honfleur and were given tickets for a bus which left just a few minutes after we boarded it. The next bus was due to leave several hours later.

More good fortune, we had a good lunch and set off for the main Catholic church (which is stunningly beautiful) and could not find a priest. I pushed a reluctant Alison into coming with me to find the presbytery and rang the door bell despite her misgivings. The priest was pleased to stamp our “passports” and we managed to say that we were looking for somewhere to stay and to tell him that we were happy to sleep on a church hall floor – and he showed us great hospitality, chatted to us, offered us refreshments and phoned up parishioners who had walked the Camino before getting a lovely lady to drive us to the parish centre, which was less than 5 minutes walk from where we were, gave us the keys and bottles of water, biscuits etc and said we could come back and have showers, too!

Now, we are in one of the meeting rooms, I am writing while Alison sleeps and we are preparing ourselves for the first day’s walking in France. Goodness knows what we can expect – we have pages cut out from a road atlas and the text of a route printed out from Google maps routes (for walking) which takes you along the main roads, so we will be playing things by ear as we go (and may resort to reading sign pposts and looking things up on google maps using Alison’s blackberry – we don’t know when I will next be able to post a blog as we have no wi-fi and my dongle would cost a fortune in France.....”

Now we are in an overpriced hotel room where the restaurant is closed, the nearest place to eat is five or six miles away and there are no shops, etc open in this village until tomorrow.... but there is wifi, hot water and a soft bed so we cannot complain.

Today we walked along the edge of some major roads (see our previous post for the details) but the traffic was very light and we were not troubled with very bad walking surfaces or bad weather; in fact the weather has been hot and sunny (earlier on it was cold and sunny for a while) with a heat haze on the surface of the road. The morning began with rough edged, wide main roads then we walked on a very pretty route which steadily climbed the length of a valley for the rest of the morning. Our rest stop was on a bench behind a church with some bread and saucison then an apple washed down with water. Not sure what we will do tonight – probably the last bit of bread and sausage and some chocolate, etc.

Tomorrow we head for a larger town and hope that there will be some kind people or some very cheap accommodation (otherwise we will seek out a campsite and try out our little tent (2 berth, under 1 kilo in weight, very simple). The packs are a little heavier now (silly us) and we have had a two day break, so today was a bit heavy going, especially with the long straight hot road in the afternoon. Still, another (almost) 20 miles done and we both continue to be safe and well and are now resting comfortably!!!

No problems.....