A rebel without a clue.

Pilgrimage Pt.8. Needing to stamp my Créanciale with the fussy old lady I leave at five to find café noir and log on to the matrix. She is very helpful, via a French couple translation, I must fill in my information on my Créanciale prior to leaving France. I had no time to even read what was within the companion piece or the Créanciale itself. I'm wake at 6am and after packing, breakfast and ablutions it is already 8am when I set off for l'eau, compote de pommes and banane and the Chemin St Jacques. That was my third stamp. I leave her with the dignity of kiss on each cheek and to discover a café to engage with those back in England. A discussion with my room mates for tonight explains that Aubrac is famous for its beef in France. I can understand that once you see the miles and miles of rolling grasses with hardly a house in sight; Sauges has a population of 2,000 only. So I am happy to discover that the café I drink and communicate from is, from 7pm, ...

Pilgrimage Pt.7. On the journey I have only seen one ghost. The wife of Charles proprietor of L'Acrobate, Corinne is the only one who is still breathing alive but is dead behind her eyes. There may be was a semi-ghost back in Montbonnet but it was unclear as I drank my Verbena tea. A simple bed and breakfast for €17 in Privat. On reaching the top of the Aubrac plateau coming into Sauges I am surrounded by cows swaying and ruminating to the chimes of antique alpine bells; in distinct brown and white they provide le fromage du Pays from the tender unpolluted dales. For the first time in my life I have climbed beyond 1000 metres. From leaving Monstrial d'Allier I climbed beyond 600 metres rapidly; in the fridgid hale and bleak swirling winds. Twice I reached the tipping point of water and mud. Both feet! But over a crest I hear school children as Sauges is before me. I descended from on high to the center ville of Sauges my body begins to react to the constant tread of size e...

Pilgrimage Pt.6. New experience of chitterling sausage and gratin dauphonoise Saint-Privat d'Allier. It was zero degrees here last night. I felt it. The room was snug but only just. Le toilette froid. Patric snores too. Will take today steady. The small blister on my left foot, third toe, has reduced. But I expect to know about it tonight. Hey that's what our shod feet are made for! Blisters! This morning, as I rolled my sleeping bag, I questioned the German I am sharing with if my current French diet is a bad thing: for the walk he states the body requires fats. Maybe he is right. Fat is bad for a sedentary life watching Jeremy Kyle. Breakfasted on pain, fromage bobi, confiture buerre doux Brest, orange presse au café noir while Charles, my Saint Etienne supporting host, plays an oldie but goodie: Age of Empires; expansion while I take in my second café noir. Ouvert. The clouds drap across the top of most of the mountains we must assault this morning and there is also a 60...