Argh!

An urgent need for a toilet circling about this village looking for a discretely positioned - phew another house is open just in time. The gates have opened and the demons pour forth without restraint!

And so the road goes on forever. As the sun reached its zenith, at this mid point in the calendar, and I had followed the A9 for as many kilometres as my insanity would allow.

Can I walk anymore from Verdargues into Montpellier? Nine kilometres! Another option presents itself a granddaughter and grandmother in their BoHo ceramics workshop feed me fraise, pommes, etc, then promise to give me a lift to a tram stop so I won't have to walk any further in the extreme heat.

...

Into the ether. Bonkers. Summer Solstice concludes at day break on the 22nd. Then my alarm awaken me again at 6am. Now Magpies battle outside the hostel and this is the last place a pilgrim should be asked to retreat to prior to another 32°. Coffee and flee!

Monday morning and without wasting anymore tiredness on Montpellier (another time and another place) there is a way up into the silent means. The route from Arles to Montpellier is bad. If this is meant to be a structured walking, with reachable sleeps, I don't think anyone from the council GR653 has thought it through?

...

If it was up to me I would relocate the Saint Roch Accueil to the beginning route: through such a large metropolitan area your feet really suffer if you can only follow "rue et place", and then another at the end of the city. A short etape. Is there more Couvent, Monasteries et Maison Religious than the guide accords?

More Donativo and less Gites Chambre d'Hotes. Linking huge cities on a Camino! Why does it feel like another tourist trap? Flies around shit.

...

Tram stop Parc Euromedecine up yonder hill. Only three Kilometres to Grabels. The smell of burnt metal fills the air: circular saw. The speed of smell? The absence of morning smiles: Monday is bluntly corrosive.

...

How is this possible?

...

I am that I am. Here I lie at the end of a very difficult day of sweating, walking up tracks with decomposing bed rock, between cicadas and the bare sun; blue skies from horizon to horizon. But that I am here is enough.

Tram line one from Saint Louis to Parc Euromédecine then walk all the way to Montarnaud, short break at Bel-Air and at the Chambre D'hotes at the end of the bitumen road in Montarnaud. At Crois de Félix I hitched to the end of the Etape. The first person's car reported 31° at 3pm; I will sleep!

The difficulties of finding a bed, in the undulating heat, makes me wonder how I can "interpret" what has no meaning? If I were to lay by the side of the Chemin how long would it take for the rats to bring my body back to the earth? My passage is losing ground in a universe I can't understand. It is time to walk passed the unoriginal Bar/Tabac as if they did not stand heavily on my mind. There is a consequence that can be irradiated. What about this so called 'pilgrimage of Grace' ... Pay it no mind. But mentally used up my life too early?

...

Tomorrow will be very tough. The mountain isn't so high, 500 metre, it might be two, however there is no bakery in the picture postcard village! A thousand nipping flies pounce as the bells chime 8pm.

Is it really possible. Three days of hills? Hmm.