End of Day Five

They're bringing in the grapes and I'm forced to cut a few small bunches ... Figs and mûres sauvages. Got locaux fromage and now looking for walnuts. Stopped for cheese, baguette and vin rose before noon. That was twenty Kms in four hours. Another hour and I think that's this day done. Must dry my boots today - still moist after the rains! Not exactly ideal.

Everything happens for a reason, and I've no control over anything, like having a migraine and being eaten alive somewhere along the way! I think when I pluck fruit deep in the undergrowth the ants get me and whenever I lay up somewhere the mosquitoes pounced.

Just as I was finishing for today - bang - migraine. It's totally unfair, but what can I do at all? Find a dark space and sleep it off, but that lets the greedy bastards in! Round my ankles and elbows they swoop. It's all part of the experience. Like being so low financially that everything becomes potential food! If it tastes good I eat it, hoping it's not the one thing that's sweet, but deadly!

Anyway now I'm not on a deathtrap of a road leaving Carcassonne and have zero glazed eyed tourists to negotiate as they walk in that bizarre slow and distracted manner as they try to get the history into their heads! Now I have local olives, a Halte Saint Jacques to my self (€12.50) and the Pyrenees to my left as constant companions to the end of the Way!