A rebel without a clue.

Even here in France big beards are the thing! But the grooming which goes into it really undermines that whole Wild West/Ned Kelly outlaw type look, doesn't it? They're paying a mint to appear to be roguish! Yet I'm sweating my arse off, for hours on end, in the same clothes everyday, sleeping wherever I can and I feel I am a veritable tramp: throw me a box car and I'll stink right in. And this "dude" (dud) is delivering fresh laundry: he's got a trolley, a perpendicular beard several feet long and all that tattoo stuff too! Now the true France reveals itself. With a wild garden backing onto a steam, and the way the fields rise in that childlike fashion. The lady of the house has four cats, all with insanely long, double barreled names, and two ewes who are quite demanding of me. They wish to come into the garden. After asking the host, quite excitedly, because I just couldn't wait, they bound into her garden and lap it up! Quite some distance from Mi...

Of course they brought forth juniper berries, here on this exposed spot, they're juniper bushes: still e xcellent - but minus the gin "boo hiss" I hear a certain voice cry out! Soon I'll be needing to do a laundry of all my underthings, but not yet as I'm sure there are two sides to every gusset? Day seven going into eight I reckon I've at least 12 days of sweating my proverbials off before I smell too much like my old man for my own comfort - I am even smelling like a 60 a day man too, which I really don't understand as I've never smoked ciggies. And being caught in a downpour means I am being launderetted for free, without Persil - parsley! And it's done! I'm staying with a family later. Not paying an absent Chambre d'hôtes £25 for a bed and a microwave - that's taking the piss! Am I talking to the wrong people by consulting the Office du Tourisme? I've to wait next to the La Poste, but currently I'm at The House of Consuls ...

Cows and potatoes, sunflowers and moorland: crossing the divide into mud and rain. Vineyards gone and olives vanished too; crooked oaks and rosehips brush my shoulder. Water drips off my nose tip and rivlets run down my sleeve; wait is there a break in the distance? Watch your feet as tractors tracks wallow deep.

I've been heading in the wrong direction for half an hour. Nothing left to do but cross direct to the correct Way! But through freshly ploughed fields in drizzle. Bugger me with a fish fork! All just to give me peace of mind! But somehow I feel exhilaration as I shake mud off the soles of my feet! That's why I re-treated them this morning. Met a fellow pilgrim in the Convent. It's his first and he's come from home, near to Nice. I've wished him Buen Camino as he's going as direct as possible and I'm slogging through muddy fields instead! Good luck Thierry!