back to Beauvais.

A great night's sleep.

Meandering along the towpath, and through the Les Hortillonnages, towards the Quai Belu where I was last Friday ready to clock out. 

The same disinterested service, from the millennials running Green Corner, meant I followed my feet onwards after two 25cls.

Found the Airbnb soon after, close to to Eglise Saint-Jacques, which is a bit like an unattended hostel (as it had four rooms, and communal facilities) leaving Sunday opiated faces for a deep shower and a rapid clothes wash. I was in Lalaland with a thunderstorm coming and going overhead before nine.

Eight days walking from Saturday until Sunday, Friday the day off to head to Arras from Rouen. Next time, enroute to Mont-Saint-Michel, it's Rouen West?

This time I forgot my credentials for staying in pilgrim digs so had a few issues around accommodation. But once I discovered Airbnb can be paid with using PayPal I was laughing.

Hotels and Chambre D'hotes are too expensive, with inflation the way it is here in France, and HI hostels are too few and far between, and almost as much as an Airbnb costs, to mean they are a consideration. Camping in a tent is obviously an option, but I've begun hating waking up from a poor night's sleep in one of those.

The Camino feeling really got to me between Dieppe, Quiberville and La Source Saint Suplice. Most of the distance after leaving the Selle from Bonneleau was dull and uninspiring. The Camino does that sometimes. You're in a picturesque river valley and then you're above looking at the acres and acres of monoculture which feeds the EU, and the world.

In the past the routes to Santiago always passed holy places and those holy places always had places to repair the fatigue of the day without taking away the little money one has for such an enormous undertaking. And obviously agriculture was vastly different when most of the world was literally starving.

Most of the people on Camino I meet are older than me, although on the route from Le Puy and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port that's different, and are, I believe, retired with the income, the time/zero responsibility to maintain the equilibrium of mind and body required for several weeks going going going ... Towards a goal which is only ever in the mind.

The conversations I have with myself during the 30 plus kilometres would probably drive anyone else mad, but I am used to my own company, as that's been the way all my life; and I am total bonkers anyway?