A rebel without a clue.

The long drawn out journey from a comfy bed in Amiens to another on the eleventh floor in Lovell Park Grange is done. A smashing night's sleep. Sans alcool... Coming back to the flat I washed everything and put fresh linen on the bed. Switched on the night time storage heater to have a warm bath come Saturday morning - those little things I don't see when my mind is somehow hampered by conflicting emotions, like a knotted ball of twine, I can never lay flat and untangled.  An hour to wake up, pack up an get into the post 7am bath - 11 until 7 nighttime cheap electricity... Now I've added my tent equipment to the 40litre bag I purchased last year at Intersport Beauvais, when all my own baggage disappeared into the ether of airside, and affixed the sleeping Thermarest mat to the bottom of the sack with the webbing there; it's going to be heavy! Now breakfast: porridge. Since yesterday I've become the healthier me once more. In the entirety of this trip to France, whic...

So now I wait for the flight outside the airport. Like a buffoon, misunderstanding the system, I went to the Gîtes d'Etape on Rue de Paris, thinking I would be OK to stay for a couple of hours: just to chill away for sore temptations I Beauvais. I arrived, showered, washed a t-shirt and the shorts I've had on all the way and lay down on the bed just as Bernard arrived. But, no, it's impossible to stay for two hours without paying the full whack for the evening! Only €15, but I only have €5 left since coffee and the bus ticket from Amiens. I think I upset him and I really didn't mean to. I know that the rules are one night and onwards, but I am exhausted from battling mosquito fatigue, the long haul yesterday.and being stupid drinking after the nice, but not massive, Cod and white rice repase in La Gargouille. But the good news is I managed forty winks, on my sleeping bag, on the floor in the departure lounge. I've done that in the past, but not for ages. I seemed to...

The final leg. The bus between Serqueux and Amiens, passing Forges-les-Eaux, and memories of June heading west towards Dieppe, Rouen, Arras and Amiens(twice). Domaine des Traverses and Feuquieres in Picardie, Quiberville and Fontaine Saint-Sulplice in Caux Normandy. Where next? To stay in Amiens, Compiegne or Beauvais. It's been a long morning with this being the forth leg of getting from Bayeux. The last of four. The longest. A bus through the same area I sweated in, during June's heatwave ... How different this July from 2022? Damp and not warmer than 20. Drizzle yesterday and this morning too. Now I wait to catch ligne 601 back to Beauvais. The next time I reach will be when? I guess some distance off? But I must, repeat must, come on a Chemin. A proper one! For the good of my sanity. Twice this time I drank. Last night with the guys running La Gargouille and back in Rouen. This morning I didn't think to concern myself with getting back to airport mid morning, but it see...

I seek it in this person, in a place, in a bar, in that beer, in that wine, in a cheese, in shirts, in sandals, in socks, in breasts, in a dog, everywhere and in everything, but there is nothing external. Before the next tiring stage of the journey east I stumbled into an overpriced and over glamorous coffee, patisserie which caters to all the image you dare to project in a material existence. I looked at the Hipsters around me and barged out and took up residence on the bar at the Café Metropole where I was reminded, and amused, that JP Satre and Simone de Beauvoir lingered contemplating their existence in the same cafe, but in another time and space before their atoms became, like all good relics, tied up with mine improving this vintage at the lowest/highest level of being. Oh the humanity!

Yet more mosquitoes to battle. I bashed most with a pillow but one remained elusive and persistent - I let it succeed where the others failed and now count the bites while enjoying a tartine and coffee at a Boulangerie Capucine along from the old town, across the pont and opposite Halles aux Grains. Now I set off back to the UK  back towards Beauvais fit fo, the flight tomorrow as a breeze whips up the fallen linden blossoms. The confiture was Tiptree wild blueberry - in France! Because it's very very good jam man? Mosquitoes must love alcoholic blood types? Because of my wanton stupidity, on the spur of a tired afternoon when I could walk no further, I missed the chance to visit the tapestry. It's not going anywhere and I really don't like paying an entrance fee to view what should be for all to see regardless of means, surely? It's a thousand years old and is a internationally important document... It's existence is completely accidental... It should b...

Tough halfway to Bayeux. I nearly fell flat on my arse in a huge puddle when I really wasn't on the path, in my head, at all. Things to ponder and too many distractions which don't mean anything at all. Back to reality? Perhaps ... Back to Galette Noir at Tapioca(€18 with a pichet 50cl bio Cidre ) on the high street in Bretteville L'Orgueilleuse with only 15 kilometres to go to Bayeux... Today was tough. Even with the food I was wilting. It's humid and the area around Bayeux, called Bessin, is pretty flat. So at the roundabout heading onto the route nationale I auto-stop with a dental technician and his sweet Takt American sheepdog curled up at my feet. Gnow. From the simple to the complicated! I thought, on a whim, to catch the bus to the sea, for a couple of hours, then back for a good night's kip at the hostel situated in an old monastery near the river, just outside the old town. Getting off the bus I popped across the road to see what time they returned...

I still can't cross the Pegasus Bridge! Although a bagpiper was playing around the cluster of people and the hanging of flags. On that side industry and the canalixlzed Orne this side a Château and the canal. Straight walk into Caen and I've decided to stay a night. At the Postern gate is the old quarter. Indeed I am sat having a coffee, sheltering from the dark clouds and occasional downpours, at La Poterne , where I will stay for repase. Booked in to an Airbnb with an actual host! That's quite rare now I find as they are usually just holiday let apartments(€42). A pile of Jambon which I took to be a roast ham, but my next door neighbour look to have Gammon. I definitely had a higher pile of ham with frites and a cidre sauce: reminds me of mums. She doesn't use cider, but mustard and onions and liquid. Great Airbnb host. Perfect place. Had a puppy and two ferrets for company. Slept well until 6. Down to Paul bakery where it's yogurt, pain au raisin, Zumo Naranja an...

Washed myself, and some smalls, in room 10 of L'Ecallier(€60) in one of those half baths I have only ever squeezed into in France. Currently I am enjoying a second Ciney Blonde contemplating at Andouillette(AAAAA), I asked the chef to make sure it's well done. Tomorrow I turn my face south and head towards Le Man's. It was wide, but not long. The Andouillette. And it was local. Troyes is famous for it and it was a pale imitation of the baked in the oven loveliness I've had previously in the areas closer to it's home. But it did the trick, same as the Ciney, the bain and the coat hangers. I will be heading south for a few days. At least until Thursday, when Amiens or Paris. The head honcho is definitely on speed. I think English and Irish tourists have worn him down. He sees so many people without any real connection. He was interested I was walking el Camino from Tuesday, but he quickly went back to being rapid... *** Opposite is a couple who are too age difference ...

The story of Noah's Ark was the story of monogamy when the animals went in two by two. You work for a pittance to pay over the odds for a two week holiday in a place everyone else has escaped to fiddle the time away eating ice creams and candy floss all to see you had no experience and no money and you go back to work feeling more bitter than ever before against your children, wife, the guy with the girl in the deck chair opposite and then in October you discover you've only a few weeks left to live because you're incurable of being irrelevant... Guy from NC yesterday asked me if I had heard of Deliverance, I had, but said I hadn't. I know the story. I know how it goes... But what a way to introduce himself and his hometown... I mean it's like saying 'have you heard of The Ripper? Well I am from London'! Walking through a marshland before the Caen and Pegasus Bridge and now I have reached foot pain threshold. 35 kilometres as a donkey brays in the field nex...

Before I returned to the none hotel, YOU are Deauville, I ate heartily of a assette Mixte from the kebab house opposite. At €19(AS kebab) with a bottle of water it was probably the cheapest option, and largest portion possible, in Touristville. Left Trouville-sur-Mer, with the prerequisite baguette sandwich to eat at the first natural break, just gone eight and by nine Deauville had gone back into it's raffia box. Had to stop for a piss next to the battery position protecting the entry to La Seine. Nasty Nazi Merde! Canisy. Being a Goon(the Goon Show) is not anything to do with the characters from Popeye, but an in joke about onaism... While almost falling into a ditch, courtesy of a passing articulated lorry, I was pulled out by a passing jogger. Thanks to her, once she continued on, I  knew exactly what a falaise gap is betwixt the sea and heaven... *** After a brief, but heavy, downpour - the first of today - I come down to Houlgate via a hollow way... So Yorkshire I could screa...

More than tempted to say fuck it to a third day of walking with the pitiful weather conditions forecast - heavy thunderstorms all day as the rain begins again - or find an umbrella... Sat having a coffee back in Trouville-sur-Mer, surrounded by photos of French post war idols (all dead, except Brigitte Bardot) and watching the storm begin. Slept well in the hotel/hostel -, but, at €48, it's the most expensive dormitory I've ever had the pleasure to hear people snore, drag flip-floped feet, cough their lungs up, douche for hours and the gentleman on reception was either new or on opium or both ...YOU are Deauville (am I? Oh I thank you! But I am sure I am not!) The rain! Last year I was fighting a heat wave and this year I am being drenched in La Manche conveyor of Océane Atlantique. Global warning is bollocks: it's just weather and statistics (we have so many records and the world is covered in recorders in the 21st) not so long since there was no La Manche! Setting off at ...

Mosquito in the dorm! The last thing I expected, but then again those Asiatic bastards can find a niche almost anywhere that there is a little water... Next they'll cross the channel and chaos will reine! On this truly haphazard trip I tried Steak Tartare last night, which was surprisingly tasty, but I can't tell if it that or the linseed heads I plucked and ate which are causing me complaint in the bowels this morrow. The weather has truly changed and there is a gale flying in from La Manche. Yesterday in my haste and anxiety I tried to get out of the Hostel, perfectly fine minus the mosquito, and back onto the yacht. *** There is a bus at 9 so I am heading west into the unknown of Normandy - Calvados. Caen is it's destination. From there I feel drawn south towards Le Man's... On the bus heading over to Honfleur via Pont de Normandie,  where I will climb off, to continue on foot awhile longer. The GR223 goes through Calvados. Impossible I know, but I pray the PIP issue...

Back in Le Havre at the backpackers and I panicked. Bizarre. The large complex: part hotel and part hostel is amongst a large construction site back from Le Gare. To get in I first went into the foyer of the hotel and thought it was just like an a&o hostel in Nuremberg I recall a few years ago, but then the receptionist said the accommodation is around the back, surrounded by building site detritus, and a lot of Africans(generalizing) were coming in too carrying cases, dragging children, etc... I was a little bit tired from the long walk and didn't feel sure about the place and felt threatened!

Twenty five kilometres. Up and down, up and down! Those Valleuses and falaise. But I stopped at noon for a galette complete and the last section brought me to Cidre Lemercier  - a boon? And the train back to Le H(avre) - the haven/harbour, but in France I must remember to drop the 'haytch'. Tomorrow a storm blows in from the Océane Atlantique up La Manche  but my attention is further west Honfleur, Caen, Bayeux and D-Day beaches... I discovered that there is a hostel/backpackers near La Gare  in Le Havre, so not on a boat, swaying gently in my dreams this evening?

Nearly missed the stop for Harfleur! It was a short journey. Being here reminds me of seeing Henry Vth with Tom back during university days. We were very high up so it wasn't perfect to see or hear from there and I think we had a pillar for company, but it was a RSC production so it was worth the strained necks? Once more into the breach... *** Around an hour later and I headed back to Le Havre. If I had more energy I would have walked back to Le Havre as it was only 8.5kms between it and the La Plage, at the end of the tram line(€4.50 on all transport all day). After briefly seeing the cleaners I took full possession of the yacht for the evening. Then went and had a thorough shower. This morning, Saturday, I just missed the bus towards Honfleur(122 to Caen) so that has to be another occasion: the bus left just as the travel office opens to get a ticket. You need cash otherwise... France in the 21st century. Now I am heading north on the 13 to Étretat where the French White Cliffs ...

Rouen. And west again... Train to Abancourt, waiting for the bus replacement service to Rouen. The site of a vast equipment and supplies depot, for the western front in WW1, after arrival at Le Havre and Rouen to be organy and redistributed to the front. But now there is no indication of anything like that except many lines meeting at the Gare a few miles from the Hameu... Accommodation sorted, but it's another single room with everything in it for €58 ... The one last time isn't available and that was a single room too. It's only got a sofa bed. But I am minimal anyway. And it's a place to rest prior to walking or hitching tomorrow... I could follow the Seine towards the sea and Honfleur... But it is Friday tomorrow. But I am being dragged/drugged south towards the end of my perambulations in 2014 - Chatellerault and then Poitiers? Yes. I will hitch tomorrow south towards Chatellerault and pick up where I left off or head to the Plum Village once more? No I won't T...

The fullest bus from Leeds to the airport, the fullest airport and the fullest plane, but, somehow, I coped and around midnight I found my way, after a piss across the street, to the Gîtes d'Etape(€15 with Credential) run by Les Amis du Beauvais vers Compostelle. Crept in took my sleeping bag to the room, was greeted by the guy from Amiens who was using the toilet and slept until around 6am. Having dealt with my financial difficulties for July I can forget it until August, although, try as I might, I couldn't contact the DWP to ask them to do the Mandatory Reconsideration... So I must, at some point, this couple of weeks walking the Camino speak to them and start the long ball game rolling. It has to go to appeal once more but that took from September 2016 to April 2017 to be resolved ... So here I am. Away from what can never help me towards the happiness I so sorely need: it's always so quiet on an evening in smaller French cities: although I do live directly above a coup...

So I returned to the flat just after noon, with no intention of leaving it all day, as I tried to cope with the various distractions which came from all directions. As the clock crept towards home-time, for those working around the centre and traveling through the various arterial roads around my flat, the kids were playing nehnah-nehnah on the landing, there was a clattering of metal objects falling on the construction site, which pervaded the rainy space between it and level eleven, towards my oversensitive hearing and the sounds of reversing continued like a monotonous and tedious lullaby drilling into my skull ... Oh and then there was another car alarm to add to the joy, but hew it was brief ... And then there was a siren drawing me to my doom as the JCB continued to reverse beyond 6pm. After all that I slept undisturbed until 5. When I rolled over, in the post dream haze, until opening the curtain I was greeted by rain once more, and stripped the bed to wash the linen. Heatwave i...

From 6am until late, in the early evening, there has been a JCB construction vehicle reversing, with the audible warning alarm/siren/noise, even on Sundays. The usual traffic noise around the flat and the occasional siren of police or ambulance or fire engine I've grown accustomed to, because I've been here since 2015 and can usually meditate on it until it no longer causes me grief, but the last several months of trying to accommodate this reversing sound and the additional noise of the people who have been working around my tower block, as part of the insolation upgrade, is making me go insane. The man below me with his pounding techno music and the children running around the communal space outside my flat, and belting a ball against my door, mean I am unable to switch off properly. Add to this the noise of boy racers, motorcycles without silencers and a distant sound of music over the weekend means that this flat feels like a form of torture...

Mood so low I didn't leave the flat all day yesterday and was in bed 70% of the time. Looked at the mess around the flat, sighed and went further into bed... The world needs to open up for me. It seems to be going that way, but only if I flee to France on Wednesday... I've accommodation in Beauvais,  with two fellow pilgrims, at the Gites d'Etape. Then the previous few years are completed. Will I live through this? Good question. Beginning another journey. This is the end of something ... Not cherished the period of yo-yoing the X99/X98 and beer/no beer as it's cutting my life back dramatically. I couldn't do 10000 push ups, like Robert is for charity, but I can walk while the heart and brain don't split or a canker develops hidden within this dermis.

Monday morning and I am low. How do I rise above this feeling? Things which occurred, which I feel irresponsible for, are playing heavily on my mind. As a consequence of not qualify for PIP I am almost recoiling, or is it uncoiling, in my mind. Seeing no way forward which isn't just one more pointless task trying to keep rolling the ball up that hill. Being on benefits is very hard to make ends meet, anyway, and when that income is halved due to the point scoring system, which accumulates to say this person gets PIP, but has no actual criteria purely for mental health issues (anxiety, depression, phobia, etc). I haven't seen the letter which gives me the option of a second opinion, before heading along the long road to the tribunal, but last time I didn't score on managing my life in the flat. Since moving to the flat in 2015 I have never decorated it. It's got exactly the furnishings that were already in place and the sofa emmanus provided, the washing machine Robert b...

Start of Tuesday, doing the usual clearing up after myself at Ruby's abode before Mo and Tony return later this morning, and I've broken a vase... The only thing I recall breaking while here looking after things? The roller blinds caught the thing on the window sill and the arms come off ...  ... Got back to the flat and there wasn't the dreaded missive from the DWP, so I thought perhaps I will be OK after all, but then this morning part of the world I've been used to since 2017 - when I won the appeal at the tribunal - fell apart and I am in the same position I was when I lost PIP in 2016 - terminally short of funds and no better mentally at all. Even though I emphasized how bad things have gotten, since the end of COVID restrictions last summer, I am back - so far back What's the point? Why do I keep carrying on? Feeling helplessness... The world is relentless. From every angle I feel threatened. I left the flat because the noise around it is simply too much now. ...