A rebel without a clue.

The first morning of the long summer. Emma is in Ibiza and I am in her house until Saturday when I switch from this house to Archie's on North Street, for the remainder of the summer, as Iskara and David head to Bulgaria for the rest of the school holidays... It's a scary prospective being unable to leave Wetherby for around 42 days(6 entire weeks)! It's such a weak town with little really happening in it's small minded existence? For a small market town it just feels bland and up it's arse about nothing. Maybe I've just spent too long of my life enclosed in its crushing embrace. True, I've never felt entirely at home anywhere else, but I rarely go anywhere for more than to pass through it. And passing through villages, towns and cities does get a little repetitive as we humans have relatively few absolutes... Church, castle, tower, hairdressers, café, bakery, supermarket. On Saturday, as I travelled back from Amiens, through Beauvais, I felt the same absolu...

€1 to get from Amiens to Beauvais from quai 17 in the Gare Routiere; bargain. Must be some concession run by the municipalities to transport people in and out of that random airport - Tillé ... It's not Paris and it's technically not Beauvais... I have my habits. At the Auberge du Jeunesse I had two average machine made coffees so I must seek a third better man made allongé. Unlike that phoney Andy, from Bottle and Bean, I don't really need a coffee that does anything other than stimulate. I prefer the street vendored affairs: Place Gambetta and a LavAzza is Italian style enough: they've been roasting that way for centuries so I get a taste I like. One sugar melted and well stirred, but a petite galette I can take or leave, but for the second morning I take: I prefer a chocolate coffee bean. Am I a lost soul? The paths I move along often have little to impress themselves beyond a glancing veneer. I shuffle onwards ever seeking for nothing because there is nothing really...

People are afraid of wasps like I am fearful of people. Wasps are never fearful. They haven't the time on their 'hands' for worries. A worried hornet would be a wonderful image to cast in bronze, a la Rodin. A book is bought from a second hand book shop. Thousands of antique French novels and a small crate of English language novels and one French novel translated into English. The Heart-Keeper by Françoise Sagan. The backpack is empty so an extra short novella won't count. Sent a Blablacar request this morning, but the driver hasn't responded. There are plenty of buses between Amiens and Beauvais, but so far I had managed not to involve myself in that form of public transport. Just trains. Trains are romantic. Buses are so tedious on life's metalled highways. One tedious journey... Here we are with a basket of pain and a container of Choquoise to accompany the Gasper beer made from old French bread. Happiness is these three things and the Quai alongside the Som...

Heading out of Abbeville along the towpath( halage ), passing beneath a disused girder box bridge, on the canalised Somme, to my left, it's silent except for the crunching march of my sandaled feet, the morning calls of the birds, a distant cockerel, a train passing into Abbeville on my right hand side and a gentle rain falls: it's green. In the distance to my right hills: so south of Amiens. To my left dense woodland. From the insanity of Tuesday to the annoyance of Thursday: horseflies biting me at every opportunity. And mosquitoes adding to the desperation. Hustling down the GR800 from Long, via L'Etoile to Flixecourt and an American Diner (French Diner) with the full playlist of RCA Elvis 56 playing out and with a tear in my eye I eat a Betty Burger, fries and sauce American. Such a strange serendipity. Thinking of a night in with my girl soon with my sister being away from Saturday and I am dog/house/fish sitting until she returns and then I turn my attenti...

A cooler day. Threatening rain. I just put on my midlayer (I have no other layer) and wonder about rain and no protection. Too many cars in Abbeville. Built post war, when cars were rarer than they are now. Only a fraction of its pre-war charms still exist. Brutal Germans - they definitely went so arrogant in the 1930s that they really thought that they were destroying for a 1000 years of history in the making? By destroying unnecessarily. I understand the reprisals meated out to them once the RAF, USAAF and USSR airforce could deliver steel over their cities. Barbarity on every level? Never again in Europe perhaps? *** I bad night's sleep. Not drunk or ate badly. Just so humid in the room. Had the window open until some train track noise in the early dawn. Closing a window on a day like this... Dark clouds, oppressive, muggy. But here I am again. Another day walking. A day off yesterday and it's enough for Abbeville. In the afternoon it poured down, but it didn...

Passing a rotisserie stall at the morning Marché in Le Tréport I bought pomme de terre for the midway morning matter conversion and three large slow roasted saucisse for petit dejeuner. And I leave vast Normandy and cross a frontier into petite Picardie once more. A very elongated circular walk... With two assistances forward thanks to SNCF, when I had run out of options, and a few nice little auto-stops, when shuttling between places,and I will be back in Beauvais by Saturday for a mid afternoon flight. There is a toilet on the beach front where I can deposit spent fuel rods before another long day and the heat will be unbearable (it's 8 o'clock). *** 40% left on the phone, but a filled belly and a place to stay in Abbeville: I must just get there, or as far as is possible before my body stops me, then auto-stop  Coming down from a 'difficulty', off of the cliffs with its relentless up and down, I am on another difficuly - the flat open uncovered pan of La ...

The sweet perfume of tansy along the way, precarious near the edge of the fragile cliffs: I took no notice of the two or three signs giving me 'obligatorie' advice not to walk that way... and here I am with an April 2021 Orval in Place Notre Dame (Bar Les Cordiers €5.60). Opposite me is Chris Pizza. All along the harbour frontage folks have mounds of steamed Moules. Can it be so good in such quantities? Like fish and chips along the seafront in Whitby... It's farmed mussels. If can find a place which feels less prole and more bourgeois... Such a fool. As an erstwhile paysanne I opt for a pizza... There must be more to me? Another 35/40 kilometres. I am killing myself as I burnt the soles of feet on the exposed chalk heading up from a cleft where the ladders had been ripped off the surface, with some force(water water everywhere, but not a drop has fallen on my feet), and were difficult to manage; going up. *** Another day dawned and I am still here? Another day ...