A rebel without a clue.

Outside Le Gare De Bayonne a crowd gathers for the bus to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. To be surrounded by so many people and voices is so unusual. An experience I haven't had since 2013. Does it fill me with fear or with love. *** Depends on the conversations. I was wedged between two American grad students and one, almost American, Canadian grad student at the back of the bus. Some kind of rock and a hard place. After the initial helloes, which brought our Canadian cousin to my left front into the midst, I wanted off the bus to mind my own thoughts: nowt like a physics student reducing me to a Turing Machine to make me wonder. I kept quiet quite long enough until he used the term computer to define me! But then he wasn't having a real experience at all? As he conjured up his sex life with these two sisters from DC as a programmed happening ... It's just not me! But I am in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. That was insane. I've not stopped, but now I relax by the stream climbing d...

Well I am straight into the cluster of folks around the breakfast table, but I am absolutely shattered from yesterday. It's wonderful to hear them all speak their French tones, four are from Quebec, and to be glowered at as I arrived after 1 am, because they weren't operating  the Tramline after 21:30 due to scheduled works - and I was on the slow bus stopping at each and every blasted stop along the same route - but the challenge of the endurance and not falling into drunken slumber (because that was impossible). The sounds of the Camino... now I know I physically cannot begin on 6 broken hours sleep, on the back of yesterday's mammoth day back from Wetherby, mum and Lola. Where to this morning? Dax or Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port... the train departs at 10:19 so I will stop enroute at Marche des Capuchin where memories flood back. Flipping a coin I decided to head to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, €42 - which was most of yesterday's allowance - so I will start from Saint-Jean-Pi...

So far so good. Good morning with Lola. Two walks and a ton of cuddles as I depart for the haul over the Pennines to Manchester Terminal 3 on the slow train, via Halifax(£9.80), etc, then the tram to the airport. It's the cheapest option at around £12. Traveling to go walking ... flying to find some space to be ... it can never be done? Arrived and find it's a replacement bus service instead of the Tram and it has to stop at every tram stop. I should reach a bed by 1am? They know I am coming, but I am sorry to wake the hostess at La Maison Du Pelerin. It's not cool. And I feel jaded! But I have been on the go since around 5:30am. Walking tomorrow? Yes, but not 34.5 kilometres.

Another day of self hatred before a restful night's sleep. It's Monday the 2nd October and is this it? The end of the previous period of my life, if life my can be divided up into Epochs, eras, periods? But a change has to come, and I can only think of one way to get the ball rolling, which is by walking away from the same temptations I see all around me. In 2013 I felt the same, ever decreasing, situation, as I lay between the late shift and the early shift at YO! Sushi when I felt nothing was real in what I was doing and where nothing meant anything to me! Then I felt why go on? But there had to another way to that obvious conclusion to which I thought death was about to pounce. And yes there was, is and will always be. To turn in to the path of lightness, being, truth, and not abide in the doorway of uncertainty, where I waver forever, back and forth, around and around, with no direction and no purpose; be fearless and find what was always there to be found. *** Pilgrimage h...

The final day with Ruby, the fifteenth, since I took over duties on that fateful Friday... but she's so lovely with every morning a cuddle, and a wriggling arse welcome into the day, but it's so long to be surrounded by only Wetherby and it's permanent fixtures. And I've hardly managed to reach the allotment this week as I don't like leaving Ruby alone for too long. It's not like Lola who always has my mother around to keep her happy? Yesterday we walked to Boston Spa via Thorp Arch village and Deepdale before coming back on the 174 and depositing Lola back with mum - where she went straight to the sofa after the obligatory bit of chicken... Quiet morning so far. Running the final bath and will begin organising my stuff back to mum's and clean up around the house prior to their arrival at midnight ... after an hour in meditation.

Up early this morning: just gone five. I think the storm has passed and I've paid my bills. Ruby had her breakfast and is alongside me. I've reduced the remaining tomatoes, which I had picked at the allotment, and fried a couple of pancakes, which will need finishing off in a little while, before I eat, clean up, go and get Lola, with Ruby, and do something together: rain dependent: Roundhay Park is a possibility?

As the clocks tick in the dining room/sitting room Ruby is snuggled up alongside me while we watch the gathering of the first autumn storm of 2023: Agnes with the trees behind the garden, on the Old Railway (Harland Way), bending their green crowned heads and soon they will shed all their leaves, as the horse chestnuts are already on Chestnut Avenue, and I contemplate a pilgrimage!