Arrived: Estaign 5:45pm
Total hours: 9.75
Total kms: 35.9
Accumulated kms: 166.2
Weather: Overcast but not cold, really nice for walking.
I'm very tired tonight. On my walk this afternoon, just after I left Espalion, my knee started hurting (right leg). I walked slower and tried to ignore it but it slowly grew worse. Before it could stop me I found a large branch to use as a crutch, and hobbled the last 5km or so to Estaign.
At one point I was passing a field with cows, and one of them looked up from the middle of the herd and cantered over to me at the fence. She stood right next to me, staring at me for ages. After a while I kept walking, and was shocked to find that my knee didn't hurt at all. The cow walked with me as well (on the other side of the fence), as far as she could until the fence stopped her. The entire time she was in sight, my knee was fine. After the road turned a corner, instantly my knee began to hurt again. I believe this is a clear case of cow reiki.
It doesn't feel so bad now - I've done some stretching and will just try to stay off it until morning. I think if it starts twinging again I'll stop at the next place I can and rest up for the remainder of the day.
Aside from the knee the walk was very pleasant today, mainly winding through rainforest. Oh, early on this morning, I had a nice horror movie moment. I was walking through really beautiful forest, and from one side I could hear bells ringing (many cows have bells around their necks, you can hear them everywhere), and on the other side I could hear dogs snapping, growling and howling. That's the other thing you hear everywhere - dogs. They rarely sound happy. The dogs I've seen on the street with their owners often run at me, snapping and barking, and their owners have to call them off. This is unusual with dogs and myself, and I suspect they get treated horribly. I walked past an open garage today where some jerk was actually spanking his dog. No, I'll use the word beating, because he was thumping the hell out of it. If I could speak French I'd have had some words to say to him.
But anyway, I'm walking through the forest and bells are ringing and dogs are going crazy and then I thought I could detect the sound of the dogs getting closer. I kept walking and listening and, yes, they were definitely getting closer. After a few moments I could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, howling and snarling and, in quite a state of fear, I picked up a large and I hoped intimidating branch.
Just then three large black dogs, all with fluorescent orange collars on, sprung from the bushes right in front of me. They glanced briefly in my direction, then continued on across the path, into the bushes on the other side, biting at each other's tails and howling for all they were worth. They didn't come back but it was a little while before I put that stick down.
Tonight I'm staying in a run down gite that is an old church. I'm the only one here and there's no heating - lucky I have thermals and a warm sleeping bag. I'm paranoid this place has bed bugs and I keep thinking I can feel them in my clothes biting me, but I haven't seen any evidence yet. I'll see when I wake up.
An early morning photo of the local community garden.
This photo was taken about five minutes after the one above, weird huh?
This is where my canine horror film happened.
This kind of path is so goddamned hard to walk on.
About four seconds before I took this photo, a light wind was blowing and all those leaves were swirling around in the air like a scene from Miller's Crossing. Then I took the camera out and they all fell dead to the ground.
This is a huge statue on top of a very tall hill. I climbed up one side, saw the statue, then climbed down the other side.
Estaign.
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