Day seventeen - Thursday November 4

Departed: Condom 8am
Arrived: Eauze 4:30pm
Total hours: 8.5
Total kms: 33.3
Accumulated kms: 534.1
Weather: Overcast

Today I finally had a respite from the barren fields, and spent most of the day walking through lush forests succumbing to autumn, or vineyards. The vineyards mostly looked quite sad and wilted being the end of the season, but it was still a nice change from field after field of crumbled brown earth.

Today was quite fatiguing, both physically - my shin was singing loudly for the first few hours before finally shutting up - and mentally. Even with the change in scenery today really dragged on. Sometimes lately it feels as if this walk has become my entire life, and I don't exist outside of it. And I've only been on the road a little over two weeks! It may be the monotony - walking alone each day, often through the same landscape, eating the same food, I'm starting to feel like a character in a Chekov story.

The final few hours today were particularly gruelling. It's funny, it was probably the most beautiful scenery to walk through all day, but the path was very long and very straight and just kept going and going, for over two hours. By the end of it I very nearly thought I might be losing my mind, I almost felt I was no longer moving forward at all, just walking on and on at the same spot, like a treadmill. When the path finally ended in town, I was dizzy from the abrupt change.

The strangest thing to happen today though occurred when I was walking along an extended stretch of road. I was on my own, no traffic, no farm noises really, just me and big grassy plains everywhere. And I kept hearing footsteps behind me. I would spin around and look, but no one was ever there. The sound would then disappear for maybe ten or twenty minutes before I would hear it again - not quite running, but walking much faster than me and catching up. Perhaps I should have refrained from turning around just once. Maybe then, those footsteps would have pattered closer... and closer... until suddenly GOTCHA! - and an unseen hand would grab my shoulder. That would have put a kick into the day.

I took this photo for Jean who I live with, his surname is on the sign and his home town is too, and I'm sure his hometown looks absolutely nothing like this one.

Ravished corn fields.

Some untouched corn!