May 2: The first signs of harvest

We were dry, sweaty messes when we got in yesterday. Today we were very ready for a cold beer, but quite presentable, thanks to the overcast sky. We walked over the bridge into town and found an excellent bar with crisp, cold beer on tap. We then swung by the local “supermarket” and stocked up on snacks. I’m now sitting on the bed, with my boots off, surrounded by junk food - HEAVEN!

We do have a dinner reservation in a nearby bistro tonight (our accommodation doesn’t do food), but the chocolate and crisps just hit the spot.

These days we are walking through oak and chestnut. There is still beech, and ash, and also stands of pine, but the leaves and the trees are generally bigger and more singular. The farmsteads have small orchards of sweet chestnut and cherry trees. The fruits are ripening already, which is astonishing. We passed a fig tree with well-set fruits, plumping up beside the path. The first cut of silage has been made. The wheat is well-along, not bending in the wind, but “pinging” in a semi-rigid kind of way. I already mentioned the barley, for which “flowing” is the only appropriate word, like a mane on the hillside.

The dog rose (or “prairie rose”) is flowering in the hedgerows. The ox-eyed daisy, cow parsley and meadow sweet give the meadows a white shine, with blue meadow clary, lilac gypsy rose and pastel flax rounding out the colours. Yellows are contributed by buttercups, still going strong where the ground is wet, but the dandelions are mostly set and celandine is a marsh plant. The vines are already jauntily sporting crowns, which, when you look closely, comprise bunches of teeny-tiny grapes, waiting to fill out with the summer.

It’s hard to keep track that it’s Saturday, the weekend again. We are 12 days in, but only 20% through. It’s such a luxury to have this extended space of time to lavish on such simplicity of living and of purpose.

Today, we found ourselves repeatedly crossing paths with an older, French, gentleman, walking fast, mobile to his ear, talking loudly for hour after hour. Of course, he may have been managing a personal emergency or that of a friend, but it sounded like a man on a business call, unable to listen to the birdsong.

We stopped at an “aire de repos” for a coffee about half-way along. It was operated by the kind of energetic old lady whom, in this environment is a “legendary local character”, but, if encountered at home would likely have the label “mad old bat”. There was bell-ringing, uninvited hugging of strangers and a whistle. I was told off for waning milk in my “café elongé” – “trop Anglaise”.

We drank our tutted-over coffee in camping chairs, in a flag-bedecked barnyard, beside a bidet-turned-fountain water feature… Carey’s chair was comically unstable and too small for him. Mine had the words “nomad lifer” sharpied on an arm rest… A VERY camino experience.