10 mar

Walked another 42 kilometres, from St. Antoine to La Romieu. Making a total of 412 kilometres in the first two weeks. An average of almost 30 kilometres a day, including a day of leisure in blizzard hit Nasbinals.
Two weeks walking and one blister. A small one on one of my small toes. Not very inconvenient. Is in fact a nice reminder that this is all about suffering. My knees have recovered from the sudden amount of kilometres they had to deel with. My feet are all right. The ball of my feet, if the area just behind the big toes is called like that, is sensitive. So are the lower parts of my heels. But very bearable. Each day of walking causes the bottom of my feet to feel like a lower grade of sandpaper.
Walked too much today. I knew it when I told Julie to meet another 10 kilometres up. But La Romieu is a nice medieval town, and the only way to know where your limits are, is by testing them.
The ideal walking day is chomping in the morning, doing the real battles and making most of the distance, and then cruising in the afternoon. After lunch, often an apple and a banana, ideally not more than ten kilometres of waking. Arriving at Merlin between four and five.
The other problem of today, and also of the day before yesterday, is mud. It drains energy. Every step is a half step. Some of the energy used causes you to slide backwards. Definetely towards the end of the day it is dreadful. And then to think that this is what the fields look like after a week of sun. A week of rain and this whole trip would be hell.
I was thinking about spiders today. I realized I never knew how they made their webs. With those silky threads of course, but which one is spun first. I figured that out. Because of the nice temperature these spiders are making threads like crazy. They are just everywhere. Sometimes they are a few yards long, just hanging from a tree in the air. The must have not very hig IQ’s, spiders, because they try to create webs where there is no other branch or tree to be seen. They create lots and lots of bridges into nowhere. Sometimes though, these threads must find another branch, and the web process can start. I do understand the first step now, and am very curious if I’m able to figure out more.
Also saw a magnolia blooming for the first time this spring. Heaven. I complemented the owner of the garden with his tree. ‘It is a lot of work’, he answered. Not the magnolia, I imagine, but the rest of his garden showed some rudimentary signs of attention. French people are awful with their yards. They mostly don’t care. The vegetable gardens are often good, but the rest is quite hopeless. If I see a real nice garden, I figure there are English people living there.
But in spring it doesn’t really matter. Everything looks good, being blessed by a delightful sun. Again a cloudless day. Hope it will stay like that through the Pyrenees. After that it can rain again, for a day. Anyway, 1036 kilometres to go.