Walked another 31 kilometres, unhappy ones, from Arthez to Castenau-Camblong. Making a total of 593 kilometres.
I spoke too soon about the healing power of the body. My shin is still acting up. Quite seriously today again. It was real hilly again. On one of those hills I got in my old habit of counting my steps. It is like a marching order. I’ll tell myself not to look up before counting to, say, fifty. Every count has four steps into it, so 50 steps would be about 200 yards, assuming that I make steps of about a yard. Which is not true by the way, they’re smaller, I measured it once. But for easy mathematics sake it is still useful to think: one step one yard.
It really helps when I am getting tired. But it is killing when I am hurt. I somehow forgot I hadn’t recovered yet, this morning. Managed to get up the hill in record time, but felt my shin acting up ever since, especially going down. And there was a lot of going down, quite steeply too. Luckily the sun started shining in the afternoon, so I had a good excuse to pause now and then and drink some water. They’ve made all their public drinking points working in this area. Nice tasty spring water.
Talking about spring. I feel like I am revisiting the David Hockney exhibition A Bigger Picture. He had a splendid series of about 50 iPad paintings that showed the arrival of spring in the Yorkshire landscape he was living at the time.
The funny thing is that I walk through different time zones, when it relates to spring, it seems. Of course there was the snow in the Aubrac mountains, and then the sun in Quercy and Gers. All kinds of flowers show up, that I assume would only be present in may or something. I am not good in names for flowers, definitely not in english, but here is a selection.
I really follow the spring with vegetables. I get tears in my eyes when I see the first lettuces. Middle of march, unbelievable. At some farms the broad beans are knee high and flowering. 
Garlics have already become the size where I would sometimes have to harvest them. It’s just incredible. And there are still cabbages on the plots, and leeks of course. Oh, and the artisjoks have survived the winter without problems, and the peas are coming up.
And then the birdsong. My goodness, they have to tell a lot of stories. Just continuous chatter from all the small mussen, meesjes, vinkjes en roodborstjes that I recognize. It is so jolly and heartwarming I feel sorry, once again, I do not recognize the sounds of them.
And then there are the butterflies, my favourites. This must be their time, I realize. I see cabbage-ones (white), lemon-ones (yellow) and a whole variety of orange-brown ones. But today I saw a lilac one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that before. It brings out the Vladimir Nabokov in me, meaning I get the urge to get a little net, chase them, pin them on a piece of board, hang them up a wall and walk by them as a memory of this most gorgeous season of the year.
And then, still 845 kilometres of Spring to follow.
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