My walk started well. The track was shaded by trees and had re-assuring red and white GR signs to guide me – important, as I don’t have a map.
The first two hours were perfect and I stopped for a rest and a slightly early beer. My backpack fitted and although it was not yet 11.00 I was about halfway to my planned lunch. stop. Needless to say things went awry. I lost the GR signs and adopted a cycle path. It led me out into a countryside of huge open fields with few hedges. There were tractors out ploughing, and plenty of sweetcorn and sunflowers ready for harvesting. Once I put up a hare which scampered away over the plough. A highlight was this Roman arch, incongruously set among wind turbines.
It came with a Roman road that I took for a while.
There was no shade and the cycle path subsequently took a circuitous route. By the time I got to the lunch. place at 3.00 I was very tired. There was nowhere for lunch. so I bought a fizzy orange drink and lay on a bench in the shade to recover. After that I took no navigational risks and walked alongside a busy road for much of the afternoon. I got to the airport hotel at Fischamend at 6.00 from where I am writing this.
The map shows the route along the main road. My actual route weaved around a lot. As I walked I mused on Humphrey Hawksley’s report from the border between the US and Russia in Alaska. I saw it this morning on BBC News. I read a thriller in which the hero tries to escape across this channel in winter when the ice is thick enough to bear vehicles. In HH’s report the water looked almost inviting and he made no reference to winter conditions. Another book that was popular years ago, Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow, tells of different kinds of snow and different words for them in Inuit. We have a huge vocabulary of words meaning being intoxicated. Can these be found in French and Italian, say? This chain of thought and many others distracted me from my tiredness.
Tomorrow I am going to take a train into Vienna for a day of R&R, as it used to be called in the army, rest and relaxation for the benefit of civilians.