constanttrek

Rue to Abbeville 29th Aug

August 30th, 2004

We are in Abbeville, which also means we have finally come to the end of our first French map! It has been something of a drawn out process, considering we have rested for as many days as we have walked. The Abbeville experience has been somewhat enhanced by the fact that, most unfortunately, it has no camping, which means we have been forced into seeking refuge in the local formule 1 hotel. The fact that is has a television, coinciding with the closing ceremony of the Olympics, is purely coincidental. As is the fact that as we arrived after the internet café closed on Saturday, and it isn’t open Sundays, we have to stay another night. Terribly hard time we are having of it. But as the weather continues to dump it down, I can’t say either of us feels particularly guilty.
I wrote earlier about the attention we seem to get from both horses and dogs as we pass; yesterday we were highly amused to find ourselves the object of intense study by an entire field of cattle. I frantically fumbled for my camera, but only managed to capture one of them staring dumbly at us. It is a rather strange feeling to be scrutinised by 50 odd head of immobile bovines.
It was about a 15 mile walk yesterday, and for the first time in a while the roads were quiet enough to enable us to talk to each other rather than yell over the traffic. Before we left London, a friend made a joke about how boring our conversations would get after a month or two with only each other to speak to, a comment which stuck in my head. I thought of it again yesterday after I realised we had gone over the same conversation about three times. It usually happens when we have gone about 6 miles and the first sign of fatigue sets in, and goes something like this:

Gary (as a flash car speeds past): God he was moving. Did you see? Nice car.
Paula: MMM. I wonder how fast he was going.
G: About 100 miles, I would think.
P: So, how long would it take him to get to Abbeville then?
G: Well there’s still 10 miles to go, so about six minutes.
P: 6 minutes.
G: Yep.
(silence for about 100 metres.)
P: So by the time we get to Abbeville, he would be…
G: Just about in Spain, yep.
P: Spain.
G: Yep.
P: I bet he’s got air con.
G: He’s sitting down, too.
P: Yeah, but look what he’s missing.
G: Yeah.
P: Yeah.
(silence for another 10 mins, then a motorbike flies past)
P: So, how fast do you reckon he’s going?……

And so on and so forth. Eventually we will get sick of this little game, I am sure, but for now it provides an endless source of entertainment. Or an exquisite kind of torture. I’m not sure which.
After Abbeville we are heading to Amiens, then Beauvais, and on to Paris. It is about 10 walking days to Paris, but we don’t expect to get there under two weeks, particularly if the weather remains foul. It is not so much the walking in the rain, which really isn’t so bad, it is trying to pack up in it. If we get a couple of clear hours in the morning we can get packed and on the road without a problem – but if it is dumping down when we try to pack everything up, it really does double the time everything takes, not to mention packing the tent away wet. As a result, if we wake to a steady downpour, we tend not to go anywhere. It is not that we didn’t expect some manky weather – in fact we are anticipating truly vile temperatures and loads of rain from October through January – but we thought we would get a relatively good run of it through August and September, which would enable us to push on quite quickly, and get on to the Santiago de Compostela before the bad weather set in.
But it is not to be. And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful for the enforced rests. Much as we would like to be moving a bit faster, after a 15-18 mile day with the monsters, it is brilliant if we can have a day off. We both find that three days in a row walking is the most we can manage. And it tends to work better to do a three day on, two off pattern, which enables us to spend one day doing washing/shopping/repairs/internet, and one day actually resting.
It also seems to take us forever to pack up in the mornings. We keep on discussing ways we can become more time efficient, but at present it remains a two hour task from waking to walking. Partly it is because we tend to use nearly everything in the packs on a daily basis, which means that it all has to come out every night, and equally, needs to be repacked carefully the next day. If things are packed without care or in an unusual way, the packs don’t sit properly, which then means stopping after 3 miles and going through the whole process again in order to walk comfortably.
Fascinating as this is to us, it being the axis on which our small world turns, I did realise, as I expounded on the theme at great length to Sarah and James after a bottle of red, that it is relentlessly boring to everyone else. So on that note I shall desist.

Please bear with the long breaks between entries on the diary. We really can’t do much about them, as only big towns have the internet, and there is often 40 miles or so between the ones on our route, which takes us up to a week. Sometimes when we get there we can’t upload stuff, or, as is often the case with libraries, can’t access our weblog. As a result I am writing on the way and uploading 3 or more entries each time we stop, so just scroll down to see the previous ones. Once again thankyou all for your messages of support. I can’t stress enough how much we appreciate them, and all of you.
Cheers until (hopefully) Amiens.

Entry Filed under: trekking