Day Eight

We are at Concots. 268 kms down. Just a few to go :-)

Glory be! Today I had my first walk of under 30 kms – 27 kms in fact – thanks to some nifty work by my navigation officer, and ditching the Grandes Randonnėes for the day.

I seemed to spend most of the day walking past military bases and training areas. Gay had picked a road which took a more direct line from Caylus to Concots than the GRs. It became obvious that one reason the GRs skirted the are could be because nobody is allowed near it. I have never seen so many signs saying “Domaine Militaire – Defense d’Entrer”, so many truck carrying passels of soldier boys, or heard so much gunfire. Since I lived in Stone, near an ammo factory, in the early 60s.

I am always impressed by how tough and fit and smart French soldiers seem. We have a parachute regiment based in Carcassonne and the Foreign Legion at Castelnaudary, so we often have these troops on exercise nearby, or tramping past the house with blackened faces and guns at the ready.

Here’s an interesting story – at least I think it is. Yesterday when I arrived in Caylus, I couldn’t find the campsite, where Gay and V-Force One were already ensconced. It was lunchtime, so as usual in a French village (another superb mediaeval one) there was nobody to be seen in the streets. I went to a point where I could here voices from an upstairs window, and I hallooed. A voice replied. It took me a few goes to find which window the head was popping from. The head said, “Do you speak English?”

It turned out to be Alistair Hamilton, a very Scottish name, but a very Welsh man. In fact a Cardiff supporter. Now today, the day after I was speaking to him, Cardiff are playing Blackpool at Wembley. The winner will enter the Premiership, what used to be the First Division (this is soccer I am talking about). At least two of my brothers are avid Blackpool supporters. Blackpool used to be one of the top teams and Gaile, my late first wife, in whose memory I am doing this Big Walk to raise funds for Pancreatic Cancer UK, had two uncles playing in the famous “Matthews Cup Final” of 1953, which Blackpool won. In fact one uncle, Harry Johnson, was the captain of the team and the other was Stanley Mortensen, the only person ever to score a hat-trick in a Cup Final at Wembley, unlike Stanley Matthews, who didn’t score at all. If Blackpool win today, it will be back to the glory days for them after decades spent in the much lower divisions. At least one of my brothers will be at Wembley today, and so will all the family of the aforementioned Alistair Hamilton.

So that was enough of a coincidence. But add to that the fact that Alistair and his wife are next week off south to camp in, yes, Puivert, where I live and where I started VBW 8 days ago.

Day 7

We are now in Caylus, a place we realise we have visited before. I have walked 33 kms today, which took only 6 hours (a short walk after yesterday) from Penne, and 241 kms for the 7 days.



An uneventful day spent mainly marvelling at the splendid scenery of the Gorges de Aveyron and such places as St Antonin Noble Val, 12 kms back down the road, and providing the bridge picture.

I have learned something from yesterday’s experience. Although most people walking the GRs do so to enjoy the rurality and the challenge of the great rough outdoors, I have a different objective – I need to get North. It is no advantage or pleasure to me, to walk for over 9 hours to cover only 38 kms and to advance, as the crow flies, probably on 20 kms in the right direction. From now on, if the road is a better choice to get onwards, and if it is a quiet road, then the road it is for me.

Oh, and the shoes? They do feel slightly roomier around the toebox. Thank you, Colin, Liz, Ang and Paul. And especially Gay, who worried these old shoes back to life.

Day Six Extra

When I came down out of the wilderness yesterday, after over 9 hours of walking, the first thing that caught my eye once I hit a bit of blessed flat road, was a wonderful field full of poppies. The next thing was, walking towards me, carrying the Vic’s Big Walk Battle Flag, Ang and Paul, Australian friends who live next door in Puivert, It must have been an even longer day than I thought – when I left “home” this morning there had been no suggestion that they would visit us. In the meantime, they had driven all that way, had lunch with Gay, an accompanied her during the long wait to discover what had become of me.

There must be a story behind that, and here it is. I foolishly set out on this walk with two brand new pairs of shoes. They are the same type and size of shoe which I have worn, without complaint and with much pleasure, during 12,000 kms of training. I don’t know whether they are marginally smaller around the toe box than my previous pairs, or if it is just that I am walking so much more, especially with vicious ups and downs and consequent slamming of my toes into the front of my shoes, but as a result, I now have several severely damaged toe nails, which are eventually going to come off.

In order to set out with new shoes (so that I would have enough sole to last me the whole trip) I gave away two part-used and very comfortable pairs to my friend Colin. But while I was out on yesterday’s marathon walk, Gay had contacted Ang and Paul, got them to contact Liz and Colin, retrieve the gifted shoes (what did Colin think of that? Vic Heaney, the Indian giver – but Colin, all this was done without my knowledge!) and bring them up to a rendezvous at Penne, where Gay and I were to spend the night.

I have to say it was very nice to see Ang and Paul, the best neighbours we have ever had. We had a bit of a chat and they went home. We have previously met Ang for lunch in Sydney and I believe our next appointment is in Winchester at the end of June.

Day Six

What a long day this turned out to be. I started walking at 6.40 and finished at 16.00, having walked for over 38 kms. I hadn’t intended to walk so far – that’s a long story, mainly about poor estimation. But even if I had, I would have thought maybe six and a half hours, not over nine houses, as it turned out.

The terrain was dreadrul for walking. It was it all up and down, even more than the previous days – not only did I walk almost a full marathon today, but I also climbed a total of 1905 metres, which is one and a half times the height of Ben Nevis, Britains highest mountain.

That would have been hard, but it would not have slowed me down much. The tracks for almost all of those kilometres was either loose stones or knobbly bigger stones, the sort of surface I really dislike, especially coming downhill, and especially with the state of my eyes.

Picture this wonderful little scene when I was about two kilometres from the end, where Gay had made me some lunch several hours earlier – there was a sign across the track – the GR46, one of France’s major pedestrian highways – accompanied by a fence. The sign said that the route was closed and please refer to something which was so curled up I couldn’t read it. Curling was obviously in vogue, so I did the same with my lip and climbed over the fence and another one a few hundred metres further along. After walking so far today, and over 200 kms in the past 6 days, I was not going to go back to please some bloody-minded farmer.


As usual, I have some nice piccies to post, but they fail to load through Internet Everywhere. I will add them when I can.

Day Five Extra

Thanks to a donated Internet connection, I just managed to add photographs to the last few posts.

From here on, the walk becomes very rural, with even less chance of a decent connection via my dongle. I may manage to post, but quite likely without enough signal strength to add pictures. I will come back and add them whenever I can.

Don't forget, double-clicking on any of the pictures will enlarge them.

When Gay came to the tourist office, seeking information about Internet access, there just happened to be a journalist here. He is interested in the story of Vic's Big Walk for Pancreatic Cancer research, and came across to V-Force One to make an appointment for this evening. He is coming at 7 for interview and photographs, then he is giving us a lift to the pizzeria. This is extremely convenient because it is where I finished walking this morning - Gay and I will walk back to the campsite, and in the morning I will start out on the track I seek, which just happens to start about 20 metres from our vehicle.

Day Five

Today’s walk was a little shorter, at 31.5 kms. That’s 170.5 kms for VBW so far, in total.

Again, most of it was quite hilly, with a total of 837 metres climbed today. I think it was even more yesterday.

I have now finished the road section of the walk. From here on it will be mostly Grandes Randonnées, or walking tracks. These tend to wander about all over the place, sometimes with big loops of, for instance, 10 kms, which only advance you 2 kms on your way. Where this happens, wherever possible, I will use roads as shortcuts to intersect the loops.

We are camped at Salvagnac, 14, 13, or 11 kms, depending upon which signposts you read, from Lisle sur Tarn, where I stopped for coffee and a text message from Septimus – who is on a walking cruise (work that one out) in Norway.

I saw a welcome sign as I came into the village – “pizza au feu du bois” – pizza made in a wood-fired stove. Our journey from here on is even more rural, passing only through small villages, and I thought I had left the prospect of pizzas behind me for a few weeks. I do like a good pizza, so we shall be off to that restaurant tonight. By a strange coincidence, tomorrow we shall be having Penne – that is the name of tomorrow night’s stop, but all Italophiles know that it is also the name of one type of that other traditional Italian dish, pasta.

I have no broadband dongle signal here, although we have just made a telephone call quite successfully to Penne.

The tourist office is nearby. When Gay asked if there was anywhere locally where we could access the Internet, the lady behind the counter said we could log in on her WiFi. So here I am.

The pictures show a lovely old watermill at St Pierre, just after I started out this morning, and what seems to be a Martian spaceship, not far from where I finished today's walk.

This blog entry may appear late because I am finding it very difficult to get connection to the Internet. I have a dongle for the Orange Internet Everywhere service – but it certainly does not work everywhere.

Day Four

The pics show (a) strange sign which indicated, shortly after I started to walk this morning, that I was even more of course than usual, and (b) my advance party coming out with V-Force one to meet me after 35 kms.



Today I had a pretty uneventful walk - although another long one of 35 kms, from Auriac sur Vendinelle to a lonely crossroads in the middle of nowhere, about 5 kms north of Lavaur. So far I have walked 139 kms since Saturday morning.

At last it was a really fine day, the first we have had for several weeks (and don't forget that about 4 or 5 weeks from now it will be the highpoint of summer).

It was pretty hard walking again - one thing that is really being confirmed in my mind is that there is not much of France that is flat.

With about 5 kms to go, Gay met me in Lavaur, where she had been doing some shopping - including for a longer USB extension so that I can place the dongle outside the Faraday cage which this vehicle so proudly has, but which probably helps to prevent bloggery. We had a coffee and, in my case, a small patisserie before I walked on. This is the first time that I have tried breaking the walk up a bit instead of just charging on to the finishing post. I wondered whether the break would help or hinder me - whether rigor mortis would set in or if the rest would regenerate my legs. I have to say that I think the latter is true. Maybe I should not just set out and charge on for 30-odd kms without stopping, as I usually do.

The regeneration came in useful because the last 5 kms, to the point where we had agreed that Gay would meet me in V-Force One, was all uphill. A worthy finish to a day of ups and downs, geographically.

Gat then whisked me off to a very rural campsite about 7 kms away. Tomorrow morning whe will take me back to the crossroads, where I start the final road section before setting out on the Grandes Randonnees tracks on Day 6. Then it will be mainly traffic-free GRs all the way to the port at Caen/Ouistreham.

These blog entries will appear late because I am finding it very difficult to get connection to the Internet. This is likely to be the pattern for the whole of this trip because we are travelling through such rural areas - also France is very hilly so there are lots of dead areas for telephone reception. So there will likely be several days without blog entries, then a rush of several, like this batch.