Now Coming To You On Facebook!

Nicola and Karen tell me that Vic's Big Walk now has its own Facebook page.

Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1322474353#!/group.php?gid=103871062992919

Day Fourteen

27.5 kms today. I have been walking for two weeks and have covered 450 kms. How am I feeling? A bit tired towards the end of each walk (even a “short” one like today’s) but OK an hour or two later and ready by the next morning for another effort. My feet are certainly in better condition than they were a week ago. Amazingly, I have not lost any weight, yet we are not eating big meals and have not even had any wine, except for a small amount on the three occasions we have eaten out.

We are parked in a wood, a simple camping ground attached to an interesting premises. Monsieur breeds geese for foie gras. There is also a hangar and an airstrip as part of the ensemble – monsieur’s son is a keen pilot and in fact was in the air when I arrived here after walking from St Leon.

Gay had done such a good job of ironing out the kinks in GR36 that from St Leon to here was only 23.5 so, after a cup of tea, I walked on another 4 kms to the point where I will start tomorrow morning. I was showered, dressed, and we had eaten lunch before 1330.

Oops! Nicola just pointed out that I have not said where we are. We are at Milhac d'Auberoche. Tomorrow night we shall be in one of our favourite places - Brantome.

Day Thirteen

“Flower of the Aquitaine” – a line from the Mark Knopfler song “Done with Bonaparte”. There are lots of wild flowers here, of course, as in the rest of France. As the picture shows the really dominant one at the moment is the poppy.

I left Sarlat early this morning. The first kilometre was descent into the town centre, then I climbed over 500 metres in the next two kilometres. Soon after I had left the city limits I was into bewilderment mode, because where my next planned junctions and changes of course should have been, there was instead a bypass under construction, which had obliterated all sign of what was on the map. Nothing daunted, I pressed on.

Much of the day was spent walking in rain. Miserable, but much better than the three thunderstorms we had yesterday, which fortunately waited until we were at our base for the night.

We have arrived at St Leon sur Vezere, after a walk of just over 30 kms (total 423 kms so far) and the now expected total ascent of 1276 metres.

Day Twelve

Last night, just after we went to bed, the mother of all thunderstorms arrived. There was a colossal amount of rain. I’m sure it wasn’t coming down in drops, just being poured from that huge bucket in the sky. It was like being in a carwash for a couple of hours, with added sound and light effects. In its own way, it was magnificent. We were glad not to be in a tent.

Today I walked from Souillac to Sarlat-le-Canada, famous for its lovely old buildings and for its huge and splendid markets.

I also walked, as you can see, from the ancient province of Quercy into the ditto of Perigord, from the current department of Lot into the same of Dordogne (I think Napoleon brought in the departments) and from the region of Midi-Pyrenees (in which I have been walking, except for the first few kms on the first day and an aberration on the second day, for the whole of VBW so far) into Acquitaine, of Eleanor fame.

Gay, having moved V-Force One on to Sarlat, walked out 6 kms or so to join me for the last bit of the walk. Where we met was in a forest – actually, almost all of today’s walk was deep in forest – where loggers had clearly been at work this morning, churning up the track –already sodden from last night’s rain - so that it turned into that sort of clay which keeps getting thicker and thicker on the bottom of the shoes and one keeps getting taller and taller. Gary Glitter clay, we call it, because it reminds us of his ridiculous shoes.

We had no sooner arrived at the campsite, had a shower and lunch, than the next thunderstorm arrived.

I walked 33.5 kms, 393 so far. I also climbed 1452 metres. All that talk of how many Ben Nevises I have climbed got me to thinking. I should have been keeping a proper record of this, and will go back over the routes with my trusty Satmap Active 10, but I have actually already climbed Everest on this trip, as well as walking nearly 400 kms.

Day Eleven

It was an early start from La Bastide Murat this morning. Partly because it was forecast to be 31 degrees, the same as yesterday. That is far too hot for this type of activity, especially when the summer has been so reluctant to arrive and there has been no acclimatisation.

Another reason for the early start was that we tend to wake up as the light filters into V-Force One, and the birds start to sing. That is normally just after five at this time of the year. So I am usually walking well before 7.

Yesterday, however, I awoke to hear a bird ringing dem bells, and my mind decided it was time to rise. It took me some time to realise that it was a nightingale, and that the time was only 2 a.m. Because I had switched into getting-up mode, I slept only fitfully after that. And one does need a good night’s sleep every night when walking over 30 kms a day.

We are at Souillac, I have walked 31.5 fairly uneventful kilometres today and 359.5 kms in VBW so far.

The pics show a wonderful building next to yesterday’s campsite, a lonely walker approaching Vers a couple of days ago, and the old abbey here in Souillac

Day Ten

Today I walked from Marty, near Vers, to beyond Montfaucon. 33.5 kms, which means that I have walked 328 kms so far, in the first ten days of VBW.

I had a bit of trouble with my navigation at first. I am entirely dependent on the Satmap Active 10. Gay works out the course on maps, then I feed it into the Active 10. All I have to do then is follow the course as it appears on the device. Well, the course was in there when I started off, but the other ingredient for successful navigation was missing. We were so deep in the gorge of the River Lot, with huge battlement-like cliffs on either side, that the device could not “acquire” enough satellites to give me a fix, I walked for over 8 kms before the device suddenly locked on and knew where we were.

It was very rural, some track, some roads. The first town I came to, or, as I see it, the first coffee, was La Bastide Murat, after about 23 kms. Gay had already paused here to check out a bar for me, then texted me of its whereabouts. I duly went there, had a coffee, while thrusting a VBW card at each English voice I heard. Resultant chat with one couple finished with them giving me a small donation for Pancreatic Cancer research. This was in cash, but fortunately PCUK have provided me with a purple collecting container, so it will go in there. Maybe I should walk along with this.

I walked on to Montfaucon, where Gay was waiting. The plan was that if I felt OK by this point – about 28 kms – I would walk on a while to take a chunk out of tomorrow’s walk. I felt fine, so after another coffee, and again depositing my rucksack with Gay, I did another five and a half kms to the agreed meeting point. Gay will drive me back there in the morning to start the next stage. I’m not sure she would have picked this particular spot if she had realised just how narrow the lanes were just there, but fortunately, today there was no contradictory traffic.

I haven't mentioned the climbing since the very hard day when I climbed one and a half Ben Nevises, but every day I climb at least one Ben Nevis, or, if I don't manage that, at least a Helvellyn or a Snowdon.

Day Nine

We are at Vers, pronounced to rhyme with Bears. Strangely, one kilometre before Vers is a village called Bears, which is not pronounced to rhyme with bears. I walked here this morning from Concots. Our original estimation of the distance was 30 kms, but after Gay finished sorting out shortcuts – using the new policy of ignoring the GRs if they wander about too much, it had been whittled down to 22. So I actually walked past Vers, where Gay had booked into a very pleasant campsite next to the River Lot. We had met by arrangement at La Truite d’Orėe – the Golden Trout – in Vers, for a coffee, before I walked on to Marty (Jeez! Frasier!). I left the rucksack with Gay, which really put a spring in my step. Unfortunately, I also left the bottle of water she had just bought me to carry the last 5 kms. Some people are just born to be plonkers.

The reason for walking past Vers, even though we are camping here, and making the 22 kms up to 27, was to take a chunk out of tomorrow’s planned route, which would otherwise be well over 30.

So my walk today was 27 kms, the same as yesterday. But what a difference. Yesterday, the shortest walk so far, was also the most tiring, possibly a delayed reaction to the very hard day on Thursday. I was really dragging my feet the last few kms, and was feeling a strain in my back. Gay walked out to meet me and asked why I had such a list to port. I hadn’t realised, but I was suffering from something I have seen discussed in walkers’ magazines – so called “leaning over syndrome”, where there is an involuntary leaning over to one side or the other, which comes on during a long walk. That’s what was putting such a strain on my back, of course. Apparently we all tend to lean a little, which is why, when blindfolded, we always walk in a circle, and why people get lost in woods when they think they are walking in a straight line.

Today’s walk, the same distance as yesterday, felt like a stroll in the park, and put me up to 295 kms for VBW so far.

Blackpool won the day at Wembley, by the way. I know that because two of my daughters and one of my brothers texted me excitedly with the news.