Still Alive

I haven’t passed anywhere with Internet for a few days and the phone is getting very low, but I thought I’d better just reassure anyone who thought the bears might have got me already.

The weather has gradually got clearer over the last three days and today the sun finally appeared for the first time. There’s been a bitter northerly wind though, so I spent yesterday in fleece, goretex, hat and gloves - it was more like spring in Scotland than summer in France! The wind kept things pretty cool again today but, after a week of dark clouds and fog it was a huge relief not to have to worry about rain. To celebrate I washed some clothes and hung them off the back of my bag to dry.

Progress has been on and off - at times I’ve pushed ahead to try and claw back some of the time lost in Paris, but at other times there hasn’t been anywhere good to camp, or I’ve just felt like stopping. It’s now looking unlikely that I’ll make up the time by the end of this stage, which is a village called Lescun, where I should arrive on Thursday.