Bonjour dear readers! I shall write a little something to let you know I am still alive and striding and to see if this works. It should do since I seem to have minutes, bytes and battery to spare, there is reception here and also WiFi access. However I have my doubts - yesterday I thought I had cracked the previously insoluble problem of tracking the journey online then making it available to others by saving the map to this point and sharing it via Facebook but apparently it didn't show up on Facebook and then it inexplicably disappeared. It took an hour to find again but at least I have the map which I am tracking and will continue to track via an app called EveryTrail, which you should be able to access for free by registering then searching on it for nick19. It would be great to hear from someone who had succeeded in doing that. I have been in France for over a week now and have covered about 150 km. from Guerande to Ancenis with a break in the middle for a spot of sight-seeing in Nantes. I have slept in a motorway concrete-box hotel, with two families via Couchsurfing and Airbnb; at a chambre d'hotes i.e. guest-house; in a deserted lakeside hotel; at an apartment at the quayside in Nantes with a sculptor and a set designer/builder; at their workshop in the countryside; and at a rented studio apartment opposite the castle in Ancenis, where I am now composing this in the public library. The first few days across country from Guerande I didn't see the Loire at all but there was plenty of water about in the form of marshes, ponds, fens, bogs and puddles. I imagine the English fenland country in East Anglia was like this in the days of Boudicca or Hereward the Wake when the locals repelled invaders by knowing how to get from A to B on dry land. When I arrived at St Lyphard I was informed that the GR3 was closed until May or June due to flooding so I would have to proceed by walking along the main road for 10 km (not a great idea with only a narrow grass verge alongside it) or taking a bus to Herbignac, from which I could walk on country lanes to my destination near La Chapelle des Marais. So the journey began with a hiccup. The next morning I was up early and out of the house at 7.30 which at the time was about an hour and a bit after dawn, and went exploring to find a way across the marsh to Sainte Reine de Bretagne. People had said that path may still be flooded too but it was passable and I saw some unusual wildlife including what must have been a vole although it was the size of a beaver, and an egret. In contrast to the succession of country lanes, bridlepaths and old drovers' or carters' tracks I found over the first 5 days, the last couple of days I have been following the riverbank on a mixture of well-made straight gravel paths, wide enough for occasional motor traffic - farmers, fishermen, woodcutters and the like - and tiny footpaths, one of which threatened to tip me into the river yesterday as it was so perilously slippery. There has been much birdlife to see here as well, including herons, ducks and divers, and a pair of unknown birds with a pronounced yellow back. In addition there are all the birdcalls from cuckoos, owls, buzzards, robins, blackbirds, finches and woodpeckers. Yesterday I spoke to a fisherman who told me all about the kinds of fish they have in the river and which ones are most prized, notably the sandre, which I think is called zander in English. I am signing off now and taking to the road again - farewell!