I thought I'd post a few random chunks of Work in Progress on a (roughly) weekly basis as I have been telling people for months that I'm working at home writing but haven't been sharing any of the outcome. The preface will inform readers that the whole narrative is absolutely true although/and there are conversations which I have obviously not remembered word for word and thoughts which I may have attributed to other people based on real events. Some people but no places have had their names changed. This chunk begins at Savonnieres near Tours on April 14th:

Graffiti: LE BONHEUR NE VAUT QUE S’IL EST PARTAGÉ (Happiness is worth nothing unless it is shared).

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I spent a couple of days in Saumur recuperating and getting used to the rhythm of town life in France: many cafés and bars and boulangeries are open from about 7 a.m. then often close after lunch until 5 or 6 when they reopen until sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. depending on whether or not they serve food. Most shops are open from about 9 in the morning to 12 or 12.30 then again from 2 to 6, not counting bank holidays or religious festivals when everything is closed, Sundays when almost everything is closed, Mondays when most things are closed and Tuesdays when some things are closed. Most people still take at least an hour and a half off for lunch, especially outside city centres where European or American office hours are beginning to creep in along with the growth in fast food outlets, and people rarely go out to eat in the evening even if they have something to celebrate. Of course the whole country is being particularly hit by the EU austerity measures so many shops, bars and hotels are closing down. People are much more likely to have a barbecue in the garden than go out for a meal at the weekend, for example. I went to the cinema in Saumur to see a popular new film – The Second Best Marigold Hotel. It was a Friday evening and the show was starting just as darkness fell but for the first time ever I found myself to be the only member of the audience when the lights went down. In fact the projectionist came out of his box at that point and said:

“Since you’re the only one here do you mind if we skip the adverts?”

One disappointment about Saumur was that I didn’t come across a circus. A friend had told me before I left of a dream he had had in which he had found himself in Saumur on Angela’s birthday, surrounded by a troupe of circus performers. He expected that I would meet them.

“This young man came to stay last night. He was very interested in your running, you know.”

“Oh yes?”
“Yes, he said he’s on the way along the Loire, on the old St Martin’s Way.”
“Where’s that exactly?”
“Well it goes along the Loire to Candes, you know, where he’s buried. You know the story, don’t you?”

“No, I must have heard it when I was a child. You probably told it to me then, Maman.”

“St Martin was a Roman soldier in France who converted to Christianity. He saw a beggar one day shivering with cold so he took off his cape, cut it in half and gave half to the beggar to keep him warm. He ended up being abbot of Tours then when he died near the river they put his body in a boat and sent it down to Candes, and they say that as the boat passed by all the plants blossomed and the flowers bloomed although it was in November!”

“Candes. That’s not far from here, is it?”

“No, it’s just down the road from Fontevraud. Ten kilometres or so.”

“So where was he from, this guest?”

“He’s come all the way from Guerande, he’s been walking for over a fortnight already, but he says he’s only just begun. He’s going all the way to Gerbier de Jonc, he said. Where is that exactly?”

“It’s in Haute-Loire, I remember running there once in a 100km race through the mountains, Cevennes and all that.”

“Anyway I told him all about your career, how you’ve been champion of the world…well alright then, world record-holder. He was dead impressed that you’re still doing it at your age – how old are you? 48, isn’t it? “

“Yes all right Maman, there’s no need to rub it in.”

“I think he was quite humbled really you know. He turned up feeling very proud of himself, you could tell. We had a good chat before I sent him down the road for a bite to eat – it’s not bad that restaurant now since they changed hands, it’s mostly pizzas and that kind of thing you know, not proper cooking, but they have a decent oven. He told me his wife had passed away a year ago – she must have been young, I could tell he had lost something. He looked happy and sad at the same time. But I’m still here and getting on for eighty, so you must have a good chance of lasting well, especially with all the running you do and how fit you are. I don’t know how you do it, really I don’t. Running for 24 hours. That Englishman said if he ran all the way like that he’d be at the source in four days from here! What was your record again?”

“240 kilometres, Maman. Do you want me to say it again so you can be proud again?”

“Oh I am proud, my dear. I know there are lots of other people in France who are proud of you too but I’m the proudest.”

Sunday. Everything in Fontevraud was closed apart from a solitary stall which an oyster-seller had erected in the town square across from the entrance to the Abbey. I got lost walking along footpaths across grazing land next to the river then stopped for a chilly picnic and spoke to Jannah at lunch-time. I am appreciating the good will shewn to me by so many people at home who are wishing me a fair wind. Arrived at Chinon by crossing the river on a very long narrow old road bridge with the massive medieval castle and city walls silhouetted against the fading daylight. After a couple of hours I was getting fed up with Chichinon, as I was beginning to think of it, or perhaps Chichioui. It was prettified, twee, expensive. Went wandering in the old part of town where I did find some picturesque ancient dwellings and a wine-shop which had a certain medieval charm. The boss was an expert in the wines of the region and gave me a couple of tasters and I fell into conversation with his sidekick later as she was smoking outside. She was dark-skinned and racy, with much silver jewellery and a leather jacket, and we were getting on famously until her boyfriend arrived. She gave me a lift back to my hotel on the other (poor) side of the river, the only place offering a room for as little as €60, which seemed like a lot to me. I was beginning to calculate the cost to my bank balance if I continued at this rate having to stay in such places – and it wasn’t anything special, a kind of small-scale Travelodge in a back street. I was keeping a note every evening of my outgoings on that day which I stuck to pretty rigorously. There were inevitably items I forgot, but it was a good exercise to review the day like that. The following day I had little opportunity to spend any money all day as I trudged through an endless forest without seeing another soul apart from two woodcutters at about midday and a young woman at a house in a small gap between the trees – a Forestry Commission property, so her husband was probably one of the woodcutters. There was a village in the middle of the forest called St Benoit, a scattering of four hamlets with a church and a café which had no customers at midday. The patron told me there was very little passing traffic outside July and August and the villagers were too busy working to go to the café but he had some land – pasture and a small vineyard  ̶  and a tractor to collect timber to sell, so he could make ends meet. The weather has changed and become much warmer and clear which is a shock to the system after the late winter temperatures of the last fortnight and thirty km felt like a long way, although I was rewarded with some beautiful sights in the forest, including a family of deer who crossed my path, startled by my sudden arrival. At Azay-le-Rideau on the River Indre there was a fine B&B on the main street where I could tend to my blisters but once again was unable to connect to the Internet to find other places to stay. There was a ‘mediathèque’ in town but it was only open afternoons and I wasn’t ready for another day off yet. “Couldn’t connect to server” and “This webpage is not available” are becoming horribly familiar. Sometimes it works if you just move to another corner of the room but sometimes you try that, it doesn’t work and you just feel foolish, especially if you are in a public place. No doubt in ten or fifty years it will be possible to be connected immediately anywhere in the world, and I mean anywhere, at any time, but right now it feels like we are in the middle of the Digital Revolution and no one knows where we are going or how we are going to get there.

                Out of Azay a ‘farmer’ was poisoning his fields. I tried not to get too close: it’s an occupational hazard of long-distance walking as your path might lead you through anything to get from A to B, from poultry killing-fields to paint factories, and you never know what you may be breathing. On the other hand there are days and weeks of clear country air, and here in the middle of April on a fresh clear mild morning I walked on through orchards of apples and pears followed by many hours of forest, but this time not so much pinewoods as mixed beech, birch and chestnut creating an odd juxtaposition of early spring leaf and temperatures of 26˚.

                I seem to have lost my suncream so have to go to a pharmacie to buy an expensive replacement. Pharmacies are not the best places to buy such things as they assume you must be suffering from some skin condition and require a special kind of sunscreen. However they do stock homeopathic remedies as a matter of course, as well as all sorts of useful things like mushroom and toadstool guides and tick-removal implements, and every pharmacie in France seems to have a green neon sign outside which flashes to show the time and the temperature. Having also mislaid my pedometer I am rather stuck – when I set off I was determined to measure the mileage, or kilometrage, that I covered as evidence that I had completed the course. I also set up an app on my iPhone which purports to measure distance as well as showing your route on a map. My thinking was that I might be able to send updates of this map or direct people to get onto the app themselves and follow my course, but I was beginning to wonder about its efficiency: yesterday I walked at least 30 km according to my maps and the signposts en route, but the EveryTrail app told me I had covered 15. It works by satellite – could it be that it doesn’t work under cover of thick forest, or in areas of poor phone reception? No one seems to know the answer to these questions. I came down a hill back to the Loire at Savonnières, a charming place with an island in the middle of the river on which a pair of herons were nesting and several old-fashioned fishing-boats moored at a quay. I stayed at a farm a mile or two out of town with a Monsieur Lleu, who was surprised when I asked him if he was Catalan, saying that his great-grandparents had come from there looking for work in the vineyards of the Loire after the phylloxera epidemic wiped out the vines of the Languedoc in the mid- to late-19^th century. Very hospitable, he offered to run me into town to get an evening meal, and even came back and picked me up later.