Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread – a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met – and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.

Terziano Tiziani – A Fortune Teller Told Me

It’s not often that I start off the day by wolfing down a can of tinned mackerel. If truth be known, I would much have preferred a cup of coffee and a pain au chocolat. The problem was that these golden nuggets were under lock and key in Montréal’s bakery section and I didn’t have the nerve to ask the supermarket assistant how to access them. So mackerel it was.

As breakfasts go I’ve known worse. For hangover cures, South Korea had a wide variety of breakfast options, the most authentic of which was a dish called ‘Haejang -kuk’.

Haejang-guk or hangover soup refers to every kind of guk or soup eaten as a hangover cure in Korean cuisine. It usually consists of dried napa cabbage vegetables and meat in a hearty beef broth. One type of haejangguk, seonjikuk, includes sliced congealed ox blood (similar to black pudding), and another type, sundaeguk, includes blood sausage made with intestine stuffed with pig’s blood and other ingredients. So in comparison to these Korean favourite hangover breakfast blasts, eating tinned mackerel for breakfast was a teddy bear’s picnic.

As I glanced through a pamphlet showing the list of local associations in Montréal, one thing struck me. For a small town of 2,300 inhabitants, there were more associations than you could shake a stick at- karate, ju-jitsu, roller-blading, local history, poetry appreciation, a Franco-German friendship but no Anglo-French association of any shape or size. It struck me as a strange omission for a region of France that is crawling with Brits.

As I was heading out of Montréal, a thought occurred to me. Was the lack of an Anglo-French association related to the activities of the infamous Edward, the Black Prince during the 100 Years War?

In 1355AD the Black Prince ravaged the local area conducting what was called a chevauchée, and ended up besieging, capturing Montréal, and forcing all the inhabitants to flee. Maybe people in these parts have long memories and the Brits have yet to be forgiven for the Black Prince’s atrocities!

As I headed out of Montréal towards Fanjeaux I got my first glimpse of the Pyrenees. The weather has been so hot in the south of France over the past few months that there wasn’t any sign of snow on the peaks.

I made good progress through gently rolling countryside that reminded me of somewhere in the south of England and reached Fanjeaux for a lunch break and a second tin of mackerel.

Sitting on the steps of a gilded statue of the Virgin Mary chomping my way through a carton of grated carrot I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew with the day’s 38km walk to Pamiers. A lack of alternative accommodation options meant that I had little choice but to hope for the best and that I arrived in Mirepoix before the violent storms predicted for the late afternoon.

During the afternoon, the landscape began to subtly change with a fair few ascents and descents. Mid afternoon I crossed a wind blown ridge and encountered a man weilding an enormous glider and a huge control box. An ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

The last couple of hours hes

The last couple of hours heading to Mirepoix was a bit of a struggle. The wind dropped, the temperature rose as did the humidity. It was a question of doggedly putting one foot in front of the other and taking frequent breathers.

After nearly 10 hours walking I finally made it into Mirepoix, made a beeline for the Cathedral and the central square, plonked myself down in a café and ordered a large beer. It tasted so good!

Christine, my host for the night, had kindly agreed to pick mr up from the Post Office in Mirepoix and drive me to her house some 3km outside town. We arrived in the nick of time. Shortly afterwards the heavens opened unleadhing a downpour of biblical proprtions.

After a quick shower I came down for supper. There were 4 of us. A chap from Western Africa who was helping Christine out wirh some building work on an adjoining property and Nathalie, a friend of Chrstine’s who was staying for a few days.

A bottle of wine appeared and we settled down for a sumptuous feast of broccoli soup in coconut milk, sphagetti carbonara and chocolate cake.

The conversation flowed with the wine. Nathalie was a yoga enthusiast who had travelled widely in Asia and visited Tibet in tbe early 90s. We chatted about Mongolian shamanism, Korean mudang (fortune tellers), yoga and transpersonal psychotherapy as well as a few less esoteric subjects such as how to make Englush scones!

Shortly before midnight I made my excuses (I had a blog to write) and nade my way off to bed. It had been a long day and for one thing I was mightily grateful – that my host hadn’t served up mackerel for supper!