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

Good food is always a trouble and its preparation should be regarded as a labour of love.

Elisabeth David

Today was a marathon of a day – 42km or 26.2km as the crow flies or as Pheidippides ran in 490BC from the Battle of Marathon to Athens with the message of Nike (‘Victory’) before promptly collapsing and dying.

Today was meant to be a long and arduous day, but strangely enough it didn’t turn out that way. Pauline came to pick me up from the gite shortly after 7am and ferry me back to Bruges. By 7.30 am I was on my way to Oloron-Sainte-Marie.

I’d love to tell you that a lot of interesting things happened during the day, but I’d be lying. In contrast to the previous 12 days, the going was easy, there were no lung busting ascents and vertiginous descents. In a word, the going was easy.

In the absence of other stimulation, I spent much of the day dwelling on the curious fate of English celebrity chefs, triggered by reading an article that they are in terminal decline due to the advent of celebrity chefs on YouTube who are not subject to the same standards ( H&S et al) as mainstream cooking programmes on terrestrial TV.

Growing up I was never a great fan of celebrity chefs like Fanny Craddock or Graham Kerr ( aka The Galloping Gourmet). However, two celebrity chefs that did grab my attention during my teenage years were Elisabeth David and Keith Floyd.

In the mid 70s my idea of a fun meal out was to head down with my mother to the local Wimpy bar. These were the days before the invasion of UK shores by the likes of MacDonalds, Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken. In the mid 70s you could feast on such delights as ‘Bender the Meaty Frankfurter’, a ‘Shanty Brunch’ or a ‘Wimpy Grill’ followed by a ‘Brown Derby’ or a ‘Knickerbocker Glory’. What more could you ever want?

The answer, from Elisabeth David was – quite a lot! Revolutionary though it was, Elisabeth David introduced the British to the concept that there was more to good cuisine than prawn cocktail, hungarian goulash and arctic roll. In her way, she was the first celebrity chef.

Then came Keith Floyd. For me he epitomised everything that was brilliant yet slightly bonkers about British cooking – you never quite knew whether the dish he was preparing would make it to the table in one piece or whether he would dissolve under the armada of glasses of vin rouge he would consume during the meal preparation. One thing was for sure – health and safety might not have been his priority but Floyd had style!

Sadly celebrity chef programmes are a dying breed. For all those of you who yearn for the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Nigella Lawson or Ken Hom then I’m afraid the culinary news is fairly bleak. In a word – eat your heart out!

Back to the walk – after 4 hours and 22km I reached the village of Buzy. I very much hoped that there would be a café in the village but there wasn’t. The Boozer in Buzy was not to be!

A few kilometres further on I had more luck – a small hamlet which did stretch to a bar. I needed no second invitation to take the weight off my feet and order a beer to speed me on my way.

Most of the afternoon was spent walking through woods. The terrain was fairly flat but the views were uninspiring. I met a couple of ladies searching for chanterelle mushrooms, but apart from that there was little to excite the senses.

Shortly after 4.30pm I got lost. The red and white waymarker signs disappeared into thin air and my Buen Csmino app failed to function. The end result was that I ended up taking a 2km detour along a railway track before I reached Oloron-Sainte-Marie shortly before 5pm.

Supper at the gite proved a jolly affair. Two of the other pilgrims at supper were from Brittany and had a host of pilgrim stories to retell.

One of them had walked from Finisterre in Brittany to Finisterre in Galicia. All of which put my walk from St Peter’s, Winterbourne Stoke to St Peter’s, Rome into perspective!

Today was a marathon of a walk, that’s for sure. But one thing is for certain – celebrity TV chefs may be going out of fashion but Elisabeth David’s  recipe for potatoes gratin dauphinois always knocks the spots off ‘French fried potatoes extra’ at Wimpy! And call me traditional, but YouTube chefs can never replace the style and sheer bravu that was Keith Floyd!