Aire-sur-l'Adour to somewhere between Pimbo and Geaune; Something Explodes.

 

After a short climb out of the Adour river valley, the way from Aire-sur-l’Adour is not just flat but punishing, endless, Midwest flat. The route winds between fields, alongside fields, through fields. An endless featureless expanse of turned soil and yellow-brown grit paths. The verges are green, the sky is blue, the fields are brown on brown on brown. In this slow grind I am lulled into an unpleasant daydream that I struggle to shake myself out of. I have to take my headphones out and breathe slowly. Nothing moves except the snaking line of pilgrims, strapped up for the morning, in luminous jackets and dirty boots. 

My plan for the day is to leave the trail. I’ve been unable to get accommodation along the usual route, and have ended up choosing a random AirBnB which is not egregiously out of the way. I get some strange looks as I leave the route. Someone whistles and gestures to me, mistaking me for lost. I am not lost in the way they think. The day has taken a turn. 

As I try to re-find my equilibrium on a new path, without guiding scallop shells or bon chemins, I wonder idly if there’s any danger in leaving the route. Here’s some context which escaped yesterday’s post: I was menaced by an untethered dog (un chien en liberté - are not all dogs born free?). I about-turned and went back the other way, urgently calculating if there was a long way around, and then some more experienced hikers came with me and with safety in numbers, a jabbed pole and a hyah hyah! we passed the dog, which in any case seemed to have mostly been waiting for the postman. 

This stuck in my mind and as I set off down new roads I thought about it again. And, as if summoned, several furious dogs launched themselves at a thin, barely-holding bit of fence. Feeling sick, I walked-ran down the road, gripping my stick tightly. I get along with dogs who get along with me. 

The path takes me through a stretch of woodland, over a stream, and then back out into farmland again. Then there is an explosion so loud that I hear it spread across the valley and hit the far side. This is it, I think. France is trying to kill me. My first thought is that a still has exploded. Rural farmers with illegal brewing operations. Wouldn’t be the first time. But, though there are no further explosions and my heart rate settles down, the noise doesn’t stop entirely. What I initially took for a single passing plane turns out to be a near-constant roaring noise in the sky. It ebbs and flows - sometimes so heavy and bassy that I feel it thrum through my guts, sometimes more of an ambience, distant thunder - but it never stops. 

I look up into the sky and I see nothing but an eagle, which on a better day would have been the most exciting thing to happen. 

The day begins to take on the character of a nightmare. 

Every farm with rusted gate dangling open I approach with my stick held out defensively, waiting for some snarling thing to come hurtling out. I try to walk on the verge so that my boots on gravel don’t alert the dogs. My nerves are shot. The roaring never stops. Blue sky, wisps of cloud, the occasional cry of the eagle, and a deep roaring across the sky, continuous and sometimes so loud that if I was to speak - and I think I probably was muttering things like, fuck me, and Jesus Christ - it would have been drowned out. I stopped looking up eventually but there was never anything there. 

I pass a farmhouse which looks the type to be bursting with dogs. So it proves. Another comes hurtling out at me. I see its owner. He waves and says something in French, which I assume is along the lines of, “My dog is coming to slaughter you.” The dog retreats at a jabbed stick and I keep moving. My bones are aching after the long walk yesterday. This, perhaps more than anything, wears at me. I walk and I suffer. 

I pass a copse next to another farmhouse and thick smoke billows out from deep inside it somewhere. 

I pass a sewage processing plant, the air thick with the smell of ordure. 

I pass long-toothed agricultural devices, smears of animal shit on the road, wet ditches thick with white lillies. The roaring never stops. The roaring never stops.

I look up how to ask, “What is the terrible sound?” in French. I plan to ask it to the first person I see. But I don’t see anyone. 

In time I leave the sound behind. I stop in Geaume. I drink three beers. I buy a bottle of wine, three tomatoes, an onion, some garlic, some green beans and some fresh tagliatelle. I trudge another four or five kilometres. I forget to unpause my Strava. I make it to the reason for my detour: a farmhouse at the top of a hill. There are several bedrooms, but I am the only guest. I look in the fridge and I find: a pot of home-made pesto and what I assume is cider in a clear, unlabelled plastic bottle, full of sediment. 

I drink the cider - and it is some of the best cider I have ever had - and then I cook dinner. I find some dried sage in the cupboard. I find salt and pepper and olive oil infused with fresh basil leaves. I find what looks at first glance to be a bottle of wine but turns out to be astonishingly good vinegar. Perhaps from that same wine. I find a soundsystem and an elderly CD rack, so I get it working and put on some John Lee Hooker. I do what I always do when I want to calm down - I make dinner. 

The walls are tiled, the floors are wooden, and there are wicker chairs under low beams. Sun drifts in from small windows. I cook with the wine I brought to drink - they say not to cook with good wine, but good wine is what I have, so I do. I think they’re wrong - the wine is the main ingredient here. I still drink the rest of it myself. The food is good because it is made from good things: it would be impossible to make a bad meal with these raw materials. 

I have a bath. I read the rest of Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea. I drink wine. Outside the heavens open again. I open the windows to let the sound of it in, and the steam from the bath drifts out into the evening air.