Our daily cheese (and bread)

                                   

This may not be a particularly scientific equation but according to my fitness app walking with a backpack burns up approximately 400-600 calories an hour. I figure that if on average I am walking six hours per day on a trek of the Pyrenées that enables me to eat about 900 grams of cheese. Per day! If you can’t think of any other reason to walk ponder that equation for a moment, and if you’re not into cheese substitute whatever floats your boat. Chips. Beer. Pizza. Chocolate. 

While I admired the stamina, and the greater freedom, of the people wild camping along the trail, these days as I age as disgracefully as possible I do prefer a demi-pension or restaurant as opposed to rehydrated vegetables and muesli bars for breakfast. This is doubly so in France where good food is an expectation even in a gîte d’etape. Three courses can come in at under €20 and taste better than anything I had the misfortune to pay for recently at Le Gavroche in London (and I highly recommend the squid risotto at Maison Oppoca in Ainhoa as an example, or the monk fish cassoulet in Terrasse dans le Parc, opposite the train station in Pau). I am always amazed by how much time I can sit grazing in a French brasserie. Not even having to monitor the falling of dead flies onto the table from the flypaper on the ceiling could put me off my dinner after a long day’s walk.

However, being a fish eating veggie did at times limit my options to cheese and eggs, or as the French would have it, cheese omelette. Fortunately, the first stage of the GR10 passes through Pays Basque with regional delights such as Gateau Basque (cream or cherry filling), pain d’epice and sheep’s cheese. Also helpfully, during summer, as the sheep are up on the high pastures so too are the bergers with their mobile milking stations and ‘cheese for sale’ signs. There is no time inappropriate to eat cheese and in Pays Basque they will have it for dessert with jam or a scoop of ice cream on the side.

There is of course always the danger of going slightly overboard. Breakfast was generally bread and jam at 7am (occasionally a gîte would offer cereal and on these rare occasions I would eat two bowls, assuming that the French wouldn’t touch it with a baguette and as the only Anglo it was all mine). I was usually ready for lunch by 11am, which was generally bread and cheese (and please note Didier, above, demonstrating the correct way to carry one’s bread – not folded in two and squashed into the top of the backpack, nor broken up or flattened). On Day 8, and arriving  in Logibar by 1pm, I was in time for a second lunch consisting of the standard vegetarian option: a salad of tomato, lettuce, walnuts, raisins, a few other bits and bobs, topped with warm goat and sheep’s cheese on toast (and nothing tastes better - take that again Le Gavroche with your boring, overpriced parfait and sick inducing bony turbot). Dinner was the usual three course meal, starting with a smaller version of the cheese on toast salad I’d had earlier, followed by a cheese omelette and fromage blanc for dessert. At this point I did wonder if there was an actual limit on how much cheese could be eaten before my heart went into cardiac arrest.

I did fall off the veggie wagon one night. I had forgotten to tell the cook and didn’t have the heart to make him open a can of something as he’d just put an enormous plate of haricot beans surrounded by confit duck leg on the table. May the duck forgive me but it was fecking delicious (take that for the third time Le Gavroche). The occasional lardon may also have been consumed (I think it sometimes counts as vegetarian in France as long as it’s an accompaniment mixed in with the salad).  The occasional falling off the wagon however does not excuse a gîte for refusing to make a vegetarian meal. It’s not that difficult to throw cheese on pasta – and yes I’m talking to you Auberge Elichalt! Or if you’re not going to make it don’t charge for it!! And no, my spleen is not yet emptied. I did manage to snaffle their last tin of pringles though which lasted a few days strapped to my backpack.

An emergency can of tuna was also carried at all times in case there were no shops or restaurants along the route but even better was what became an emergency block of pain d’epice. Thinking that the village shop would be open in Bidarray (Day 3) I ate all my supplies (keeping weight low in the backpack was always a priority). FYI, the village shop in Bidarray is closed Wednesday afternoons. It did reopen at 0830 the next morning but as it was a long day of big ups and downs it was not ideal to be leaving that late. Fortunately, I had accidentally bought a half kilo of pain d’epice the day before (sometimes crap French can turn out to be a virtue). A spicy dense cross between ginger cake and bread, it kept me going for eight hours until I could get to Baigorry, which probably has the most popular Spar on the planet full of customers incredibly grateful to see actual fresh fruit again … and cans of tuna (other treats in Baigorry became a washing machine and clean hair). But like biblical proportions of loaves and fishes, the pain d’epice seemed to regenerate itself and lasted for another two days.

The way of the gîte

It is possible these days to make the crossing of the GR10 without a tent as cabanes, gîtes, refuges and auberges are now spaced across the Pyrenées. This accommodation can range from purpose built with mod-cons, converted homes in bustling villages, to simple renovated barns in the middle of nowhere. They may still at times possess a squat toilet, lack toilet paper, or lack enough toilets, but they make for a comfortable, cheaper option that avoids the carrying of excess baggage.

However, there is a certain artfulness to gîte living. First, and most importantly, getting in early means you can get a good bunk: avoid those near a doorway and go for a low berth if you don’t fancy crawling off a six foot platform in the middle of the night if you need to use the bathroom. Respectful spatial arrangements are necessary including leaving a gap between yourself and the next body if numbers allow. You have no choice in who your neighbour might be, and in the busier gîtes, where the mattresses are lined up next to each other, you can wake up with a complete stranger literally in your face.

Second, don’t forget your earplugs. People will snore and fart and get up and rustle plastic bags. But hopefully you’ll be too tired to worry about it.

Third, go to bed by 9pm and get out no later than 8am unless you’re staying a second night. This may sound draconian but after a day’s walking I can sleep nine hours straight, be up at 6am and never feel tired. It’s a mystery why back in London I can just about manage to haul myself out of bed at 8am only after much mental persuasion, and four hours of uphill in the Pyrenées feels like a walk in the park compared to the four flights of stairs to my office.

Fourth, gîtes are unisex, intergenerational communal spaces. No-one is looking. It is also one of the great benefits of getting old in that I actually don’t care if anyone in the dorm does happen to see me in my undies (and I can highly recommend the Sweaty Betty boxer shorts for quick dry comfort. Now if only I could find a bra that I didn’t have to put on damp every morning). 

Fifth, expect a degree of eccentricity in some of the gîtes. There were beer shandies for the early arrivers on Day 1 because the manager ‘liked our faces’. There was a refusal to provide a vegetarian meal on Day 8 (Auberge Elichalt, Sainte Engrâce – avoid if you have the chance). In the Hebergement Pic D’anie (Lescun, Day 11), there are a lot of dead animals on the walls and a gun rack in the office. This is a reminder that there are sections of the trail best avoided during the hunting season lest an unfortunate walker be mistaken for a pigeon.

Sixth, try to keep track of all your belongings. Everyone has the same looking poles, pants, socks, hats etc, especially after a few days trekking (sweat, mud, wear and tear can soon remove any brand markers).

Seven, boots most definitely stay out.

Eight, communal tables for dinner should be joined.

Most importantly, and for this I thank Kim (a fellow walker occasionally passed along the way): ‘centralise your crap’. This is a lesson for life. Don’t go spreading your baggage in other people’s space and never, NEVER, make anyone else carry it.

Life at the speed of walk

‘We learn a place and how to visualise spatial relationships, as children, on foot and with imagination. Place, and the scale of place, must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities’ (Gary Snyder, Blue Mountains Constantly Walking).

It’s the hottest day of the year in Hendaye (33 degrees), a prelude to a thunderstorm of Pyrenéean proportions. A good day then to start the GR10.

To the question of why I would want to walk 866km over the Pyrenées there is the usual reason of finding out things about yourself you would never discover sitting on a beach. Like how something happens when I pull on a pair of trek pants, and I go from being compulsive about cleanliness to becoming very relaxed about collecting increasing amounts of assorted dirt and stains. Those same pants wont get changed until they can stand up by themselves – usually after a week or so. I also discovered that I feel perhaps a touch too much schadenfreude when getting into the gîte before a downpour and watching the late-comers arriving sodden and bedraggled.

There is experiencing the joy of having all worldly possessions in a 50 litre backpack that I can get down to 12 kilos. So familiar is it to me that I can find anything in it, in the dark, at three in the morning (important when suddenly feeling the urge to pee and needing to find a torch).

There is the simplicity of a routine (get up, dress, breakfast, clean teeth, finish packing, walk, lunch, walk, find gîte, shower, wash socks/undies/t-shirt, sit in bar with cup of tea or beer and greet others as they arrive, check route for next day, read/knit/chat, dinner, sleep), but a routine that never tires as each start and end point and route in-between is a different world to the one yesterday and the one that will be tomorrow.

There is the development of patience and managing unpredictability. The guidebooks offer a basic steer but the trail changes through the season: avalanches, flash floods, forestry and road works all demand their toll. Shops may not open, gîtes may be closed, the weather could do its own thing. And then there are people. Despite possible signs of misanthropy it is necessary to develop a certain degree of tolerance and respect. I may not like hearing the surplus resonance of Daft Punk emanating from other walker’s earphones but if it helps get them up the side of an escarpment then I can hum along for the few moments it takes to pass.

There is the time and space to think profound thoughts or think nothing at all. The latter is incredibly easy to do most of the time, which produced occasional moments of anxiety when waking from a moving daydream and not being 100 percent certain of where I was. But the route in the initial stages is well marked and as long as I could see the familiar red and white ballisage painted on rocks, trees, signposts, telegraph poles, or barns every five minutes or so I figured I was on the right path.

If I was attempting a profound moment of thought it was mostly about borders as the trail weaves in and out of France and Spain. Praise be to the border dwellers who slip between languages and ignore frontiers. There is a surreal moment on Day 1 when the path opens out into a tarmac’ed world of restaurants and ventas (duty free shops). These are to the French what the hypermarchés of Calais are to the British, and similarly they flock to them for the cheaper booze and cosmetics.

There is the joy of feeling like the only person on the mountain that day and the silence that comes with it: so quiet that it is possible to hear the sound of the wind over vulture wings as they ride the thermals close overhead. Other days, however, were surprisingly loud as thousands of bells attached to sheep, goats, horses and cattle on high pastures simultaneously rang out and rebounded off canyon walls. The rivers roared as their blood was up after a night’s storm. The vultures screeched in Jurassic chorus as they stood possessively over a carcass. There is the constant white noise of invisible crickets, the tapping of my poles and the crunch of my boots on stony ground. The singing from a funeral in a 12^th century church mixed with the wind that became increasingly cold as days passed, but under a still hot sun making for a hazy, late summer reverie.

And then there is just the joy of feeling the world pass at the speed of walk. It takes five days before the Atlantic can no longer be seen. Small green rolling hills and farmland become big hills become escarpments become mountains. The route shifts from path to mule track, single track through closed, humid valleys, blinking forests, corn and sheep fields, to long traverses around mountain sides, prairies and ‘guess at which way to go’ paths, way-finding over karst rocks, along ravines, across cols and open peaks above the snow line.

Some mornings are a damp rise through the mist, upwards through clouds coming at me from both sides, hitting the wall of mountain and rising to meet at the crest, engulfing first distant walkers then finally me. Skirting crops and boulders, traversing heather, peat and fern raked tightly against legs and poles. And then downwards in knee crushing descents into chocolate box villages. There must be a general edict in Pays Basque that decrees that all houses must be whitewashed the night before I arrive, while the afternoon light turns the rest of the landscape shades of teal. But as I walk east, and the villages become more rocky and even more chocolate box, like Lescun, held within a circumference of peaks in the Aspe Valley, the more empty they seem to be.

After some time I can’t recall details about scenery. I just go up and down, up and down again. It gets hot, cool, light and shade. By Day 8 the High Pyrenées are my constant companions, with Pic d’Anie appearing first as a tip of a peak on the horizon, and over time becoming a monolith directly in front. The thing with mountains is that looking at them straight on is daunting. It’s like ‘how the feck am I going to get up that’. But once you start and get into them you don’t see the whole, the giant. You just see the steps directly in front. And eventually, one after the other, you get up and over.

This spatial distortion of walking is one of life’s great mysteries, as is my ability to climb a pass with maximum inelegance; a pair of awkward hands and feet entangled in a bit of cabling. Mostly I’m mystified by the question of where the troupeaux of sheep come from. They cross the Pyrenees, grazing with such concentration, their patou keeping a watchful eye, knowing they have complete impunity and right of way in the pastoral areas (they’re not so stupid). Even a fully constructed ski station that almost generates a sense of violence when it appears from behind a hill seemingly in the middle of nowhere, poses no obstacle. So much concrete and modernity, D’Arrette (Day 10) had the look and feel of hell about it as diggers realigned rocks for the next ski season. The sheep ignore it and on some hidden signal, all walk back the way they came, disappearing into the folds of the mountain.

Getting used to the speed of walk is most noticeable when contrasted with other forms of transport that occasionally overtake: mountain bikes and assorted vehicles speed past near larger villages and towns. Walking on the other hand ensures that the random encounter cannot be avoided. The approach takes time, followed by a ‘bonjour’ and the chance for conversational French.

‘Tu traverse’?

‘Oui, je traverse’.

There is some chat about trail or gear or the weather, then a slow separation.

My watch was fixed with a new battery in St Jean but I only look at it at the start and finish of my day. As long as there is light, I can walk. Moving at this speed means watching clouds lift, rearrange themselves a bit and settle back over the peaks. From my picnic spot on the col above Etsaut I looked up and saw the contrail of a plane high over the mountain in front. At my feet the detail of the earth continued. A beetle wrestled with the tuna that fell out of my sandwich. The chunk was several times the size of the beetle but still it crawls over and under it, finding traction, rolling it, pulling bits off. I wondered what broad images those in the plane would have of the landscape passing underneath them, but even though I’m moving at the speed of walk my memories are also fleeting. I know I’ve been happy, humbled, delighted, silent, dirty, tired, hot, cold. I recall solid, crumbling, high, blue light. I recall the tin pan alley of animal bells, and the stink of sheep pens (shit, piss and lanolin). I want to burn them in, these memories: of mountains and forests and rivers and canyons and sounds and smells and long, slow traverses into storms and clouds and silence. But they are no more or less real, no more or less solid, than those from 10,000 metres and 1000km an hour. It can only be in that very present, on the ground, among the mountains, in my dirty trousers, with my cheese sandwich and a beetle, that the journey and the place I journey through makes sense. 

La Plage

Nothing is quite as liberating as a southern European beach. It is a mass of rolling, jiggling, swinging, sagging, hanging, leathery flesh. Scars, beer guts, drooping sacks of mice, wrinkles, cellulite, boobs, butts and guts comfortably bobbing in and out of the sea.

My name is Mz Kitty, and I'm addicted to fabric ...

It's true ... I can't help myself. Whenever I travel I have to collect fabric. And the mother lode is H. P. Singh, Nehru Place, Delhi (closely followed by Okadaya department store in Tokyo, and Habu Textiles in New York if you want to sacrifice your home or first born child).

On one trip to India I brought fabric from travels in Japan and China to get stitched. That's seven dresses worth of fabric. After a trip to the pre-Diwali hand loom fair at Dilli Haat I had enough for seven more long kurthas with left overs. This trip H. P. Singh provided fabric for three pants, two shorts, and two skirts (and I only went in for some grey wool for a skirt).  Lajpat Nagar market rounded the debauchery out with two punjabi suits (enough for kurtha, pants and dupatta).

I have had several tailors now who inevitably disappoint in their inability to turn what I'm seeing in my head into an actual piece of wearable fashion. Mr Noor has been with me the longest and can generally get a kurtha together as long as I'm okay with Chinese collars. He never bats an eyelid even when I turn up with saris and bed spreads to be converted into kurthas. Only once have I seen him stutter as I placed before him a Keralan cotton dupatta, hand painted with a winding lotus.

Master ji: 'Lining madam?'
Mz Kitty: 'No Master ji'
Raised eyebrow. Master ji places his hand underneath the fabric to show its transparency.
Mz Kitty: 'I promise I will only wear it in Europe'.
A sigh; eyebrow lowered.

So concerned is he with my respectability that for sleeveless kurthas he makes little loops on the shoulders to attach my bra straps to so I don't disgrace myself with slippage of lingerie.

Trousers, shirts and dresses can be trickier. My first attempt at getting a halterneck backless dress made took three attempts. The first rendition came back stitched into a version of skirted overalls that if I'd worn without a shirt underneath (defeating somewhat the purpose of a backless dress) would have created an outfit Ann Summers could display in her front window. The second and third tries added patchwork strips till eventually it resembled the original image. The last batch of dresses all had to be sent back at least twice as my hips had expanded in the tailor's imagination to encompass an awful lot of child bearing.

But I think Delhi's tailors are finally rebelling and blacklisting me having worked out that it is an impossible task to make 'madam ji' happy. I had to ask four tailors in Khan Market before I found one who would take on a job of two capris and converting a kurtha into a skirt. But
then maybe a total ban is the only cure.