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.