south . . .

Monday's options: hitch-hike or train South, stay a day longer . . . tempting . . . so good to spend time with Yann, Joelle and their boys . . . over thirty years ago Judith, my sister and Jean-Paul, asked me to be Godfather to Yann . . . an honour, of course, and I resisted, since I was in my communist period and mostly atheist . . . well, the main thing in France, is you are responsible if the parents die . . . will you do it . . . fortunately for all concerned, they survived and Yann has grown into a fine man, without any influence from his irresponsible uncle . . . and somehow has come to enquire into the ideas of Buddhism . . . reading Matthieu Ricard, the French bio-chemist turned Buddhist monk (well worth checking on You Tube if you don't know him) . . .
. . . resisting the known to head towards another known in a warmer climate, decided to try hitching to see Judith and Jean-Paul at their holiday home in the foothills of the Pyrenees . . . they met in Toulouse, when both were students . . . she studying French and becoming a teacher, he, agriculture and returning to the family farm to become a pioneer of organic vegetable growing . . .
. . . so, a lift into Morlaix with the lovely Joelle, a walk up the viaduct to check the trains . . . which go east-west, like most of the roads in these parts . . . drawn to Brest, probably for psychological and infantile reasons . . . decided to try hitching, since the rain which was forecast had not arrived . . . down to the Brest road and a lift with a young woman heading out to her lifestyle project at La Fume, some six kilometres away . . . past the expressway on a minor road . . . you can take this road south west . . . by-pass Brest . . . it's a beautiful road . . . which indeed it was . . . since I had no map, she drew one for me . . . hmm, not quite Michelin, but you get the idea . . . standing by her house, noting the absence of traffic, thinking maybe to get going . . . after five minutes a car . . . well, if you are going south, you had better go back to Morlaix and head east to Rennes . . . detaching from my Brest obsession . . . turned round and walked back along the wooded valley . . . stopping for a coffee, chatting with a customer who knew Jean-Paul . . . he married an English woman you know . . . err, yes, my sister . . . on to the expressway ramp at St Martin des Champs . . . hitch-hiking cultivates patience and opens the way to meeting strangers and unexpected places . . . after an hour walked on to the station, booked a train to Rennes, having surrendered to the geographical reality of this trip and wanting to arrive in St Louis et Parahou while Judith and Jean-Paul were still there . . .
Rennes was busy and the light was fading, so the hitching option went . . . now it was stay here or train south . . . the city was not drawing me, so, a night train to Narbonne was possible . . . from Paris at ten . . . the TGV to Gare de Montparnasse, an hour to cross to Gare d'Austerlitz . . . a warm exchange with two Parisians opposite about the way to manage the change without getting lost . . . there is a direct bus, but safer to take the Metro . . . line 4 to Odeon, line 10 to Austerlitz . . . thanks, and how to buy the tickets . . . another Parisian steps up . . . here is your ticket . . . the kindness of strangers, defying the stereotype usually attached to Paris people . . .
. . . the night train at Austerlitz, unclear of the route . . . snoozing and waking at stops . . . Limoges, Brive . . . Toulouse . . . Toulouse? . . . thinking it was past my stop, checked and misread my watch, leapt up half asleep, jumped off the train . . . checked again . . . too early . . . asked, have we passed Narbonne? . . . no, not yet . . . back on the train . . . another stop . . . Castelnaudary . . . then Carcassonne, a surprise since I thought I had to change at Narbonne to get here . . . another quick exit from a surreal ride . . . on day trains there is constant information, on the night train they let you sleep . . .
Carcassonne at dawn . . . a beautiful city at the best time of day and very aware of the geographical changes from north to south (the leap mirroring my English lives, hopping from south to north and back, without lingering in between) . . . a bus to Limoux later . . . breakfast in a cafe . . . trying out my rusty French . . .
. . . and so, to St Louis et Parahou, after a day sharing Judith's holiday, to a hilltop village with a strange story of Cathar treasure and freemasonry myths . . . a woodland walk . . . a beautiful gite and a mysterious mountain, of which more later, with photograph and end of the world tale . . .