And then backwards ...

 2021-09-25 Grabels - Montpellier (11/140 km) 

And then came the sad ending. I realized with a GPS only half working and myself often being very tired - it was time to interrupt this walk an return to base. So in the morning I turned my steps backwards to Montpellier. 

A couple of funny things. First the lady that helped me in yesterday. She was driving a car in Grabels, saw me, stopped, and asked what had happened. I explained. In a second event, still in the outskirts of Grabels, I met a man - my age or slightly below. We stopped and exchanged some words about walking pilgrim trails. He had also started in Arles, a day after me. It would have been fun to walk with him. But my decision was made...! So I continued to walk my earlier steps backwards to Montpellier.

Had found out that it was possible to go by tram from the center of Montpellier. And so it was. Found a room at an Ibis hotel 15 minutes from the terminal. And that all for now.

2021-09-26 Montpellier - Home  

Early Sunday morning at 5 am I walked to the terminal. Poncho on, since rain was pouring down on the way. Lots of people in the terminal building. Seemed to be popular to fly to Paris on a Sunday morning. In Paris, fairly long wait for the plane to Amsterdam. An towards the end they shifted terminal and you had to move fast to another terminal. Delayed start. Similar type of problem in Amsterdam where you had to walk very fast from one end of the complex to the other. And no "mowing belts" to speed up the transfer. 

Finally in the air and a fine view of wind mills out in the North Sea (the small white dots in the photo below). 

2021-09-27 to 29 Home

Home with mixed feelings. Was it right to interrupt? 

To check my physical status I did a long walk along tracks with the same equipment and backpack on Monday. It worked reasonably well so I guess most of the fatigue I had felt during the afternoons in France was due to for me unusual high temperatures. 

My handheld GPS was beyond repairs, so I've had to let it go. I can probably replace it with similar functions in my mobile phone. 

But I guess that also the difficulties I had had to find lodgings during the tail of the pandemics, the continued restrictions and the lack of meeting other pilgrims were thing that I was missing during this interrupted walk. Things that probably also contributed to my decision to break.

But ... still the memory of the man that I met briefly at the outskirts of Grabels challenges me. I want to follow his footsteps next year in the spring. Better prepared...