An excellent night in a comfortable room! Was glad I was safely back as a pretty solid storm came through. Nice having a lot of space. Had an amazing breakfast including GF bread and then walking in the light rain. Eventually, about 2 hrs in there was a little place for coffee run by some Argentines. They were very pleasant. Continued walking until about 2:00pm and then arrived in Pomp and made a beeline for the epicerie, which managed some cheese and some ham. My lodging for tonight was booked considerably further, so a phone call produced the owner, Bertrand in a bakery van, who turned out to be a true character. He gave me a quick, and I mean that in the sense of speed, tour of the area before taking me to his sprawling Gite. This place was a bakery and still does some of that but seems to have a dormitory, private rooms, and I was given a little studio apt thing. Not terribly fancy but all amusing and many pilgrims around. A quick walk in to the town of Arthez de Bearn produced pretty much nothing with no bar, cafe or anything open. Many cars jetting around at top speed. Did find a working ATM on the second try. Still, it is looking like it will be an entertaining evening with at least a dozen people here if not more. 31,649 steps.

Here is a piece that I wrote yesterday since I had a short day:

Grit

Some thoughts about grit. At its simplest, grit could be defined as the willingness to stick to something when the going gets tough. Obviously for many things in life, including long distance walking, this is a useful thing to have. You need to be able to tough it out when your pack is feeling too heavy, there’s a big hill, it’s cold and your getting rained on. But, looking at it from another perspective, it is obviously possible to have either too little grit and/or too much grit. Many of us have one or the other of these depending on the situation. Sometimes we give up when we shouldn’t and sometimes we stick things out when we shouldn’t, both inappropriate uses of grit. In my own life I can think of plenty of examples of both types of grit application, deficient and excess. In either case, there is regret. How do you decide what is the right amount of grit to apply? I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but I can think of an example where I feel that I did apply just the right amount. I was walking across Spain on the Camino Frances, and had come towards the end of the Meseta, the table lands an incredibly flat and long section across the middle of Spain. I done a week of very long days. As I got to Sahagun, I had a pronounced limp and a golf ball sized lump on my right Achilles tendon. After consulting Dr. Google, I was convinced that it was probably Calcaneal Bursitis. I opted to take a few rest days in Leon. It was cold and rainy and after two days I was not showing huge improvement. I decided that while I could continue to limp along, I didn’t want to risk permanent damage in pursuit of a short term goal. So, that was the end of that camino, and I took the train down to Seville where it was Easter week, Semana Santa. An absolutely amazing annual occurrence in Seville. No regrets on that decision. Likewise, I could give some examples where I stuck it out too long and some examples where I undoubtedly quite too early. This may be one of those things that is always in play, but probably evaluating short term versus long term consequences and results may provide a better way to decide whether or not to stick something out.