26 Aug In the oak forest
The awakening on this meadow was idyllic, almost kitschy romantic, I enjoyed this mood. At least until I had heaved myself out of the hammock. Because then I noticed, everything was wet, because of the high grass and full of burrs. I didn’t take time to dry, because I didn’t want to push my luck and provoke the people in the neighboring houses. Already I went my way again, but this time on this ultra-crass bike path. It ran as if by itself, in only 2 1/2 hours I stood in front of the supermarket 11 km away and took a break.
During the subsequent 14 km, the tank was then probably empty. The streets became narrower and stretched. But at least, they passed through beautiful landscapes, through the magnificent vineyards of Provence.
In Pourciuex, the last village before a long stretch of nature where I wanted to spend the night, I wanted to get a cool drink for the evening at the bakery. A beautiful dreamy place. I took a picture and suddenly the phone was hungry. That’s when I decided to go back to one of those bar/cigar peddling places and have a drink while lingering a bit to charge the phone. I drank two ultra-small bottles of my favorite drink, stayed half an hour, and paid 6 euros for it. Quite disappointed and annoyed at this price, I moved on, only to find that, the baker noted in the app, no longer exists. So I had done everything right and the most important thing was that my cell phone had enough energy again to show me the way.
The road led me along a major highway, fortunately with little traffic. In my thoughts, a car suddenly pulled up next to me, rolled down the windows and a 10 minute conversation started. Basically, I had to politely refuse the ride the whole time. I couldn’t tell him that I was just looking for a place to sleep in the forest. I could not explain that for tactical and for language reasons. With him I understood only “big”, “important”, “basilica”, “Maximin”. After the nice gentleman drove on, I walked for quite some time on this expressway until the redeeming turnoff came. Immediately after the turnoff, a path led into the forest and I followed this for about 100 m with the car. There I found a great place for the night. It was an oak forest, not big oaks like at home, no, rather narrow, small oaks, but sturdy enough to carry the hammock including yours truly.
After setting up camp for the night, I did some planning in my hiking app and saw that with just a little detour, a huge supermarket was just right for breakfast time on the way and lo and behold, not far from it was the Maximin Basilica. Yes, then I’ll look over there too, let’s see what the nice gentleman meant.
I talked to Johanna on the phone early and in the evening, as I do every day, and she advised me to pay more attention to my diet, because my body needs a lot of energy, but it doesn’t always have to be sugar water. “Och manno,” I thought “it could be so delicious, just ice cream and limmo. But when she’s right, she’s right!”
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