Mon petit sac gris

I rise with the sun, I move all day long, and as I lay my head down again I’m not one inch closer to where I mean to be. What have I done?

Spent a whole day backtracking is what. A story that begins yesterday, is discovered late last evening, and consumes all of today.

Yesterday I stopped for an early lunch and a bit of life admin (oh for a life without email) at a cafe. I stayed a long while, had a couple of phone calls, left around 3pm with only around 6km behind me, added another 30km by walking late into the evening, and only as I set camp did I notice I was missing mon petit sac électronique gris (my little grey electronics bag)…

Batteries/powerbank, cables, cards for the camera, my second lens, my sparse first aid kit, and a bevy of little things you only use once a month but cant do without on the road: needle and thread, superglue, tape, patches for sleeping mat and tent etc etc

But all those things are replaceable, the loss would be annoying yes, inconvenient surely, but manageable. There was only one thing in there that was priceless, a necklace made by a woman I love 🫘, a gift that I really didn’t want to be without. By then it was already dark so there was little I could do til morning. I didn’t sleep well, drifting off what felt like five minutes before the sun woke me.

First thing, I rang the cafe, thinking surely it was there that I lost it. My first phone call in French, and entirely in French because the wonderfully patient woman on the other end spoke no English at all. I’d made notes beforehand but they only got me so far.

Bonjour, désolé je ne parle pas français. Parles-tu anglais?

“Non”

Non? Ah… J’ai perdu quelque chose dans votre boutique hier, un petit sac gris, vous l’avez vu? Très sentimental à l’intérieur.

“Oui, Oui”, replies the woman seemingly quite enthusiastically

Oui?! I say, very excited

“appeler à neuf, appeler à neuf”

It took me a while to figure out she was telling me to call back at 9am, but eventually I understood that another colleague who spoke a little English would be arriving then.

While I waited I packed away my camp and set off back the way I had come. Backtracking 30km was not a welcome prospect, but that annoyance was completely eclipsed by my relief at the bag having been found and I was walking as fast as ever.

At 9am I rang the cafe again and got through to the colleague with a little English. “No, sorry sir, nothing has been found.”

My excitement had been mistaken, she had simply been acknowledging what I was saying and nothing had been found or handed in. I thanked her colleague for the clarification and went and sat in a field for a while. I was so sure that was where it must have been, and my head just ran in that same loop for a half hour before I got the map out and mentally retraced all 49,659 steps of the previous day. Where else could I have lost it? I thought about all the verges or trees I’d sat on or under throughout the day, but scouring all those would take days and seemed less than hopeless.

Like the drunk looking for his keys under the street lamp I decided I’d go back to the shop where I’d bought bread in the afternoon. I didn’t really think it could be there, I was sure I hadn’t opened the main compartment of my bag there, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. It took a while to get back there, my heart wasn’t in it any more, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I got to the shop and was told nothing had been found. I bought some more food and ate some feelings for a while, not in any mood to walk backwards or forwards.

An hour passed, then another. At some point I picked up my phone and saw a text message that’d arrived 15 minutes ago. I read it three times before I understood it. They’d found it, at the cafe! I rang them and said I’d be there as soon as I could but that it might take a while because I was still 20 kilometres away. I thought about leaving my pack in some bushes and running back, but in the end I opted to try my luck with my thumb and a smile. It took a while, once I’d made it to a road there were few cars to be seen, but eventually a couple on either side of 80 pulled over. They were happy to take me to the next town, Guînes, about 10km away, and off we went. 10km doesn’t take long in a car, along the way they pointed out their house and, realising then that they had driven out of their way I tried to insist that they drop me where we were and I would try for another hitch, but they weren’t having it.

They asked where I needed to get to and I explained the situation as best I could, I fear the phrase mon petit sac gris may never leave my head now, so many times have I said it today :D but I was firm that they mustn’t take me beyond Guînes, they’d been too generous already. Well, when they understood that the situation involved amour, they locked the doors and said they were taking me all the way, that it was their protestant duty. In the end Christian and Annie drove me more than 50km round trip.

With their little English, my even littler French, and help from Google translate, we talked about the walk, their children, my conservation work, God and Providence, the history of the area — the town where Christian grew up has a Rue Francais and a Rue Anglais marking the border between English controlled France and… French France?, in the 15th century.

As we neared the cafe I asked my saintly chauffeurs to teach me how to make a very profuse show of thanks to the staff and, repeating my lines all the way, I dashed in to a busy lunchtime cafe. They were all smiles and lovely, but very busy, so I was out just as fast and back in the little Renault.

Christian and Annie dropped me in Guînes, and at last made their way home, I thanked them a million times in my best French and English both, and I walked the two hours back to where I am now, made my camp again in exactly the same spot as I did last night, and lay in wonder at the goodness of people… and my own stupidity. If there’s a lesson here, I think it’s not to bother looking at my emails until I get to India.

Je suis très fatigué, si bonne nuit mes amis x