Day 10: St Etienne du Vouvray to Rouen - Part 1 - a suburban walk

Day 10, on the face of it, didn't promise much. In planning the route I knew I wanted to spend Sunday in Rouen but the scattering of cheap hotels created an unavoidable unequal division of distances. Yesterday's walk, at slightly less than seven miles, was half the length of the previous day.

The shorter distance was very welcome for my aching body but I knew that the route wasn't going to be spectacular, as it simply led me through the suburbs of Rouen, northwards to one of its five bridges across the Seine to my hotel. It would be my first walk through city suburbs since the bans-lieu of Paris and I remembered how tough they could be and how unsettled I had felt walking through them.

So with comparatively low expectations I set off after a late start. It was pavement all the way but it felt surprisingly good; like I was joining in with a normal French Saturday.

I waited in the long queue in a pharmacy to buy some more ibuprofen and enjoyed the mixture of neighbourhood shops in Sotteville. A very friendly greengrocer helped me choose the ripest of peaches. They wouldn't have been given shelf-space in a British supermarket for they were small and made unattractive by pock-marks and scars. They tasted delicious!

I sat under a tree and enjoyed the fruit, thinking that the day was already turning out much better than I thought it could. Then a bird pooped on me! I laughed. And then I noticed how little it mattered to me and how delightfully trivial it was. In the ten days I'd been walking I was much more relaxed and ready to take whatever came my way.