Theory of relativity

We're back on the real walk, progressing through the Aube and the Yonne departments a day's distance at a time, as fast as our packs and our legs will allow.

By our second morning out, we realized how much our frame of reference had already shifted. No more racing around in cars, thinking nothing of a twenty-kilometre trek to the nearest food shop or a half-hour drive for a five-kilometre walk by a lake. We listen, bemused, at breakfast in the Domaine des Lacs in Lesmont and later at La Renouillère in Villeneuve-au-Chêne as fellow guests (yes, that has changed too) explain they plan to spend the day in Troyes.

"But that's nowhere near here!" we think, "it must be at least three days away."

Ah, but three days at walking pace. Just around the corner for everyone else.

A week later and the relativity of our life swings again. From €30 each for a room, a four-course meal with wine, breakfast and enough over for a picnic, in the beaming hostel in a chateau donated to the village of Étouvy by its English doctor, to a bubble bath and fine dining in the Michelin-rated restaurant of the Hostellerie du Clos in Chablis. Well, we've just passed our one-thousandth mile. And we'll soon pass our tenth wedding anniversary. So we follow the hotel receptionist down the corridor as if in a L'Oreal advert: "We're worth it."

There's no "better" between the two experiences. Just the richness that comes with the unexpected.

18 May 2008