Chasse accompli

I distrust patriotism; the reasonable man can find little in these days that is worth dying for. But dying against - there's enough iniquity in Europe to carry the most urbane or decadent into battle.  

It's a glorious sunrise and I immerse myself in it. I soon hear shouting, barking, and the sound of bells. I wrongly imagine that it's a farmer rounding up goats - it's a hunt. A chubby man, all dressed in hi-viz orange, carrying a rifle hops onto the path and trots off panting.

Up ahead, half a dozen similarly orange me are stationed on raised platforms, roughly 30m apart. They're waiting for a sanglier (wild boar) to be flushed out of the wood by their colleagues and their dogs. I walk behind them and escape.

An hour or so later, I come upon van full of baying, howling, caged dogs. A dead sanglier is strapped to the back. More dogs and men are in the wood below. Sunday is clearly the day for hunting round here.

Great weather, lovely walking. And then I get to Banne, which is beautiful, but from which I am entirely unable to find the path. I follow signs, I check the map, I correlate with Google. In the end I follow the road, which unerringly brings me to Les Vans.

I check into an overpriced and uninspiring campsite, put up my tent (twice), shower, do my washing, and then head into town.

There's a attractive central square with a string of bars/cafés on one side and a couple of restaurants on the other. I pick a vegetarian where I drink an organic pastis (with a really zingy flavour) and eat tofu-stuffed tomatoes.

I repair to the Café du Commerce and drink a couple of glasses of red and then head back, in the dark, to the campsite. My route takes me past a couple of lorries (converted by traveller types to mobile houses, one bedecked with a Jolly Roger) and the sewage works ( churning away quietly, smelling sweetly).