And the walking was on good turf now, crackly or crunchy with stones and gravel, and on roads; no more mud, no more slipping, but back to the pleasure of a confidently placed foot on the ground, and the crisp sound of progress at each step.
In a wooded vale below the plateau is Sensacq, a couple of old houses and then the romanesque church. The chapels are half aisles, half chancels, linked to the church only by one arch in the wall; dependencies, not corollaries. The main apse is square, hugely buttressed; the font, huge, plain, bulgy, its only ornamentation the billet round the rim, impressively rough and massive character, not sad but strong with age.
From the tight green valley of Sensacq I come out on to a road that winds through more arid country, on to Pimbo, a long thin town strung out along the top of a ridge; founded in 1268 as a new town, from afar it is a row of teeth capping the hill, the houses white and gleaming. The romanesque doorway of its church, surprisingly crude - incised rather than sculpted with mysterious spirals, suns, stars, like an alchemical text. A pair of twins like an astrological symbol; short chunky figures bound to each other in identity as well as flesh. What do they mean? There are no other Zodiac signs.
Descending from Pimbo I saw on the left of the road a fountain, tiled with the magnificent words, "Chemin du Roy", and more practically, "Eau potable", and with soap and a towel left in a dish. I hardly had time to notice it before I was assailed by the inhabitant of the house - a tall, dark man, saturnine in look but jovial in volubility. The country here seems deserted, but nothing you do is unseen; Maurice's half-kilometre distant neighbour had phoned to announce the arrival of the New Year's first pilgrim. Hospitality could not be escaped. At the shop in Arroue, also, I found out the truth that one is always observed; the patron there had passed me in his car that morning, and waited open to serve me with Mars bars. Like Trescazes, Maurice and his family kept open house for walkers. The toilet was full of postcards sent back; all of sunsets; sunsets over London, Geneva, Vienna, New York. . .
I was being stuffed like a sacrificial victim, not allowed to rest, food pushed at me every time I showed signs of stalling. The wine glass was full every time I picked it up, refilled when I wasn't looking. Offered the choice of staying or walking on to Arracq I chose to stay, fuddled in a haze of red wine, in a sun too warm for the cold breeze. Laziness after so long was luxury; to daydream, not to have to think where to place my feet, not to have to make the effort of trudging, to be still, entirely, to let my thoughts wander, to be warm and lie like a lizard letting my blood slowly warm through.
Foolish Maurice laid a bet on my blind tasting of his hors-age Armagnacs. I won - naturally; cognac is just not the same. But it was an uneasy evening, spent with the daughter of the house and her disapproved-of boyfriend, and a sort of feeling that while I was welcome, there was some undercurrent I had not grasped. More bad dreams of garden parties at which the Pimms disappears from view and I can't find the cucumber sandwiches.
I feel vaguely guilty the next morning, as if I have overstayed, as if my solitude is reclaiming me like a mistreated lover. I have been too lazy; I have lost sight of my solitary goal. In a few more minutes I see the mountains again; they are clean, pure, unsullied by the guilt of human contact, the necessary compromises. My feet march quicker.