I’m less than 100km from the border and 111km (ish) from the city of Andorra La Vella. Where I’ll stay a day or two before crossing the spine of the Pyrenees and head down into France. Until then I’m busying myself trying to find places to stay in Toulouse via couchsurfing. A friend I made in Amiens said that she had contact’s down here so I’ll attempt to see what I can see .

Aside that I biked up a mountain yesterday, strangely it wasn’t so bad, that sounds odd but seriously I was amazed how easy it was to travel up for 10km on 4-5% slopes. As long as you keep your pace no matter how slow that becomes you’ll eventually get there. I know that now, it’s not a problem the mountains don’t worry me any more, they are more a nuisance that’s stopping me from reaching France.

When I get to France I know it’ll be a shock, I know I’ll need to work hard, something very different to biking hard, I’ll have to study a lot, and it’ll be difficult. But I also know that the rewards will be great and the problems surmountable. Just like the mountains, I have to just keep going, eventually I’ll get there.

One thing I have been considering before I leave is my journal, I have a nice leather bound diary that I want to fill in with something meaningful as I travel, as my blog (in theory) is going to be covering most of the what’s happening generally as I travel as a day to day diary I’ve decided on another tack for my journal.

Recently I’ve finished reading Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) a Japanese book by a hermit Yoshida Kenko who about his works wrote:

What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realise I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts that have entered my head. – Yoshida Kenkō (as translated by Donald Keene).

For those who don’t know (which included me until recently) the essays comprise a preface and 243 passages which varying in length and subject. There aren’t any dates, just numbered entries, and each one is written as an individual point separate from all the others.

Many of them cover death, life, faith, humanity and humility but also strange mannerisms of the lifestyle of his time and culture, because of it’s roaming nature it reveals a huge amount of Japans character at the period and not just amongst the high courts (like the Pillow diaries) but amongst the general public.

Obviously I’m not a buddhist hermit, zen master, or fantastically eloquent writer so I’m not hoping to write anything as poignant, but I think it’ll help me frame my thoughts and it’ll be slightly more novel than just logging my thoughts, the only slight alteration might be a map of where I am so that I can mark down when I had the thought.