Soon I was in a small village near the river. This place was crowded with competitors in the annual rowing competition. I sat on a bench that was almost even with the starting point and watched a few races while munching on an ice cream cone. As I walked on I got to where all the competitors were camped. There were tents everywhere and I thought this would be a good place to camp but it seemed to early in the day for me to stop. I decided to press on at least to the next small village, which was only about three kilometers away. As I walked into the town there was a big soccer game going on with a huge crowd watching. I stopped for about twenty minutes to check out the action. I saw my first castle today and then hiked about three more miles before I found a camping spot. I was exhausted! I wanted to stop at least four or five miles back but there was no place to camp. However, the extra miles paid off because I ended up finding the mother-load. On the right hand side of the trail was a line of trees and bushes that was like a windbreak or something. I found a small opening between a few trees and decided to venture off to find a place to take care of business. Then, like a lost sailor finally sighting land, I saw them. Apple trees and blackberry bushes everywhere! What a relief. It was a good thing I found this fruit because I was way to beat to cook dinner. I feasted on fruit and then hung my rain-fly from a tree. I was only 15 feet from the trail but I knew that people probably wouldn�t see me unless they were really looking for me. I laid out my sleeping pad and started to write. People kept riding their bicycles by well past dark. They all had headlamps, as well as taillights, attached to their bikes. It wasn�t long before I just passed out.
9/8/02
Well, last night was once again, quite eventful. The chaos started at about midnight when I woke up because I was very cold. I fumbled through by backpack to get my long underwear and checked my thermometer. It was in the low fifties. I managed to get back to sleep but was reawakened about an hour later because I was still cold. This time I dug out my sleeping bag and crawled in and went back to sleep only to be reawakened once again at 2:00 AM. This time by a light rain, and oh yeah, I was still cold. Since I was so tired when I found a place to camp I hadn�t rigged up a very good shelter. I figured I really wouldn�t need much because I didn�t think it would rain. I don�t believe in all that Murphy�s Law stuff but if I did I would have to at least bring it up right now. Now I realized that I should have just taken a few minutes to pitch the tent because that is what I ended up doing when I saw that some of my stuff was getting wet. I was very lucky that it wasn�t a heavy rain because that would have really been depressing. As soon as I crawled in the tent and dove into my sleeping bag I crashed out and stayed warm all night.
After the rough day and night I had just had, I decided to sleep late. I pushed the four-minute snooze button on my watch until 8:30. Breakfast was more apples and blackberries and an experiment with oatmeal that turned out pretty good. Since I never feel like cooking and cleaning breakfast stuff, I decided to get one of my single serve oatmeal pouches and just put cold water in it. I let it sit for a few minutes and the stirred it up and dined. I never once cooked breakfast while in Europe.
Only a few people stopped to talk to me today and each (like all those before) were very curious what was in my fly rod case. Sometimes I would wonder if I should just get rid of it and the accessories to save weight, but I think that it is the only reason some people stop to talk to me, and I enjoy the socializing. So for now, I will keep it.
