Day 73–Sunday, September 10. Arles-sur-Tech (7.5 miles)

We rarely set alarms when staying in a gite with other people. Who are we kidding, we rarely set alarms because Pam ignores them anyway. But usually in a gite, someone wakes up early and makes it impossible for anyone to sleep any longer. Not today. With only 6 of us all sleeping quietly, no one set an alarm so we all slept until after 8. It was pretty chilly out, so that made us go even slower. We managed to get on the trail sometime around 10 (and we weren’t the last ones out–I like having Martin and Tobias around).

The wind was blowing strong, but not quite Irma ranges. When we took a wrong turn and headed over an exposed mound, we found that we had to keep our poles in front of us or get blown down so we are guessing in the 50-60 mph range which is no joke on the side of a mountain. We managed to fight our way back to the road and find the trail. With a 4500′ drop in elevation today, we quickly got down into trees and some protection from the wind.

I really hate downhills. The path was very rocky and steep which was killing my ankles. They’ve never completely recovered so I try to go easy on them which means I move at a snail’s pace, or roughly twice the speed of Pam. After we dropped down one or two thousand feet, the trail became very pleasant walking but the damage had been done.

There must be hundreds of thousands of tons of scrap metal on this mountainside. The gite we stayed at last night used to be a miners dorm. We walked next to and over metal cables almost all the way into town. There used to be overhead buckets carrying mined materials down to the smelters in the valley. We even ran across some buckets and rail. There were also some towers still standing with the cables hanging from them. If the price of scrap metal ever rises, someone could make some money recovering all this.

By the time we got to town, I had pretty much made up my mind that I was done for the day. I knew Pam was all set to hike on once we got groceries–she’s ready to be done. I was afraid to broach the subject of calling it a half day when she started talking about hoping the grocery store was closed so we could relax all afternoon. Of course, I reluctantly agreed to stay in town if that’s what she really wanted to do even though it would mess up the schedule we had planned (a good husband never gives up the opportunity to acquiesce to his wife’s wishes).

We limped into the downtown area and liked the town right away. It has been 9 days since we’ve been in a large village. We found a pizza restaurant next to a hotel so we thought we were golden. When we walked into the hotel, Tobias and Martin were sitting on the veranda having a beer and invited us to join them for lunch. We accepted but only after we got a room to drop our stuff in.

We had just had a lunch, of sorts, on the trail, so we just ordered fries, sodas, and desserts while they had their lunch. We had pleasant conversation with them, but we learned a few disturbing facts about Germany which might prevent us from visiting there.

It’s very easy for a country to be duped into electing crappy leaders. Heck, it happens to all of us. I can accept the fact that sometimes countries think they are the best in the world and think they should rule the whole planet because they are the “master race” (everyone can get a little empire crazy–but two world wars is the limit before forgiveness is no longer possible). Almost everything that has happened in Germany’s past I can forgive and move on. Race cleansing, no country’s hands are completely clean on this topic. But the horrendous things Tobias told me will make me lose sleep for years.

Turkey has listed Germany as a “no travel” state. They did it out of revenge for being singled out by Germany, but they may be right. My hands are shaking even as I write this. Back in the 80s, I can’t go on…It’s too horrendous to contemplate. I guess I just have to come right out and say it. Back in the 80s, David Hasselhoff (of the “great” dramatic series “Knight Rider” and his Masterpiece Theater run to rival “Downton Abbey”–we all know “Bay Watch”) was a superstar singer in Germany. (I think I just threw up in mouth). I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to think of Germany as a potential world leader again knowing this fact about its people.

We were all a little shaken after lunch and had trouble making eye contact with each other. Martin and Tobias thought it best to move on to the next gite and travel ahead of us the rest of the way to Banyuls. We stayed behind. We did manage to stay civil and hug each other goodbye; it’s been a great hiking run, but we will never be able to think of them as before knowing that they even knew the words to a David Hasselhoff song. After they left, Pam and I went up to our rooms to bathe just to try to feel clean and Hasselhoff free.

After a little cry, we managed to pull ourselves together and make light of the situation. We walked around town a bit to see the home of the former capitalist pig that owned the mine and exploited the local workforce to his own benefit. Even seeing his corpulent lifestyle was not enough to shake us out of our slumber. We walked around in daze but identified places we needed to head to in the morning such as the Tobac Store, the Grocery Store, and the Tourist Info Center. We ended the evening with a visit to the Pizza Parlor for an early supper.

We headed back to the hotel to talk to family before turning in for good cries before a restless night of sleep filled with fitful visions of David Hasselhoff singing and dancing. I may never get a full night’s sleep again in my lifetime.