Getting Beyond the Familiar #2: We Begin Walking Part E

Breakfast at the Sodbury House at, again, about 7:30. My legs are tired from the previous day's hike, but the rest of me is anticipating what lies ahead over what should be only 10 miles or so. Imagine: 10 miles seeming like an easy stroll. Before I leave I speak with one of the owners about traveling, how he's a bike rider and recently rode to London in about 6 hours. We talk about bikes. We talk about his travels to Las Vegas and Florida. And then I am out the door. The weather is good.

I retrace some of my steps from the day before and turn right at The Dog Inn, heading down a paved road until I'm once again in the woods, then out of them and walking through fields. I look at some notes in the guidebook: "Extensive views across fields to hills"; "ornamental bridge"; "take care: busy road." And there are several busy roads, it seems--not the country lanes I might expect, but full-blown expressways. Some views I see look like this:

At one point begin hearing the noise of motorcycle engines, a noise so out of place and grating. I look in my guidebook and see the note "motocross track," and for half an hour I hear the engines before, just over a hill to my left, I see an occasional motorcycle in mid-air. Later, I find a sign announcing that I am just 2 miles from Cold Ashton, where I will spend the night. I am happy to be so close, but I am also bordering on despondence because with each step over the past few days I become quite at home with being outside. I think that, if a person planned well enough, he could carry a small tent and backpack and spend the nights outside, as well. Not long later I pass through the small town--really not much of one, really--of Pennsylvania, where I find a fuel station/mini-mart in which I buy a sandwich and drink for dinner. I cross another highway, hike diagonally across a field, and find that the trail cuts through a churchyard, which looks like this:

Because I have arrived in Cold Ashton earlier than I expected, I linger in the churchyard and walk among the headstones. Some are old, some quite new. One thing about death, I guess, is it's always there. I find the Laburnum Cottage, where I will be staying, but rather than check in right away I head up a small country lane. And there, coming toward me, are a woman and her dog. I barely notice the dog. The woman is dressed in shorts and a bikini top, with a wide hat on her head. The woman has the whitest, most pure skin I have ever seen on an adult human being, and I am aware that I look as though I have just left the trail after a long day of hiking. I keep walking. She and the dog keep walking. Moments later I turn around to check into the Cottage, and I see that the woman seems to have more clothes on than she had earlier. She and her dog turn, too, so that they are coming toward me again. The dog, though, suddenly turns left, and the woman follows. In moments I am where they had been, but there is no trace of them.

I meet Monica at the Laburnum Cottage. She is in her seventies, and she tells me to take my shoes before we discuss who I am and what I shall have for breakfast. And then she tells me that she had not been sure that she would be there when I arrived because she'd been at the hospital all day with her sick brother. She says she was not sure of where her loyalties should be placed: with her brother, or with her business. We then discuss the church, and she says that the doors should be open until 6:00, and that I am welcome to go inside. She says that, if the doors are locked, to talk to her because she is a church warden and is happy to let me inside. I am then shown to my room, which has a small sign that reads "Catherine's Room" hanging on the outside. Alone, I shower. I make myself comfortable. My view through the window looks like this:

 Somewhat refreshed, I head outside again. And the church, inside, looks like this:

Back in my room, I eat the sandwich I'd bout in Pennsylvania, and I watch the BBC. I do not sleep much throughout the night, the first time this has happened since I began my trip. My dreams are strange, and more than once in the night I wake up and think I hear someone else breathing, as if sleeping soundly.