Thorembais-Saint-Trond

Finally, this morning, after three days of frustration and further and better preparations I got myself back on the road, though not without a fair amount of worry about how my old meniscus-troubled knee would hold up. My friends Gene and Caroline drove out to the Hamme-Mille campground where I had left off on Sunday afternoon. They also conveyed my backpack, big Greg, to the parish house where I would be spending the night, making my walk much lighter on my dicey knee. I was using my little GPS today to navigate along and, after a bit of confusion at the beginning, figured out how to use it to get myself heading south. My knee was feeling pretty good … a little bit of ache from time to time but nothing disastrous. I walked through some beautiful Belgian countryside, which was mostly fields of grain or vegetables with more than occasional dairy farms dotting the landscape. It was all rather beautiful, even under constantly dark and heavy skies. I was rained upon from time to time but didn’t melt, as my pa always assured us when he expected something done outside on days like this. I crossed over twenty kilometres of muddy roads and paths to the little crossroad village of Thorembais-Saint-Trond, where the pastor, Paul Hanson, welcomed me for the night. He is quite a priest! Having spent over twenty years as a missionary in Haiti, he runs his small parish like his former mission, with a grand vegetable garden out back (he was husking fresh peas when I arrived), raises his own sheep and slaughters them, and breeds racing pigeons for fun. It has been great fun visiting with him and his friends this evening. All in all, I am feeling much more optimistic about things than earlier in the week. Tomorrow I head for Namur with full pack and the hope that all goes as well as it did today, though I have just discovered that the waypoints I loaded into my GPS to guide me have disappeared. AAARGH! Somehow I’ll have to find my way. Santiago, guide me! May my knee hold together for another day.