Today started out quite well. I left the house shortly after 7, went back to the route, and happily walked uphill past the supermarket I had visited the night before, enjoying seeing the sky grow lighter, hearing the birds, seeing the view over the town with fog over the river in the sunrise, and I even saw a squirrel. I liked it all very much, until I reached a crossroads without any markings. Turned out I had left the GR, so I had to go back. To find I had interpreted a 'go left' sign as 'go right'. Pretty stupid, eh?
So I had to go up a different hill, walking straight at the sunrise, which was awesome.
My feet really prefer my sandals over my shoes, so I put those on as soon as my feet were warm enough, around 8. That was a bit premature. I can tell you walking over frosted grass in sandals isn't much fun for your feet.
I came up on a hill and couldn't see the markings because I had to look into the sun. Someone was sitting in a car and after asking me where I was going, helpfully explained where the white and red markings went. Very friendly. There was also a classic sort of rifle standing next to him and his dog. And later I heard shots coming from a different direction. Apparently, there were hunters around.

I went left on a T, and was walking downhill again, which meant back into the shade. I was getting pretty cold, so when I had to cross yet another frosted pasture, I put my shoes back on.
After a while, I was walking parallel to a railroad, and as I had no idea where I was on the map anymore, figured this path next to the railroad should be easy to find on the map. It wasn't. Until I realized I had left my route a long time ago and was following the wrong GR.
So I had to walk back, which took about 35 minutes, to that T where my route had met another GR, the 563. All the way being angry with myself, 'grumble grumble grumble, that'll teach me, not reading the description, grumble grumble'.
However, I think it must have gone wrong way earlier, because when I thought I was back on track, but after about half an hour again couldn't find where I was in the description, it turned out I was somewhere else entirely, again. Good thing I had my work phone with me, and good I had downloaded the gps route to it. With help of that and google maps I eventually found the right way again (I put the two places where I really shouldn't have been in the map, so you can see what a crazy detour I was taking). By then I was pretty frustrated. I had been walking for 5 hours, 26000 steps, and I had effectively traveled only 4 km.
Which rendered my planned place to sleep completely impossible to reach. Not only would it have meant over 40 km, probably closer to 50, but as it was 12.15 and I still had 30 km to go, I could never make that before dark. So I had to cancel that and find an alternative; and it had taken enough trouble to find this place to begin with.

From then on, I kept being very attentive to the route, so I ended up walking with the book (I'm just going to use the French word 'topo-guide' here, because I like it) in my hand.
I was in a hurry, so I hardly took any breaks, and tried to walk at a somewhat higher but still comfortable pace. Made difficult by some climb; it is really getting more and more hilly, and I love it. Gives me some nice views over valleys with villages and more hills in the distance.
There was a very pretty path parallel to a brook lower in the valley, through a beautiful forest - forests in autumn can be quite awesome.
And on a hollow path full of fallen leaves I met a friendly elderly person, who I ended up having a conversation with, as he was surprised to meet anyone on that path, so I explained that the GR5 ran there, and we chatted for a while. People seem to really like it a lot when you're doing long-distance walking alone. Though I don't think they like it as much as I do.

Lingual side-note: the topo-guide isn't just in French, it is French. So it uses a lot of extra pretty words and elaborate descriptions. I have seen at least 6 different words for 'turn in the road', not counting the verbs ('the road turns left'). The elaborateness doesn't make it clearer ("Le randonneur le [un chemin] suit vers la gauche et va longtemps surplomber le cours d'eau, sans la moindre velléité d'abandonner, par le haut ou par le bas, ce splendide cheminement." - a Dutch guide would just have said "Take a left and follow this path parallel to the stream for about 600 m."); and sometimes it's just plain cheesy ("coucou, revoilà la Julienne!").

I was getting quite tired, and a bit cold, as it was slowly getting darker; and it had been colder than yesterday all day. But I still didn't have a place to sleep. I though about taking a bus at Wégimont and traveling to Liège, where I could have slept in a hostel or, if all else failed, in a hotel. But then I saw a chambre d'hôte sign right on my route, just before Wégimont, and the phone number was in the topo-guide. So I took a deep breath and called.
The guy explained that he was in Greece, but upon learning I was walking and couldn't reach my planned sleeping place, went to arrange for me to stay in the house anyway. When the neighbours who have a key weren't home, he proceeded to guide me to the back of the house where there was a key box hidden behind a parasol, then guided me inside, to find a room with a made bad, in a very nice little house, all wood on the inside, very pleasant. He was fine with me being unable to transfer the cost of the stay to his account until I'd be back home on Sunday, and I talked to him about his very affectionate cat that I now have for tonight. And I told him how happy I was that he let me stay there and to have found a place to sleep.
All of which, to be honest, left me pretty darn proud of my French.

Effectively I traveled only 21 km on the GR5, but I must have walked about 14 more than that.

Geschreven door Jewaontheroad