When I was young I used to run downhill. I was too broken-winded [asthma] to make <puf> much <puf> progress <puf> upwards. I don't mean run on a downhill path; rather my joy was leppin' from tussock to rock planning my route 2 or 3 enormous steps in advance. Nothing bad ever happened - because I was immortal back then. Or more accurately: my tendons were resilient and springy and my eyes and feet talked to each other with me having to think at them. In the 70s, not so much? When she was about my now-age, my mother was visiting. She helpfully gathered some dishes after dinner tripped over a rucked rug in the kitchen and broke her fall with a broken wrist. It was bad timing because she was due to fly back to England the next day and A&E thought it was better to turn her care over to the NHS when she got there.
I spent my last 10 days as a 70 y.o. marching through France with The Boy. It turned out to be possible to walk 20+ km a day without [either of us - he do be pushing 50] crocking up entirely. It was hot, it was tiring, but twinges and pangs resolved themselves within a couple of hours and a decent night's sleep delivered us fresh for another day's graft.
Until, on Day 5, on loose gravel in the hamlet of Castillon-d'Arthez, my right ankle turned and I parachute rolled to my left to protect it. I was off the ground immediately and it wasn't until a few minutes later that I noticed blood trickling down my fore-arm from a few punctures in my left elbow. The Boy <"medic"> said it wasn't worth covering with a plaster until the bleeding stopped. So I trudged on trying to keep blood spattering the dest rather than my trousers. We paused 5m further along the GR65 at the épicerie at Pomps for bevvies and sandwich makings and I went back to the tap behind the Mairie to wash the blood off my arm [to not frighten the horses, like].
As well as weakness in the plumbing, my aged at no longer bounce-back resilient body seems to be defective in its Factor VIII response because my elbow was still leaking when we arrived at our gîte for the night. What was really concerning me, as we continued to pound le chemin, was the increasing stiffness in my turned ankle. The boy relented, after I washed my arm for the third time that day at one of the robinets d'église, and applied a sticking plaster just big enough to cover all the holes in my elbow. That night was the first and only time we were requested to stand behind our chairs before dinner while the host said grace.
Whether it was the prayer, or the excellent dinner, or a tremendous midnight orage thunder-storm, or 8 hours with no weight on my ankle or a bonny breakfast; the next morning my feet were ready to go. I'd left no blood on the sheets, either; although the swelling on my elbow was the size of half a small hen's egg. My unspoken anxieties of the night before about Uber, bus and stretcher contingencies to get us to Aire sur l'Adour on schedule evaporated as another sunny day in paradise rose up to meet us. We walked 31km that day and were rewarded with ice-cream.
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