August 22/23: Travel by plane from Calgary to Toulouse via London

It started with the usual lengthy and cramped flight to London. The line-up at immigration and passport control was huge. It took almost two hours to go through the process followed by an eight-hour wait until my next flight, so I decided to step out of character and practise patience – one of my objectives of the walk! Later I learned that several international flights had landed almost concurrently and that this was a bank holiday weekend with the corresponding impact on resources.

The flight to Toulouse left an hour late and I was concerned the delay would mean I’d miss the last shuttle to my hotel at 11 PM. Fortunately the flight made up some time and I had all of ten minutes to spare. I found a shuttle but wasn’t sure if it was the right one. The shuttle driver did his best to ignore my feeble attempts to converse in French but a tall and slim black lady in front of me helped me and confirmed it was the right shuttle. She worked in London and was on her way home for the long weekend to visit her family, who lived near Toulouse. She was going to the train station right across the street from my hotel.
0173: Hotel d'Orsay in Toulouse. Nothing fancy, but my first and only private room during the trip


“God bless you”, she said as she walked towards the station.


“And you too”, I replied.

The hotel had a full bathroom. Little did I realize this would be the last time in over nine weeks that I would luxuriate in a bathtub.