research

Getting ready for my Loire-Atlantique trip now. The first five chapters of The Long Thought are pretty much empty pages as yet, whereas the second half of the book is nearly finished. It's been an odd piecemeal construction over a long period of time, but I'm happy with how things are turning out. This week I'm completing the initial research which will enable me to walk a 125km stretch of canal with the right sort of thoughts in my head and a certain preparedness for important sights. Pretty sure that the excessively watery nature of the terrain out there will lead to some emotional turbulence, but there are also good historical pegs along the route from Alain le Grand to Spanish prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars to American shelling of villages by the canal. I also intend to develop the psychology of walking theme in this particular chapter - if the weather is anything like last week, I'll certainly be asking myself profound questions like - why bother?