Autour d'Ecosse.

I spotted this guy from my kitchen window awkwardly trying to negotiate what looked like a golf trolley through the gate down the road. Weird, I thought. He has a long way to go. I went back to making my coffee and grilling my bacon.

However when I came through to the living room and got a closer inspection of his golf trolley, I realised that it wasn't a golf trolley at all. It was a strange luggage contraption. A rucksack on wheels, semi home made in a style that would allow the traveller to run or walk. What excited me most at the time, though, was the French flag that waved from the top of this unusual bag. This meant that I could ask the million and one questions I had and practise my French at the same time.

I ran out into the garden and shouted 'bonjour!'. He turned his head and smiled 'bonjour' he replied. He waited for a car to pass and then approached the garden. He told me that he was doing a four month walking tour of around the entire coast of Scotland. He had been walking for a month already and had covered 600 miles. He complimented my French and I told him that study it at uni and that I will living there next year. Then something weird happened. The flow of questions in my head came to a sudden and very awkward stop. So I wished him good luck and told him that I should get back in.

I returned to lukewarm coffee and checked my bacon. I sat down to read the paper but got that old familiar feeling of incompleteness deep in my tummy. Why didn't I ask for a picture? Why didn't I ask a million other whys?

I couldn't take it, the knowledge that I had missed out on a photographic opportunity. So I got on my bike and tanked down to the village trying to spy out le voyageur solitaire. I found him in the middle of the village and I pulled alongside him. He didn't seem to mind the fact that I had already said goodbye but had now creepily followed him down to the village on my bike. What's to say that I won't turn up in his tent somewhere along the road to Ullapool and secretly snuggle in the cold, lonely nights? I digress.

His name is Jean Serreau, he is a student in France, I didn't quite catch where. His travel is partly in the name of charity partly for study. After a few minutes conversation I had built up the courage to ask for a photo for my blog. He politely obliged and told me that he had a blog too! One that I think y'all should check out. We chatted for a bit longer, about travel in general and university stuff and, more oddly, about showering and rivers and showering in rivers. In the end we shook hands, exchanged e-mails and URLs and bid each other a fare thee well and a Bon Voyage.

I cycled back home all excited to update my blip (interesting things rarely happen in Gairloch) and then I remembered my bacon. Damn it. It was like having a pork scratching butty.