À force de marcher entre le pressing, la poissonnerie et la quincaillerie, nous avons mal aux pieds.

À force de means by doing something so much, through repeated effort, or from doing something over and over.

So À force de marcher... means something like:

• After so much walking...
• From all that walking...
• By walking so much...

It often suggests repetition or excess, not just a single action.

Because à force de is a fixed expression.

The pattern is:

• à force de + infinitive
• à force de + noun

Examples:

• À force de courir, il est fatigué.
• À force de patience, elle a réussi.

So de marcher is required here. You learn à force de as one unit.

Yes. In real French, entre can be used with more than two items, especially when listing specific places or people.

Here, entre le pressing, la poissonnerie et la quincaillerie suggests moving back and forth among those shops, or walking in the area between them as part of errands.

A very literal English learner might expect among, but French often keeps entre in cases like this.

In French, un pressing usually means a dry cleaner's or dry-cleaning shop.

This is one of those words that looks English but does not mean the same thing in normal English. In English, people do not usually say a pressing for that shop.

So:

• le pressing = the dry cleaner's

It is a common modern French word, even though it comes from English.

• la poissonnerie = the fish shop / fishmonger's
• la quincaillerie = the hardware store

These are shop nouns:

• poisson = fish → poissonnerie = fish shop
• quincaillerie = hardware shop/store

So the sentence is talking about walking between several local businesses.

The ending -erie often appears in French nouns for shops, businesses, or places connected with an activity or product.

Examples:

• boulangerie = bakery
• boucherie = butcher's shop
• poissonnerie = fish shop
• quincaillerie = hardware store

This is a very useful pattern to recognize when reading French.

Also, nouns ending in -erie are very often feminine, which is why we get:

• la poissonnerie
• la quincaillerie

That is a question of grammatical gender.

• pressing is masculine → le pressing
• poissonnerie is feminine → la poissonnerie
• quincaillerie is feminine → la quincaillerie

There is no deep meaning difference here; it is just how those nouns are classified in French. Still, the ending -erie is a helpful clue, because those nouns are usually feminine.

Because these are not proper names like Walmart or Tesco. They are common nouns meaning types of shops.

French normally uses an article with such nouns:

• le pressing
• la poissonnerie
• la quincaillerie

So entre le pressing et la poissonnerie is like saying between the dry cleaner's and the fish shop.

French commonly uses the structure:

avoir mal à + definite article + body part

So you say:

• j'ai mal à la tête = my head hurts
• il a mal au dos = his back hurts
• nous avons mal aux pieds = our feet hurt

French usually uses the definite article here, not a possessive adjective, because it is already clear whose body part is being discussed.

So nous avons mal aux pieds is the normal idiomatic way to say it.

Because aux is the contraction of à + les.

Since pieds is plural, French uses les:

• à + les pieds → aux pieds

Compare:

• au pied = à + le
  • singular masculine noun
• à la main = singular feminine noun
• à l'épaule = singular noun starting with a vowel
• aux pieds = plural noun

So mal aux pieds is exactly the expected form.

No. Here nous avons mal is just the present tense of the expression avoir mal.

So:

• nous avons mal = we hurt / we are in pain
• nous avons marché = we walked / we have walked

The difference is that a real past tense with avoir needs a past participle, such as marché. In this sentence, avons simply means have, as part of the idiom avoir mal.

It most naturally suggests going back and forth among those places, probably while running errands.

So the idea is not only physical location, but also repeated movement from one shop area to another.

If someone wanted to make that even more explicit, they could say something like:

• faire des allers-retours entre...
• marcher d'un magasin à l'autre

But the original sentence already gives that everyday errand-running feeling.