Day: August 3, 2015

Thunder rumbles

Later
I have written before about the ingredients for wonderful camping. I remember on my last night under canvas in the Black Forrest last year when at least one of the ingredients was lacking, writing that. The two key ingredients are good weather and a beautiful and socially agreeable site. This trip has combined them both, pretty much unfailingly. Tonight, for example, I was able to buy a bottle of chilled white wine to sip while I cooked up a simple but tasty pasta dish on my stove next to this lovely still river in the still hot evening (onions, tomatoes and some sausage fried up with some curly pasta) interrupted in a good natured way by Betty, black little dog owned by two men camping up just up the hill, who came to investigate me and my tent and my rubbish bag followed by Betty’s sweet owner. There are two women now just behind me also with a dog, a white dog while Betty is a black dog, and a mixed gender couple just over there also by the river. Up on the hard sites are more conventional camper van travellers but nice all the same. There is complete friendliness on this site. But back down here, with my easily cooked meal on a borrowed table done and washed up it is still warm and humid and I sit hot and shirtless and read as the light here starts to dim. It’s half past eight. This campsite is full of the English, or at least English speakers. It makes casual conversations while waiting to dry up or humour about tonight’s expected rain so easy and evokes a sense, imaginary of course, of connection, for me aloneness but with the always available and present connection with others.

There is a very faint rumble of thunder in the distance. I have spent so many hours in my tent in heavy rain that I have a routine: bring everything in, gather it all right in the middle, balance what might get soggy on top of my boots, tighten up the guy ropes so that the fly sheet and inner tent don’t touch, then pray.

At Manzac Ferme camping

3rd August
Now I am sitting by the little river at what will be my final campsite of this trip. In a sense it’s true that the sites are getting better and better or rather they are all good in different ways. This one Manzac-ferme has a fairly ordinary area up top for cars and caravans but tents can pitch down here in the shade by a small river that doesn’t seem to be flowing anywhere which is probably quite good because it won’t burble all night. What is best about this site is the beautiful restored farmhouse and barn that the owners live in. The barn is cool and enormous in the heat which is reaching 35 degrees today. The owners are Brits who have lived here for four years and are clearly thrilled with the place. He has an enormous white beard and reminds me of someone I used to know. This is another adult only site, so everyone seems accompanied by dogs, but not dogs as as you know them, these are almost silent non barking incessantly all night or when they see another dog. (I spoke too soon we now have a barky poodle-ish kind of hound in residence.)

The ride over here was good, though short, just 80 miles. I woke up at the last site having slept poorly (I was awoken by a rustling in my paper rubbish bag just outside my tent. I looked out with my torch and the whole thing was heaving. and with an upset stomach and headache again but after a cuppa (green tea) and Paracetamol and once up on the bike and rolling my spirits revived. As today was a short trip I had planned a nice curvy route on small D roads drawing a large circle around Limoges instead of taking the high road through or closely around it. My first direction was fine but after fifteen minutes of riding I found myself back on the same old main road I had left. I really have no idea how that happened. I looked at the trail afterwards on the GPS and can make no sense of it. Still the ride was mostly good and it was great to keep moving in the air to cool down with breeze finding the ventilation of the jacket I wear. I was spoiled with the last sites that served up food, in fact a delicious meal last night, and there is no shop though they say they can sell wine. Some one alerted me to the weather forecast which is for quite heavy rain for most of the night. Tomorrow will mercifully be a little cooler. There is also a fridge in the barn where I have stashed my food.

Last night I joined in the three course meal offered by the proprietors, one of whom is a chef. I joined three other couples, two Dutch and a younger quite quiet couple from Ayr. Our conversation was quite grown up, with some laughter but verging on the stereotypic (jokes about wives from the men), quite unlike the more witty talk at the first site where we talked about different views of the marauding migrants threatening to invade Kent and someone’s experience with a hugely powerful kit car (was it a Caversham? no Caterham) which was much more fun. The meal was delicious and much of it was courtesy in one way or another, of the chickens that stride around the whole site.