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.