Foreign holiday (part 2)

‘I went abroad again on several other occasions, over the next ten years or so’ continued Paul once more after an interlude in which he was kind enough to service me with some coffee from his flask and some cheese savoury sandwiches, ‘and although I certainly enjoyed myself and had a lot of fun, it was as ever a mixed bag of emotions for me. Especially as I hit my teenage years. Suddenly awkward, embarrassed, ill at ease, the nudity of the beach now had greater significance for me, and for myself and my brother holidaying with ideas of women, sex and lustful pleasures and meeting with the reality of soured hopes, misspent days, and the experience of being out of place in the cooking cauldron of sexual competition, we vented our teenage angst in quarrels with our parents, whom of course we wanted to be rid of. Thinking of going to nightclubs, but not daring, and not in truth really wanting to. I remember getting extremely sunburnt on one holiday, and subsequently being laughed at and pelted with pebbles by a gang of Spanish youths, a football team, who were out on the beach, in preseason training. And when I got home from that holiday I decided that it would be a good many years before I returned abroad again.’

I tucked into the delicious cheese savouries and washed them down with coffee. Being addicted to caffeine, I do like to drink the stuff. But from someone else’s flask, someone else’s cheap, plastic flask, on a day like today, when you’re out of doors, by the lake, and the air is wet, as if it wants to rain, then that coffee is extra magical. Oh so good! And the sandwiches as well. Yes, it’s a universally acknowledged truth that, when prepared by the hand of some stranger, morsels and victuals always taste infinitely better than if you’d made them yourself. Peculiar human trait. Yet too true.

‘And so there was a time when I never ventured abroad and when I held a strict belief that I shouldn’t. Not that it didn’t attract me, it did. As I matured, went to university and so on, desires burnt away inside me to visit the cultural cities of Europe, Paris, Prague, Rome, Vienna or Berlin, to travel out east to drown myself in the culture of India or Japan, to roam the African continent, cradle of humanity, to visit the halls of Moctezuma or see kangaroos and koala bears. But I held those desires in place with a constant reminder of the cold realities of travel, the sunburn, the language barrier, the inability to truly immerse yourself in another culture. My friends, young, excited and ready to explore would often try to entice me to go on world tours, gap years or eighteen to thirty holidays, but I always resisted.

‘You know someone once said that, until you’re forty, you shouldn’t ever go abroad, and I think that by and large I agree. I don’t know which annoys me more the thought of young people on an eighteen to thirty holiday, drinking, nightclubbing and copulating to excess, or the thought of more educated, richer students, taking a gap year and going off to India say, to imbibe the culture as they would have it, when in fact, too young to appreciate anything really, not knowing themselves, inexperienced, not particularly saffey of their own culture, they jet off to the far reaches of the planet, never having read a single book on India or wherever it is; and there, unable to speak a word of the language, ‘immerse’ themselves in the local culture.

‘I knew of one girl, the daughter of a friend, who dropped out of university and went off to Brazil for a year, where I understand she took a lot of drugs and enjoyed herself. Well perfectly fine you might say, I shouldn’t be so hokey-pokey. Only the thing is, she came back a year later and began working in an office in Leeds: where she’s been working non-stop for the last ten years, with no thought of ever travelling again. I can’t understand that mindset.

‘No, youth is wasted on the young, and it does bug me to see fakers and hippies swarming to India or Brazil as much as it incenses me to see drunken British louts head off to Prague for a weekend, polluting the atmosphere as they do so, lured by the thought of cheap beer and cheap sex; mindless, brutal, unhappy holidays in which I presume, the lost and misled tourists drink pointlessly and don’t have the balls to do anything more than chat with the expensive prostitutes. Mindless, thoughtless holidays, just as much so as the gap year students trekking across the Andes, struggling through the terrain, sunburnt, bored, hot and bothered, walking through the Andes, even though they’ve never explored their own backyard, never walked through the Cotswalds or Snowdonia, never even tasted the delights of their nearby woods or lakes, never even went for a walk around the block. And even though they hated the holiday, they always come back with tales of how it was an experience, how they’d do it all again if they had the chance; and you know I wonder how many people in their heart of hearts have ever really enjoyed a holiday. Really, it’s a form of mental illness, a malaise. To see a swarm of humans fly half way around the world to descend on a tourist hot spot, Niagara Falls, Lake Garda, the gardens of Versailles, get their cameras out and take a photo, then head off somewhere else – what on earth is it all about?

‘Anyway such were my thoughts. I made it a rule then never to go abroad at least until I could work out and formulate some ground rules, some codes of conduct, and until I truly believed that I could go abroad and really make something of my time there, be happy and truly absorb the foreign culture. And so one day, now aged thirty, twelve years having elapsed since I last went abroad, I found myself up North visiting relatives. It was a drizzly day in Dunston, a small habitation just south of the Tyne. I stood before a black door with a bronzed knocker on it. Raising my hand I knocked.

‘‘Hi son, come in’ said my auntie, opening up the door. I stepped inside the hallway and wiped my feet on the door mat. ‘He’s missed you’ she said, referring to my uncle ‘he’s been full of himself mind, talking too much, really pleased with himself. He’s had the maps out everyday’ she added as we passed down the hall ‘every night I’m saying to myself, ee you bugger, what the hell's he doing through there, and then I find him bent over the table, holding a magnifying glass, scouring the maps and working out a route. He’s at it now again’ she said as we entered the dining room and saw my uncle examining a map on the table in front of him.

‘Having attended private school when young I do and always shall consider myself a bona fide gentleman and toff, a nobleman, scholar and old boy. And that’s as it should be. But my aunty and uncle were quite the opposite; they were true working class folk, peasants I might say if I can use that word with a good connotation, in that they seemed to typify a lot of what is worthy in the working people. I think they liked me especially, and more so than my in-between parents who had managed to jump the class barriers, because I was an out and out toff, knew that I was, was proud of it, didn’t try to pretend I was something else, and took them for exactly what they were.

‘My uncle was a peculiar man. Tall, strong and sturdy with the rough hands of a labourer, he talked with a thick accent, could curse like a navvy and had tattoos running all over his body. He was a bully in lots of ways, yet that went hand in hand with a sensitive nature, a cynical nature, a nature which saw the world for what it was and was horrified by it, by the injustices of it, by its falsity. Looking like a brigand and speaking like one, he could however hold his own on just about any issue or debate in politics or the state of the world, loved to moan, to bang the world to rights, and as well as this he was cultured, he read books, watched the history channel, enjoyed visiting old buildings and churches, and drank fine wine and travelled. Now retired, he had worked for times as a labourer, for times as an engineer and his work had taken him to London for example where he helped build the Dockland express; or up to Skye in Scotland for the construction of a bridge.

‘My aunt, more meek and submissive, seemed an eternally pleasant woman, always caring, always pleasant, she gossiped it was true and could be a bit common, but her flaws were few. Whenever you visited their house you were always made to feel welcome, at home, at ease, and offered cup of tea after cup of tea, cake, sandwiches, ice cream and more. My aunt could not have been more generous or accommodating. Everyone in the family liked them, and more so because, for whatever reason, they had no children of their own. From that perspective nieces and nephews meant a lot to them.

‘My uncle being a man of such capabilities, he had decorated and furnished the house himself. The dining room in which I now stood was a grand example of this. On the right stood an oaken bookcase full of books and leatherbound volumes; on the left an oaken dresser full of plates, cups and crockery; then in the centre of the room a polished mahogany dining table. And the kitchen, in the manner of a bar, was placed behind a counter looking into the dining room. But the centrepiece of the room were the stairs, which, like those in a lighthouse, spiralled upwards from ground to second floor. There was a feeling of peace and happiness here, and I always felt calm and at ease. My uncle started showing me the maps.

‘You see, this here is a place called Lourdes. I don’t know if I’m saying that right, you’ll know better than me, but aye, this was where they used to bring cripples and invalids you see, to try and cure them with holy water from the local springs. Now, we’ll take the train to Lourdes and start the walk there.

‘Now you see this little place here’ he continued, pointing to a small depression on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, this is called XXX. What we’ll do is, we’ll hop over the border at this point and take a look at the waterfall. It’s meant to be the most spectacular in Europe. It’ll take us off the beaten track mind you, but then we don’t wanna be restricting ourselves to the tourist trail. You know, I’m not one of these for following the umbrella like a tourist, we wanna get out there, see the wilds. There’s little points along the way, resting huts that the Spaniards and French have put up, and you can stop overnight in these for free; and there’ll be shepherds, I’ve been reading, they make this cheese stuff, and we can buy it from them, as well as some fresh bread, and you know kid that’ll do for your dinner’ he said satisfied, delighted by the thought of roughing it. ‘And’ he added ‘if we time it right, we’ll even be able to get a glimpse of the tour de France as it passes by.’

I shared my uncle’s reverence for this pure, esoteric way of life that we hoped to experience on our camping-walking trip through the Pyrenees. For myself the whole venture seemed ideal, the ideal antidote to the package holidays I’d known as a child. Not only would we be heading to the heart of mainland Europe, to a place so rugged, ancient and untouched as the Pyrenees – wild, untamed, off the beaten track; but doing it as we would, camping, roughing it and parleying with native shepherds, and the tour de France along the way – it all seemed perfect.

‘And I also shared my uncle’s reverence of maps. I don’t know what it is about them, but just to see all the myriad towns and villages of civilisation dotted about, to see lakes, rivers and mountains, and to plan a route through these, just gives me such a thrill. A map is such a refined thing, a symbol of man’s knowledge, an artefact combining his love of exploration, geography and geometry in one. That sense of adventure and discovery that must have inspired all explorers, must have always been accompanied by a scholaric thirst, a desire to steep oneself in the ancient traditions of cartography. Yes maps, whether of the land or of the Heavens, are one of humankind’s most treasured, most exquisite delights. In my travels through the Cotswalds, Snowdonia, and the Yorkshire Dales, I had in my twenties fallen in love with the map, and would spend endless hours studying them, planning routes, my imagination lost in dreams, as I wandered through the forests, bridleways and byways and alighted upon a small village, hamlet or church.

‘My uncle put the map away and we sat down at the table; in between times my aunt brought us Earl Grey tea with lemon and some beef and mustard sandwiches. He started telling me about the holiday they’d taken to Portugal, in which they’d walked the length of the Iberian peninsula, along a route known as the Camino. It was tales of this holiday of theirs that had inspired me to join with them on our upcoming walk; that had finally decided me to break my duck once more on foreign travel.

‘‘There was one day’ said my uncle ‘we were absolutely choking for a drink. Anyway we comes to this village. Apparently it was deserted. I has a little look around and finally I found this guy in a run down little house. It turns out he was German and he’d been living here for nearly two years, trying to make a living somehow. He went to this little shed and picked out a bottle of coke and I tell you that was the sweetest thing I ever tasted. God I was absolutely perched. Your auntie Linda as well. Ugh! How sweet it was that coke! God, so refreshing. And the guy didn’t want anything for it. You know kid that’s the generosity of this sort of people. You know, didn’t want anything for it’ said he wistfully, reflecting.

‘‘But I says’ said my auntie Linda, who sat now at the table with us ‘I says give the poor soul something for it. He was clearly struggling to make any sort of a living out here.’

‘‘Aye, aye’ said my uncle ‘so I gives him ten Euro’s and says it’s no problem, you’ve saved our lives kid, there you go. Aye, but that’s the sort of people you bump into out there in the wilds. People who are looking for something a bit different in life. Aye, you’ve got to admire him, for trying to break free of civilisation like that.’

‘‘All the Portuguese mind were generous as well, weren’t they Ted’ chipped in my aunt.

‘Oh aye, they would give you huge great jugs of wine, at meal times, filling it up time after time, we ate huge big bowls of soup and other Portuguese dishes – the food was delicious. You know, after walking twenty miles or so everyday, you could just eat non-stop as well. Aye, every night after a long days trek, it was nice to book into a hotel along the route, have a bath and a siesta, and then come down for dinner, a glass of Portuguese red, you couldn’t beat it. Aye, it was a route you see that the pilgrims used to walk in order to cleanse their sins. And along the way they would give generously to the Portuguese peasants. So there was lots of religious types along the way, and anyway I got chatting to this one woman, a nun from America, on the final day, and she starts telling me about how I’ve purged my sins and all, and I says to her ‘me? Purged all of my sins? I doubt it. What’s God gonna say to me at the end? ‘Hey you, you daft old sod, you think that cleanses your soul? Go on, get yourself round again!’

‘And with this he broke into his usual laughter, pleased with himself as my aunty always said. It didn’t take him long to get into one of his favourite rants.

‘Aye, you know your cousin's husband Craig? I well, the daft sod, he was telling me about his trip to the Himalayas. ‘Now you know Ted’ he says ‘I only get two weeks holiday in the summer, so I had one chance to see the Himalayas. So I signed up with this party, they take you up along a route you see, they take care of everything, you don’t have to worry about planning and all that lark. Aye, well on the first day my heart sinks when I see the guide take a red umbrella out and says ‘follow the umbrella.’’

‘And my uncle broke out with contemptuous laughter, mimicking a snob’s voice, saying ‘follow the umbrella’ despising the sort of tourists who couldn’t venture out alone, or who had no self will, but who had to follow the pack, the trail, the herd. Although in general I agreed with a lot of what my uncle had to say, he did sometimes appear over cynical, and ready to do down everyone and everything, to act as though nothing in this world ever worked out as it should. And this filled me with slight foreboding; for in slating this Himalayan adventure, I wondered how acquainted my uncle truly was with the realities of venturing out alone, and getting off the beaten track.

‘The next day we took a trip out to the Derwent valley. It’s very picturesque out there. Grassy hillsides bordered by grey stone walls and dotted with sheep; quaint little farmhouses and grey stoned, ancient-looking buildings; deserted expanses of moor land and purple heather, with roads and telegraph lines making a solitary trek across these, and up and down the hills. We walked awhile through some hilly parts, poked our noses inside a disused mine, and finally came to rest at a rushing little brook, that concoursed down the hillside; where we sat down and tucked into a picnic, prepared by my aunt, who as ever provided some delicious morsels.

‘This, this outing into the rurality of the English landscape, this tranquility and peace, as we sat by the brook in solitude, eating sandwiches and cakes, this was what I loved more than anything, and what I had satisfied myself with over the last twelve years. And I was lucky enough to have in my aunt and uncle, people who shared my love of the good things in life. It was because of this that I felt confident of going abroad with them; I felt that with them at least I stood a good chance of experiencing the joys of foreign travel, of squeezing out the orange of experience to the full, in the same way that I had learnt to maximize and fully appreciate all that we have here in England. It would be a great holiday, done in the right spirit, we would rough it, go native and be braced to experience the pleasures of France and Spain. And I would learn the languages as well. It would be, as my aunt said, the holiday of a lifetime.

‘So there it was’ said Paul turning to me momentarily, then returning his gaze to the waters, ‘I finally had my formula for going abroad. And more so than this I had hope that this would be the way in which I would see the world. For my uncle spoke of similar walks across Spain, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic, similar walks across China, Russia and Chile. My appetite was wetted, and I settled down to improving my French and Spanish. I would spend a couple of hours reading a French children’s book on the culture and history, wines, foods and sports of that great land. Then I would switch and spend a couple of hours reading something similar in Spanish. How wonderful! What a joy it is to read about French society and culture, in the language of the French, to find, you know, one of those books suited perfectly to your level, without any complicated grammar or colloquialisms. Yes what a joy. Yet how that joy multiplies tenfold, a hundredfold even when on finishing you are then able to do the same in Spanish! And not only did I improve my languages, I read widely on the history of the region, read travel accounts from travellers who’d made similar voyages, as well as dipping into French and Spanish literature. I intended to do everything properly, perfectly.’

‘Yes’ said Paul lapsing into one of his moods of reflection, in which I picked out a chocolate donut and tucked in. ‘But of course’ he added after a few moments, ‘it was all destined to blow up in my face.’

‘I don’t know if you’ve ever been camping, but one of the first things you learn is that no matter how light you intend to travel, no matter how many items you might deem unnecessary luxuries, you always end up having to cram things in the night before, and when you finally put your rucksack on it weighs an utter tonne. I had the lightest tent on the market; I had only one change of underwear; in every department I had only the essentials; but when you have to lug around everything, I mean food, clothing, shelter, cooking equipment and utensils, soaps, detergents and sun creams, mirrors, books, guides and maps, water and so on forever, God it adds up!

‘So one early morning in June I made my way to London Waterloo to meet with my aunt and uncle. Even on my way there I began to feel vulnerable. The cumbersome, heavy rucksack on my back, annoying me already; the mental stress of knowing that I’d be lugging it around for the next two weeks; the irritation of bumping people with it as I walked; and feeling ill at ease amongst ordinary, relaxed people, commuters on their way to work. I, in contrast, dressed in shabby camping gear, a tombstone on my back, a cap on my head, two sticks in my hand, all my possessions on me, of no fixed abode, and heading of to the continent in an anxious frame of mind.

‘When I arrived at Waterloo I found my aunt and uncle there. It was no reassuring sight to see them, dressed like myself in camping gear, huge, weighty rucksacks on their backs, they too now appreciating the horror of what was up ahead. We’d all had really poor night's sleep, my aunt and uncle especially, since they’d had to travel down from up north. As we waited in the train station we all felt vulnerable and isolated, as though we stuck out like sore thumbs. There was such a feeling of well being and joy emanating from the other holiday makers as they prepared to set off for the continent. They were decked out in fashionable, expensive clothes and lounged casually in cafés and bars, drinking coffees and wines, eating pastries and croissants. Little children ran around excited. We however felt only vulnerable and foolish. It wasn’t just the fact that we wore caps, boots, anoraks and bumbags, it wasn’t just the fact that we were half-human, half-rucksack creatures; it wasn’t just the fact that sticks, shopping bags and water bottles cluttered up our hands and persons. More than all these things it was the simple knowledge that all of our possessions were with us, and that we were not headed for any cushy hotel room or apartment, but essentially for nowhere. The vague sense that we were homeless.

‘But I guess it was still just a vague sense at that point. Well anyway, after arriving in Paris we took the train down to our destination of Lourdes. We’d already begun to have a few arguments, all of us tired and irritated, and my attempts to speak French in a burger bar in Paris had utterly failed, as unable to comprehend a word of what the young cashier had said to me, I froze, got tongue tied and was eventually relieved of my misery when the young French man demonstrated his excellent command of English. It was all very depressing. Of course those feelings of vulnerability and isolation that we’d experienced even in London, intensified dramatically as we stepped onto foreign soil. I don’t know what it was, I really don’t, but just being on foreign soil seemed to scare me, to enervate me. I felt I just couldn’t relax. As I sat at the train window and watched the French landscape fly past, even though it so resembled the English landscape we’d just journeyed through, I felt intimidated by it, it felt foreign. Yes, foreign soil, foreign climate, foreign moon: that feeling of being an outsider, an alien.

‘We finally reached our destination, Lourdes, and it was here that our feelings of loneliness, vulnerability and intimidation were finally consecrated.

‘I still have never found any explanation for it, but even though it was the month of June, the town was shut up and in slumber. Worse than this, it was no bastion of French culture, but rather, from the glimpses afforded to us of tacky tourist shops selling beach balls and lilos; of run down nightclubs playing dance music; and of petit bourgeoisie natives, looking sleepy, wearied, miserable and worn out – from all of this you had the distinct impression that it was an uncouth, uncultured little backwater.

‘By the time we got here it was already six o’clock, so we decided to find our intended campsite and set up camp. The guide book we were using was in every way excellent. Written by a young man who had pretty much made a profession of touring this region, it described in the minutest detail, all the various campsites, places to eat and watering holes along the route, told you where to have a cold beer, where to see wildlife and waterfalls, and how to respect the local customs and soak up the ambience, the history of the region. It was this guidebook that had recommended the campsite we were now heading to. Lonely, vulnerable and feeling despised and ogled by the natives as we did, the campsite at least offered some refuge, in that finally we would be amongst our own kind.

‘I cannot describe the desolation that overpowered our hearts, when, the sun slowly sinking and extinguishing the day, we finally found the campsite and traipsed into its environs. In the foreign twilight, in the balmy, calm summer night, we saw before us a line of six or seven campervans. They were all seemingly deserted, and no one, no proprieter, no owner, and no campers were visible. As we stood in the grassy courtyard of the site, we felt we were being watched, looked on with contempt and scorn. The thought of setting up our lowly, weak, humble little tents adjacent to the monstrous, luxurious campervans daunted us, and, unsure if we were even allowed to, and wishing to have the blessing of the proprieter, our hearts were filled with foreboding. Nevertheless, I was one for sticking to my guns and following our plan, no matter what indignity. However my uncle, unable to face the degradation of it, talked me around, and we all ended up that night in a hotel.

'And after booking in, instead of now preparing a camp meal, we headed off to a restaurant. It would’ve been impractical to do otherwise.

‘The three of us, aliens, foreigners and outcasts, relieved at least for the night of our rucksacks, wandered the deserted town, trying to find a place to eat. Time and again we came across a restaurant, and would stand nervously outside, sniffing at the menu, before one of us plucked up the courage to enter; only to be told, by some sleepy, wearied owner that no, they weren’t in fact open. Finally we found somewhere, begging the sullen, contemptuous, petit bourgeoisie owners to allow us in, which they did, under the condition that one, we could only choose viel and chips, and two, we paid extra, which the old woman informed us of by pointing to the viel dish on the menu, then moving her finger along to the price, which she’d managed to increase for the night by adding an extra scribbled zero to the end.

‘Totally alone we sat there intimidated, as a rabid and unfriendly dog came up and growled at us, and as from time to time the sullen owners threw contemptuous glances our way. We were served complimentary stale bread, after which came the viel and chips.

‘Determined to stick to my guns vis-à-vis good manners, I managed after the meal to embarrass both myself and the old woman, by not only passing some trite phrasebook compliment about the meal, but also, after paying the extortionate price, by generously leaving a tip; not a little one, no. But for some bizarre reason a large one.

‘When I returned to my hotel room and was alone that night, I felt really sick at heart. I felt depressed by this dreadful town, depressed also by my contemptuous behaviour with the locals and by the fact that I’d so foolishly given a large tip. This was the last place on earth I wanted to be and so far the holiday had been one big disaster. I felt however, that I had one consolation. Tomorrow we would begin the walk. We could leave this town to rot, and head out to the solace of the Pyrenean loneliness. I went to sleep comforted.

‘And so the next day I woke up fresh and rejuvenated, and with hope in my heart we set off on our trek. We had to troop through the town first, then take a bus to our starting position. But finally we were there: the countryside, its freedom, its expanse, its solitude lay ahead, and we were finally free to escape the lowly French towns, to escape the contemptuous eyes of the natives, to feel the liberty and aloneness of the Pyrenees. We began our walk.

‘Well, and so we spent a couple of hours plodding along a forested trail. The progress was slow, as we constantly went uphill, but at least we were getting going now. Or so we thought. In fact the realities of the walk were about to set in.

‘Although my aunt and uncle were regular walking people, they usually did so without the burden of a rucksack; even on their walk across Portugal, stopping off at hotels along the way, they had travelled light, free of camping equipment and cooking gear. Here they were weighed down. For my rough and tough uncle I did not fear; nor either for my demure, small of stature aunt: she was resilient, persistent, in her slow way, a true working class woman. Still, I perceived they were somewhat fazed by the experience. For myself, having made several camping expeditions in England, I at least had some experience of carrying a rucksack, experience that had taught me in the end to stick to one day expeditions and travel light. However here, under the influence of my uncle’s naïve encouragement, and lured once more by the deceitful charms of camping, I had decided to take it up again.

‘We plodded slowly on, resting at times, consuming water, even though at present, shielded as we were by trees, the gross heat of the day did not really thwart us. Eventually however the forest gave way. And in its place, our old foe returned to haunt us.

‘For now, and in fact for what turned out to be the remainder of the morning, the route followed a course along a road, and through built up areas. It was with horror that I saw the forested area dwindle, and perceived that once more we were back into the realms of civilisation. In fact I realised that for the last two hours we hadn’t really been walking through a forest, but simply through a forested margin by the side of a road.

‘And so now trouping along a road, a road shared with cars and lorries, we persisted in our route, feeling stupid, dogged and despised. In our caps, boots and anoraks, and loaded with our sticks and our rucksacks, we met with the contemptuous glances of locals, occasionally shouted at and mocked at by passengers in passing cars. The progress was as slow as ever, the conurbation seemed to sprawl on forever, and hot, sticky and having to stop to consume water every so often, we now felt the full force of the sun, unprotected as we now were by the forest. Eventually, all of us having had enough, we hit upon a roadside café and refuelled.

‘Of course one of the intended highlights we anticipated with this walk, was to stop off at cafés, as a well-earned reward, and partake of French coffee and croissants, of pain-au-chocolats and sorbets. But God how the reality was different. How many times did we come across a deserted, empty, ghost of a café. How many times did we have to tread nervously in and discover if anyone was alive to serve us. Then the awkward, painstaking process of trying to speak French. I should say that already by day two I had come to realise how limited and pathetic my French conversation was; and not encouraged by the few encounters I’d so far had, or by the unwillingness of the natives to humour me; and more so discouraged by the fact that, even when people were willing to speak to me, I wasn’t forceful enough and was cringe-worthy – with all of this my confidence had rocketed to an all time low, and I desperately tried to avoid speaking at all costs. Anyway this time, we were eventually served coffee. But, of course contrary to how the guidebook painted it all, there were no croissants or pastries.

‘We sat by the roadside eating, watching cars go by and on one occasion given hand gestures by some passing French youths. We spent our time bickering and quarrelling, before, desperately wanting to get on, we took up our trail once more.

‘At least the afternoon was better. Now we did finally enter the countryside, and though packed with French tourists – it was a national park, a hot-spot for one day outings – we could at last breathe more easily, feel more at home, more in our comfort zone. The scenery was at times breathtaking and magnificent, and just to see how huge and dominating the Pyrenean mastiffs could be; simply to walk through a glacial valley, grassy with verdure, French citizens playing ball or picnicking on the greenery; and on every side, rising stark and dominant, the huge rocky mountains. Later we sat down to drink a much needed lemonade in the baking sun. We sat adjacent to a gorge, and watched the splendour of waterfall pour into a basin below. Though our progress was slow, we could now say we were moving; and by that evening we had gone so far as to escape the tourist section of the park. We had reached a more remote spot.

‘And it truly was lonely and this, this I now felt was where we had intended to come to, this was what the holiday was meant to be about. We hit upon a campsite near the Spanish border, and for the first time saw genuine walkers and campers, hikers and explorers like ourselves. There were perhaps twenty or so in total, and some had arranged their tents on the ground, others were staying in the adjacent youth hostel. We loitered in the vicinity for a while, resting.

‘Yet for all that we were now amongst our own kind, we felt just as lonely and outcast as ever. I don’t know whether it was the language barrier, I don’t know whether it was the feeling of self-loathing engendered in all of us campers, by the contemptuous eyes of those we’d met during the day. In any event we found no camaraderie or friendship here. It was as though we were all competing against each other. As the sun started to wane and seven o’clock approached, we felt, in the lonely backdrop of the Pyrenean expanses, lonely, outcast and vulnerable. We were unsure of ourselves, like lost sheep, and as we watched on as French campers set up for the night and engrossed themselves in cooking and so on, seemingly disdaining us, we all felt sick at heart and dejected, wishing only to be on home soil. And when my uncle said that we should head on and get away from here, and camp on our own further up, I didn’t object much. Even though I thought it a foolish move and even though I thought my uncle amateurish and excessive for wanting to camp right out in the wilds, disdaining even the slight comfort afforded by this campsite, I was not sad to say goodbye to this place and its people.

‘And so an hour or so later, climbing up a grassy, rocky path, the sun started to disappear, the dusk descended, and the three of us, isolated in the lonely wilderness of a foreign land, knew that we had to set up camp for the night. It was a tricky business to find a spot. The land hereabout was perpetually sloping and rocky. We spent some angst filled time, as the sun departed, trying to find a decent location. In the end, conscious of the approaching dusk, we had to make do with setting up on the hill.

‘And so disheartened and depressed we got along with the laborious task of putting up our tents and cooking. The cooking was especially faffy, not to mention dangerous. Resting a small cauldron of boiling water above our burning gas canister, my aunt and I were in constant trepidation that the stove, placed as it was on the sloping hillside, would topple, and, hitting the tinder dry grassland, set off a forest fire. As we looked down the hillside in the twilight, we realised just how far we were from anywhere, just how desolate this spot was. It dawned on us how perilous our plight was, here in the outback of a foreign land. What the hell would we do if we started a fire? It was like being in our worst nightmare. My aunt and I crouched on our honkers over the bubbling cauldron, like two witches on the hillside, praying the pasta would cook. After an eternity it did so, and we tucked in. It was foul, mushy, tasteless and watery, no solace at all on this dreary, depressing night. At least I still had my health however. That much could not be said for my uncle, who lay a few yards away, trying to rest off an illness. He was prone to stomach problems, and after having spent all day in the heat, was now, at the worst possible time, at the mercy of one.

‘We went to bed with sinking hearts as the night strangled out the day. It was a sleepless night, it was an anxious night, it was a night spent in conscious torment on the stony, slanting ground. I spent virtually all the night simply lying there, terrified, unable to relax or sleep. When dawn finally came, we were all mightily relieved, my uncle now recovered, and we joyously swapped stories of how, hearing the slightest noise in the vicinity, we’d all assumed it was an axe murderer come here to slay us.

‘And the dawn, the Pyrenean dawn, was indeed a sight to behold, an experience to savour. That beautiful moment when the stranglehold of night was broken and succeeded by the promise of the virginal dawn. The red sun appearing. The birds singing joyously. The sound of a rushing brook, the fresh country air – all of this was so welcome and calming as it came and displaced the night; and wearied though we were by lack of sleep, it was a solace, an invigorating, rejuvenating solace. I stood awhile and contemplated. The grassy hill we were on ran down before me to a gravel path some one hundred metres away. Two peaks rose immensely from the ground, to dominate the sky in front of me. And as I watched on as the red, sombre sun of dawn, rose and broke through those two peaks, I realised that I didn’t watch alone.

‘Although I wouldn’t say it made up for the holiday as a whole, and somehow justified the persistent misery of it, still I was lucky enough to experience a very rare and profound moment. Watching the dawn of day, I saw on the rocky slopes next to me, a creature – some sort of dog, bear or badger: to this day I really don’t know what – sitting on a rock and just looking out, like myself, on the crimson dawn. Never have I seen an animal so at peace, so content, never have I seen such a look of calm wisdom on the face of an animal, as it studied the sun rise. Such a profound, sensitive expression possessed its glorious, golden, sun-soaked face. He was like a wizened old man, who had come to the end of his days and only wanted to calmly appreciate all that is magnificent in this world. A serene, wistful, self-deprecating look on its face. Wise and yet overcome by an innocent wonder at such a simple, exquisite joy. And then finally, having had enough of it, it turned its sensitive little face away, and calmly and without hurrying, retreated inside its stony habitat.

‘That morning we set out to cross into Spain.’

‘‘Look’ I shouted to my uncle, ‘you’re having a joke aren’t you’ as the path, heading up ever more steeper terrain, petered out and broke down, and as the boulders got ever bigger and the walk promised to turn into an Everest-style rock climbing expedition. ‘This is crazy’ I shouted.

‘We were all on all fours now, my uncle in the lead desperately wanting to go on. Eventually he realised the futility of it. It was beginning to look like very dangerous ground.

‘Why couldn’t you just have stuck to the established route’ I asked my uncle reproachfully, angrily. I had left all the decisions concerning our route to my uncle, he being senior and headstrong. I had hoped he would stick to one of the established routes, for this I felt would be more than sufficiently tasking. But he, determined to go off limits, determined to incorporate into our route all the wonders of the Pyrenees such as the rarely seen Spanish waterfall we had been headed to today, had planned his own little route, employing little paths and tracks on the map, that in reality turned out to be precarious, dangerous, unsigned and unmarked, non-existent I might say. Anyway the upshot of all this was to alter our route, which meant, in the first instance, entirely retracing our steps from day one. Depressed, angry and annoyed we did so.

‘And that night we arrived back at the town of XXX, and checked into the local campsite. Under no illusions as to what we were getting into now, I spoke with a decent, but as usual wearied French woman who showed us to a humble little plot, opposite to the rows of caravans, where we were left to set up our feeble little tents, and there, believing ourselves watched by all, went about preparing our meal. Not only were we intimidated by the sheer size and presence of the caravans, but the clientele of the site seemed, for want of a better word, like such riff-raff, typified by a group of five or six young women who spent the evening drinking and laughing raucously. We were scared and paranoid and as we went about our business, searching out the toilets and showers, or heading off to town, we felt like marked people. We wandered around the deserted streets of XXX, a desolate, uncultured, sleepy little domicile, desperately unhappy in our hearts and wishing only for the morning to come so that we could be, once more, on our merry little way.

‘And so the next day we left and this time, under my instigation, headed onto the standard route, hoping now finally to make some progress along what would hopefully prove to be a relatively well-worn and well-trodden trail. But it only took three hours of uphill walking for the frustrating reality of it all to be revealed to us: the path was closed until September, as huge signs pointed out. There was no access along our intended route.

‘After fruitlessly trying to find a detour route, we shamefully accepted the inevitable, and retraced our steps. And with hanging heads, we must have cut sorry figures as the three of us, sunburnt and sweaty, dirty and demoralised, returned to the campsite and presented ourselves once more to the run down populace, who presumably had breathed a big sigh of relief when we had left their holiday camp that morning.

‘Oh. And so it went’ said Paul, sighing, seeming to relive the misery of it all as he spoke. He was a downcast sort of fellow. He looked distractedly at the lake for several minutes. After which, turning to me and looking quite cross, he asked why I had only eaten one donut. Apparently upset about it, I thought it a good idea to get on and eat some more.

‘Yes it was a complete farce and disaster’ he pursued after a pause. ‘The whole trip went on exactly in the same vein. Every time we felt we were starting, making some progress, something cropped up to hold us back. The trail would turn out to be too steep or dangerous, and more often than not we took wrong turnings and got completely lost. The paths were never well signed and map reading, well, it’s such a fine art. We were forever in a state of altering our plans, as travelling at such a slow rate we failed to reach our targets. Moreover just about all of the designated cafés and campsites along the way turned out to be shut up and fast asleep when we got there, some were even boarded up and long since abandoned. We would have to try and persuade the owners to feed us, whilst they usually didn’t want to know. Not one of the many campsites we visited boasted any tents. Everywhere it was only campervans and caravans. And so many times along the trail, we found ourselves not in the idyll of the countryside, but marching along the roads.

‘Camping is an onerous, stressful experience, the most miserable form of holiday. You wake up after a few hours of awful sleep on hard ground and with some t-shirt or bag as a pillow, and struggle out of your tent. If you’re on a campsite you can take your toiletries to the shower room and go through the faff of shaving, tooth brushing and showering, in facilities that are usually wet, dark, cold and dirty. You scrounge around in your bag for all your different lotions, and everything, your clothes, your shoes, your toiletries, your towel get soaked in the badly designed, claustrophobic shower. Then afterwards you attempt to dry yourself with your one and only towel, which being such, is wet, dirty and thoroughly useless. And of course if you’re not on a campsite, you have to make do with the ordeal of washing near a freezing cold stream, and accepting the fact that for the rest of the day you’re going to be greasy, dirty, sweaty and run down. Humans need to shower in the morning to rejuvenate. Otherwise we’re mentally snappy, irritated, jaded.

‘Then you skip breakfast, spend hours dismantling your tent and creosoting your body in sun cream and so finally you are ready for the day’s march. You walk through the sunny day, a load on your back, you sweat, you go up and down hills, your knees ache and crumble, so too your back, your feet get blisters and insects persistently bite you. You constantly need water, and because it’s so heavy and you haven’t brought much with you, you’re constantly stressed about where the next drop is going to come from. You’re constantly on the lookout for food as well, limited in how much you can carry, and because the meals you do make are usually tasteless, bland and thoroughly disappointing. And if it wasn’t enough stress setting up your tent at the end of the day, you can add to that the thrill of squatting down on your honkers and preparing your meal, after which you spend an equal amount of time, also on your honkers, doing the washing up; which chore, hindered by the lack of clean water, detergent or anything clean on which to dry the crockery, is an almost futile procedure. Just as is washing your clothes and underwear, which you must or else you’ll run out; the washing part not being so tortuous, but the process of drying seemingly impossible, as you come up with ingenious ways of hanging your underpants to your tent or more often your bag; which when in place, since you’re already touring across the French countryside like a dog and a fool in your cap, boots and anorak, since you’re already a sunburnt, half-man half-rucksack creature, and since you’re dirty, sweaty and smelly, cannot in any way further embarrass you in front of contemptuous onlookers. No, whether you’re washing your clothes, your crockery or your body, it is always when camping a precarious operation, as with limited space and equipment, and with a shortage of things that are actually clean, you’re always playing the game of standing on one foot, of crouching on your honkers, of putting a cleaned cup, a cleaned sock, a clean limb in the one minute area of the communal basin that looks remotely clean. And getting dressed is a pain as well, carried out as it is when you’re prone in your tent.

‘And yet for all that it was a pain in the neck, back and rectum, I might have found it tolerable had we been out in the wilds. But the problem was that we were forever within touching distance of civilisation, forever forced, in our degraded state, to French kiss it’s people and population. And of course it was nice – and necessary – to refuel at little cafés and shops along the way; or at least it would’ve been nice, had we not been sweaty, dirty, sunburnt and oderous; had we not have cut such horrific, outcast, lowly figures. In reality we were nothing but homeless people and vagabonds, and it was torture for me to sit in cafés and wonder if the owners and other customers were annoyed by our presence, by our odours, by our unhygienic state of grace. No, never clean, never wholesome, how can anyone relax and enjoy themselves in such circumstances? Sitting at cafés, not having showered, smelling like rotten vegetables and donning our caps to reveal tufted, matted, ridiculous hair styles. Is that any condition in which to sit with locals and tourists joyously lounging about in their holiday season? Dirty, despised and downtrodden, looked upon as vagabonds by all, constantly stressed over your appearance, paranoid as well – in such a state you just cannot relax.

‘Had we been strictly out of bounds, had we been truly banished beyond the sphere of civilisation, it might have been a different story. Living purely off limits, out in the wilds, out in the wastelands who would’ve cared if we smelled or were dirty, that we didn’t wash, bathe or shower, that we crapped without toilet paper or didn’t wash our clothes. Perhaps in that way the holiday might’ve been easier, had we gone native, and lived like our primitive forebears, not caring for any of the ways of civilised man. But in this day and age, when civilizations’ grasp is so far, wide, and strangulating so that you’re expected to present clean cut, polished, neat and tidy figures with every man, dog and horse you meet on your travels, it really is so difficult to truly escape.

‘And you really are like a homeless person. Persistently you worry about where the next meal will come from, constantly you stress yourself about water supplies. You bank on reaching cafés, shops, and water sources and just as often when you reach them it turns out that they are closed, defunct or simply no more. You have to consistently plan and then carry out the annoying and futile process of washing your clothes. You have to skip breakfast, making do with a biscuit or a banana, some stale bread or a cake instead, in short whatever you can get your hands on. And so constantly stressed out from all angles, harassed by worries of food, water, clothing and shelter, physically sick and tired, mentally depressed and dispirited over the state of your person, your animal, vagabond status; feeling stared at and mocked; dirty, grimy, down and despised; in a state of constant fear and apprehension, that not only are you on foreign soil, but that you have no home, no bed to go to, no place where you can get five minutes – five fucking minutes! – of downtime, solace, time to yourself, five minutes in which to relax, find comfort, prey to God, five minutes to just feel yourself at peace – all your possessions on your back, harassed twenty-four-seven by a mental unrest, a state of peacelessness – how on earth I ask, how on God’s green earth, are you then meant to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the continent, to soak up the ambiance of the locale?

‘Sometimes during the evening after we’d made camp and eaten, we would go for a stroll through the town. And even though many of these French towns were sleepy and apparently devoid of culture, still you might have thought it would’ve been a pleasure to peruse its environs. But that was never so. Because deprived of that sense of well-being and ease which comes of having your own home, your own place, your own room, deprived of that sense of security, you cannot relax or take it easy. On other occasions I would set off by myself and sit down in the town and read a book. Feeling vulnerable and isolated as I sat alone amidst French citizens, the gulf let me tell you, between the French novel I was reading and the impression I had of the town, the feeling of boredom and dullness that it gave off, couldn’t have been greater. Here I was in some backwater, rural French town, feeling an alien and having no desire to mix with its citizens, reading exactly the same books I had done when in England; delightful books, treasures so to speak, books depicting French life, history and culture. It was a massive irony, the contrast between my love of the book and my dislike of the reality, the chasm separating my appetite for French culture and the bad taste it’s towns left in my mouth. And it made me feel as if the whole notion of culture is a fraud. The book lost something in light of my experiences, the cold reality, the sleepy, slumbering, comme si, comme sa, indifferent attitude of the town.

‘Not that I did much reading, I couldn’t. I didn’t have the concentration, for I could never relax. Whatever we did, whether touring a small town, viewing a church, sitting at a café drinking wine, whatever it was we were never once able to take it easy, and the ideas that I had of making similar camping trips abroad and visiting art galleries and eating in restaurants along the way now seemed ludicrous. No, we need that solace of a place of our own, a room to shut oneself up in, even if it’s just for an hour or so, in order to feel tranquil, at peace, to find serenity. And when you give that up, you might as well not be alive. Even the natural wonders of the wilds, a gorge, a waterfall, a grassy verge, none of these can you fully appreciate under the stress of camping. Magnificent as they were, we were never at liberty to fully enjoy them, never felt the freedom of the young honeymoon couple, hand in hand, relaxing before the spectacular sight of the foaming waterfall; running in and out of the spume, screaming, laughing. Or the happy family playing tennis and picnicking on the grassy verge, soaking up the sunshine and the joy of life. No, for we, unlike they, would not be going to comfortable beds that night, to a home, to security, to a place of our own.’

A pause ensued. Paul’s story seemed to be nearing its end. We were both silent awhile. I looked out onto the lake, not giving him any encouragement to continue. Eventually he started up again.

‘I shouldn’t talk as if it was all so bad’ he resumed with evident self reproach for being so negative. ‘No, ha!’ and he laughed to himself in a wise manner, ‘no, there was one occasion, where my aunt, uncle and I landed up at this ‘designated’ campsite, a farm in fact in the middle of nowhere. As usual, no-one was in sight and so daunted, we walked together to this farm building. God it was sleepy, it puzzles me how all the industries of these French provinces don’t go under. Well, as we approached, out came the farm owners: a fifty-something, corpulent, buxom, French Madame, flanked by two forty-something men, two specimens indeed, a little wild and rugged, brawny, contemptuous, either the sons of Madame or her lovers, or both; these three appeared, so picturesque – the Madame straight out of Dickens or Zola, her two rugged, half-tamed mountain men, dressed incongruently in sleeveless tops and shorts with crazy furry caps on their heads; crazy dudes, also picturesque and colourful, also contemptuous and rude, looking down on us with scorn, the Madame, more able to hide her feelings, generously showing us to the campsite area; yes what a threesome indeed! And though I really hated it at the time, being treated with such contempt, I can’t help smile now that I recall this motley crew, on this beautiful, secluded, mountain farm, in the evening sunshine, watching the two sons lazily lark about, chasing the golden, sun-imbued cockerels; the cockerels strutting around, clucking and making a fuss and being chased in a silly game by one of the sons, as the other watched on and laughed; the man chasing and imitating the cockerels, mimicking its voice and run; larking about and having fun, though there was an anger in his temperament, a dissatisfaction and he disliked it that I laughed at his antics and tried to share the joke with him. Yes funny specimens.

‘And plenty of the French people were helpful and friendly too. Just it was difficult to carry on a conversation. Painful. For example the Frenchman at one of the caravan sites I met – even with someone who was patient and intelligent how cringe worthy and awkward it was. Or the picturesque French peasant I met out in the hills; decked in beret and yellow peasant garb, pushing seventy, digging and ploughing with his spade on a little plot; toiling in the heat – who after trying to give me directions, and trying to make conversation with me, and trying to impress upon me his French culture, his French status, his French life – I think he felt flattered I should take an interest in him – after trying and failing to make me understand he simply concluded with ‘Moi, je suis paysane. Bonjour’ and he resumed his digging in his old mannish way.

‘The little girls who waved to us from a castle window shouting Bonjour, the café proprietors, a genial man and woman who served us steak and chips at a mountain café; genuinely pleasant people, who served us with such grace; whilst the sullen French family at the other table eyed us with undisguised contempt, despising our sun-burnt, awkward, nervous foreign presence; and I remember feeling then, there was something flawed in my attitude, in that, instead of just being satisfied with the good will of the proprietors, I felt only anger and rage toward our contemptuous onlookers.

‘But contempt was exactly what I felt toward the other English tourists we saw here who looked equally as lost, befuddled and nervous as we. No it was no pleasant image to look in the mirror; to see waiting at the bus stop two people, a middle aged man and woman, who by their aurora of nervousness, isolation and vulnerability, signposted themselves as Brits abroad; the mere act of hailing and boarding a bus a big problem for them – the stress of asking for a ticket, of enquiring after destinations all too overwhelming for this poor couple. Yes, I was sorry for them. But my sympathy was mixed with a good dose of contempt, and I shrunk into myself as they boarded, not wishing for the ordeal of a parley.

‘On the two occasions when we did parley with our English brothers and sisters it was either with mutual disrespect and dislike, as with the listless, bored, equally sun-burnt sixth-formers we happened upon, trekking wearily through the Pyrenees; or, as with the retired couple we met near Lourdes, it was an over false, over-exuberant parley, as, realizing we were both English people amongst the Frogs, we swapped stories in loud, pretentious English voices, telling each other of where we came from in England and just how we were finding it out here; false, disgenuine and nauseous meetings with people who in England, we would never have spoken to. It was testimony to the fact that we were all deeply unhappy.

‘The holiday eventually came to an end. I decided to leave after only eight of the planned fourteen days, opting to cut my losses and sick of my aunt and uncle with whom I had quarreled to knock out proportions. All the stress of camping, all the rigours of the march had laid bare our relations, so that the class and education tensions that existed inchoate between us, took root and sprouted, blooming into fields of nettles and thorns. We really did argue, that was one of the chief pastimes of the excursion. It took five whole years for our relationship to be restored.

‘So I went home early and was glad to. One night in France seems to capture all the joy and misery, the dream and the reality, all the contradictions of the holiday.

‘It was a beautiful, still, summer evening. Calm, tranquil. We had set up our tents and eaten and now went for a relaxed stroll around the sleepy, little town where we were quartered. We strolled around for a while before sitting down at a street café.

‘We sat on the terrace outside drinking red wine. The sky was that dark, dark blue of late evening, and as we sat at the lulling, calm café, in the quietude of a beautiful, summer evening, I couldn’t help recall that painting of Van Gogh’s, of the illuminated night café, and the blue star-encrusted Heavens above. The solemnity of that work, its peace and serenity seemed also to imbibe our locale, our setting. We were figures in a colourful, beautiful, living piece of art.

‘But that didn’t stop my uncle from petit-bickering and later as we strolled around the town I was deeply angered when, finding a secluded, little park and sitting down on a bench, my uncle proceeded to tell me a tale of how his brother in law – a decent, sensitive man – had, a long, long time ago, refused to give him soap from the shop in which he worked for free, instead selling it on to him for a knocked down price. It wasn’t just the fact that my uncle so savagely took to pieces this kindly uncle of mine, or so whined about such trifling matters. But I’d heard this story so many times before. And now again, in this the most charmed and magical of French settings, this splendid little park, facing onto a row of quaint old French houses, and on such a balmy, pleasant evening, I was forced to hear it again.

‘And I was all the more frustrated as, in coming to sit down here we had seen at the entrance to one of the houses an old French Monsieur come to his door. I think he had seen or heard us approaching, and the sight of that old and evidently lonely, sensitive chap coming out of doors in the hopes of conversation had really touched me. But my uncle – who also was aware of all of this – simply paid him off with a kindly, well-intentioned ‘hello’ and then, knowing fine well communication with him was impossible, withdrew to the park. I had smiled to the old gent as if to apologise for the fact that we couldn’t talk, and he had looked so sensitive and genial and appeared to accept our apologies.

‘Yet as I listened to my uncle whinge, wondering why the hell we had had to come to France to hear this stupid story, I was overcome with sadness that I couldn’t speak to the old gentleman. He looked so old, so French, and I wondered if he had fought in the war, and what stories he might tell me, how he could, as a bona fide specimen of French culture, bring me into living connection with France. I was full of regret for not having talked with him, but the more I considered, the more I realized I couldn’t have really done so, my conversational French being so exceptionally weak; and so I was frustrated, for essentially, I was no better than my uncle.

‘I let my regret and sadness turn to anger against my uncle and swore at him. I decided to go for a stroll.

‘It was a beautiful summer’s night, but what a lonely, isolated feeling fertilised my heart. I was a little way out of town and whilst grasshoppers chirped thereabouts, I heard the distant sounds of a teenage party in the distance; and as I let my heart and spirit be overcome with feelings of loneliness and disconnection, I realized that those teenagers, who laughed, talked and screamed in a foreign tongue, were in no way different to those in England; and the whole town seemed so cultureless and bland.

‘When I arrived back in England a few days later, it felt oh so good to be back on solid ground, oh so good. As the taxi drove me from the train station to my home, I looked out the window and felt calm; just to see the English landscape, to feel myself once more with my own people, made me so tranquil, so relaxed, so at ease. I was glad to be home.

‘And over the next few weeks I saw many a depressed looking backpacker in my hometown or in London, sometimes sitting down reading a book, sometimes walking around, all looking sad, lonely and upset in their bedraggled camping gear and with their rucksacks, and harassed by that restless frame of mind that I had known so well; and whenever I saw them I always felt pity for them and thanked God for having allowed me to escape the horrors of being a camper.’

The sun was setting. Some way into the lake I watched on as a group of ducks came into land; descending and then skid-breaking onto the lake as the mellowing orange sun fell deeper toward the earth.

‘Well’ Paul said a little while later, after he’d packed up his things and was ready to go. ‘I’m going to that take-away shop now for some dinner – do you fancy joining me?’

I considered. I had passed the shop two days earlier, and the smell that it had exuded had been delicious.

‘Sure’ I said, being genial ‘let’s go and have some good old fish and chips.’

The waning, peachy sun went down over the trout meadow.