30 sept

Arriving in Autun. Possibly the highlight of our trip. I mean, the memories of the sculptural delights of Gislebertus got us (the plural Julie, or Pluralis Juliensis as it is called officially) thinking about this trip in the first place.
A little bit earlier than planned, but it was plain desperation that led us away from the campground we stayed in a little bit east of Beaune.
We have seen horrible campgrounds in our lives. People packed on top of each other like Brighton Beach on a sunny day. Or toilet facilities that were not much more than a hole in the ground – this must have been a memory from my youth. Or a campground next to a motorway. Or a camp with bright street lanterns on about every corner.
This hellish campground had none of these things, but it was worse. It was just plain depressing. The guy who showed us our place had the defeated look of someone who has given up hope, which, come to find out, was probably caused by a bitchy, chain smoking, kicking her dog, wife, whose french vocabulary did not go much farther than demanding – no much more blurting – une nuit? Deux nuits? Trois? I answered deux, paid her her measly €27,90 and wondered why I had not ran away immediately.
A droopy dog and a bitch as owners of the campground was pretty much represented for the rest of our guests. One guy was surely hiding from the police after a possible triple murder. He even took his mean large dog to the toilet as protection.
At another caravan three generations of smelly Frenchmen (one woman) were obviously doing all kinds of things that God had forbidden, and definitely not with the happy demeanour I was reading about in Clochemerle.
At another caravan I suspected a drugs clan, In yet another one I thought somebody must have died two years ago, it was that messy and smelly. And then there was us. Oh yes, there was no internet and phone connection, so how could we have been able to call the police, and our camper started leaking again. A little bit, probably not caused by rain but by the sadness of the place.
Well we were desperate for a campground after one night on the street in Dijon and one night next to the busiest truck route in the middle of France, at an official Campervan stop in Nuits-St-Georges. And the shower did feel good, although I had to make it quick, worrying that our camper would be robbed, or Julie molested, if I wasn’t fast enough.
But then Autun. The campground owner is a cheerful young girl, the other visitors are the prosperous retired couples one expects at this time of the year – Oh I longed for grey hair, after those woollen hippiish hair add ons that I do associate with drug abuse – and the view from our little place is spectacular. We see the Cathedrale St Lazare (Gislebertus’ own stomping ground) in the far background, comparable to the way we saw La Madeleine (Vezelay) from our camping in Asquins. But closer is a nice little river (Le Ternin) with the magnificent ruins of a Janus temple from Roman times to complete it all.
We are taking no risks and are going to stay here, the campers’ version of Paradise as far as I am concerned, for at least one week.