22 dec

Sometimes pictures tell more than words. This is the place where we’ll stay the coming week. Our temporary home. Somewhere in the background to the right one can see our permanent home. Parked away for a week, trying to recover from the thousands of miles she had to digest in the last weeks.
Last night we drove again through the Cluny infested part of Burgundy where every other village has a Romanesq church. In one small village there was even a sign that said: Romanesq churches. We just drove on. It was dark and Merlin is not really made for travelling in the dark.
This morning we started slowly, I had to catch up with a lot of nonsense in the Nigella Lawson saga, but the drove on to Sommant, where we are going to stay at the Chateau de Valogne. It was like travelling through a landscape and through towns that were familiar from some distance past. In Autun we remembered all the streets where we had gone wrong in order to find the Leclerc super (hyper) marche.
It is stunning how the french are able to confuse oneother with inept directions. One of the odd things, for example, is that they will say that a supermarket is 3 mns away. Do they know I am not travelling by foot or bike or, as in our case, in an old campervan. Why don’t they say, 3 kilometers?The other odd thing is that they will only tell you once in a while where to turn. Not enough to make the trip to the store smooth and easy. Do they think life is a big puzzle? Do they think it should be a challenge for you to visit the store?
Or they tell you these things on billboards with rotating advertisements. Chances are that one will find a supermarket that one wasn’t looking for on the way of looking for one. Funny also how these memories of desperate journey’s come back when one revisits the place. If all the desperate moments of not being able to find the place one is looking for were being added to another, there would be several days of waisted time, I am sure. But then, this useless time is valuable again in its own way.
Inaccurate directions for supermarkets, inaccurate directions for towns, inaccurate instructions for the sat nav. A big part of our trip consists of travelling in the wrong direction, although some might claim that the direction of the whole trip is wrong.
Anyway, following wrong satnav directions we passed the Mont St. Vincent for example, yesterday. That is the best place to see the influence of Cluny, I had read a few months ago. It was dark yesterday, so we didn’t stop, but I would never have passed this spot if we hadn’t followed the wrong directions to a non existing camper place.
Arrived at Sommant at the end. The chateau is a fairytale. We are not staying in the part that is on the main picture, but here:
We are staying with my mother and my sister Hanneke, partner and two daughters. The youngest one first showed me her arm muscles today, which were impressive. When going to bed she assured me she was going to wake up as a princess.
If you are a princess, what does that make me, Hanneke asked. ‘The queen’ her daughter answered so fast that it seemed like Hanneke had asked this before. ‘And Rob is the King.’ And what is Joost Hanneke asked? The cook, she answered herself. And indeed I had been cooking again for the first time in ages. Home made bouillon, the best smell in a kitchen ever, some kind of beef that is called ‘sucade’ in dutch, skillet or something in english, and red cabbage. Not really a princesses meal, but we will have to make up for that tomorrow.