9 mar

Walked another 30 kilometres, from Moissac to St. Antoine. Making a total of 374 kilometres.
One of the worrying parts about this trip is how much we like Merlin. Until eight months ago I couldn’t see ourselves in a camper van. They were for old people who were bored with life.
But then we thought of this trip and a camper van just sounded like the solution to make it possible. And it is doing the trick. More than that. It is cosy and fun. The idea of having to eat in a restaurant – in a trip going from hotel to hotel – is just unattractive. Merlin has its own privacy. The only thing that we have to look out for are our neighbours for the night. They provide the kind of conversations that neighbour’s are always good for: ‘Francoise has a bad hair day’ and ‘Jean and Maria have a real nice camper’.
The last thing is part of the worries. Some of our friends despise camper vans, but the old hack that Merlin is, is okay in their eyes. But I envy the new campervans we see. The ones with fridges on 12V, floor heating, the extra cabin for the king size bed, which makes it not necessary to start the day with folding the bed – an activity which Julie and I both dislike.
And although Merlin is doing okay on the road, it would be nice to keep up a little bit of a decent speed, going up mountains. And the gas guzzling monster that Merlin is, is not really appropriate for the modern mind.
But whatever new Merlin might show up in our lives, one thing is for sure. The new one has to have a Barbie kitchen where Julie can clutter around. It is an amazing and often very entertaining view. Like this morning. Julie was making coffee. Boiling water to pour it through the push cafetierre machine thing that we have. Suddenly Julie started laughing. I asked: ‘Why are you laughing’, as one does in those kind of situations. ‘Oh nothing’, Julie said, as she always does when I ask this question. I mean at least once, that;s what she’ll answer. Because her nothing answer makes me very very curious, so finally she will tell what she thought. This time it was that she was thinking making sounds like a capucino machine would really add to the expeience. After telling her secret – I had to laugh too – she started practicing. Sometimes there was a tiger in Merlin, but sometimes the suggestion of a freshly made cappucino was made possible. Which is, I bet, only something our Merlin provides.
Had a late walking start of the day. Wrote a book review this morning and tightened some loosened screws at Merlin. Very satisfying work.
I first thought of only walking 21 kilometres, but then I saw it was possible to walk just a little bit farther to St. Antoine. In honour of my father I decided to walk these few miles extra. Thought of him too, while I was walking past a canal. The same canal that a little bit farther down gets a bridge for itself over a river. At one point I was humming ‘Bist Du bei mir’, which is sometimes thought to be written by Bach. My father used to play it on organ for my mother, when he was practicing his organ playing in (almost) empty churches. Although I can not see my father as a romantic guy, with this example alone he proves to be much more romantic than me.
Sweet thoughts, those are.
And then I was walking on. Still not a cloud in the sky, but my head was directed downwards as protection against the stiff wind. That way I had a good view on my nicely polished (another morning activity) shoes. They still have quite some way to go, those shoes, but one quarter of the total trip is done. 1078 kilometres to go though.