Someone Else's Cheese
By mid-morning we were surfed out, had packed away our camp and were ready to head off on the third and final stage of our travels. It was decided that my old hand drawn map had insufficient detail on the location of traffic lights and so 'Mrs LORD' took the lead, following a newer map produced from something called "technology". This strategy proved very effective and we journeyed for a whole hour without finding traffic lights!
However, somewhere near the town of 'Saint Emillion', three things happened simultaneously - the amigos decided to start a fight (or rather one of them decided to start a fight and you know where that leads); I accidentally took someone else's cheese and found myself once again leading the party; and we came to a stop at some traffic lights.
Several hours later we had waved farewell to the 'Dordogne Valley' and I was beginning to get that confident feeling of arriving at our destination in good time. However, at one of those crucial life-changing moments, I spied a road sign for a brand new 'state-of-the-art' motorway taking us directly to our next town (Limoges) and feeling unhinged by the constant eye-poking, arm-biting, nose-scramming and leg-pinching happening behind me, I fell for it.
The King of France had surpassed all his previous achievements in 'highway design' on this motorway to 'Limoges'. Firstly, whilst being signposted to 'Limoges', it actually goes in a completely different direction. Secondly, it doesn't have any traffic lights! Mainly because it doesn't need them as thirdly, the road ends in a single toll booth, with a single lane farm track on the other side!
When we finally arrived in 'Limoges', we found a city of contrasts. The elegant exclusive external appearance of our hotel contrasted with the drab, dull, dusty interior. The splendid 'centuries-old' cathedral walls contrasted with the neo-nazi graffiti sprayed upon them. My hitherto clean leather sandals contrasted briefly with the 'dog doo' splattered pavements. Our stop was brief for we had heard there was a "Fete aux Van" on the banks of the River Loire the next day.
The 'Fete aux Van' was a festival for the purveyors of finest grape mead, and attracted an eclectic, cross-cultural mix of folk. There were sturdy French country farmers with bushy moustaches longer than broom handles, short fat French peasant women wearing dresses made from old curtains, a small flock of aged Belgian Hell's Angels and our band of seven road weary travellers ready for a drink. And so we drank!
Eventually, we settled at a mead stall hosted by a friendly young local who kept plying us with his produce. He had a vast supply of "van" and chunks of goat cheese alongside great culfs of bread. The booty was surrounded by a small pack of French guys scoffing and quaffing like gannets (well not really like gannets, as gannets have a tendency to swallow sand eels head first with a fair gargle of seawater and wouldn't be seen within a mile of goat cheese).
In my drunken haze, I pushed through into the middle of them, slicing off cheese for me and the 'DARK 'LORD before it all went. The host gave me a quizzical look and said quietly "You have just taken someone else's cheese". I gave him back his seadog and we left.
We arrived back in 'Weestrawham' some 28 hours later, sombre at the end of our journey through a previously unexplored land. As a golden sun eased gently over the horizon, we thought of the friends and enemies we had made along the way and mused over the fact that we never did get Arry...
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