Travel can be a strange. Compared to workaday life it has more than the usual number of 'moments'; it is a life rich in encounters and days which flash by slowly. And these moments don't quite make sense, because they are not moulded into the mundane by the habits of work, or family life or the commonplace rituals of a neighbourhood. Can you imagine the freedom of not having to think every Wednesday should I put our the green or the black bin? Small freedoms small pleasures and unexpected encounters - such is our life at the moment! The French surrealist writer Andre Breton coined a really nice phrase to describe itinerant existence. He called it 'a paradise of pitfalls'.
One difficulty however, is that because you live moment to moment, your view of things can be become skewed, like trying to make sense of experience from a series of semi-random snapshots. I've just been running yesterday's blog through spellcheck before posting it, and realise that most of my acerbic comments about where we are staying are more or less entirely countermanded by my experience today.
After we picked up Matthew from the airport and parked up back at Montolieu Camping. We wandered into the village for an early evening drink.
Matthew joins us, time to get the awning out! |
The walk from campsite to village passed a really lovely old estate |
reflections in the mill pond |
The Cafe du Conmerce was busy, couples, extended families with kids happily dodging about between the tables and playing with the water in the nearby fountain.
early evening drinks in the Care du Commerce |
The village football team? |
So what about Montolieu? Is it some kind of inadvertently hilarious artsy enclave that I described yesterday, or an idyllic evocation of a more outdoor, social able southern culture? Is it both, neither, or something else altogether. Really how as a visitor can you ever tell? I was left to reflect that travel is much more a pursuit of encounters than a search for meaning - life in the moment, a 'paradise of pitfalls'.
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