Treating dying organisms with beer

Hilde and Patricia - I was going to tell you about this on the previous page but I got distracted by the Pope - have been together more than a quarter of a century. They've known each other since basisschool in Nijmegen in Holland, where they became microbiologists. After a long period studying germs they realised that crowded, frenetic Holland wasn't a lot better and they yearned to be somewhere calmer, warmer, somewhere other than one of the most populated countries of the world.

"I always fancied England," Patricia said. "I love the countryside. But of course the weather there is no better than in the Netherlands."

"It was the hills of England that I liked but here we have that and the weather as well," said Patricia.

"So we came down here," Hilde continued, "and it had the countryside that Patricia liked but it had the weather. It could have been Spain or Italy but this was where we settled."

They came for a house and found one. Then the sale fell through and they went back to the camp site at which they'd stayed. The business was managed by a French couple. Neither they nor their Dutch friends had enough money to buy the business but by pooling what they had they could. The trouble is that it's a small place and will probably never pay four wages, so other than in midsummer all four work in other jobs: Hilde and Patricia in the wine business and Marc and his wife in plumbing.

I turned up at the site disgracefully long after leaving the teenagers in the square at Beauville. It's not that far to Mourenx but I was in less than stallion condition and the ride starts with a never-ending grimp from the valley and into the deep of the Gers. And when that's finished there are several smaller climbs to take whatever life remains. Hilde, her professional training helping her recognise a dying organism, rightly suggested a suitable treatment could be beer.

It's a rustic site out of the village, down a twisting descent. Chickens peck where they will. Fruit and vegetables grow and bread is baked - and delivered each morning to the tent. It's been a great summer in France but

...but the Dutch have still stayed away, perhaps because their government urged them to.

despite that they've just been through a disappointing season. "The economy and the recession," Hilde said. "People aren't travelling as much. And then a government minister said Dutch people ought to be more patriotic and spend their holidays in Holland. Hartstikke bedankt, meneer! ("Well, thanks a million!")

There were three of us camping, me and an Irish couple who lived on the road. They came from Dublin, had lived for years in England where on his last day he called his colleague, said he had worked until the final minute of his final day and now he was off. He and his wife, a tiny sun-tanned woman who - to her husband's despair - smokes one cigarette after another, bought a huge camper-van and set out on the road.

"We go to Spain for the winter and then come up here for the summer, when it gets too hot down there," said the husband, a lean, bright grey-haired man with a love of model aeroplanes. "It gets stinking hot down there. More than you could stand."

They have no address. Not of their own, anyway. They have paperwork sent to friends and pick it up from post offices along the road. Other than that, they're free.

I asked where they went.

"Anywhere. Wherever we fancy. And never in a hurry. It doesn't matter when you get somewhere when you don't need to be anywhere," the man said. He had no idea how long the van would last but it would still be on the road when its owners were no longer on earth. "It'll see us out."

"I had a look at one of those American RVs once," the woman said. "Really nice it was. Had everything. But no good where we go. Too big. I'm not sure you could drive one in Europe." I said I'd seen them in America, great battleships too large to go anywhere nearer towns than camp sites out on the interstate. To get about after that they have a car on a trailer.

"We have a scooter on the back," the man said. "But that's not because the van is too big. It is big but having the scooter means we don't have to take everything apart just to go into town for shopping."

It wasn't a life for me, although I could see the appeal of the road. Closer to my soul were Hilde and Patricia, who by the time you read this will be off to Gibraltar on their motorbikes, 1,000cc for Hilde and 600cc for Patricia. They carry everything I carry on my bike and in almost the same way. The only difference is that I pedal and they don't and therefore their distances and speed are greater.

"I don't think in the end there are that many differences," Hilde said. "Go by car and you see nothing, not without looking through a window. On a motorbike you feel the countryside, you're in the weather, you sense the atmosphere."

Once they've ridden to Gibraltar, the next trip will be to Morocco, across the strait, and then perhaps down western Africa. I'm almost tempted to join them. There is a coming together of souls.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0