The unpacking
All the things I wish I'd brought, wish I hadn't brought, & picked up along the way
Hello friends,
I got home from my adventure last night, after four days of train travel (interspersed with a visit to Canyon at Koblenz, a visit to my grandmother in Southampton, and a sleepless night in a hostel in Brussels), and I’m still surrounded by half-unpacked bags and dirty laundry.
Before I failed to get to sleep in the hostel, I sat and knitted in the bar for a while, and since I was hogging one of the best tables, I was quickly joined by a friendly German couple, probably in their sixties, who parked their two Bromptons next to us as we sat and drank our beers.
They were on their way to the south of France; the following afternoon, after riding round Brussels for the day, they’d fold their bikes up, put them on a train to Paris, spend three days there, and then get on another train to Marseille. It was the very best way of travelling, they told me, and went off into reminiscences of trips past, and descriptions of trips yet to come. (They’ll be taking the ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle sometime in the next couple of months, and are planning to work their way over to Manchester, so do look out for them.)
And I think they’re onto something, although my mode of travel hasn’t exactly resembled theirs over the last few weeks.
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