Keith and Christine would love to hear from you with questions, comments, personal news and any news at all from Australia or wherever you are. We will reply to all emails! Please write to either windlechristine@gmail.com or windle.keith@gmail.com
This morning we spoke to all our children and to Frey on the phone. It was wonderful to hear their voices and to be able to catch up and discuss our plans. After breakfast, we reviewed our belongings, and made a pile to give away or throw out, and washed the things that we had borrowed from Corine and Michel. We had lightened our load a few times but books were taking up the weight that had once been clothes. I was wearing many layers of summer clothes since all my winter walking gear had not yet dried. Our room looked like a bomb had gone off in it.
Keith had been publishing lots of blog days and had saved the drafts for the Chemin days that I had written. The pressure was on me to finish the last three days from Tanzania, and the inspiration to write was just not there. Nevertheless, I knew how much Keith wanted to press the buttons on the computer to bring the blog nearly up to date, and so I soldiered on. It was with great relief that I announced in the late afternoon that we were ‘out of Africa’, and with some glee that Keith started to read and place the photos for those pages for publishing. I felt sorry for the few readers still following every word who would have about three weeks to read all of a sudden.
Maёlla was packing, and asking our advice about weather and possibilities in Melbourne and Australia in general. I hoped that we were giving good advice, given how variable Melbourne weather can be. We realised that she would be seeing our children before we did, and it felt quite strange to be talking about them as new people for her to meet.
When Michel came home, he was stressed by a whole day of meetings and terrible traffic. He went off to run off the tensions, and to restore a relaxed frame of mind. We watched a little of a DVD of Dave Allen, the comedian who is one of Michel’s favourites. He is a master of timing, and of the raised eyebrow and subtle facial expression that shares expectations with the audience. Michel had brought home a part of Chaucer’s Tales, as an example of old English, and it certainly showed how English has changed. It reads like a foreign language. I had studied some sections of it in my last year of high school and felt a much greater affinity to it now, when I had some understanding of pilgrimages and of language. We sipped a special Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle wine that Michel produced to celebrate our return and our experiences on the road.
We had puzzled over how to travel to Bilbao, our next destination, where we were keen to see the Guggenheim Museum and to visit the Spanish Basque region. Both Michel and Corine had helped Keith to research trains and buses, and there was little available. There was no bus option that would have let us stop in Bayonne, and then travel on from there. We finally decided to take the overnight bus on Saturday night, but it was full, so settled for leaving on Friday night instead. Keith emailed Danny, the couch surfer who we would be staying with, and explained when we would be coming, and that we would stay in a hotel for the first night and then come over to his house. He then booked a hotel on the internet. Ten minutes later, Danny rang to say that it would be best to come straight to his house, rather than go to a hotel, so Keith emailed a cancellation to the hotel. It was well after midnight when Keith finally came to bed, happy that arrangements had been made.
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