Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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As it’s raining again, I repair to the bloc sanitaire to wash almost everything I own, and in the meantime, perch stylishly on a plastic chair in nothing but a waterproof jacket and towel, taking advantage of the warmth and free electricity offered by an unplugged* tumble drier to try to plan ahead. There’s nothing to eat on site, and the huge oyster is still making itself comfortable in my stomach, so I end up spending about three hours in there, squinting at train timetables and maps, before finally dousing myself in mosquito repellent and taking my bundle of clean laundry to bed. It occurs to me as I lie there in the dark that perhaps a secluded corner of the campsite is not the best place for a single woman to pass the night, but to be honest, I’m too sleepy to care.

Something I’d conveniently forgotten about camping, though, is that however tired you are, the local birds will still be up with the lark. In fact, given the noise they make from 5 a.m. onwards, possibly they are all larks – in any case, my bijou residence, which has in the past been unkindly compared to a body bag, isn’t really somewhere for a luxuriant lie-in, so after taking at least three times as long to strike camp as to set it, and allowing myself five minutes to sit on a pannier and eat the other half of yesterday’s kouign-amann, I make my way back to Saint-Malo, where I have a reservation on my first train of the trip to Finistère, home to the best crêperie in Brittany, and thus France, and so, I think it’s fairly safe to say, the world.