De Luxe

Peacefully enjoying the altered state that is early morning wakefulness, my bubble of solitude was burst by the sound of an approaching tractor, which I heard drive right to the foot of my tent and honk its horn. I came out of the tent as fast as possible, wearing just my holy boxer shorts, to greet the interlopers. They were just there to do some work on behalf of the landowner, and thus not too upset at my presence in spite of the horn. Ironically, in light of my previous nights' appraisal of the location, they were here to clean up the animal enclosure where young deer were going to be raised and then released for hunting.

I set about packing my stuff whilst they got down to weed-whacking, and one of them warmed to me and we chatted a bit. He told me that the person who'd lived in the decrepit wood cabin had contracted rabies from a fox somehow and had died of it - an interesting piece of synchonicity perhaps, in light of my vaccination the day before!

They were finished and off again before I, and now with a week to kill before my next vaccination appointment in Lille for the follow-up shots, I wondered where to go. Cysoing was the last village I'd passed through and I decided to head back that way. On passing the town square, a woman sat outside a cafe stood up and gestured to me, asking me where I was from in French, then again in English before I'd properly heard what she was saying to me. I stopped and rolled over to her and we started to chat in French, before she invited me to sit with her and offered me a coffee, which I gratefully accepted.

Geneviève told me that she'd done quite a fair amount of cycle touring and climbing, but had suffered a fall in Norwegian mountains several years earlier and now was often in quite a lot of pain. She missed being able to participate in these activities anymore, but perhaps could be said to be staying in touch with it more vicariously - she'd similarly enjoyed the company of a German cycle tourist a few weeks earlier.

She soon introduced me to some of the locals, and then invited me to lunch with her sister, who kindly paid for everything. Gen then invited me to stay with her a few days and in exchange I offered to help her out with some of the household chores that weren't always easy for her. Straight away she made me feel right at home and we talked a lot throughout my time there. I used the local free Internet kiosk to research for my journey, then secured her computer which she'd been hesitant to use since having seen a virus warning some time earlier.

Outside the house,  I cut the lawn, made repairs to the lawnmower and to some garden furniture, trimmed hedges and cleaned a bit, but all pretty light work. She took me to the Irish pub once, and another time to the Tunisian restaurant in the local Belgian city of Tournai. We passed a bit of time with Bernard, who was a pretty eccentric and very funny guy living in a nearby run-down building. At first I had a bit of difficulty understanding his accent, and he used a fair bit of slang too, but I soon got used to it.

The warmth and generosity of Gen and her friends was exceptional and I had to really insist or use deception to manage to pay for anything most of the time!

I had intended going to Brussels to visit Antoine for the time between vaccinations, but in the end he was going to a faraway corner of Belgium for the weekend and a 500 km round trip over a weekend would have been excessive! The period of my stay with Gen had not really been fixed, and in fact ended up stretching over 6 nights, conveniently taking me right up to the day when I had to return to Lille for my next shots.