So you travel a lot? You must meet an awful lot of people? is a weird conception in this day and age. Because the minute you step into any bus, train, metro or other form of public transport, you will mostly be confronted by people staring at their litlle screen, either silently looking or having huge conversations.
Thus it is seemingly impossible to strike up a conversation, because quite frankly, you are interrupting whatever they are doing….
The same is the case when travelling in a camper, if other campers come too close, you are left wondering what they want or need out of you, because that is how we are mostly wired to think.
I am no different, but I am also quite talkative, according to my kids I will always have “friends” because I will talk to everyone and anyone!
This is not really true, I can be presumed to be quite open, but I am not really, it can take weeks even months before I feel I can have any conversation with you and yet sometimes I can tell my lifestory to a complete stranger. I supose I am as complicated as the next person!
I also try to do simple pleasures to and for other people, just because I can and today I really managed to do that.
Last night I was driving towards France from Victor Gasteiz, high and right through the mountains, not quite raining, but cloudy, not a happy day.
We had a citytour in VG , had some lunch, got back to the camper and after a little hanging about, I wanted to leave, I was bored.
As we had taken on quite a bit of water, in order to take lovely long showers, we also needed to lose quite a bit if water, because otherwise you are taking all the useless wight with you, so went to a place where you can empty or fill up everything and there was quite a queue!
Mostly Spanish campers, waithing for some guy to finish his cleaning! Just to be sure, I ask the order in which would be my turn, i got nice and friendly answers. So I parked and watched, the guy who was already there, thinking that this was his private domain, but got a bit nervous by me getting in place. i have somewhat of a biggish camper.
So he hurried himself along and more or less scooted out, and the queue changed form, all of a sudden there was a new contender, wandering when his turn was or perhaps better, how he could jump the queue by jumping in front of me.
I seemingly have radar for these people so I put my camper a bit more strategically in front of his. The second camper was ready, so the third camper moved in, careful because due to gates, the place could easily scratch your whole side of. While I waited for the second guy to properly move on, the guy behind me went round me, thinking he could bypass me.
Which he could not, you see I am not too bad at driving my camper and I can turn with the best of them, so I blocked him, pushed him out and took up my rightfull place in the queue.
Although raised partly in the UK, I am still Dutch, so nobody goes in front of me, unless I offer.
He was furious, like I care and emptied his toilet while there were other people trying to get clean water in their car, empty the grey and their own toilet.
I would have just loosened one of my dogs, he would not come within a the vicinity of my car, but these people were a whole lot more tolerant than I would have been!
After they were ready, we exchanged places and nr 4 just drove off, while 3 others had turned up. They literally try and by pass eachother although the queue is quite easy to form!
A polite form of passive agressive Fighting broke out, but hey, nothing to do with me, so I happily left.
The bit between Burgos and the French border is never my favourite, high, windy, lots of bridges and tunnels, so I told Tokyo that after arriving in France we would stop, I do not like driving in the dark and I am quite particular to where I want to sleep! After dismissing the first few, we arrived at a aire with Petrol, some food but above al with several good reviews about its safety.
Of course we took the lorry turning, I have once or twice gotten almost stuck in these places so I prefer with my 2.35m wide to follow lorries rather than cars. It was quite a big parkingplace with enough empty places, but I want to sleep and you cannot do that next to a cooling lorry so we toured further on on the parking, when we saw a perfect spot, just behind a Belgium lorry.
Why are you parking so much forward, you will not be able to get out tomorrow? Tokyo asked.
Yes I will, but this way if another canper turns up, he can park behind me! And yep, within a while a camper stopped behind me, obviously quite fed up, because he turn his motor off immediately.
This morning getting up early, I got out, and lo and behold, I had a UK neighbour, probably at 6 am still fast asleep!
Lovely to know that when you do a nice gesture, someone is able to make use of it, I looked at the camper proudly, like you do at your kids when you know they are not watching.
I hope they will read this, I hope that they slept wel and have a safe travel onwards to where ever they go!
Like ships in the night!
From 43,58676° N, 1,41872° W in France
Colette Pastoor