A wheelchair toting Motorhome

Thénac, France

David is the 75yr old husband of Ann, a paraplegic of 41 years. The original trauma was car related where they both got run over with Ann left close to death.  David is also a Morris dancer of many years

 "We both loved dancing and when I couldn't dance with my wife any more, well I didn't want to dance with other women, so I decided I would dance with men."

They both come from Jersey and as you can see from the photos have a motorhome adapted for wheelchair use.

Now my intention this morning was to get going quickly and early. (ha ha! some hope Stevey boy seeing as you have developed this strange habit of still being in bed at  well past back of eight o clock) 

I was moving on from 'Les Deux Vallees' campsite. However; meeting a couple such as Ann and David quickly pushes aside any 'plan for the day' and I am soon, and willingly, engaged in 'the fascinating experience' of someone else's life.

"Look how this works" says David as he demonstrates the rear mounted wheelchair lift which neatly folds and with a gentle electric motor whine disappears to its stowage underneath the Motorhome. Ann meanwhile is able to move to the front of the Motorhome where she transfers to the swivelling front passenger seat. 

She then, as she puts it, "Am settled and can order David to do everything else."

They travel from one wheel chair friendly site to another. Ann's rating for 'Les Deux Vallees? "Adequate but cold!" Well; it was rotten weather this morning and cold for all of us so called 'campers".

They were also proud grandparents (They had 2 young children at the time of the accident) and played me the cd of their grandson who, and I wholeheartedly agree after listening and being spellbound, was a remarkably gifted young chorister.

I've always said this journey is more about having, or collecting if you like, experiences. Well. You don't get better experiences than meeting and listening, for however long it takes, people such as David and Ann and the many others I have described throughout these blog entries.

This morning though that was not the end of the story. Take your mind back a little. Remember when I was in Brittany and people were arriving to gather the shellfish etc because it was a particularly high tide. At the time I did mange to gather and eat a couple of oysters for myself but wished I knew more about it so I could join in the fun too. I'd promised myself to look out a book on it when I got back to the UK. I'd seen a French one but couldna make head nor tail of it being written in the foreign n all that.

So; what a surprise to learn this activity is called 'Low Water Fishing' and the David I was talking too happened to be David Le Maistre author of 'Low Water Fishing, an islanders pursuit'.

He had been persuaded by his best friend, who incidentally did all the wonderful pencil illustrations in the book, to write down his vast knowledge and humorous anecdotes of this pursuit learned over a lifetime around the shores of Jersey. The book is exactly what an old, mad, landlubber, agricultural muckspreader selling peasant like me needs. Especially if his madness should require him to supplement his diet with winkles and cockles and slippery worms from the sand. Some of which can bite you it is reported! 

I tell you; synchronicity, coincidences, universal communication, God, call it whatever you like. They are coming at me thick and fast. I want a particular and quite obscure book one day. A few weeks later one particular and quite obscure book (one published run of 1000) is presented to me at a caravan site in the Dordogne valley by the author himself. Not bad eh! He was not slow mind you but I willingly paid him the £6.95 recommended price for the one spare copy he had.

And the days plan? Yes that worked too. My arrival though, at 'Plum Village' was a little later than planned. More on that later.