My Mum and Dad have a great camping story about making friends. One night about 55 years ago, in the mountains of northern Italy, they finally rolled into a campsite in the dark and started to pitch their tent. A Dutch guy wandered over and asked if they would like a cup of tea, realising they were English. They shared tea and the evening together and left the next day, despite pleas from the Dutch to stay on a few days. No, they had to reach Sienna – in their old ex-army Austin 7 it was a big ask. But they did exchange addresses.
Mum and Anny wrote to each other. We visited each other as families every year and Sjef worked with my father from time to time. They are still intermittently in touch though Sjef has sadly died and my mother can no longer travel. It has been a lasting friendship from one evening, hard to believe.
In La Grande Motte we met a German couple, Tom and Dorit. Within minutes he was offering to pick up anything we needed in Lidl as we didn’t have a separate car. That evening we went over for drinks – the next day we went to work hanging! We borrowed chairs from them when the family arrived and even borrowed his car to take them back to the airport. On our last evening Tom cooked us dinner and we insulted our livers collectively one last time, together with Dorit’s son Haffidh and lovely girlfriend Svernja.
Lovely, friendly, generous people, and most of all good company – always happy and laughing despite having very colourful lives about which we now know quite a bit!
So, once again – Thank you Tom and Dorit, Haffidh and Svernja – we will stay in touch – its much easier these days than when my Mum and Anny had to write letters the old-fashioned way.