shewhomust | The White Towns

I am not entirely sober after a delightful lunch with

desperance and other persons who do not LJ. In the course of which

desperance made mock of my many unfinished holiday narratives. Very well: cover me, I'm going in. The first page in the notebook (because of course I rip them out as we go) finds us back in 2008, following the Meuse from source to sea - though downstream of Maastricht, so I must learn to call it the Maas. We were attempting to follow a route suggested by a book I'd found at the library, a baffling combination of interesting and attractive old towns, pleasant relaxing countryside and baffling and infuriating road diversions - and every now and then, when we least expected it, returning to the Maas, which seemed for now to have left industry behind and surprised us with a broad expanse of recreational waterway.

In Hoensbroek, looking for the castle, following odd glimpses of an intriguing building, we came instead to the zoo: an area of grassy parkland in which a variety of animals mingled behind a wire mesh fence: a raven perched on the fence to talk to the ostrich (and I was so charmed at this that I badly annoyed a family of cyclists - remember, there are no pavements, only cycle ways). The ostrich strode off, nearly getting its feet entangled in a baaaaby goat. A lady walking her dogs paused by the fence while her scotty dog went nose to nose with two hens: three small white beasts together. There were deer, too. (My notes say "separating the geese from the goats".)

We paused in Thorn. I'd remembered the route as taking us to a string of 'white towns' but the internet tells me that the 'white town' is Thorn - particularly dazzling on this bright autumn afternoon, the white painted buildings and sharp shadows quite hard to see in the dazzling sunlight. When we'd had enough of that, we found a pretty back path, where a stream ran through woodland past the back doors of the town.

Then we got lost again, and I can't decipher the next paragraph of notes, but struggling to navigate what should have been a straightforward route was a leitmotif of this holiday, so perhaps that's appropriate. And eventually the old road north brought us to Arcen in time to watch the sun setting over the Maas.

Perversely, the next day, which we'd scheduled to be simply 'a short drive to the ferry' was more fun than we'd anticipated: there was sunshine, broad flat fields punctuated by trees, waterways, even windmills. And just to put that zoo in context, we saw small groups of deer kept in domestic gardens as people in other places might keep sheep or hens. And so we came to the King of Scandinavia, and home.

End of story. How does it go again. Oh, yes:

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