Backpacking is not only for the young. It is also for older women grieving the loss of their mate!

1. Backpacking: A different kind of Grieving
(1,786 words)
The youngsters do it – why not me? Ok, so they have
muscular legs and youthful, lithe bodies that curve
comfortably into the coach seat as they send last minute
text messages, while I struggle to fall asleep.
But they also wear smelly trainers, and mine don’t smell.
Plus, they’re not 60, not slightly overweight, not on beta
blockers or hormone replacement therapy, not
grandmothers backpacking alone, missing a mate of a
lifetime who’d died just before we were to have gone
together on our camping trip by car.
The funeral is over, the winter is gone, the summer is there
in the south of France, and the memory of him calms the
restlessness of my insomnia, urging me to take my tent and
go.
Six thirty in the evening, and a quick stop at Dijon. Then
Time jumped, shedding its British hour on the A31 into
the light sunlight which lulls body and brain.
‘My first time in France,’ said the 35 year old Australian
next to whom I was to spend half the night,’ followed by
the inevitable question: ‘and you?... where you off to?’
‘Me,’ I said, watching the driver’s profile in the green and
red fluorescence of the dashboard lights, ‘me, I’m running
away to wherever the next coach goes.’
He stared at me, and I stared through the window at road
markings which disappeared like suicidal white snakes
under the wheels of the coach on the wrong side of the
road.

2. ‘Wow!’ he murmured, almost simultaneously falling asleep,
his stiff gel-spiked hair tickling my cheek as his head fell on
my shoulder, and he rocked like a baby on his first hiking
trip through the Chamonix mountains, via slumberland.
I smiled into the twilight of our unsure closeness, having
bonded across a generation, in the interim intimacy of
sleep. Then murmurs and movement metamorphose my
semi-consciousness into the impersonality of Lyon’s bus
station, where nations change coaches in multilingual
confusion.
‘Where do I catch the coach to Marseilles?’ remembering
to call it le car, I asked the pot-bellied driver in unintelligible
French when it was my turn to alight into the international
expectancy of Lyon coach station.
He answered with a shrug and a lung-full of foul-smelling
Gaulois. Unlike the pony-tailed Dutch driver who was
answering questions in soft accents, with fluid figures of
eight flowing between French and Italian, through Spanish
and into English, and I knew that I was on his bus to
Marseilles.
Glad I’d remembered to pack munchies and water for my
tablets, this time sitting next to a well-travelled, leather-
weathered Londoner en route to Barcelona, who offered
me a sip of something strong, smelly and potentially
intoxicating from her once-silver hip flask, chatting
endlessly.
‘I’ve travelled across Europe many times before on my
own,’ she cut through my thoughts, which had settled on
sights of broken 16th century stone-barn skeletons. ‘I’ll be
63 next birthday.’ she said, reading my mind. That’s when I
knew without a doubt that I, too, was doing the right thing.

3. The campsite was all that I had dreamt it would be, but I
should not have arrived in Marseilles on a Sunday.
Everything deserted, only a lone taxi driver waiting to tell
lies: pas de bus a l’auberge de jeuness, he said. No bus? Hot and
tired, I had forgotten that the guidebook had clearly said to
take bus number six. I ended up wasting three quarters of
my daily allowance on his cab.
Note in my diary five days later: ‘I’m leaving now. It’s
Friday evening, back at the bus stop, same taxi driver. I
ignore him. I know my way around now!’
The campsite. What a joy it had been. And what sadness,
for tenting is what my husband and I enjoyed most before
his stroke. As I sat watching the happiness of children
playing, and German and Japanese couples concerned for
my comfort, inviting me to have drinks with them at
sunset, I cried inside for my John.
Watching the sun sink behind pine trees, I was reminded of
mediterranean Cape Town, where I’d walked on soft pine
carpets 40 years ago. Longing for my mate welled up inside
me. Alone, later, I sobbed, and the birds, frogs and crickets
stopped respectfully. And when I was empty, they started
up again, cheering me on.
When the evening hung back respectfully waiting for the
day to move out of its way, arriving almost imperceptibly at
ten at night, I saw a lone bird of prey sailing across a wide,
blue sky, and I felt safe and cared about when my tenting
neighbours, monsieur and madame les gendarmes offered me
aperitifs and invited me to share coffee with them. I was
grateful in broken French.
Next day I discovered the bustling market place of the
Marché des Capucins, by getting lost in a side street off the

4. Canebiére. There people of every colour and language
stand around in the street. Some just chatting, others
offering goods; authentic, copied, bought or stolen,
cigarettes, phones and phone cards, beside kiosks with fine
smelling meats, spices and smoke from Tunisia and Egypt,
Morocco and Paris. There I smelt my John again next to
me, saying you’re still my girl and I’m proud of you.
I want to go back to Marseilles, there where the sun
enhances colour and works its magic on the skin. There
where black turns to a rich, deep purple in Brazilian and
African skins. There where young, long, brown legs turn a
deep bronze and the vitality of youth in white skin shows
in a golden haze.
I want to go back with someone who will go snorkelling
with me in the green, green med off an inflated rubber boat
hired for a few euros, to the rocks surrounding the Chateau
D’If.
Italy. From Chioggia to Venezia on the autostrade, at 100
kilometres per hour through moving fields of water, I
watch birds perching on moving poles and white stone
houses floating on centuries of silt, waiting for silence, for
us to go, for me to return.
I fell in love with Rome. Fell in love as I never thought
possible, knowing of Rome’s Traverse, which can be very
dirty. I murmured to my John, who was walking in my
imagination beside me through St Peter’s Square into the
Basilica.
‘Pray for others,’ I hear him say during the mass, while the
German choir threw their voices up in strong, ascending
oscillations of sound. Up and up their voices rolled, then
down over the round limbs of chubby cherubs onto our

5. lowered heads.
‘No blame, no blame ever again,’ John had taught me to
say, and so I prayed as the waves of harmony washed my
need for forgiveness, and for a partner, onto the alter.
I did not go into the Sistine Chapel that day. In a
counterpoint of doubt I passed it by, thinking I need to
share this with someone. By the time I reached the little
chapel of the Tinita del Monti, I had discovered the joy of
praying for others, as I prayed for persons known and
unknown.
I’m going back to Siena, to the speed of the birds criss-
crossing at 150 kilometres an hour between statues, in the
game of chaos they’ve been playing for 2,000 years.
Without success they try to tempt a smile from the sombre,
Egyptianesque, striped black and white pillars indside the
Catradale St Mary. I want to go back to ancient Siena,
where you walk under arches which have been defying
gravity since the Middle Ages. Where, as you step through
automated medieval doors, you are surprised by the
fluorescent lights and air-conditioning in top class shops. A
city where time has stood still for thousands of years,
where millions of horses and walkers have polished stone
passages, which mirror the light of the sky at day and at
night.
And then, on the coach through Spain, early morning
southern Spain, I gasped as I woke up to the yellow smiles
of thousands of sunflowers, turning in unison, following us
with open faces and frilly yellow bonnets, allowing us to
ride over their sun.
On the municipal bus, alone, but not unhappy, I wonder
what emotions lie behind the closed white shutters of the

6. council flats we pass, as they stand, like huge warehouses,
waiting for the blazing afternoon sun to pass by with us, to
leave them alone.
I’m going back, John, I’m going again next year, I say and I
know he is smiling encouragingly. He knows of my
sadness, my grief, knows that I went backpacking into
friendliness and concern, knows it was my way of coping
with my loss.
I’m already packing again in my head, for I’ll be 61 next
year and the weight of my backpack might have to be
lighter. Perhaps a tent smaller than my 1.5 kg one? Can’t do
better than this little plastic stool. I’m too old to sit on the
ground. And the Thermaseat armchair, weighs only 350
grams, not forgetting my soft silk pillow for comfortable
sleeping, especially on the coach.
I’m almost ready to go back, just waiting for the spring
sunshine, then I’m off, perhaps to meet again some of the
friendly people whose email addresses I’ve collected: The
young doctor anthropologist lady from Rio with whom I
shared feminist theory on the coach at midnight
somewhere in Provence; the 56 year old language teacher
from Mexico and her French boyfriend who were roller
blading through Europe, snogging in their tent next to
mine on a quiet afternoon in the campsite in Venice.
People who wanted to know about me and enriched me
with details of their children, their pets and their opinions.
But perhaps next year I might no longer be able to carry
my own tent. The 13 kg backpack might be too heavy.
Perhaps then I might just fly to Italy at a budget price and
go and enjoy a bungalow or chalet or pre-erected tent at a
fraction of the price of a package holiday and with twice,
three times the freedom - and make contact with my kind

7. of people.
I must go back to the freedom which an hotel in the city
will not allow a lone middle-aged woman, where I will not
given permission to walk at 11.30 at night with a glass of
red wine in my hand, bidding bonne soirée to families sitting
outside their caravans enjoying pre-midnight calm. I want
to go back to enjoy the smells, goodness and safety of a
campsite next to a river, to say bonjour to the frogs who are
calling me back.
Wholesome memories, which soothe departure.