A lot of melon, a cycle, and some magical mud

Day 10
by Roz

Layla rather undersold the glory of last night’s dinner. But she also failed to mention that the owner, Di, had commented on our impressive consumption of the melon she’d provided for our breakfast that morning. In fact, we’d consumed the melon over a longer period (dinner, breakfast and then a little for lunch) but were too ashamed to admit this – particularly when Di said she’d specifically asked one of her staff to get off the bus early on his way on to work to buy us a melon for us to have for breakfast (since she’d now understood our true level of enthusiasm for the fruit)…! And so we found ourselves in the position of having demanded a full melon to eat for breakfast every day.

Oddly enough, eating an entire melon didn’t seem that difficult when it actually came to it. (I reserve judgement on whether it is going to be achievable every morning!) Though the plate of it did look slightly daunting for a minute or two…

From the glory of breakfast (which also included scrambled eggs – though Layla assures me that mine are much better) we headed off in a Range Rover with bikes up into the mountains. The intention of the day was every lazy biker’s dream: a beautiful downward ride through rural villages and beside babbling brooks (and with few cars). And indeed that ambition was achieved. It’s hard to describe how lovely it was. We saw the odd lazy dog, a few horses and carts and even the odd ancient villager on a bike. But no tourists and indeed no city dwellers. A truly joyful experience.

Having made it through the villages to the hideousness of an upward slope we stopped for a packed lunch in the village. A lunch made all the more delicious by knowing that part of the sandwich was a tapenade made by smoking the glut of vegetables at the end of autumn for 24 hours…

Although the temptation to cycle further was quite strong, in the end we decided to keep to our original plan of visiting old salt mines that had, over the years, been turned into salt lakes with very muddy bottoms. We drove there through very pretty countryside and to the sound of the BBC World Service. And what a random place it turned out to be! Visited by enthusiastic locals for the mud’s healing properties, it is now in the process of being redeveloped (by whom, who knows). But the redevelopment (and even the signs of “danger”) are still not a deterrent for locals who we found bathing in salt water – and covering themselves with mud – with glee. Always keen to fit in, Layla and I had to join them and dived in (ignoring the adjacent bulldozers). The salt water was fun (why does salt make it impossible to swim on your front?!) and the mud copious. Having daubed ourselves in mud appropriately, we baked along with locals until the mud was caked on – and then dived back in to the salt water to wash off the magical mud.

On the way home, Jez, having heard about the current ongoing manhunt in England, started asking about criminal sentences and how they are determined. In the circumstances, and given my job, I felt obliged to bore him and Layla with a lengthy explanation about how sentences are set (and how a sentence is served partly in jail and partly in the community). Fortunately before they’d both dozed off, we were back home. A fairly quick swim (for Layla) and a more languorous one for me, and then it was dinner time. Hurrah.

My only sorrow is that Layla is now waiting impatiently for me to finish my current book – Theodora, by Stella Duffy. This will teach me not to rave too much about anything until it’s read. This misguided book chat came about through the slightly odd atmosphere of dinner in the guesthouse – which is to say dinner a deux, in a tiny dining room, with not quite dim enough lighting to be appropriate and absolute silence. This leads to the need for un-holidayish intelligent conversation to fit the weird ambience: last night was public service and the pros and cons of commissioning and privatisation (aren’t you all, dear readers, glad you aren’t married to me?!) and tonight what is the definition of a historical novel – and particularly what makes a good historical novel.

Speaking of which, I must go: I have 40 pages of “Theodora: Actress. Empress. Whore.” to go and I can’t wait! And nor can I wait for tomorrow and the next bit of our Transylvanian fun….