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souvaris tour diary
 

Tuesday 14 April: Dijon, France

The final day of the holiday begins with desperately poor attempts to flee our rooms before the cleaning staff arrive, so we look sheepish as they look on at us getting our collective shit together, and we quickly depart to spend a slapdash hour in Dijon. We get to munch on crepes for an extremely pleasant brunch and manage a quick glance at the town hall before time dictates that we depart for the outlying villages, at which we intend to sample and purchase some good wine. This is Simmo's opus, and he looks suitably chuffed as we quaff copious amounts of plonk in the name of trying to find "something we like" (virtually all are fantastic, and five billion times better than the shit we normally indulge in back home).

By the time we realise that we've spent far too long indulging in alcohol and trying to pull down Ian's trousers to make him look more Emo, everyone is looking a little shakier on their feet. No matter, for we have a seven-hour journey in front of us, which means that everyone in the back can continue drinking exploits/get some final amount of rest/finish books/argue over what we're going to listen to for the final stretch of our tour.

The fact that we arrive in Calais at the allotted hour with any bottles left for loved ones leaves me surprised, and then rueing not downing them myself, for Calais truly is a shithole that is only really visible by night. Our moods take a collective nosedive at this atrocious sight/smell, plus we realise that the bliss/mayhem of the week is finally at an end. A little before midnight we board our ferry, and spend the journey drinking watered down and overpriced lager in an attempt to condition ourselves to domestic habits once again. We also talk excitedly about coming back at the first opportunity, and of touring an album that we will one day get around to releasing in our birth country.

Then it is back into the comfortable confines of Doris for a final stretch of a mere couple of hundred miles to our various homes and chosen beds. Most of us spend it asleep, but I am in the front with eyes wide open, thinking of all we have experienced in the last week. It has been an absolute blast, blessed in many places, and hampered little by any kind of problems at all. We have met several fantastic people that have already become good friends, and have been warmly welcomed and treated like kings wherever we have gone.

We have, in short, been incredibly lucky to be able to do such things, and are all incredibly grateful. We drop people off, and reach our beds by something like 4am. Now all I, Stu and Jim have to do is get up at 6.30am to return Doris. But we will still in some kind of deliriously happy stupor when we arise. Unsurprisingly, this soon fades to a numbed depression at going back to normal domestic life that stays with each of us for a good few days.

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