- Don't pitch your tent in an ant's nest. Especially if you intend to leave the inner door flap open to 'allow the air to circulate' during the day.
- Don't play football on astroturf with bare feet. It will give you blisters half the size of your palms. On both feet. And some on your toes too. This makes walking everywhere very inconvenient.
- Don't swim in the Seine without checking for tampons floating in the reeds upstream first. Definitely don't accidentally swallow the water whilst swimming.
- Don't assume a train station not on the map is just off the map. It may not be. In fact, it is highly likely that is quite some way off the map. Especially if you plan to walk from the train station to a campsite comfortably on the map.
- Don't climb on three fingers because the fourth is injured. You will only injure the other three and you won't be able to climb at all.
- French country music, somewhat incongruously, actually exists. And not even Alt-country or Outlaw country or something respectable like that, no, real classic Nashville sounding Country, such as the fantastic, but nevertheless surreal, '
Sur la route de Memphis'. And there are French covers of everything from 'Reach out I'll be there' (the Four Tops) to my favourite, 'Le lion est mort ce soir'. And I always thought the lion was just sleeping. Apparently not. And something else I never knew: 'My Way' is based on the French song 'Comme d'habitude'**. Cultural imperialism doesn't just go one way.
- Climbing is an international language and is, in fact, more fun in at least three or four languages. Say, for example, some Spanish climbers want to describe where a boulder is (you have to visit Font to truly appreciate how the hard this is, I mean, it's just a lot of trees with a lot of rocks) to some German climbers. Rather than drawing a map, or using the guidebook, the conversation is better conducted thus: Spanish climbers confer in Spanish. One speaks in broken French to me. I translate this into simple English for one of the Germans. This German in turn translates this into German for the others, who then confer. In German. The process is repeated in reverse in order to establish the whereabouts of this boulder, which we later fail completely to find. This is bouldering's Tower of Babel and is inordinately chaotic and fun.
- When your finger heals, it will start raining. And when it stops
raining your bike hire time will be up, so you have to walk everywhere
again. I don't believe in an interventionist God, but I'm starting to
think there must be an interventionist Devil out there somewhere.
- If you're camping in the rain, use two sets of clothes: one 'indoor' set and one 'outdoor'. This won't keep you any warmer nor the inside of your tent any drier, but changing gives you something to do while you wait for the rain to stop.
- You always meet the best people and do the best climbing right at the very end of the trip, just before you're about to leave.
Footnotes.
* These things actually happened to me/are true.
** If you already knew this, then serious kudos.
