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philip@philip@gotosocial.wittamore.fr (2026-05-09 21:11:51)
(Testing long blog post, I wrote this for my previous #blog)

The summer of '75

The white ferry crossing the channel seemed ancient, with a single passenger deck that was mostly a bar. Was it a converted fishing boat? An Isle of Wight ferry? In any case it was certainly unlike the sleek cross channel ships of today. It felt like going to Mars in a bucket.

I was 18. Tall and skinny with wild hair, in a t-shirt and shorts and a blue backpack that my parents had bought me. I’d read “Dove”, by Robin Lee Graham, the story of a 16 year old who left California to sail around the world alone. At the same age I left school to work as bank clerk, but I dreamed of seeing the world and living differently. Robin’s story scratched around in my brain along with other books. I had already hitchhiked to Hadrians wall, to a hippy medieval festival, to the fossil cliffs in Devon, and South Wales.

My first impression of #France was of large roads and big fields, a wide open horizon. I felt liberated, everything seemed brighter and more promising than in England which at that time was in an economical marasmus. I remember elm-lined roads in the north, passing under the Eiffel Tower, and my rear end still recalls the trip in a 2CV from Lyon to Orange, with a cortège of hairy students. Eventually a professional boxer in a black BMW dropped me off at the Marseilles ferry port. I paid for the overnight ferry to Corsica with my last francs, 10 francs perhaps.

I could smell #Corsica before landing, as the vegetation gave a distinctive perfume to the air. I quickly ran out of money, but rather than being a show stopper it was just another problem to solve. After a miserable mosquito ridden night in a field near Bonifacio, and a beautiful one in a pine forest with chips of tree bark on the ground, my last lunch was some peaches given to me by a lady on a market stall in Bastia. However I did catch a sign that said something about an employment agency, so I washed my t-shirt in a nearby foun