The Sleep Of The Just

I have slept. We are ready for our sole ‘guided tour’ of the whole trip.

Champagne’s Swamp Tours on Lake Martin is a magnificent organisation – and we don’t do tours.  A heavenly journey back to a better world – one of monsters, primeval swamps and unadulterated beauty. Seeing my wife jump with fear as an alligator twitched near her was worth the very reasonably priced tour fee alone – and the video was on. At one point on the swamp I ask our five fellow swamp-tourists which direction they think is back to the dock. Five arms all confidently thrust to utterly different points of the compass. All horribly wrong. I feel reassured that if there is a problem Mr Alligator will undoubtedly choose to feast on the healthy young plump girl in the boat. I’m sticking close to the guide…

Back to the cottage and fiddle about on boats, Ashly laughs at me – a lot – and we’ve almost forgotten about our other life running a small business in the UK. I fall out of the canoe and walk around the swamp in Chelsea boots, ill-fitting shorts and a terry-towelling shirt. You need these days in a road-trip. Ashly is a competent canoeist which slightly annoys me as my entire family were sea-faring folk and I’ve certainly let the side down. We get a Famous-Shrimp-Feast-To-Go… predictably inedible but who cares: Tomorrow is the ‘Last Drive.’