256. Driving through country roads

I am happy. 

I am alone in the car and I can drive as fast as I want and as carelessly as I want. No-one here to make comments. No-one to warn me about the dangerous bend ahead or the speed camera hidden behind the trees. No-one to moan about my playlist. 

The rain has turned into a drizzle but the heavy downpour of the past twenty-four hours has left huge puddles in the potholes. I purposefully swerve into them and press hard on the accelerator just as the wheels touch the water. Whoooooooooosh! I love the noise it makes as it splashes noisily, water towering above me like a geyser, upwards from the tyres and all around the vehicle. I am trapped behind a beautiful wall made of a thousand silvery droplets twinkling in the grey winter sun. It fans out around the car and then crashes heavily on the bonnet. Splaaaaaaaaaash! It gets the windscreen wipers into a noisy frenzy. Thrup-thrup. Thrup-thrup. Thrup-thrup. I laugh out loud as the whole car is now covered in milk-chocolate-brown mud. So glad I left the family behind. I can hear them though.

‘Mum, you’re just a kid!’

‘My car! I’m going to have to wash it!’ 

'Slow down! Driving conditions are treacherous in winter particularly this area.'

And so on.

I am now singing at the top of my voice along one of my favourite tracks. It is like a scene from a movie - my movie. A woman wearing an old jumper and a shapeless wooly hat, alone on a country track somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There is no traffic, no-one in the farm yards as I drive through tiny hamlets, not even kids in Wellington boots. Only cows, a few horses, a couple of donkeys. I beep my horn to them and they turn their heads slowly, full of disapproval and maybe a hint of contempt. 

But I dont care what the cows think! I am happy. I am going to meet up with an old friend from high school. I drive along a tumultuous river at the bottom of a valley, I drive under stone viaducts - useless now that trains do not criss-cross the area but still impressive  and menacing. I drive through a small sleepy town that clearly struggles to find its place in this new modern world. I drive on and rich the high plateau with fields each side of the road and cows everywhere and a view over the distant peaks of the dormant volcanoes. I drive and suddenly out of the blue the road dips down towards an other river so steeply (or my speed too high) my ears pop. I reach the first hair-pin bend and negotiate it like a Formula 1 driver and here I am, ready to drive back up to the other side of yet an other valley. I am now close to my destination and the road is getting narrower, darker. I slow down as I cross the village and notice the Café de la Place is open. I stop to give way to imaginary cars and turn into the road leading to my friend's. Up I go again, up a steep slope under dark bare trees that shale and tremble violently. I turn the music down and open the window to listen to the howling winds and the snapping on the branches. I love the smell of the mud, of the rotting leaves and decomposing branches, of the damp soil and the moss on the rocks, of the wet tarmac. I realise that I am probably a country girl deep at heart. Happiest in muddy wellies and muddy jeans.

Suddenly the road leaves the dark woods. The view to the left is stunning, rolling fields getting higher and higher until the blend in with the purple mountains and the white peaks in the distance. I recognise my friend's farm house tucked away on the hillside. I park the car and pause to take in the incredible landscape.