Wildlife

Camino II: Dawnbreaker

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Holy Week got off to a flying start last night outside Logroño’s cathedral, Santa María de La Redonda. It isn’t always easy to tell which towns will have a serious procesión, but for the record, Logroño goes the distance. It looked as though all the brotherhoods were out in force last night, garbed in white, red, green, black and blue. Crucially for me, they also beat out the same halting drumbeat from my memories of Holy Week in the south. Not every town does it, but you’ll notice if they do: it’s the ever so slightly delayed drum roll during the march that, once you hear it, you can’t unhear. It’s the suspense of the last days of Jesus’ life, as his followers waited to see if he would save himself. At least, that’s one way of reading into it.

I had supper with a rather awkward American, the only other guest for dinner at the albergue. He wasn’t even staying there, but appeared to have wandered in looking for a menu peregrino (the cheap three-course fare offered to pilgrims on the Camino). He had his reservations about how sociable people are on the Camino and pined for the quieter stretches, and from his less than satisfied reaction to the ‘vegetarian option’ he’d asked for, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing out here. He was quick to want to fact check my anecdote about his home state of California being one of the only places in the world named for a fictional location (it takes its name from the mythical island in Montalvo’s 16th-century chivalric novel, Las sergas de Esplandián) but I won’t begrudge him for it. After Trump and the fake news boom, who’d trust anyone?

I was definitely one of the first out of town this morning. Though I passed some pilgrims on the road a few hours in, from the speed at which they were walking I suspect they’d been lodging one or two towns ahead. As a result, I had pretty much the whole 30km hike to Nájera to myself – including the first hour and a half before sunrise, which is always one of the most magical times to walk the Camino.

Approaching the Laguna de Grajera from the east, I counted about six or seven night herons flying in from their roost somewhere beyond Logroño. You can just about make out the silhouette of one of them in the photo above, as dawn was starting to break. There were rabbits everywhere – more than I’ve ever seen in this country – and the morning sky was alive with the songs of blackbirds and larks. I could have waited for company at any point, but I do love to have that part of the day to myself. Self indulgent, perhaps, but worth indulging all the same.

There was even an icon of Nuestra Señora del Rocío on the lakeside. Whether or not I sang her into existence through various repetitions of Las llanuras ardientes and El Rocío es un milagro as I was walking is conjecture. It felt special to find her here, so far from her usual haunt in the marismas down south.

Now, while I needn’t have set off quite so early (the 8 hours in the guidebook is a joke, the trek is at the very most 6h30 with a stop for lunch) I did have my reasons, and one was to catch a very specific angle of the sunrise at just the right moment.

At the brow of a hill to the west of the laguna stands one of the famous Osborne bulls for which Spain is so famous. By the time I got clear of it – at around 8.20am – the sun was almost exactly behind it. I could not have timed it better. Point and shoot!

The rest of the walk was pretty straightforward. The ruins of the old pilgrims’ hospice at San Juan de Acre were picturesque and the Camino itself, though it cleaved close to the road on occasion, was quiet and easy underfoot. I let a couple of Dutch pilgrims overtake and continued to have the road to myself. The Sierra de Cebollera remained cloudbound for most of the walk, and I kept my hoodie on until I reached Nájera – it simply wasn’t hot enough to justify fewer layers, and that’s not bad thing!

Navarrete was stunning – easily one of my favourite stations on the Camino so far. The church is a classic Spanish affair: pokey and generic on the outside, and an immense explosion of heavenly gold within. I lit a candle for abuelo, left a story in the visitor’s book, sang through Thomas Morley’s Nolo mortem peccatoris (since there was nobody there) and moved on.

From Navarrete, the final stretch rolled across the hills before sloping down toward the cliff face of Nájera. Legend has it the French hero Roland fought a Syrian giant on one of these hills in a single combat that went on for days, but I was happy enough to see the familiar silhouette of the giants of my childhood: griffon vultures, circling high above the meseta in the distance. I didn’t keep a tally, but there were raptors everywhere today. Kestrels and kites – both black and red – and buzzards and booted eagles, these last in both white and brown. Since it’s still early enough in the season, some of them were displaying still, climbing high and then plummeting down in a sharp V with wings tucked in. Between that and the flute-song of woodlarks that followed me for the last hour before Nájera, I have been in seventh heaven all morning. Oh Camino, I have missed you!

The Albergue Municipal is filling up. Maybe I’ll meet some of these people later. But for now, I’ve done my write-up for the day and I could use a little shut-eye before I seek further adventures in Nájera this evening. Until the next time, folks. BB x

Camino I: Plus Ultra

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

6.15am, Gatwick North Terminal

I left over an hour and a half to make my flight this morning, but I could easily have done it in less. Even with the extras (a few more items of clothing than originally planned in case of inclement weather), I’m traveling lighter than ever. Who’d have the fuss of a suitcase when the open road is so inviting?

I think I must have raced to the gate in my eagerness. It was almost deserted for some time when I got here. Only two or three others joined me in my vigil: a Spanish girl chaperoned by her mother, a Greek/English couple (yes, I googled the man’s passport symbol – call me a nosy Parker but the square cross had me stumped) and a woman who from her accent could only be Basque: one side of her head shaved, brow furrowed, a black hoodie emblazoned with the slogan ‘DESIGNED BY AN IMMIGRANT’ in block white capitals.

No tannoy for this flight – the attendant called out Bilbao almost as quietly as I did trying to call a student over in the canteen last week for his poor choice of language. She only changed her tune to ‘Speedy Boarding Only’ when the first six or seven of us were clear. Sometimes, just occasionally, it pays to arrive ahead of schedule.

10.18am, Bilbao Intermodal Bus Station

I’ll say this much for Bilbao Airport: it’s a lot less hassle than Gatwick. All in all I don’t think it took much more than fifteen minutes between touchdown and the shuttle bus.

As I thought, the skies over Bilbao when we landed were clouded, grey and low. They always have been on my visits to this corner of Spain, to the extent that clouds and the Basque Country are virtually inseparable in my mind. The Spanish author Miguel Delibes once said that the sky over Castile is so high because the castellanos themselves put it there from staring at it so much. While my kith and kin chase the coy heavens plus ultra, always in search of the new, the ever practical Basques bring the skies down to their level, coveting the Viscayan rain and wrapping their dark forests in mist and cloud. I don’t expect to be free of that shroud until we reach the frontier.

11.56am, near Pobes

I’m now racing south on the Bilbao-Logroño bus, basking in the intermittent glow of the Spanish sun. Craters of blue have started to appear in the sky as though punched through by some celestial artillery, and still the Basque line of defence holds.

Here below, the landscape is changing. The military ranks of pines encamped around Bilbao suddenly give way to a gentle blanket of beech trees. Patches of brilliant green herald the coming of spring to these hills, and limestone crags scar the mountains like bones – first in uniform grey, then bleached with that warm golden stain that is so evocative of Spain’s highlands.

And then, suddenly, the dark hills of the Basque Country fall away and the plains of Castile are all around me: a forgivingly flat golden country, nestled between the high crags north of Haro and the snowbound peaks of the Sierra de Cebollera to the south. Castles and monasteries dating back to the time of a real frontier sit atop the hills and knolls like childish imitations of the limestone cliffs behind, the handiwork of the greatest craftsman of all.

And there, racing over the fields near an Alcampo petrol station, is my first swallow of the year. It’s only a fleeting glimpse as the bus races on past a bodega and a Lidl in quick succession, but it’s enough to make my heart soar – higher still than those Castilian skies.

I’m drunk on all this scenery, in case that wasn’t obvious (the overblown choice of a frontier semantic field was probably a dead giveaway). Rehab is the usual cure. However – to keep in line with this post’s choice of imagery – sod that for a game of soldiers. I have a week and more to wander around my grandfather’s country once again. I can’t think of a better rehab than this.

5.27pm, Albergue Santiago Apostol, Logroño

Logroño is climbing back out of its siesta. I’ve spent the afternoon here and there, though perhaps more here than there. Here being the Albergue Santiago Apostol, the same place I stayed when I last did the Camino four years ago. The only thing that seems to have changed is the stamp for my pilgrim’s passport. That, and I’ve come alone this time.

The albergue is quiet. I’ve only crossed paths with a handful of other pilgrims: Joan i Laura, a couple of peregrinos from Girona, a French family of three and a German family of four. I expected the Camino to be busier during Semana Santa, but I guess if you have a week’s holiday you’d do the stretch that can be done in a week or less – that is, the last 100km from Sarria. Out here in La Rioja, it’s likely to be rather quiet.

That will make for a rather soul-searching experience, which is no bad thing!

I’ve gone for dinner and breakfast at the albergue, 1) to make sure I actually eat and eat well and 2) to meet some of the other pilgrims ahead of the 31km stretch tomorrow. And also 3) because, at 16€ for dinner and breakfast, it’s a steal. I hadn’t forgotten how affordable the Camino is, but it is nice to rediscover, as it were.

I ate my lunch (chorizo and queso curado in a fresh barra de pan) under a beech tree on the bank of the Ebro river. Spring may be slow in coming to England but she’s been here a while already. The beak-clicking display of the local storks can be heard every so often, even from the albergue, though a drumming woodpecker in the park was giving them a run for their money.

English and Spanish birdsong combined on the riverbank. Blackcaps, wrens and blackbirds supported a local chorus of serins, short-toed treecreepers and wrynecks. I don’t think I’ve seen (or heard) a wryneck since my first stint in Villafranca back in 2015, but I hadn’t forgotten its call. After scanning the branches for a minute or so I tracked it down to a lightning tree just a few metres from where I was sitting. They really do look bizarre, the way they move about mechanically, looking for all the world like the clockwork nightingale from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. The wryneck kept me company for most of my lunch and only took off when a dog walker came by, carrying an African grey parrot on his arm.

I’ll try to catch the first of the procesiones tonight. ‘It’s only Monday,’ said the hostalero at the desk, alluding to the fact that the pinnacle of Semana Santa is toward the end of the week. Even so, my pride as a Spanish teacher is at stake (I have just been teaching the topic to my Year 10s) and besides, I’m a fanatic for the pasos. You can blame my year in Andalucía for that. I’ll also see if I can’t locate the local legend of the Bookseller of Logroño that fellow English traveler George Borrow recounted in his book on the Gypsies of Spain, published a little under two hundred years ago – because what’s an adventure without a quest of some description? BB x

Spirits of the Forest

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Winter is on the retreat. It began on Tuesday, when I heard a dunnock singing from the top of one of the trees by the church. A tiny foot soldier, the herald of the advance guard that has set up camp at the edge of the Weald, singing his heart out in defiance of the lingering cold. The dawn chorus grows in strength by the day. It woke me before my alarm did yesterday. There are still a few redwings about, but it’s been a long time now since I heard the cackle of a fieldfare, and the evenings are getting lighter. Spring is still a little way off, but it is finally on its way.

I’ve been a lot more mobile these last few months. No, it’s not because I finally have a set of wheels – I don’t, and that is still very much a work in progress – but all the same, it has meant I have spent even more time in the Weald than ever before. While my head and my heart have been busy elsewhere, my eyes and ears have not taken a day off. The shifting seasons and the changes they bring have always been a major source of happiness for me, and there have been so many things to see on my weekly commutes that I’ve been pretty spoilt for choice.

More than a couple of times, I’ve looked over my shoulder to see a roe buck staring back at me. I almost walked right past a couple on my way into town yesterday, and they stood their ground even when I stopped to stare right back. They’re easy to miss at this time of year, blending seamlessly into the starving ferns and leaf-litter, and I might well have missed them more than I’ve seen them. The only obvious sign you get is when they dash off into the woods, their tails flashing white like a signal behind them. When the snow came down in December, they were only too easy to spot. I very nearly missed my train into London because I stopped to let a small herd cross the path into the woods beyond, watching them until they disappeared into the gloom. It wouldn’t be the first time.

During a cold snap like the one we had before Christmas, it isn’t uncommon to see foxes out and about during the day, since the going gets tough for pretty much everything that lives in the forest. Last weekend I saw one curled up asleep in the open beside the Gatwick stream, one eye open and trained on me as I wandered by. Not too many weeks before, I had a close encounter with a younger tod on the edge of town, which was either so accustomed to people passing by or too hungry to care that I was sitting only a few metres away. Plenty of folk passed by without so much as a sideways glance, which is understandable, I suppose – foxes aren’t universally popular for a number of reasons – but the country boy in me can’t help but stop, and look, and listen. Whether or not they’re virus vectors or poultry pilferers, foxes are undeniably beautiful creatures when you get the chance to have a good look at them.

Then there’s all the voices of the Weald. Snatches of conversations in languages at once familiar and unfamiliar. The croak of the ravens that nest somewhere in the forest. The harsh cry of a hulking grey heron as it soars above the trees. The thin rattling wheeze of a wren, and the answering snare drum of a woodpecker. It’s all I can do to keep my head facing forward on my way to and from lessons at work, lest I make my love for these things painfully obvious. In a very real sense, I’ve been playing the same game since I was a schoolboy. That makes it twice as fun, I guess.

Boy, but it feels good to be writing again. I’m out of practice. I’ll report back when I have something to report. BB x

All Change

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Autumn has come early this year. Following in the wake of the fierce heat of the hottest summer on record in the British Isles, many of the trees have started to shed their leaves almost two weeks earlier than usual. Two weeks does seem to be the number: the forest is thick with the musty air of fungus, and the colony of house martins that nest in the school have already started to muster on the roof as though they mean to depart any day now, though they are usually with us well into September. We’re in for a long winter when it comes.

The zenith of the summer stargazing season is behind us now. It’s one of the things I most look forward to about the summer, living where I do: despite the eternal glow from London to the north, the stars and the planets are surprisingly clear. Some of the summer nights this year were so hot it was possible to go out stargazing well after midnight without catching a chill, and I refamiliarised myself with the constellations: the twinkling ‘W’ of Cassiopeia; the Northern Cross; the winding enormity of Draco; and arrayed along the horizon, the bright lights of three planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. It was so bright at the peak of the heatwave that I didn’t even need a torch to find my way around, thanks to the unfriendly glare of the hunter’s moon. While I couldn’t catch the planets with my camera, the Moon was easy enough.

There’s a buzzard that lives in the forest which sometimes quarters the school grounds. A few days ago I saw her from the kitchen while I was having breakfast one morning, and on a childish whim I set out with my camera in hand. I used to be rather good at stalking for a good shot, but I’m a good number of years out of practice. I did manage to get close enough to see the hawk’s eyes with my own, which was the standard I always used to hold myself to back when I was a schoolboy, before it took off over the woods.

Words can’t describe how good it feels to be back at work. Usually, the two days of staff training can feel like a gut punch from the backstage crew as the curtain is yanked back – a kind of ‘playtime’s over, now get out there and earn a crust’. But this year, after eight weeks of on-and-off isolation, it could hardly be more welcome. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back in the classroom since the end of July at least, and finally, it’s come around again. Only the bank holiday stands between the last few hours of the summer and blissful occupation.

I popped up to London yesterday and bought myself a new suit and shoes in a hollow attempt to pave the road to success this year, but also to treat myself after the success of my first ever GCSE cohort to sit exams came out shining. But will they detract from the beard? I find that doubtful.

Sir has been known to radically change his appearance before. I shaved my head once two years back and braved the raised eyebrows of my kids for months as it took its sweet time growing back. I’ve not cultivated a beard (or a ’tache, for that matter) since my time in Jordan, now seven years ago, and despite my initial apprehensions, I have to admit it’s starting to grow on me – faster than it’s growing in, anyway. I’ve accepted the fact that it’s going to leave me looking more like one of Leif Ericsson’s men than one of Hernán Cortés’ conquistadores – I am three-quarters English, after all, and what Spanish blood I have is more than a little rubio. Still, change is good. One can get too comfortable.

I tidied the flat a bit this morning. Took some clothes to a recycling centre. Did one last shopping trip before the portcullis comes down on Tuesday and ordered a grooming kit to keep this new project under control. The writing bug bit earlier this week, as it always does just before work begins. I guess I need to be busy to be productive.

As the clock runs down, I’m enjoying a warm mug of Cola Cao (courtesy of Garcia’s on Portobello Road) and leafing through one of the oldest books in my collection: a 138-year old copy of Washington Irving’s Life of Mahomet & Tales of the Alhambra. The writing is wonderfully poetic, and it even smells historical. One of my students is writing a project on the Alhambra, having fallen under the same spell that I did at his age – the same magic that ensnared Irving and countless other devotees long before us. It would do me a world of good to clue up on that old obsession once again.

It’s going to be a very busy year, but I’ll write as often as I can – it’s been really therapeutic, getting back into the writing game after a long hiatus. Until the next time, dear readers! BB x

Leveret

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The heavens opened last night. The water butts, which were pretty much exhausted yesterday, were filled right up to the brim and overflowing as the rain continued long into the morning. Then the winds blew in hot from the southwest, then the skies clouded over and a chill set in. Looks like we’re back to formula with a regular English summer once again.

I read a couple of articles in The Critic today. Oxford University in a bind over a Benedictine college. Simmering anger against the rising tide of wokery. In the news, US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan against the wishes of the Chinese government, Beyonce changed the lyrics to her latest hit single after outcry against an offensive word and Big Brother announced its return. I could have added that the latter information was revealed at the end of this year’s season of Love Island, but the ambiguity is very much intentional on my part.

I quit the house for a bit, grabbing a worn Barbour coat and a pair of binoculars. Figures if I’m on the wrong side of history, I might as well look the part. Watching the swallows yesterday made me nostalgic for the long, quiet days of my childhood when I would set out into the countryside with my camera in search of nature. It was a bit warm for the Barbour, despite the clouds, but it’s a damn sight better for blending into the khaki hues of the English countryside than anything else in my wardrobe.

Lincolnshire seems to have quite a sizeable population of hares. You don’t see so many of these impressive creatures in the south-east. Being larger and more skittish than the rabbit, they don’t cope so well with how crowded it is down there. Neither the rabbit nor the hare are native to these islands. Both were brought over here by the Romans – for sport and for eating, if not for some early scientific whim. Our only native species is the mountain hare, and you’ll have to travel to the wildest parts of Great Britain and Ireland in order to find them. Ultimately, that’s neither here nor there: two thousand years have come and gone since the Romans were here, and the hares that race across the fields are by now as English as the oaks that have grown in our soil since time immemorial.

The hares I saw in the fields behind the house were only youngsters – leverets. They hadn’t developed the long and powerful back legs and enormous eyes that make adult hares so striking. They also weren’t as fleet-footed as adults, who will usually disappear in a black-and-tan dash into the middle distance long before you can get close. They let me approach further than I expected before deciding the Goldilocks line had been breached, and off they went. I followed, slowly, at a distance, and caught up with them by the sand martin colony. One hung back to watch me for a few moments before slipping through the fence and bounding after its sibling. After that, I climbed the fern-bound rise and scanned the forest for a while, listening to the wind in the trees and the buzzards calling. It feels good to be back in nature again.

When I get back home, I really must get back in the habit of spending more time in nature again. I’ve neglected this side of me for too long. At the end of the day, I love to try my hand at various things, but under all those layers is a naturalist. Life is a mosaic – you never lose who you were, or the people you’ve been at various stages of your life. You will always carry them with you in one shape or another. The largest shard in my mosaic is an earthy brown, like the soil; greenish-grey, like oak leaves; and bluish-white, like the sky. I need to go back to nature. I need to go back to being me again. BB x

They Bring the Summer

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The year is turning. Can you feel it? The light in the morning has shifted ever so slightly, but it’s noticeable. We’re past the peak, and before long the red-gold winds of autumn will be upon us. Thanks to the fierce heat we had in July, some of the trees are already wearing their russet cloaks. I shouldn’t be surprised if we’re in for a long, dry winter this year. Perhaps that’s the way of things to come, perhaps not. Time will tell.

The family of swallows that nests in the barn near the house have had a very successful year. I counted eleven of them on the wires this morning: two parents with full streamers and nine noisy youngsters whose tails have yet to grow out in full. I had to count twice because of a sand martin who seems to prefer hanging out with swallows than his own kin, who have a colony in a field half a mile down the road. There comes a time every year, usually in September, when the swallows and martins suddenly gather en masse in a noisy spectacle before setting off for the south. We’re not quite there yet, no matter how abnormal this summer’s weather has been, but it sure felt like a nod to that day this morning.

Swallows, swifts and martins – collectively known as hirundines, which might have something to do with the Latin word harundo, meaning the forked shaft of an arrow – really are some of nature’s miracles. The tiny flashes of blue and white that dance over the fields with such cheerful abandon in summer travelled around 9,700km from their wintering grounds in South Africa to get here, and in the space of a few short months they have to make the same journey all over again in reverse, this time with their young in tow. Most estimates have them traveling about 320km every day. That’s a bloody long way to go when you’re only a few months old!

This morning the family looked like they were getting some practice in for the long journey ahead. Mum and dad would sit with the youngsters on the wires for a while, chattering amongst each other while the kids preened endlessly, before suddenly taking off and wheeling about the garden with their offspring racing after them. They might have been hunting, of course, but some of the young ones were far more interested in playing keep-up with a pigeon feather, catching it and keeping it from touching the ground, the way children sometimes do with a balloon. It was really quite endearing to see.

In the past, where our swallows went each winter had us stumped. There were some truly bizarre theories floating around. Following in Aristotle’s footsteps, some thought they hibernated underground. Some thought that they slept at the bottom of deep lakes and ponds, since they spent a great deal of their time hawking over the water during the summer months. One 17th century theory, courtesy of Englishman Charles Morton, claimed the Moon as the swallows’ winter destination as the only logical explanation for their total disappearance. It sounds absurd, but it’s not so outlandish a theory when you try to imagine explaining that these tiny creatures travel further twice a year than most humans will in a lifetime. It even makes the underground hibernation theory seem plausible!

It’s an incredibly hazardous journey, and not every one of our brave swallows will make it there and back. There are all manner of dangers they have to face: sea crossings, storms, high winds, predation by hobbies (consummate swallow-catchers), not to mention human interference – some will be caught for food, and the Maltese in particular are infamous for their practice of trapping migrating birds by liming fences. And then, of course, there’s the mighty Sahara Desert. Michael Morpurgo wrote a fantastic children’s book about that journey – Dear Olly – which you should read if you want an idea.

So why travel all that way? Competition might well have something to do with it. After all, Africa has plenty of swallows of its own (without all these European swallows “comin’ over ‘ere and takin’ our jobs” etc.) and fans of Monty Python will be well aware of the fact that African swallows are non-migratory. On my travels around Uganda during the rainy season (November) back in 2012, I saw plenty of familiar-looking swallows hawking over the White Nile, but most of the birds I clocked were local species that don’t travel far from home. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether maybe just one of the brave little birds flitting by had crossed my path sometime before, either in Spain or the south of England. How’s that for a flight of fancy! <groan>

Greater striped swallow, Ishasha Lodge (Queen Elizabeth National Park) Uganda, 18th November 2012

Swallows are remarkable creatures to watch. While we still have a few weeks left of summer, try to find a few minutes to enjoy the little winged miracles. I’m sure they do wonders for one’s mental health, but to use less clinical terms, they sure can lift one’s spirits. Today, for the first time, I saw two of the youngsters doing something I’ve never seen swallows do before: sunbathing. Plenty of birds do this kind of thing to regulate body temperature, but it’s the first time I’ve seen swallows in the act. It was just two of them who kept leaning over in the sunlight – the others were far more interested in preening, though the sand martin looked as though he wanted to get in on the action!

One swallow does not a summer make, but their departure certainly puts an end to it! If you’ve enjoyed reading my homage to our chatty little neighbours, you might find the links below worth a browse, too. Until the next time! BB x
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/natural-histories/great-migration-mystery
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/swallow/migration/

Greenheart

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ll be frank. Summer is my least favourite season. Summer is, in the vocabulary of my students, “dead”. Most of the birdsong is over for the year, the whole nation is out and about and the holidays stretch on for what feels like forever (especially when you work in a private school). There’s a dry stasis in the air that you don’t get in the changeling months of spring and autumn and you’re too cold to notice in winter. This summer, as is tradition, I’m spending my time between watching documentaries and watching the clock. There’s not all that much else to do when you find yourself in the countryside far away from everyone you know.

There are, however, massive perks to being here. A few days visiting my parents in Lincolnshire usually throws up a chance to explore somewhere new, and though today’s ramble was more of a wander “round the back” than an adventure per se, it was a beautiful reminder that there are some things that make an English summer worth seeing.

Up on the wolds near Donington, I heard a quail. It’s been years since I heard one in this country, but once heard, you never forget. That iconic wet-my-lips call carries for miles, especially under a hot midday sun when the only other sound is the wind. It reminded me of the green riverbanks of the Dehesa del Banco, where the call of quails was just one instrument in a wetland symphony: percussive reed warblers, the accelerando snare of the corn bunting, the indescribable beauty of the bee-eater’s woodwind and zitting cisticolas going zzzzit zzzzit zzzzit overhead. It sure felt nice to be taken back there from the sunlit uplands of Lincolnshire.

The skies here are immense. The land seems to go on forever in all directions. You get a real sense of eternity in this vast corner of England. Little wonder, then, that so many Lincolnshire folk hoist the red and green county flag over cars, windows and doors. And yet, as is so often the case in England (and why I really didn’t take too well to life in Jordan), you’re never too far from a dark forest, which – admittedly – are especially peaceful places in the quiet summer months.

I tried to explain to my companions in Amman again and again the importance to me of green spaces. I think at the time I said I needed more trees, and was quite rightly told there were plenty of trees in Amman’s parks. But there’s something very special to an Englishman about the quality of light that can be found filtering through the trees in an English wood. Something about the infinite shades of green, alder branching over ash, ivy climbing up oak, a ceaseless communication from leaf to leaf, tree to tree. Little wooden fences put up by one of the country folk using fallen branches. The sound of the wind in the leaves: the way it chatters and whispers through the oak trees, and sings without syllables in the firs. Stop and listen the next time you’re near one and you’ll see what I mean.

It’s a magical feeling, standing in the dappled shade of an English forest in summer, and the loss of it in Amman broke my heart, I think. It was, perhaps, the time in my life when I stopped hating on my English heritage and came to appreciate the land where I was born – which, I think, is a stage we must all go through at some point in our lives. Not making peace with the establishment, exactly; rather, making peace with one’s roots. Learning to love the land that made you who you are.

Ten years ago today, I was spending my final childhood summer gigging with my funk band in an attempt to distract from results day. Two months later found me teaching for the very first time in a private school in East Africa. It’s been a colourful decade since then. I feel like I’ve lived around the world in my twenties: Durham, Jordan, Morocco, Sussex, Dorset, Lincolnshire and various corners of Spain. I’ve also found a real fondness for Edinburgh, reawakened my love for France and started a love affair with Italy. And while all those LinkedIn “so grateful for” posts make me want to throw up into my hands, I have to admit I’m incredibly lucky to have had such a colourful decade. I wonder where the next ten years will take me?

I hope She is out there somewhere. I never lose faith in that. And faith, as always, keeps one believing in a better tomorrow. For now, there is the English countryside and the sounds of summer. I can live with that. BB x

Summer Ramble on a Ha-Ha

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bastille Day. The temperatures hit 26 degrees Celsius this afternoon. The BBC Weather app is predicting a high of 34 on Tuesday. The folks on the radio are starting to use the words ‘ration’ and ‘hosepipe ban’. I sat outside on the south-facing ha-ha and stared out across the Weald towards the South Downs for about an hour. I brought a few books to read – four more than I actually needed, as is my habit – and spent about ten minutes “reading” the mega-drawing, reliving the memories recorded on that gargantuan scroll.

I saw a monk in the quiet garden sitting in silent contemplation and reminded myself how lucky I am to live and work where I do. Isolation does no wonders for the human condition, but there’s a reason enlightenment is rarely sought in the cities. Sometimes the key to more positive thinking is just to get outside for an hour or two, even if there is no destination in mind. I certainly feel a lot happier for it.

Over the forest to the south, I saw a pair of hobbies displaying. I haven’t seen such a thing in a long, long time. I’d forgotten what masters of the air they are. Little wonder they’re among the few predators capable of catching a swallow on the swing. They cut through the air like feathered lightning, making the hovering kestrel nearby look like one of Da Vinci’s clumsy flying machines by comparison.

A few minutes later, the white buzzard flapped into view. It wasn’t around for more than half a minute, before two crows sent it back the way it had come, back into the wooded dark of the Weald. A hat-trick of British birds of prey in as little as five minutes. Reminded me of a sunny June afternoon when I was a kid, when to my disbelief I clocked no fewer than six raptor species circling above the house at once: kestrel, buzzard, sparrowhawk, hobby, two red kites and a peregrine. To this day I have no idea how they all came to be in the same place at the same time. In Gibraltar, maybe, but not in Kent.

The race for Boris’ replacement is picking up momentum. My parents were quick to bat aside my guess that Sunak would take the throne, but the odds seem to be in his favour at the moment. I’m no political pundit, but I feel it’s worth recording these things from time to time. Since reading Philipp Blom’s Nature’s Mutiny last year (a collection of anecdotes documenting the Little Ice Age), I’m all the more convinced it’s important that those of us who spend our free moments writing make a point of logging the everyday. Who knows what it might tell future generations about the way we lived?

I’m getting itchy feet again. I think I might go on just the one *little* adventure before the summer is over, and I’m thinking it ought to be France – not least of all because of the relative ease of getting there by boat. It sounds like nothing less than chaos surrounding airlines at the moment, which are struggling to meet the logjam of two years’ worth of cancelled summer holidays when they haven’t yet recovered from the post-COVID staff shortages. I don’t plan on going far, but I have always wanted to see the Bayeux Tapestry, and one of the better things to come out of 2021/22 has been a rediscovery of my love for French, thanks to an especially heartwarming Year 7 class I had the pleasure to teach this year. I confess I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about going back to teaching two languages at the start of the year (after my experience teaching lower set Year 9 in my PGCE year), but these kids really turned it all around. So… Normandy? I’d better do some research, but… I’ve got to say, the opportunity to spend even a couple of days in a place of such historical importance… It’s dangerously tempting! BB x

Venice III: Spirits of the Marshes

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Three days in and I’m already a day behind. I guess that’s a good thing, as it means I not only had a packed day yesterday, I also had a busy sociable evening swapping stories with fellow travellers. It’s travelling done right, and all I ask is your patience, dear readers – such days make for good writing.

Wednesday was another make-it-up-as-you-go kind of day. I had it in mind to visit the smaller islands out in the lagoon – namely Murano and Burano – but as the vaporetto rolled up to Fondamente Nove, I suddenly decided to take a chance on mysterious Torcello, Venice’s predecessor. Most of the guidebooks pointed out it was almost deserted with very little to see other than an ancient church – the oldest in the lagoon – but if you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know that’s one big fat tick in the box for me.

The lagoon feels truly vast once you’re out on it and Venice is behind you. Wooden struts stacked in threes mark what can only be described as water highways, giving the lagoon the appearance of a race course – until you realise it’s not mere practicality but also a safety measure for sailors, as there are multiple areas of the lagoon that are considerably shallower than they seem. Here and there, large expanses of mudflats rise out of the water, giving the lagoon’s waterbirds a place to retreat from the noise of the city.

The vaporetto chugged into Murano, city of glass, and then Burano in turn, city of lace and paintbox streets, but I spurned both of these for the diamond in the rough that is Torcello, risking a stranding for a chance to see one of the lagoon’s hidden gems. (In hindsight, I needn’t be so melodramatic – Torcello is surprisingly well serviced by the vaporetti, with a boat every fifteen minutes from neighbouring Burano).

Why come way out here? Easy. Torcello is nothing less than Venice’s ancestor, home of the first Venetians who arrived in these islands around the year 422 fleeing the forces of Attila and his Huns as the Western Roman Empire fell beneath fire and the sword. Guided by the visions of their priest, the refugees escaped into the lagoon, believing the great water would hide them from the Huns. They named their new home Torcello, meaning “Tower and Sky” – which is eerily apt today, as that’s almost all that’s left of what was once a thriving city.

In its heyday, some twenty thousand people called this island home, and it punched well above its weight as a centre of commerce and tolerance until at least the tenth century, though you’d never guess to look at it today. All that remains are some twenty residents, a few houses, some scattered allotments, a collection of Romanesque statues abandoned to time and an old church in the Roman-Byzantine style, whose bell-tower still dominates the landscape – the “Sky Tower” that gave the town its name. On a clear day you can just about see it from Venice itself, staring jealously across the lagoon.

Several factors brought about Torcello’s decline, not least of all the lagoon itself. Just as she did during the first COVID lockdown, Nature showed how quickly she can regain control when she wants to. Over time the island began to sink back beneath the water, swallowing up the villages and turning the once prosperous salt-flats into malaria-ridden marshes. Torcello’s disciples fled in the wake of the tide, seeking refuge on the other islands.

And then, of course, there was Venice herself. What was originally an offshoot of Torcello quickly took advantage of its father’s plight, absorbing its fugitives into its own ranks. Eventually, the son far outshone the father, and as more and more citizens abandoned their former home to its fate, the glory of Torcello faded into memory. The many thousands who once called this island home simply disappeared.

I had my lunch on a jetty east of the Roman church with four ducks paddling hopefully in attendance below. Venice is quiet, but Torcello is something else. Sure, maybe not so much that afternoon, as one of the locals had his radio on full blast as he scoured his fishing boat upriver, but I can imagine this place is as silent as the desert most days.

I’ve always been attracted to the desolate corners of the world. A childhood spent exploring Dungeness, Stodmarsh, Elmley and Doñana National Park has left me with a voracious appetite for marshlands that has never really gone away. So when I look out across the mudflats and listen to the cries of the shorebirds, my heart falls into step and I feel calm and content. But marshes are lonely places. I can think of few places in the world with a lonelier atmosphere. The mournful cries of plovers and sandpipers out on the flats give the place an eerie sadness. The gulls almost sound as though they’re laughing at you for losing yourself here. Solitary herons and egrets prowl the canals like watchmen. And of course there’s the mournful curlew, whose bubbling trill is possibly one of the most haunting sounds in nature. What unholy terror drove the first Venetians to such a lonely place? Their fear of the Huns must have been great indeed to seek to build a home out here in the lonely marshes.

As I leave the island, a thin dark cloud appears on the horizon, moving fast toward Burano. As it draws near, I see it is no cloud at all but a raft of pygmy cormorants, thousands of them, flying in a loose formation that surely stretches for half a kilometre in length. Like oversized starlings, they sail over the marshes, moving deeper into the lagoon.

Perhaps these little sea-crows are the perfect metaphor for the Venetians themselves. A creature of the land that took to the water, making himself a master fisherman, building his nest out on the lagoon. I’m not the first to jump to that conclusion either. A sixth century Roman official wrote of the denizens of Torcello thus:

You live like sea-birds, with your homes dispersed, like the Cyclades, across the surface of the water.

Cassiodorus, 523 AD

Standing on the forgotten shore of Torcello, it’s easy to imagine that the thousands of cormorants passing by really are the spirits of those first Venetians, making the same exodus from land to lagoon every morning for generation after generation, like the denouement to a tragic Greek myth: some cruel trick of the old gods, granting the refugees an eternal escape from their would-be oppressors. That such creatures should choose to haunt Torcello, the forgotten ancestral home of the Venetians, only adds to that mythos.

The outlying marshlands of the Venetian lagoon are full of such spirits, if you’re prepared to leave the bustle of Venice and its glass-blowing cousins behind for a couple of hours. If you truly want to see what Venice might have looked like before its canals become cloudy and green from all the water traffic, come to Torcello, whose ancient canals are clear as daylight, revealing a colourful array of sea grasses, seaweed and scuttling crabs on the silt below. And listen, just for a moment, to the ghosts out on the mudflats, knowing you’re hearing the same haunting sounds that the first Venetians defied to make their home here, over a thousand years ago. BB x

White Hart

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

This time tomorrow I will be in Venice, hopefully enjoying una cena veneta with a few fellow travelers, but more likely getting some rest from a busy day on the road (and a 4.30am start). So, as is tradition, I went for a walk in the countryside to bid adieu – or even addio – to the England I love, as it will be almost a fortnight before I return to this island.

I originally meant to get a breath of fresh air and nothing more, having spent most of the day inside, packing and preparing. But the darkness between the trees in the dying light of the evening pulled me in, so I decided to take an alternative route home through the forest.

There’s something intensely magical about walking in a forest after sunset. For some reason it’s never given me the shivers – at least, not if we don’t count that frightful wild camping episode I wrote about a couple of months back. With the light failing with every second, your sense of hearing intensifies: the crunching leaves beneath your feet crackle like a bonfire, and the alarm calls of blackbirds echo through the trees like klaxons.

If you stop and stand still for a moment, though, you’ll hear other sounds. The rustle of movement in the undergrowth. The drumroll wingbeat of a cock pheasant after his cry. The distant hoot of an owl. The footsteps of deer, not too far away.

I came across the herd in their usual clearing, where the poplars grow. I call it the cathedral, because of the way the trees soar into the air in four rows, their branches covering the sky like the vaulted arches of Canterbury. It’s also blissfully dark here in summer, when the leaves blot out the sun, and I often find the muntjac here. Tonight, the fallow herd were resting between the pillars – until they heard me coming, that is.

Even with my keen eyesight, the deer did a fantastic job at staying out of sight, though there must have been at least twenty of them, fading seamlessly into the forest floor the moment they stopped moving. Only one remained visible, shining like the morning star: the white hart. Look closely and you’ll see it, even in the shoddy resolution of my phone’s camera.

In British folklore, white stags are quintessential symbols of quests. Lots of children’s books feature white stags that can never be caught. If anything one ought to feel sorry for the beasts, as nature can hardly play a crueller trick than to make a prey animal absolutely incapable of blending in to any environment that isn’t covered in thick snow. All the same, it’s always a sight to see – even if our white heart hasn’t got any antlers to show for it. So I won’t be following in the footsteps of Saint Eustace and seeing Christ between its antlers. Not that I got close enough to see whether it really was Jesus or a chaffinch perched upon its head – the beast had enough good sense to disappear deeper into the forest as I drew near. Saint Eustace must have been a damned good sneak.

As for my quest, my quest is to rediscover the thrill of the open road once again. With my taxi due to arrive in only a few hours’ time, I suppose I’ll know soon enough. BB x