Praia do Mar de Fóra, Fisterra. 12.31.
An enormous storm is moving in off the Atlantic. That’s what it says on the El País headlines on my phone. The signs were clear this morning: the wind was up and the waves were agitated, as though some supernatural force were stirring beneath the water out beyond the cape. Or maybe that’s just because I finished reading The Leviathan today and I have sea monsters on the brain.
That and the old English saying about red skies in the morning being a sailor’s warning.
I didn’t come all the way out here to hide away from the elements, so once the worst of the morning’s rain was over, I nipped into town, grabbed an empanada and made for the Praia do Mar de Fóra on the west side of the cape. There were still a few clouds stretched across the sky, but none so ominous as those that were splashed across the news from the Canaries this morning. I sat on a boulder with my feet in a small stream and ate my lunch in peace, having the entire beach to myself for the second day in a row.
It’s easy to forget that there aren’t that many places in England where you can appreciate the full force of the Atlantic. Most of the English coastline looks out across the North and Irish Seas or the British Channel, and none of those are in the same league as the Great Western Ocean. From my post at the edge of the beach, I can see the sea mist rolling in with each crashing wave. Some of the waves collapse before they hit the shore; others swell while they’re still far off, hulking and dark and full of threatening force.
The ancients believed that Poseidon, God of the sea, was the ultimate force behind the power of the ocean. As well as the deity responsible for waves and quakes both terrestrial and marine, he was also the lord of horses, perhaps stemming from an even older association between horses and the sea. Poseidon is believed to have fashioned the first horse from the waves in an attempt to win over the people of Athens, who ultimately spurned his gift in favour of the olive tree offered by Athena, a far more practical gift for a seafaring folk for the myriad properties of its wood and fruit. And then there’s the parallel between the nature of horse and ocean, both extremely volatile – at one moment calm and beautiful, at another restless and powerful, stirred into action by some powerful emotion.
It’s thought that some of these beliefs come from seeing the shapes of horses’ heads as the foaming crests of the largest waves catch the wind before they break upon the shore. Before the unfettered force of the Atlantic bearing down on this little bay like a besieging army, it’s not hard to see the likeness to an elemental cavalry charge in the surf.
I had most of my lunch and readied to scale the cliffs. A half-beaten track snakes its way up the slope – a snake with a sadistic habit for traveling in a straight line, that is. The cliff climbs 200m in less than a kilometre, so I had plenty of opportunities to stop and take in the beauty of the bay (or, alternatively, a breather).
As I began my ascent, a couple of waxbills saw me off, a bizarre African immigrant in this Celtic corner of the world. I found the half-eaten corpse of a guillemot a little way up, the only one of its kind I saw, though they do still breed here at the westernmost corner of their range. For the rest of the climb, I was followed by a pair of red-billed choughs, an incredibly acrobatic bird which seems to delight in its ability to fly like few others. Now hanging in the wind, now plummeting into the abyss before unfolding their wings and climbing back out of their death-defying dives, they appear to perform these feats of gravitational defiance for the sheer thrill of it, since they serve no practical purpose whatsoever. The peregrine falcon employs a similar tactic to strike its prey out of the sky, but while I did spot one wheeling overhead, it wasn’t hunting today.
Far out to sea, the occasional gannet soared by, its wings just above touching the crests of the waves. They were shadowed now and then by the squat-bodied shags leaving their crude nests to fish; beautiful creatures in their own right, but ugly, misshapen imitations before the slender, powerful wings of the gannet. Down below, just metres beneath their colony, the Atlantic roiled in aquamarine anger between the cliffs.
It was a dizzying spectacle with both my feet (and my hands) firmly planted on the ground. Goodness knows how the choughs see such a sight and feel compelled to hurl themselves at it, as though defying the gods themselves. But then, I was never much fond of rollercoasters either.
The cliff path works its way up to the watchtower of Veladoiro, where the wind howls through the bars of its iron-framed mast, before skirting the edge of a pine forest so perfectly arranged it must have been planted here as a windbreak for the villages in the valley below. The lithe shapes of lizards and at least one snake dart across the path ahead of me, and I find the snapped-off tail of a slow worm that obviously wasn’t fast enough, though by the wearing at the severance point it seems to have been there for at least a day.
At the edge of the forest I come across a hidden bay: Praia da Arnela. It’s hard to tell from Google Maps why this pristine beach isn’t more of a magnet, but the answer is obvious to the naked eye: it can only be reached by a steep descent from an offshoot of the nearby hamlet of Vilar de Duio. I haven’t brought a towel, and I don’t think I’d fancy climbing back up the cliffs even if I had, so I content myself with watching the waves roll in from the clifftop instead.
Turning my back on the sea, I start to descend into the interior. The fields of buttercups nestled between the forests on either side of the cape shine in two distinct shades of yellow: one a warm gold, the other a brighter, almost greener yellow. American and European, perhaps, though I’m not sure which way round. A single swallowtail butterfly dances into the field, its own golden wings lost in the shining petal sea.
The last time there was a great Atlantic storm, some of the mighty monarch butterflies were blown across the sea to our shores. I think that was in 2016, as I recall seeing one or two in Morocco and then, even more bizarrely, in Kent within that same summer.
Sometimes I wonder if esoteric anecdotes like these are worth recording. But perhaps it serves a greater purpose, as naturalists the world over try to understand the forces of the world around us by drawing together tiny threads such as these.
Back at Langosteira, I remove my sandals and continue along the beach barefoot. The relief as the waters rush over my tired feet is like nothing else. There are no swimmers out – it’s much too early in the year – but I’m happy to have my feet in the water again.
A single dunlin races ahead of me along the shore, a straggler from the traveling group of five that I saw from my window yesterday, perhaps. It will soon be on its way north to its breeding grounds in the Arctic circle. Much like the swallows who sing merrily from the telegraph wires in the fields here, you have to marvel at the courage and strength of these little wanderers who travel many thousands of miles each year, defying the elements to answer a call beyond their understanding: the call to come home, wherever that may be.
A less fortunate wanderer lies stranded in the sand, glistening in the sunlight: an enormous jellyfish. Not a false jelly like a man-o’-war, nor even a lion’s mane by the colour of it, though it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty, as some marine predator has already devoured its trailing tentacles, leaving the flabby and presumably inedible bell behind. A hollow has pooled about it where the waves have dug it a grave, after a fashion. On the off chance that it might still be alive, I carry it back to the tideline and lower it back into the water. The tide spits it back up again and it lands on its head, motionless. An ancient creature, practically unchanged since a time before life moved over the land, humbled by a force older than the world itself.
I’m back at the pensión now and taking a well-earned rest. There is Wi-Fi here, but it doesn’t reach quite as far as the last room in the corridor (which happens to be mine) so I’ve been using data to patch up the gaps. Quite a lot, by the looks of things, as it takes my app a long time to do the maths – longer than me, and that’s saying something. I’m feeling like it might be a good excuse to get an early night tonight, as I’ve got a few late ones coming up, so I’ll make the most of it while I can. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 