fish

Fillet of Fish

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 17.30.

It was still pretty hot and sunny this morning, so as soon as Rohan was back with breakfast, I wolfed down a couple of slices of bread and cheese and hurried down to the saltmarsh.

Just like before, the flamingoes kept to the centre of the saltpans, far from the road, and there was next to nothing to see once I reached the public footpath – possibly because it was very busy today with families out enjoying the sunshine. I contented myself with observing the herd from a distance as, short of an organised tour into the reserve, this is probably the closest I am going to get.

I’ve spent a not insignificant part of my life in and around these great natural mirrors. Saltmarshes are blissful places, full of light and wonder when the sun is shining. Footprints in the mud can last well over a week, turning them into a tracker’s dream. I was looking for flamingo tracks, of course, but there were quite a few boot prints out in the mud, too. I wonder how they got there?

I didn’t see that many birds today, but there were fish everywhere. The mullets were especially active, lingering so close to the surface that their tail fins gave them away as they broke the water. Mullets are primarily marine fish, but they can be found in estuaries and brackish waterways like the channels that carve up the Étang des Pesquiers.

At work, mullets are synonymous with that god-awful hairstyle that seems to be all the rage with teenage boys at the moment. Fortunately, out here, they’ve taken on their original meaning once again.

The others had planned to go into Hyères to get some crêpes and check out the 11th century castle, but I was just too tempted by the sea to join them. I’ve come all this way, and as things stand, it may be quite some time before I see the sunlit waters of the Mediterranean again, so I voted to stay behind and go for another swim. Rafe had a few things to accomplish so he stuck around too, so after we’d tidied the place up a bit, we clambered back down the cliff to the not-so-secret beach. The GoPro did such a phenomenal job yesterday, so I put it back to work straight away.

It was a bit rougher today, the waves driven by an impressive bank of clouds heralding a front to the southwest. I still clocked plenty of two-banded sea bream, ornate wrasse and silvery saupe among the rocks. The light filtering down into the shimmering seagrass took my breath away just like it did yesterday, and every time before it. I could have spent hours just drifting with the current and taking it all in, if I could.

I also counted an astonishing number of octopuses over the course of my forty-minute swim. Once you get your eye in and know where to look, they are quite easy to find – just look for the yellow sheep-like eyes, as the rest of their bodies blend incredibly well into their surroundings. This one was ensconced in a tiny crevice just beneath the surface, watching the tide come in.

Well, that’s a wrap – nearly, anyway. This time tomorrow we’ll be coming in to land in the UK. It’s been bliss, getting away from it all for a bit, and I’ve been so happy to be back in Europe and speaking French again. I might try to get to Spain and see my cousins one last time before the move in February, but that, for now, must wait. I have an incredibly busy term to get through first – and somewhere amid the mayhem I’ll have to break the news to my kids. Not looking forward to that, but once the interviews begin, they’ll join the dots. So maybe I should head that off.

I’ll decide closer to the time. For now, I’m happy enjoying the final hours of this very spontaneous French holiday. BB x

Sealife Safari

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Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 19.30.

The original plan for today was to spend a leisurely five or six hours biking around the island of Porquerolles, a short ferry ride from Tour Fondue. It was already a quarter to eleven when I realised we weren’t going to make it: one of our group of five wasn’t feeling up to it, and we’d already lost at least an hour of the best part of the day.

In the end, it’s no great loss. The ferry to Porqerolles alone would have cost us 35€ each, which is quite a lot for an island that you could swim to if you really wanted. For context, it costs less to cross the English Channel by boat… but then, I’m not surprised. Tour Fondue is nakedly expensive in relation to the rest of the area. 4.80€ for a bottle of Coca Cola…! What planet are they living on?

Anxious not to let the day go to waste, I went on a cliff top hike with Rafe and Harry.

The Mediterranean has been pretty choppy since the day we arrived, so today’s clear waters and shimmering turquoise shoals were a sight worth waiting for. A few French families had found their way down to the various secret beaches for a morning swim. One of the local shags was fishing among the reefs of Baie du Niel, followed closely by three large mullets.

With the water so clear, it was very easy to follow the seabird as it powered through the water like a feathered harpoon. Every time it plunged below the surface, the mullets would accelerate to keep up, mirroring its pace and sharp turns. You don’t normally get to see their supreme aquatic acrobatics in England’s choppier seas, so I felt pretty lucky.

There were plenty of Sardinian warblers about, but they’ve been nigh-on impossible to capture on film, so I contented myself with one of the local robins singing his heart out by the cliffs.

Rafe suggested waiting out the midday sun before taking the kayak down to the beach. It took a little while to haul it out of the attic and pump it up, but we did stumble upon an Aladdin’s cave of supplies in the process: flippers, snorkels, life jackets and just about anything that might be useful for a seaside holiday.

Thank God I brought my GoPro. Today was a reminder that I made a huge blunder by not taking it with me to Chile (and, by proxy, the Galápagos), but at least it got some work!

The Mediterranean is quite spectacular from any angle, but it really does come to life in a whole new way beneath the waves. Sunlight filtering down onto a world of perfect blue and shimmering fish. For once, all the variables were in place: my mask fit like a glove, my breathing tube was the right height and my flippers worked like a dream. Snorkelling was heavenly! Maybe I just haven’t had the right gear before…

Wrasse, bream, combers, saupes and gobies darting across the rocks. Clouds of damselfish drifting in the sunlight. In some ways, it feels like being back in the Galapagos – a little less spectacular, perhaps, but every bit as enjoyable.

A whistle got my attention as I drifted across the bay. A Frenchwoman swimming over by the rocks asked me if I wanted to see un poulpe. I came paddling over. I confess I didn’t see it at first, despite her pointing to where it must have been. They are masters of disguise and can compress their bodies into even the tightest of crevices, so I swam off after a few minutes’ search turned up no sign.

I returned the way I had come and thought I’d give the rock another try. Sure enough… there it was.

I’ve seen a tiny octopus before on a rockpooling adventure many, many years ago, but I’ve never had any luck tracking one down since. They’re fascinating creatures to observe, with their slowly pulsating heads, the siphons on either side acting like exhaust pumps and their eight legs moving as though each had a mind of its own. They’ve been patrolling the rocky coasts of this planet for over 150 million years, so it’s quite a privilege to see such an ancient creature in the wild, and so close, too.

It feels good to have finally spent some time in the sea, especially when this place literally looks out across the Mediterranean. I also managed to track down my photos of the full moon from the other night, which really was a sight to remember.

Our last full day in France tomorrow. I believe crêpes are in order, but if the weather’s kind to us, I’ll try to get out early and see the flamingoes one more time before the others are up. Late risers as they are, that shouldn’t be too hard to achieve! BB x

Heatwave

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The Delayed 14.29 to Taunton, Reading. 14.51.

England swelters under the glare of an unseasonably ferocious sun. For the second day in a row, the temperature is pushing well into the thirties. It’s all the news can talk about. Trains are running slower due to speed restrictions, three children have “gotten into difficulties” while bathing (a tactful way of avoiding the potentially triggering d-words associated with fatal water incidents) and the whole of the South seems to have jumped into the car and carved out a four-square fiefdom on Bournemouth Beach.

I’ve hopped out east to pay my mother a visit, and in so doing stepped right into the hottest part of the country – bar London, of course, which is usually a couple of degrees warmer than the rest of the island. England is rather pretty in May, though she wears her best dress in the first two weeks of the month, when the flowers are still fresh and the wind is cool. Now, the early summer sun is at that particularly British angle where it’s high enough to burn but low enough to blind, and the heat feels more like the first week of August than the last week of May.

Retreating before the summer’s wrath, I have sought solace and shades along the banks of Hampshire’s rivers.

England is at its most beautiful wherever a river can be found. Crystal waters running over gravel, with shadowy trout and grayling darting from sunlight to shadow. Clumps of weeds and watercress wafting in the water as though in the wind. The trailing arms of a weeping willow gently tracing the water’s surface. Iridescent dragonflies of every shape and size – dragons, damsels and darters – hawking from bank to bank, playing a longer game than the mayflies, whose inert bodies drift downstream, their twenty-four hours spent. Chiffchaffs, wrens and blackcaps singing from the trees, the lazy purr of an overheated wood pigeon and, now and then, the explosive song of a Cetti’s warbler from deep within the darkest heart of a reedbed or thicket.

When I am traveling far from home, this is the image of England that I miss most of all.

Did you see the pike in that first picture? Don’t worry if you missed it – they are master ambush predators. Go back and see if you can spot it.

This corner of the River Alre passing through Alreston is supposed to have otters and kingfishers, but I was over the moon to see a pike. They were always my favourite fish when I was a lad, and it’s not hard to see the appeal for a young boy: fully grown, they’re huge, sinister, almost crocodilian monsters with soulless eyes and fins that move so slowly that their every twitch seems calculated. A perfect killing machine. Hardly surprising for a fish that outlived the dinosaurs, whose ancestors prowling Cretaceous rivers were not all that different from the river monsters that lurk in reedbeds outside Tescos and Sainsbury’s.

I can see why adventurous young lads might get a kick out of fishing up one of these ancient beasts, but I’m just as happy spotting one drifting between the weeds. It makes a change from chasing chiffchaffs through the branches of the tallest trees.

I’m racing home now, clearing the green fields of the Vale of Pewsey under a mercifully cloud-studded sky. I acquired a few books in a second-hand bookshop for a couple of pounds and a new sketchbook for a little more. I’ve been meaning to get my hands on the Horrible Histories books for a while, since they had an enormous impact on my art and my love for history and storytelling. Everyone seems to remember the enormously popular TV show (which, for my sins, I have never seen) but the books appear to have faded into collective oblivion. I dare say Martin Brown had more influence on my pen-and-line drawings than any other artist – besides the legendary Chris Riddell, of course.

Power’s running out. I’d better stop typing and leave enough juice on this thing to get me through the ticket barrier at Taunton station. See you around! BB x

At the End of the World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Cape Finisterre, 20.11.

Galicia provides. Happiness writes white but the white light is brilliant, like the sands that run along the length of the bay beneath my window. Like the feathers of the gannets and terns that dance above the face of the water. Like the sparkling reflection of the sun as it sinks below the horizon along the 42nd parallel north, disappearing beyond the Atlantic, beyond Chicago, beyond the end of the world.

Madrid feels a world away. I caught the early AVLO train from Chamartín and joined a modest number of passengers on the three hour journey to Spain’s north-westernmost region. The railway line tunnels under the snowy peaks of the Guadarrama before racing across the featureless plains of Zamora and then, slowly, climbing into the wooded hills and craggy moors west of Astorga before rolling through the deep valleys of Galicia proper. Spain is one of those countries that alters radically as you travel through it, and the Madrid-A Coruña train is a very good way to prove that point.

I arrived in Santiago de Compostela with a couple of hours to kill before the bus to Fisterra, so I wandered into town and sat in the main square in front of the cathedral for a while. A few school groups posed noisily in front of the cathedral, while exhausted pilgrims sat at the feet of the pillars, soaking up the sunlight to recharge their batteries. There aren’t as many now as there were during the summer. I guess that’s to be expected. The year I made the trek, 2023, was also a delayed holy year, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic shut the Camino down, so the numbers were especially high.

I wonder how far these bold pilgrims had come this year. What friends did they make on their journey? What memories will they take away with them forever? Did somebody watching from the sidelines wonder that about me, years ago?

The bus from Santiago to Fisterra is almost as long as the train from Madrid, but it does travel along one of the most scenic routes in the whole country. To reach the famous cape, it first has to pass through all the towns and villages along the coast, fording the great rías that weave through the cliffs on their way to the sea. The sun came out from behind the clouds just as the cape came into sight, and the whole coast seemed to come to life: the yellow flowers of the gorse shone like gold, the sand beneath the shallows glittered like jade. My heart did a similar leap once when I saw the silhouette of Olvera, my old hometown, for the first time in seven years. It made me smile to think that this place had joined that pantheon.

I arrived early, so I went down to the beach to soak up the sea air for a while. Fisterra is so special to me because it combines the two sides of my heart: the sounds and smells of the sea from my childhood in England, and the language, cliffs and mountains of my adult love for Spain. Mountains take my breath away (especially the craggy limestone kind) and marshes hold a special kind of rapture for me, but I think I will always come back to the sea when I need to feel whole again.

As I watched, a sandwich tern flapped into the little bay and started diving for fish. It was a beautiful sight to see, for the waters are so clear here that I could see the bird’s brilliant white form beneath the water after it had dived, moving like a living arrow. After five attempts it speared a shining silver fish and took off to the south with its catch in its beak. I realised the path on Google Maps didn’t actually exist and beat a quick retreat to the hotel for check-in.

The last time I was here, I only saw the town’s fishery out of hours. I got lucky this afternoon: on my way to the cape I dropped in and caught the daily auction (or lonxa) in full flight. Crates of hake, mackerel, red gurnard and more than a dozen other species I learned to identify as a kid went to the highest bidder in one of the mildest mannered auctions I’ve ever seen (though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that many auctions). Some of the larger fish had QR codes slapped on the sides linking them to the fishermen who caught them, I suppose – my camera didn’t reach far enough to tell.

On one side of the room, crates of sea urchins were stacked fifteen high. I didn’t see any percebes (the region’s famous goose barnacles), but then, the manner by which they are collected is very different indeed, so that’s hardly surprising.

I left before the giant anglerfish went under the hammer. I’d have been curious to know how much that went for.

I called home from the cape and said I’d be back before sunset. It’s now fifteen minutes to sunset and I’m still here, but I’m glad I stayed. The weather here is so changeable and this might be my only chance to watch the sunset from the cape, as it was rained off the last time I was here. A small cohort of like-minded pilgrims and locals have come out here with the same idea. A couple of noisy Spaniards made a pig’s ear of taking a highly choreographed selfie nearby, much to everyone’s frustration, but they’ve gone now, and it’s been nothing but the sound of the waves for the last twenty minutes.

I’m going to stop writing now. The sun will be sinking below the horizon soon and I want to appreciate every second as it does. See you on the other side. BB x

From Burning Desert to Sapphire Sea

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One minute I’m standing on a high rock, staring into a lunar desert whilst desperately trying to even up my tan lines; two hours later I’m staring down at a school of damselfish drifting over a coral reef. I’m still struggling to get my head around it.

Sunrise feels far longer ago than this morning. After putting the finishing touches to last night’s report, I left the others sleeping in the campground and set off alone into the desert once again, this time to see the sunrise. I made it to the other side of the valley in time to catch the first rays of sunlight bursting over the cliffs. The sand was full of tracks: the footprints of beetles, snakes, camels and four-wheel drives crisscrossed the valley floor. There was even a lone skink trail halfway across, both satisfying and amusing on a more personal level (for the record, it’s an old family joke about lesser-spotted three-toed eagle-eyed skinks that gets wheeled out whenever yours truly gets boorishly specific about animals). The others were mostly up and about by the time I returned, and in perfect time for half an hour’s meditation before breakfast. The hefty futur Ahmad and his brother Khaled prepared for us was a kingly feast: fresh bread, helwa, jam, hummus, falafel and hard-boiled eggs (there’s no escaping them!), and that’s without mentioning four glasses of that lovely sage and cinnamon-infused Bedouin tea. Dee-lish. God help my teeth over the coming year, because Spain and the Arab world most certainly won’t.

The jeep tour of Wadi Rum was a pretty standard exploration of the main sights, as you might expect: the early Nabatean rock art, Lawrence’s house and the rock arches. I needn’t elaborate much; such sights, stunning though they may be, are better detailed in guidebooks. Besides, Langelsby’s got it covered. I highly recommend you go for a tour if you’re in the area, though. On a more personal note, I found it profoundly ironic that I finally found a haven for wildlife, in what must be outwardly one of the most inhospitable landscapes on the planet. Desert larks, white-crowned wheatears, rock martins and rosefinches followed us from rock to rock whilst the ever present grackles, the tricksters of Wadi Mujib, whistled noisily overhead. No sign of the nocturnal denizens of the desert, but a welcome change from scabby cats and pigeons. The naturalist in me will never be suppressed. So says the lesser-spotted three-toed skink, at any rate.

On the knowledge that wrangling a bus from Wadi Musa to Amman might be beyond us, we arranged with Ahmad, our kohl-eyed Bedouin guide, to take us as far as Aqaba instead, where buses to Amman would be easier to achieve. Aqaba may be your run-of-the-mill beach resort these days, but it has a notch on everything I’ve seen before: the Red Sea. Sapphire would be a better name by far. I’d heard stories and seen pictures, but I’d never really believed quite how deep a blue the Red Sea was. Quite by accident, and with no small meddling from my heart, I found myself physically incapable of passing up the chance to go snorkeling.

Water sports and I don’t have an easy history, let’s say. Ask the population of Whitstable, who watched me capsize a kayak twice and have to be towed ashore (yeah, that still smarts). Swimming’s just about my favorite sport, being both an important skill and the only sport I’ve ever enjoyed, but I have breathing issues – something to do with my nose – which makes most other water sports more problematic than entertaining. Snorkeling has always been a dream of mine, though. Not as technical as scuba and easily doable for somebody with breathing issues. I say that, at least. It’s easy in retrospect.

The first forty minutes were tortuous – not because very salty water kept leaking into my mask, or because I was panicking over the oddity of breathing through a tube, but because the scenes opening up below me were nothing short of some of the most breathtaking sights I’ve ever seen (ouch, that was a bad pun). Stacks of frilled and fringed coral giving way to deep, sandy gardens shimmering in the crystal sunlight. Black sea urchins stretching their tapering spines out of crevices. Angelfish, surgeonfish, triggerfish, even clownfish, frolicking just inches in front of me. It was like living a wildlife documentary in the flesh. By the time I’d finally worked out how to breathe properly – ironically, the key to it was simply calming down and having faith in the tube – we only had five minutes left in the water. But those last five minutes were magical, even more so than the stars over Wadi Rum. Who could possibly feel lonely, or even give loneliness a second’s thought, with scores of brightly colored fish teeming about so close to? Those were my brightest moments.

Christ, but I feel like a tourist right now. I’ve just tackled three of Jordan’s biggest attractions in two days flat: Petra, Wadi Rum and the Red Sea. I didn’t really give Petra much clearance, did I? Mm, I’ll leave that one to the girls over at Langlesby Travels (https://langlesbytravels.wordpress.com/).

It’s been a busy weekend and a half. It feels unreal, somehow. But I don’t regret it for a second – and for once, l don’t even feel ashamed. I am a tourist. Jordan thrives on tourism. I guess I’m finally beginning to accept that. And about time too! Travel is no more and no less than the best thing you can do with your life, and it’s such a shame to have it spoiled by something you could never change, even if you wanted to. BB x