history

Camino XII: Strange Bedfellows

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The pilgrims at the albergue talked a lot of game about getting on the road for 5.30am this morning, but when I was out the door today I was the first to leave by some twenty minutes at least. No matter how Spanish I feel sometimes, the Englishman in me is a stickler for a prompt schedule. On the plus side, I did pretty much have a room to myself last night, so I had a very good night’s sleep for once.

It was a cold start, and the sunrise when it came was a full fifteen minutes later than it was last Thursday – a sign that the year is already beginning to turn. Wandering alone gave me plenty of time to stop and enjoy the stillness, though, with the result that this morning was possibly one of the most magical I’ve had on the Camino so far.

I waited for dawn at the top of a small rise just beyond a tree-lined arroyo, where a flock of noisy bee-eaters were calling unseen somewhere downriver. The sunflowers in the fields were already facing east, and I let a number of pilgrims pass me by as I stood and waited. I counted four or five buzzards and kites heading out on a morning hunt and listened out for the distant sound of a quail, a less frequent accompaniment to the Camino as I leave the central plains of the meseta behind.

Finally, the warm glow beyond the horizon erupted into sunlight, saturating the sunflowers behind me with reddish light. I’ve got more photos of sunflowers now than I know what to do with, but it was totally worth it. Sometimes you have to stop on the Camino and wait for moments like these. You can tune out the two-tone crunch of gravel under your feet pretty easily, but you mustn’t tune out the rest of the world you walk through. It’s a soul-seeking pilgrimage, not a hike!

Passing through the mud-brick houses and hobbit holes of Moratinos, you leave the plains of Castilla behind and enter país leonés. And I say país (country) because of the fierce nationalism of the Leonese, whose old and bitter rivalry with their Castilian neighbours is more than obvious if you look below the self-help scrawls and incessant Welsh nationalism on the Camino waymarkers (we get it already!):

It was a similar story across the border in Burgos…

Castilla y León were merged in 1983, with the three Leonese provinces of Salamanca, Zamora and León joining the six territories of Castilla La Vieja (Old Castile) – excluding Santander and Logroño which elected to become autonomous regions of their own (Cantabria and La Rioja respectively). The Leonese have a strong regional identity and there are many who still believe the merge was a mistake, and that the Leonese territories should constitute their own autonomous community. An article in El País from earlier this year claims there are political differences at the heart of it, too. I’ve yet to pose that question to a local, but now that I’m in Leonese country – and they certainly have stronger feelings on the subject than the Castilians – I’ll see if I can’t do a little digging.

It’s little things like that which make for great inspiration. A lion sprayed in purple on a wall in Salamanca with the slogan ‘país leonés’ back in 2015 was what gave me the idea to make León, not Castile, the dominant power in my Spanish saga. If I don’t find a similar icon graffitied somewhere else over the next week or so, I’ll be surprised.

After a brief tortilla y zumo stop in Sahagún, the first Leonese town across the border with fellow pilgrim Bridgette, I made the decision to take the alternative route to the north via the Via Traiana, the old Roman road to the gold mines in Astorga. It meant a later arrival at my destination – and a considerable shade deficit – but I’m never one to turn down a challenge, and after a very sociable day on the Camino yesterday, paradoxically, I wanted a quiet one to myself. The heart wants what it wants, I guess!

The rest of the trek to Calzadilla de los Hermanillos has to be made beneath a blazing midday sun. I had plenty of suncream for the journey, but I left my sunglasses in Carrión a few days back and for once I found myself in need of them (they mostly sat unused on my head for the greater part of last week). I met only one other traveller on the road, a timid Irishman shielded from the glare by long sleeves and a sun hat who asked for the distance to Calzadilla in broken Spanish. Fighting through the last eight kilometres of scrubland, I kept my spirits up with a number of African walking songs my old drumming master taught me in my university days: Siyahamba, Uchikala, ba Tata. I might not be able to share them with the kids at school anymore, but there’s nothing to stop me enjoying them out on a march here in the open country.

It was uplifting singing my heart out in the woods, and I hardly noticed the blazing sun or the distance shrinking away at my feet. The kites and stonechats that accompanied me from forest’s edge must have thought me quite the unusual pilgrim – Spanish afternoons are decidedly not a time for jubilation. Perhaps that’s an old superstition about Pan, the Greek god of the wilderness, who legend has it would be angered by noise at midday. Or perhaps it’s just common sense!

Anyway, I’m here in Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. It’s a tiny frontier town, reminiscent of a Wild West set-up, with most of the townhouses clustered along both sides of the old Roman road. I’ve had a shower, washed my clothes, stocked up on supplies for tomorrow and packed accordingly. Now that the other French pilgrims staying here have quietened down, I’ll put my phone to charge and do a little reading before bed. Tomorrow is another day, and it would be good to meet up with the other pilgrims again. I’m somewhat doing my own thing this time, but a balance would be no bad thing. BB x

Easter and El Cid

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Ending any stage of the Camino is always a sad experience. I think I’d managed to put it out of my memory last time, but it came back to bite this morning. I guess it’s the routine sense of purpose the Camino provides so effortlessly: wake up, eat, walk to your next destination, wash your clothes, eat, sleep and repeat. You never need to worry about planning ahead, and that allows you to focus on the small pleasures: conversations on the road, birdsong in the morning, the joy of taking off your sandals at the end of the walk. Life can seem a little lacking in purpose when you step out of it.

So, unwilling to surrender entirely to sorrow, I strapped my sandals back on and set out to explore the beautiful city of Burgos, city of Spain’s greatest hero of all time: Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid.

I went to Mass in the cathedral. There were two celebrations taking place in the chapels at the front of the cathedral ahead of the misa solemne. I opted to attend one of the smaller ones. For my sins I haven’t always been to church on Easter Sunday since becoming a Catholic, so it was extra special to turn that around here in one of Spain’s most beautiful cathedrals. Even if it did mean staring up at one of the least subtle icons of Santiago Matamoros.

While soaking up the sunshine on the bank of the Arlanzón, I heard the sound of bells. A colourful procession was making its way down the Paseo Espolón, trailing a happy crowd of Sunday pedestrians. Gone were the solemn drums of the nightly pasos: the air was thick with the clean sound of hand bells and castanets. Gone too were the hoods that had so spooked the American pilgrims: these celebrants were welcoming the Easter season in with golden ribbons in their hair.

I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to Semana Santa. In the same way that I prefer enigmatic bulerías to happy-go-lucky sevillanas, I’ll always take the dark mystery of the nightly processions over the happier parades that bookend Semana Santa, Domingo de Ramos and Domingo de La Resurrección. Even so, the addition of an advance guard of local dances (in local dress) is a very nice touch: I don’t think I’ve ever been moved so by Easter Sunday’s celebrations.

Leaving the celebrants behind, I made for the Puente de San Pablo, which is, frankly, a less than impressive name for what should really be called the Puente de los Héroes. Watching the passing traffic from eyes of stone are the primary characters of the Cantar del Mio Cid, among them Alvar Fáñez, his lieutenant and nephew; Jimena Díaz, his wife; and Abén Galbón, his Muslim friend and lord. At their head on the north bank stands the Cid himself, an imposing figure astride his war-horse Bavieca with the sword Tizona in his hand. I’ve been obsessed with the legend of El Cid since I was a boy, and none of that has faded as I approach thirty. I still get a giddying kick in the guts at the sight of that statue. Whatever the real Rodrigo Díaz might have been – warlord, mercenary, king in all but name – I will always be a fan of the legend. It is, truly, one of the greatest stories to come out of Spain.

It occurred to me that I had not actually been inside the cathedral proper on my last visit ten years ago, so I decided to make good on that this time. After all, it isn’t every day you get to pay your respects at the resting place of a real-life legend – and at half the price, as a peregrino (5€ with a credential – that’s a steal!).

Now, I’ve spent my life in and out of cathedrals – I know Canterbury’s so well I could probably navigate it blindfolded – but Burgos is something else. I’ve heard people say it’s more impressive outside than in. While it’s easily one of Spain’s most breathtaking cathedrals to behold, the interior of Burgos’ cathedral is no slouch. Come for the tomb of El Cid (or what remains of his the French didn’t loot as trophies during the Peninsular War) but stay for the incredible stonework. There really is something to see at every turn, from starburst-like windows in the upper vaults to stone carvings of skulls, savage beasts and wild men.

The treasure rooms in the lower chambers also hold a number of interesting relics, including the Cid’s legendary chest of sand, the silver hand of Saint Thomas A’Beckett (of Canterbury, of all places!) and a beautiful Moorish cloak emblazoned with the motto “Glory to the Sultan”. I wasn’t expecting to see any Moorish treasures so that last was an unexpected bonus!

With my tour of the vaults complete I popped into one of the only food stores still open and had a snack dinner of mejillones en escabeche – a solo travel staple of mine – overlooking the cathedral. A pair of ravens circled the twin spires for about an hour, their usually impressive stature dwarfed by the Gothic masonry. I couldn’t get into the bottled tinto de verano I bought on a whim – foolishly, I didn’t think to check if it would need a bottle opener. It’s still sitting unopened on my beside table as I write.

Finally, I went out for a beer with Francisco, the Mexican from the hostel. He was keen to draw my attention to a mural near the bar, where the Cid once again leapt off the page of legend into life. I was most impressed to see one detail in particular: the moros watching from the corner were striking for how un-Moorish they looked. Why, without their turbans, they might just as easily have been as Castilian as the other citizens of Burgos.

Which is exactly the point. We can be fairly certain that, by the time of the Cid (the mid to late 11th century), many if not most of Iberia’s Muslims would have been native to the peninsula for generations, not the lean, bearded Syrian stereotype that is so often thrown about when painting this period of history. Major props to the artist – it’s a brave stroke but a necessary one.

I have now made landfall in Bilbao. I’ve scouted the bus and train stations and they seem navigable enough. Tomorrow, I strike out for the highlands that followed me all the way along the Camino. I’ve had two days to recover and my feet are feeling much better. One final challenge stands between me and my flight home. Let’s hope I’m up to it! 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

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

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/

Home Again

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’m back home in England. It’s a lot noisier than it was in Bayeux, but then, the summer school kids are still here. It’s a Friday night, which means an end-of-week party, curated by the team leaders. That’s what we always used to do. You can tell because the music pumping out of the hall is almost entirely hits from the 2010’s. Twenty-somethings revelling in university nostalgia at a party ostensibly for children. Every once in a while a track comes on that they all seem to know: Freed from Desire, Mme Pavoshko, the Macarena. I’m almost nostalgic for Sur ma route, ever the anthem of my summer school days. Almost.

Blimey, but it’s a long ferry ride from Caen, though. As I caught the overnight ferry on my way out on Monday, I slept through most of the journey, but this time I watched the whole thing from the seats. At first you’re riding parallel to the sloping French coast to the east, and the seabirds follow you out: pairs of scoters, heavyset black-backed gulls, solitary gannets and the odd fulmar. Then it’s nothing but sea in all directions. England, on the horizon, hides behind a wall of cloud and mist, and the sea seems to fade into the sky. There’s always at least one or two shopping containers in the distance, the lettering on their hulls so vast you can read it from miles away. In a trick of the light, an Evergreen tanker seems to float in the void between the sea and the sky.

More than once, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers crossing the Channel. The Allies riding into the jaws of death on the beaches of Normandy; and the Normans themselves, some nine hundred years prior, setting out to rewrite the history of a nation. The Conquered liberating the land of the Conqueror. There’s a poetic symmetry to that. Perhaps that’s why Normandy felt so special. It really is a history fanatic’s paradise and I couldn’t recommend the place more highly.

I really enjoyed being back in France. Toulouse was OK and Bordeaux pleasant enough, but there’s a magic in the north I’d never noticed before. It was also a pleasant reminder that I can handle myself just as capably in French as I can in Spanish, and I needed that. I should get to know that beautiful country some more over the years. Normandy was especially beautiful and I may well be back someday.

But for now, my legs could use a rest. And I could do with the sun making a return, since my feet, having been in sandals for four days, look like something you might find in a Bernard Matthew’s packet in the frozen food aisle in Tesco’s. BB x

Omaha Beach: Battlefield Forever?

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s easy to ask yourself why you’re bunkered down in a hostel when you’re at the point on your life where you can afford a little comfort here and there. But I stand by my decision: hostels are a fantastic way to meet people from all walks of life. And that’s what travel is all about, right?

I got talking to Gavin from Utah last night – the first American from a state that isn’t Cali or Texas that I’ve met in a long time (those two states pump out travelers like there’s no tomorrow). To have an American perspective here in Normandy was more than I could have asked for, and Ana from Austria provided a Germanic point of view – so I really scored a hat trick here!

Over dinner last night the three of us decided to check out the landing beaches today. Gavin had already booked himself onto an organised tour, but I’m nothing if not stubborn when it comes to planning my own affairs, so Ana and I improvised our own plan of attack, starting at Pointe du Hoc.

Most of Omaha Beach – one of the main landing zones for US troops during the D-Day landings – has reverted to its pre-war status as a pleasure beach, so it’s important to visit a site like Pointe du Hoc to really get a feel for how things were. The promontory is strewn with craters caused by Allied shells, some so deep you can stand in the centre of them and still be more than a head below ground. It’s hard to take it all in at once: the scarred, lunar landscape overgrown with tall grass and summer flowers, with pipits and wagtails and warblers singing their hearts out. In a cavity in one of the old gun mounts, a blackbird stood washing itself, and away to the east the mournful cries of a large colony of kittiwakes. I wonder how much of this vanished when the clouds of earth came down here, all those years ago.

The bunkers are eerie. No other word for it. They’re cavernous on the inside, with a lot more rooms than you think at first. Some of them have marks in the rear wall that can only be from stray bullets fired directly through the opening. You try not to imagine how they got there. And then there’s the coils of barbed wire that ring the cliff edge, rusted from years of exposure to the salted wind. You can’t help but take your hat off to the US Rangers for not only coming ashore under heavy fire but scaling a vertical cliff-face before launching their assault.

From Pointe du Hoc we found a track along the cliffs to take us back to Omaha Beach. It’s completely invisible on Google Maps, but reason told me there would surely be such a path, and as luck would have it, there is: a relatively new cycle track that starts at the Pointe du Hoc car park and follows the coast all the way to the beach at Vierville-sur-Mer.

It’s clearly a popular route with the locals, and there were plenty of cyclists out and about, from hobbyist Dutchmen clad in Lycra to families of sporty-looking Germans – and, of course, your classic stately monsieur paying no heed to aerodynamics in his beige jacket and jeans. We passed him at least twice (did he lap us? I think he lapped us…).

Omaha Beach was pretty busy when we got there some two hours after leaving Pointe du Hoc. Paddle boarders, bathers and dogs plied the shallows between the beach and the sandbar. Children built sandcastles and dug bunkers of their own, while parents leafed through this or that summer book. If you squinted down the coast you could almost imagine the many thousands of troops who landed on this beach nearly eighty years ago, but I get the feeling that memory is fading further and further into the distance. The tour guides bussing up and down the coast road in WW2-era jeeps look more whimsical than reverential, like taking a ride in a sedan chair. Gavin said he thought it a shame that it hadn’t been preserved more like the battlefield that it was. I’m not so sure. I think the regeneration of a battlefield is part of the healing process. This is, also, France, and having borne the brunt of the fighting in not one but two world wars in the last century – not to mention their occupation by the Nazi regime – they may well want to move on.

In any event, I wasn’t averse to a swim in the bloody waters of Omaha, if only to say I’d done it. After a two-hour hike in the sun along the cliffs, it was definitely the right thing to do. The heatwave might be over, but it’s still hot enough to dry off in a matter of minutes, so I had no concerns about swimming out to the sandbar and beyond for a bit. I’m not the best swimmer, but God, I’ve missed being in the water. It’s a pain living so near the coast and yet so far.

I didn’t think about the history as I stepped into the water. The infamous opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan didn’t flash across my eyes. I just waded in up to my waist and kicked off into the murk. As the poppies that grow on the fields of the Somme have become a symbol of remembrance, I think it’s only fair that the spirits of Omaha are also allowed to depart in peace. Their heroic struggle will never be forgotten, but the land beneath our feet is not ours to sculpt, no matter how hard we try. It was here before us and will be here long after we’re gone. To see Omaha and to stand where they stood is enough, I think. And that’s my two cents on the matter. BB x

The Weatherman Cometh

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It starts with an ominous grey sky to the west. The patchwork of fluffy summer clouds that have been insulating the leftover heat from three scorching days suddenly drops into a void the colour of slate, matching the roof of Bayeux’s cathedral almost exactly. A man in a beret watches the skies; a French family whose children seem to tan faster down the years savour their two-scoop ice creams; a boy and his mother walk their five beagles.

The first raindrop falls on the back of my neck like a kiss. Cool, swift, sweet. I’m sitting on a bollard, sketching. I wait for another. It lands on my arm. Almost instantly a third lands on my sketchbook, narrowly missing the moustachioed gentleman I’ve been sketching. I snap the book shut and watch the tourists scattering as the rain comes down: the French dignified beneath their umbrellas, the Dutch unflinching behind their cameras, the Americans in a mad dash. I think about taking a slow walk back to the hostel to savour the blessed rain after so many days of sun. I’m no further than a few feet around the corner of the cathedral when the heavens open.

I concede defeat to the tempest and join a small but growing crowd seeking shelter in the ancient stone doorway of Odo’s cathedral. The beagle-fanciers are here, along with a cross-section of Bayeux’s tourists. The rain comes down in sheets, hammering the cobblestones like a snare drum, and then a sudden flash and a rolling crash from the bass drum up in the sky. “On est bien dessous, hein?” remarks a Frenchwoman with short-cropped hair and round glasses. A boy with long eyelashes runs in and out of the rain in his yellow anorak, singing the chorus of the Wellerman shanty over and over.

A solitary American standing nearby stares at his phone in disbelief and growls. It sounds like he’s frustrated at a video game, but as he starts to verbalise his frustration it’s obvious he’s checking a weather app. “You’re kidding me, I’ve got to wait half an hour? God, you’ve got to be kidding me. Come on!”. He growls again. And again, louder this time. Some of the other tourists back away. “Hrrrrrnnnn!” The grunts and growls sound uncannily like a bull, giving fair warning before a charge. “END! NOW!!!” A couple of startled jumps from the crowd. By the looks on their faces, they’re weighing up whether to tell him it’s futile to attempt to command the skies, or whether it’s more futile still to reason with a man so blatantly trying to do just that. As a result, nobody intervenes, and Yankee Canute continues to defy the elements, bellowing at the clouds with increasing fury. “Hmmmmmhnnn, CAHM AAAAHN. When’s it gonna EHYAAND? GAAHD, I don’t have TAAM for this SHIIYET”.

The growling and grumbling is briefly cancelled out by another clash of thunder. “Hurry up, END, NOW! Cahm aaahhn, pleeez, end now! Why does it have to do this during the day, it should do this at night!” – (a fair point here, it was unbearably hot last night) – “Gahd, I don’t have time for this shit!”.

I slip inside the cathedral to escape the verbal artillery for just a moment. Bayeux’s cathedral survived intact the last time it came under fire from an American battery, so I figure it’s a safe bet. The muted thunder beyond the stone walls sounds strangely beautiful, and the grey skies filter through the stained glass in hopeful technicolour. The aisles are packed with a colourful array of tourists waiting out the storm; a phoney faithful glued to their phones, waiting to proceed on their pilgrimage to the crêperies outside – a combination of American flags and English spoken here signs were drawing in the crowds earlier. Staring down at the sightseers, a gargoyle pulls his mouth into a sneer, tongue out, deriding a thousand years of peasants, pilgrims and pensioners.

Outside, the rest of the gargoyles are doing their job, spewing rainwater from their mouths onto the streets below. For the first time they look complete, as though the gaping mouths were merely voids waiting to be turned into channels. A father points them out to his daughter, one hand gesturing, the other on her ear as our frustrated Yankee Canute swears blue murder at the sky.

The streets of Bayeux shine under the whitening sky. Umbrellas and ponchos have been magicked out of the air (and some straight out of souvenir shops). The Wednesday market is being dismantled. The fishmonger reclaims the last two skate wings and a Norman bookseller voices a quiet complaint to the heavens as he stacks his pulped collection of second-hand books: “aujourd’hui, précisement?”.

The storm has passed and the sun has returned with a milder temperament, his midsummer fury sated at last. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off. Find a park, do some reading, and clue up on the bus times for tomorrow’s expedition to the coast. A bientot! BB x

William the Conqueror’s Invincible Thigh

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I woke up on a boat this morning. That happened. Originally I was inclined to arrive later today and save on the expense of booking a cabin on the overnight ferry, but how often do you get to sleep on a boat? I’m glad I did – the long faces on most of the other foot passengers spoke volumes of a long, sleepless night on deck. I just caught the sunrise as I went up on deck, by which point we had almost arrived. No dolphins or whales on this journey – maybe next time!

Attention, mes amis! The ferry serves Caen, but it docks in at Ouistreham, a small village some 17km north of Caen. The shuttle bus into Caen was a little deceptive, since despite saying CAEN in block capitals it only went as far as passport control. The real bus stop for Caen (Ouistreham Port) is a few minutes’ walk into Ouistreham from the port. Easy enough to find but worth knowing. The price is (at the time of writing) 1.80€ for a one-way trip. It’s also completely incompatible with the early ferry, arriving some twenty minutes after it departs, so I guess I’ll have to shell out for a taxi on Friday.

Check-in at my hostel in Bayeux wasn’t open until 4 in the afternoon, so with that early start I had quite a few hours to kill – on what was gearing up to be the hottest day, not just of the year, but in living memory. It was already pushing thirty by 10 o’clock. I took refuge in the shadow of Caen’s Abbaye aux Hommes, where William the Conqueror was laid to rest a little under nine hundred years ago. I thought I’d picked a good spot, and I pretty much had the shade to myself for the best part of an hour until a window cleaner turned up in a monstrous contraption spitting and whirring and grinding and clunking. It took him and his two companions all of five minutes to calibrate the machine into the right spot so he could start cleaning, by which point all the office workers within had long since pulled down the blinds. Why a ladder couldn’t get the job done beats me.

William wasn’t in the Abbaye itself. The 5€ entry fee through the Hotel de Ville revealed a beautiful cloister and an interesting exhibition on the Allied liberation of Caen (after nearly levelling the place first), but no William. A mini-map within showed he was in the adjacent cathedral (go figure), which is free to enter.

But, as it turns out, he wasn’t there either. Well – not all of him. During the French Wars of Religion in the 1560s, the abbey was sacked and William’s bones were exhumed and scattered. Only his thigh bone remains, and that in itself a miracle: less than two hundred years after his tomb was restored, it was sacked again by the unscrupulous revolutionaries. Napoleon’s generation certainly didn’t seem to hold heritage in high regard: you may have heard of Bonaparte’s foiled attempt to blow up the Pyramids, but he also ordered the demolition of various ancient wonders in Spain, including the Alhambra. Even the mighty CID’s tomb was ransacked by Napoleon’s men, and though more of his bones ultimately came home than poor William, some of them traveled a very long way. One apparently ended up in Russia, where it must have been carried as a trophy of war by a soldier with an eye for relics…!

William’s tombstone reads ‘here lies the Invincible William the Conqueror’. Somewhere under that slab is an invincible thigh bone. It’s definitely more invincible than my thighs, which are feeling very vincible in this heat… if that’s even a word.

Outside, it’s sweltering. It felt like walking into a wall of heat. By the time I reached Bayeux around midday I didn’t have the energy to anything beyond finding a shaded spot and collapsing. Fortunately Bayeux was spared the inferno enveloping most of Europe, and a nearby nature reserve afforded both shade, a cooling river and a bird-hide to lay down in relative comfort. I must have passed out several times, I think.

*Alternative* sleeping arrangements

Thank God the worst of it is over. Rain is forecast for tomorrow. It couldn’t be more welcome. BB x

Rome III: Respighi’s Quest

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

For my last two days in Italy, I decided to embark on a rather esoteric quest: to see all the pines of Rome featured in the orchestral piece of the same name by Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. If you grew up with Disney’s Fantasia 2000 – like I did – you may remember it as the number with the flying humpback whales. The symphonic poem in question is divided into four movements, and though I didn’t manage to hit the correct time of day for each one, it was an enjoyable musical challenge to round out my time in Italy!

It’s also a fitting challenge since music provided me (and my mum) with our first Italian connection, and I’ve been scraping by out here on a combination of guesswork from Spanish, DuoLingo and twenty years of orchestral jargon…

So, play the music below and read along as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra takes you through the movements!

https://youtu.be/6tXVXLNQe04

I. The Pines of the Villa Borghese (I pini di Villa Borghese, allegretto vivace)

I clocked these pines last night on an evening wander towards the Spanish Steps. Respighi wasn’t wrong to write this movement as the jolliest, most playful of the four: when I was there, the Giardini della Villa Borghese were full of children playing in the evening light. A couple of fairground rides replaced the Roman ring a ring o’roses game in the original, but in all other respects it still fits perfectly. The man knew his source material!

The Borghese gardens also appear to be a favourite spot for Roman romance. As the sun starts to sink behind the trees, the long shadows cast by the stone pines stretch like rivers between the patches of sunlight, where in one corner of the gardens couples clustered like mayflies in the light. A girl in her twenties was picking daisies to fashion into a chain, four Spaniards laughed their heads off as they wheeled up and down the paths on rental bikes, while in the middle of the gardens a priest gave a homily to a small crowd in front of one of the chapels.

If I should find the One someday, I’ll take her for a walk here, too.

II. The Pines near a Catacomb (I pini presso una catacomba, lento)

By the time I reached the catacombs, they were all shut up for the week… but that’s what you get for prioritising the Pope over a blog post. Compared to the rest of the Appian Way, the area around the catacombs was quiet and shaded… though that may have more to do with the lateness of the hour by the time I reached them. Here in Rome, as in Spain, cypress trees mark the resting places of the dead, lining the roads to the catacombs. They’ve been symbols of death since ancient times, since they cannot regenerate when cut back, and so they stand as sentinels outside tombs, cemeteries and graveyards all across the Mediterranean. The Romans’ beloved stone pines tower above them, but I think its the sad and stately rows of cypress trees that Respighi is alluding to in this movement.

III. The Pines of the Janiculum (I pini del Gianicolo, lento)

My first night in Rome was spent watching the sun set over the Eternal City. A girl I once put on pedestal told me to make the most of every sunrise and sunset. I left behind both girl and pedestal years ago, but it’s still a rule I live by when I’m on the road. Snacking on a focaccia from the hilltop, I had a sweeping view of the city, from the Vatican to the distant towns of Tivoli and Palestrina. The pines that grow here are the stone pines of Doñana, the trees of my childhood. The Romans had a special love for this tree and planted it wherever they went, especially along roads like the Via Appia.

Down in the dark branches below the viewpoint, some of the city’s monk parakeets screeched this way and that (oddly enough this South American species began to colonise Rome around the same time the Argentinian Pope Francis was elected), but my eyes were drawn to a tiny black-and-white shape moving up the trunk of the tallest stone line overlooking the city: a lesser spotted woodpecker, the first I’ve seen in many years. The rising and falling flute in Respighi’s movement pairs well with all the birds I saw here: the parakeets racing by, the pigeons wheeling over the roofs below, the tiny woodpecker climbing up and up. But I didn’t hear the nightingale that Respighi insisted on featuring at the end of this movement. Perhaps it’s too early in the year – though I suspect it’s more because it’s much too crowded here for such a self-conscious minstrel.

IV. The Pines of the Appian Way (I pini della Via Appia, tempo di marcia)

This was always my favourite movement – and what a sight! No visitor to Rome should pass up the chance to take a walk on the Via Appia, especially on a Sunday when the road is closed to traffic and the Romans descend upon the ancient highway in their droves for an afternoon passegiata. Walking the forum is one thing, but this is something else. The Via Appia is probably the oldest road still in use in the western world, and you really do get the feeling you’re walking in the footsteps of the ancient Romans as you walk this road. The things this road has seen…! This is where soldiers marched to the port and on to Egypt, where nobles lived in luxury beyond the confines of the city, and where the great orator Cicero was assassinated. I fell into the Romantic trap of many travelers before me as I passed one old Roman sitting on a marble colonnade, with skin of burnished bronze, black, sunken eyes and an aquiline nose that would have looked supreme on any Caesar; and I wondered whether he was the descendant, through many fathers, of Romans who had lived on this road two thousand years ago.

I also heard a nightingale here – he must have missed his cue in the Third Movement.

If Cannaregio was my favourite spot in Venice, the Via Appia takes the top spot in Rome. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, flanked with ancient Roman treasures along its entire length, and absolutely mustn’t be missed. And Respighi nails it with his final movement: it’s heroic, majestic and the perfect finale to both my long walk and my time in Italy.

I’ll tell you the tale of my incredible Palm Sunday experience as soon as I get my hands on a computer, as my phone photos simply don’t do it justice, but until then, arrivederci Italia! Sei bellisima e tornerò presto! And that’s a promise. 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