nature

Tiny Wings

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

3rd October, 10.40pm. The Flat

The October half term holiday came to a rather unorthodox end this evening with a last minute trip into town to catch a talk by celebrated English nature-writer, John Lewis-Stempel, on his latest release: England: A Natural History. It isn’t every day you get to meet people who you have grown up reading, and as this is a year for saying yes to things, why not? I came away with a signed copy and a really interesting chat with the author about the importance of names – not just the scientific names of the animals and plants around us, mind, but the old English names that are disappearing even faster than some of the creatures themselves: you might have heard of a peewit or yaffle, or possibly even a dumbledore, but would you know a bumbarrel or cuddy bear* if they were sitting in a tree in your garden? (Answers at the end!)

I’m feeling much recharged after ten days’ leave. These boarding school terms really do knock the stuffing out of you, though as I like to say, I’m happiest when I’m up to my eyeballs – it leaves less time for dwelling on things. I left it a little late for any far-flung adventures this year, but I did make it to Dartmoor a few nights back, taking advantage of the last few days of the public bus service that crosses the moors before they shut down over the winter.

Why Dartmoor? Possibly because it’s arguably easier to get to by public transport than Exmoor, which is a lot closer, but mainly because I had an insatiable itch to see the legendary Wistman’s Wood, a tiny sliver of temperate rainforest nestled deep in the heart of the national park. It popped up in a number of ghost stories I read a while back and again in Guy Shrubsole’s The Lost Rainforests of Britain. The desire to see that last fragment of the Great Wood that once covered this island ended up pressing against the inside of my skull like Wistman’s own stunted trees.

I was holding out for mist and fog, but I had neither. The weather was actually remarkably pleasant for fickle Dartmoor, so instead of mirk and mystery I was treated to soft clouds and sunlight through the ancient branches; the kind of warm glow that Tolkien bestowed for a moment upon Fangorn Forest, an ancient wood of his own design. Did he pass through here, I wonder? His faithful illustrator Alan Lee certainly must have done at some point.

Just as it sits in a valley in the innermost chamber of Dartmoor’s heart, so too is Wistman’s Wood at the heart of much of Dartmoor’s folklore. It is said to be haunted by the spirit of a terrier who can still be heard scampering through the boulders, while by night it is prowled by the far more sinister wisht hounds, a local variant of the hell-hound myth that can be found across the British Isles, from the gytrash and Barghest to the Beast of Bodmin. The wisht hounds were believed to be kennelled in Wistman’s Wood by Old Crockern himself, the ancient pagan spirit of the moor whose foreboding tor rides the crest of the hills a short distance to the west of the woods.

There were no malevolent spirits during my brief stay, of course – at least, none that I could see from my perch atop a boulder on the fringes of the forest (visitors are no longer allowed to enter the wood proper, so as to protect the longevity of this sacred and truly unique ecosystem). But that is not to say the place was lifeless: quite the contrary, in fact. There was no wind, but the trees were alive with rustling leaves that turned out to be the beating of tiny wings. In the space of a single minute I clocked three species of tit (blue, great and coal), blackbirds, redwings, wrens, robins, tiny treecreepers and the truly pint-sized goldcrest, our smallest native bird. I haven’t seen a forest so alive in a long time. Even the air itself felt different, a fact that would have been obvious to all but the senseless by the thick, mossy lichen growing on every surface, a perfect natural yardstick for a healthy forest.

I spent the next five hours or so wandering in a wide arc around the surrounding moorland, following a rather makeshift path swiped from the internet the night before. I haven’t hiked around Dartmoor since I was at primary school, so I’d forgotten that, up on the moors, river crossings are often not bridges but rows of stepping stones. Which are a delightful challenge in balmy summer weather, no doubt, but something of a roadblock after the first heavy rains of autumn. I made the tactical decision to not tempt fate and so I took off boots, rolled my trousers up to my knees and waded across.

I hardly need to point out that Dartmoor’s rivers are devilishly chilly – and surprisingly deep. I was just shy of the other bank when the water came almost up to my waist. Thank goodness I’d brought a spare pair of trousers, or I’d have had a very wet hike back to the inn!

Luckily, as I crested the hills due south of Two Bridges, the sun came out to guide me home. It seemed to turn the grass to gold, in a wave that washed down the hillside until I was stranded in an ocean of golden blades. I straggled up to the Crock of Gold, a small stone-strewn vantage point where, as if on cue, a shining rainbow daubed itself across the grey sky to the north. No leprechauns on this occasion, but I got my gold one way or another.

Well, I’d better put down my proverbial pen and get some sleep. Back to work tomorrow, and another busy term awaits! BB x

*Bravo for holding out for the answers! A peewit is of course a lapwing, a yaffle is a green woodpecker and a dumbledore is a bumblebee, while cuddy bear and bumbarrel are old English names for the wren and long-tailed tit respectively! Go figure!

Longhorns and Lightning

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is the first day of a new life. After a long summer of alternating adventures, up-and-down driving lessons and watching the clock, it’s back to school for this bleeding heart. I’m determined to make a success of it. Once again, I find myself thinking back to my first teaching post in Uganda, nearly twelve years ago – where it all began. Did I know it then? I must have had an inkling – that was partly why I went, to see if teaching was for me – but I suspect I was blinded by the lure of seeing Africa with my own eyes. My lanyard is hanging from the door, my notebook is on my bedside table and the pen pot on my desk – a gift in the shape of a Dia de los Muertos mug – is stuffed with fully-loaded board markers. It’s nearly time to get started. But for now, let’s dive back into the realm of memories; to a remote farmstead on the banks of the White Nile…

9th October 2012
Ugandan Independence Day (50th Anniversary)

One month into our stay in Boroboro in northern Uganda, Luke Ojungu came trundling into the driveway of the Bishop’s compound in his enormous four-by-four. With Uganda on the brink of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its independence from Britain, we had an unexpected holiday on our hands and the former headmaster had offered to take us to stay at his farm in the Apac region to the southwest. The bishop said a prayer to bless our journey and send us on our way with God’s protection, though Luke’s impressive 6’5″ stature might well have been all the protection we needed. His plan? To show us a corner of Uganda we might not see otherwise, and to put us to work herding his cattle.

No visitor to Uganda who makes it out of the capital can possibly miss the famous Ankole cattle. For one thing, they’re everywhere, and for another, their enormous horns make them easy to spot over a great distance. I wonder if that was an intentional bit of genetic wizardry on the part of the cattlemen, so that they could keep stock of their herds from far away?

Luke had several hundred longhorn cattle spread across his lands south of the river, along with a large number of goats and chickens back on the home farm, which by Ugandan standards (or any standards, for that matter) made him a rather wealthy landowner. He was very keen to point out Matthew, the hornless bull he had named after the headmaster of our school back in England. It was hard to tell whether it was an affectionate gesture or somewhat tongue-in-cheek, choosing the one longhorn bull without horns for such an honour, but we had a laugh all the same. A running in-joke was born and Matthew “the most indie cow in the world” and his distaste for anything mainstream kept the four of us amused all weekend.

We arrived in time to help with administering the inoculations, which had already taken a couple of days, what with the herds spread out across the forested hills. Maddie, the team scientist, took the lead on this one, seeing a chance to do a little fieldwork ahead of the Biology degree ahead of her. Several years ahead of the rest of us in maturity and wisdom, if not in age, she was always out in front and seizing any and all opportunities that came floating our way, whether we joined her or not. It was Maddie’s idea to go to Uganda in person to snag a better deal on the national park permits. It was Maddie’s idea to spend all night dancing with locals down the road from our tumbledown hotel in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. I should have followed her lead more often.

Mind you, it was also Maddie’s idea to ride along with the staff to a remote village in the north to the funeral of a colleague we’d never met, even though the service was conducted entirely in Lango (of which we understood perhaps four words between the four of us) and the return journey had me sandwiched between quite possibly the two largest women in Uganda.

With jabs administered, Luke left us in the care of two of his cattlemen, Alphonse and Gideon (I definitely misheard Gideon as Geryon the first time around, since that’s what I wrote in my journal, though that would have been a very fitting name for a cattle herder!). Out in the bush, I got my wish: to explore a proper African wilderness. True, it was grazed by Luke’s hundred-strong herd of cattle, but there were wild things everywhere: drongos, hornbills, cuckoos, parrots and forest kingfishers. Overhead, the awkward silhouette of a pair of bateleurs kept us company across the open marches. In the course of a single cattle drive I counted at least forty species I’d never seen before, jotting down details of what I’d seen and sketching while the memory was fresh.

In short, I’d make a decent Darwin, but a useless cowherd.

The drive took us deep into the forest, which swallowed up the herd quite capably. The going was a little hard, with thorny acacia branches poking in all directions, and we got to wondering whether we were being watched by other, more sinister residents of the forest as we cut a path through the trees: our encounter with a troop of baboons at the crossing at Karuma the day before had left me with a deep-seated awe (and justified terror) of the things, and I couldn’t shake the idea that they might be hiding in the trees, watching us from evil, sunken eyes.

I needn’t have bothered: the great herd of longhorns drove most of the forest creatures before it like a scourge. But it’s funny what gets into your head.

What was waiting for us, however, was a tropical storm. We had reached the heart of the forest, where the bush was at its thickest, when Alphonse brought us to a stop at the sound of a heavy drumroll from the north. Gideon went on ahead to divert the herd, but we had gone no further than a hundred metres when the heavens opened. It did not happen gradually, as rainstorms do in the British Isles, but in an instant: one minute the sky was grey with promise, the next it was sheet-white and bucketing it down. It was as though somebody had turned on an almighty showerhead, the way it just came down all of a sudden, and it went on for the best part of an hour. At Alphonse’s suggestion we sheltered beneath the scant cover of the trees, holding the herd at a standstill while we waited for the worst of it to pass. The waterproof hiking boots which had endured similar conditions in the Lake District were waterlogged within minutes, and we were all of us soaked to the skin – it was hard to imagine that only moments before it had been a balmy thirty degrees and we had been bemoaning having run out of sun lotion. I don’t think I have ever been so utterly drenched. If I remember correctly, I was quite miserable. We all were.

Luke came to the rescue around midday, picking us up from the side of the road when we finally broke free of the forest and saw the Nile, our intended destination, winding across the valley ahead. Regardless of the conditions, it would still have been another couple of hours’ march to the river, and Luke was quite anxious that we would not catch our death of cold on his watch, so we were whisked back to the farm for a warm cup of tea and fresh clothes. Alphonse and Gideon bade us farewell and pushed on toward the river, even as the clouds threatened a second deluge with flash and thunder.

We conceded defeat before these incredibly hardy cattlemen and their herd, and returned to teaching the following week with a renewed sense of purpose: we had a lot more to offer in passing on what we had learned than in wandering blindly through the bush in the wake of men who had been herding cattle since they were children.

I said I was miserable – which, according to my diary, is a fact – but like most things that get me down, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat, if only to see the rain come down as ferociously as it did that day, and to feel that shudder in my heart when the first drumroll of the rainy season came thundering in. Matthew wouldn’t have thought all that much of it. After all, there’s all manner of cliches when one gets to talking of a thunderstorm, and Matthew is far too indie for any of that nonsense. BB x

Saudade

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

SAUDADE – (n.) a deep nostalgic longing for someone or something absent, infused with a melancholic awareness that it may never return.

I looked up last night and saw a plane coming in to land at Heathrow. One of the big ones that comes in from across the Atlantic, like the one I flew home on nearly five weeks ago. It made me think of that Monday morning, seeing the sunrise over London, knowing in my head – even if I didn’t want to admit it in my heart – that I had come to the end of a cheery chapter in my life.

A plane like that one brought her here to this cloud-covered island many months ago. I wonder what my summer would have looked like if it hadn’t?

The Portuguese have this wonderful untranslatable expression called ‘saudade’. It’s often taken to mean the feeling of missing someone or somewhere, or more precisely a sense of longing for that thing, but many Portuguese and Brazilians will tell you that it’s a lot more subtle than that. There’s a sense of finality to it, also: an understanding that what you once had may never come back at all, an acceptance of that, but a wistful longing for it all the same. Not the raw kind that breaks you in the days and weeks that follow, but a tempered and reflective sense of nostalgia for what once was and what could have been.

It’s not unique to the Portuguese, but it is especially common in their culture – and perhaps even more so among the Brazilians. It is said that the expression may have evolved during the Age of Discoveries, when the wives of the great explorers of the day bade farewell to their husbands and lovers as they set out for the Americas (how ironic) knowing full well that they may never see them again, and that if they did, they would return as changed men.

Among the Brazilians, it has taken on the sense of a nostalgia for a lost future: a golden country that never was. The American dream isn’t just limited to the States – a shard of it can be found embedded like a splinter in the subconscious of all the descendants of the colonists, I believe. Why else should they have made such a journey if not in hope of a better tomorrow?

I feel that way about Spain, sometimes. Perhaps that’s the generational shockwave of my grandfather’s death in his mid-twenties, rippling across the years to the present, an echo of a lost world that could have been. Spain calls to us. It has been calling for sixty years. Come back. Come home. Sometimes you spend hours, days and even weeks waiting for somebody to reply (looking at you, folks on Hinge) without realising that something greater has been waiting for you all the time, if only you knew how to answer.

I have been the architect of my own saudade by choosing to devote my life to gazing upon that dream from afar: teaching Spanish to the English, sharing my love for a country I can only touch a few times a year. It is a test of endurance, to look upon a thing of beauty and not to touch. Spain has always been that thing. It fills me with awe, excitement, a deep-seated admiration and an infectious appreciation for life itself, but a sense of longing all the same, knowing that it is in my heart, but beyond my reach. Like there’s something blocking the way that I can’t see. Perhaps it’s akin to sleeping beside a former lover, after the love has gone.

I wandered through the woods as the sun came down. I think the nightjars have already gone back to Africa – there must be plenty of them around for a local bar to bear the name The Nightjar – but I was followed across the heath by a pair of stonechats. In that year I spent growing up in the Andalusian sierras, that was a sound that accompanied me every weekend on my forays down to the abandoned railway at the foot of the mountain where we lived: a whistle followed by a song like the clash of two small stones.

Further in, I found a couple of kite feathers. There are so many in these woods. When I was a child, you would have been lucky to see a buzzard – poison and poor public perception very nearly wiped them out – but now they’re everywhere once again. The red kites that once quartered the streets of London before their extirpation in the 19th century have also come back with a bang, and their feathers turn up in the forest quite regularly. I left some in a small tree for another person to find – some bright-eyed kid like me, perhaps, who might take them home as a treasure. Something they can look back on in years to come, and remember the day, remember the smell of the forest, remember the one who took them there by the hand – the feel of their hand, the sunlight in their laugh. I’d like to think that. BB x

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

What a vast gulf there is between love and loved! It is measureless. Still, most people have crossed it in their lives, some of them more than once.

Henry Rider Haggard, The People of Mist

Summer rumbles along. August yawns before me, and once I’m settled into my new home at the end of the week it will be a quieter month than this very to-and-fro, up-and-down July. I’ve managed to book in some driving lessons starting next week, despite the ongoing national shortage of instructors, so I should count my blessings. I’ve also been very lucky to have traveled so far. I mean, honestly: four weeks ago today I was wandering around New Orleans. Three weeks ago I was on an island. Two weeks ago I was sitting atop Montmartre in Paris, eating frites and watching the sunset.

I really have moved around a lot this summer. I should be grateful. That’s what I tell myself.

The summer holidays are a rough time to handle heartache. There’s never a good time, but the holidays really are the worst. For dealing with affairs of the heart, the best things to have around you are friends and family who will listen, advise and support you, if not a job that will keep you too busy to dwell overmuch. All of these are close at hand when you live and work in a boarding school (or any school, for that matter, though the boarding scene does amplify most things).

Come the holidays, however, and you can find yourself cut off. Marooned. It’s like floating in a wide, wide sea, in a boat that has lost its motor, looking and hoping for the afterglow of the stars you’ve been chasing, even though you know both the looking and the hoping will hurt your eyes.

I love a good quest. It gives one’s life meaning, purpose. Something to come home and tell stories about. Seeking out my long-lost family in Spain – that was a quest. Walking the Camino for my grandfather José – that was another. Even the ten-metre colossus of a drawing I created at university was a quest after a fashion. In short, any endeavour that you put your heart and soul into is a quest. So perhaps you might forgive me for trying to catch a shooting star this summer, knowing full well that they are so precious precisely because they are fleeting.

It’s just because it’s in those fleeting moments that we truly feel alive that we hunger for them so.

The hardest relationships to walk away from are the ones where you both still care about each other. Where, by whatever divine prank, the whole world stood between you, telling you to listen to reason and face the enormity of the Ocean, even as you railed against it. Bloody Hinge! Bloody Atlantic! Bloody bleeding heart!

One of you must be the brave one and make the bitterest of choices. Somebody needs to be the one to say “good bye”. Good-bye is a powerful word, and one I try to avoid – it is so much more final than “farewell”. And even when it is the right word to say, it’s never easy to cut yourself off entirely from the person with whom you have come to share a corner of your heart. But one of you must do this, and that will always leave the other with questions. What more could I have done? Did I let the flame die out from a lack of attention, or did I snuff it out from too much? Had I the winged sandals of Hermes or the might of Moses to part the sea between us, would it have been enough?

Questions come easily in the silence of the summer holidays. So I’ve been going out in the evenings for long walks to clear my head and focus on the beauty of the world around me, as the year turns.

The harvest season has begun, and the wind among the gentle fields of barley can hardly be heard over the distant roar of the combine harvesters up on the golden hills. Hay is in the air and, every now and then, the faint smell of mushrooms. Autumn is waiting in the wings. Change is coming.

One thing I’ve noticed this year is that there are so many owls up here in Lincolnshire. More than I’ve ever seen in the south, that’s for sure. Owls are an omen of bad luck in many parts of the world, but here in Europe we chose to see in them wisdom. Perhaps that’s on account of their enormous eyes, or their ability to turn their head in seemingly all directions.

Last night I saw a barn owl quartering the fields after sundown, a ghostly silhouette against the evening sky as it flapped noiselessly overhead – or rather, noiseless in its wings, for it was shrieking as it went.

Barn owls. Flamingoes. Rollers. Swans. It’s a strange quirk that the most beautiful creatures make the most alarming sounds. There is nothing alarming about the wind in the barley tonight. It rustles softer than any sigh.

Nature is a powerful healer, and so is writing. I will make good use of both in the weeks to come, until life and work begins again. A new world is waiting! I have waited long enough. BB x

Marooned

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

13.25. High summer. Somewhere in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

English summer skies are blinding. There’s an intensity to the white clouds that blanket this island in summer that demands a permanent squint, or a pair of good sunglasses. America – and even Europe – seem a long, long way away from here.

Six days ago I was sitting on a low wall among the ruins of an old boathouse on the largest of the Chausey Islands, a collection of low-lying islands in the bay of Saint-Malo. I’d never heard of them until the day before, when I saw that a local ferry company was offering day trips out that way, but I do love an adventure, especially one that goes well off the beaten track. Due to its remote location, there were only two boats a day from Saint-Malo: one to the island, and one from. Which is how I ended up spending seven hours on an island measuring just 1.5km across.

The Chausey Islands are a magical place. Quiet. Peaceful. Cut-off. It’s not so far from the coast that you feel lost – neighbouring Granville over in Normandy is a little nearer than Calais is to Dover, and in good sunlight you can see as far as the spires of Saint-Malo on the Breton coast – but far enough to feel like you’ve put some distance between yourself and the world. Even on a cloudy day, you can see the ghostly pyramid of Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the sea to the south like Atlantis. Or should that be Ys?

People have been living in these islands for centuries. The Vikings of old used to stop here regularly en route to their raids along the mainland, and you can still see the holes they bored into some of the rocks to anchor their longboats. The narrow channel between Grand Île and the other islands still carries a Viking name: the Chausey Sound, the southernmost “sound” in Europe. There were once a few farms here, and even a school until the last century. Now it plays home to French holidaymakers, who pass their jealously-guarded homes down through the generations, so I’m told.

I have a habit of winding up in places like this. Others travel to meet people, have a great time, see the world. I always seem to end up by myself, searching for myself, marooned with my thoughts. It’s not that I don’t set out in search of those things too – I just find my way to these spots quite naturally.

I found the spot I was searching for to the west of the island, on a low islet overlooking the ebbing tide beneath a crown of standing stones. But for the hulking black-backed gulls, a couple of oystercatchers and the odd lizard, I had the bay to myself.

I let my mind wander. I thought about a great many people, and wondered what they were doing at that moment in time. Were they happy? Were they wandering like me? Had they ever found just such a place and turned their thoughts to friends and lovers past? I think so. I think it’s in our nature to do just that in the far-flung corners of the world. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a sucker for a good Western: nothing sends you on a greater inward journey than the wilderness.

I had questions, but the answers didn’t come to me as readily as they did on the Camino last year, so I waited out the hours on a beach, reading Breton fairytales and burning under the sun. When the boat did come, it was to carry me back to Saint-Malo across a choppy sea that left half the passengers on the deck soaked to their skin, though the sun was shining bright.

I didn’t see as many seabirds as I hoped, but I did clock a guillemot taking its fledgling on what might well have been its first swim as the sun came out. I also came away with a number of close encounters with the lizards that call the island home – all of them a lot less skittish than their cousins on the mainland. I used to love looking for lizards in the countryside when I was a kid, so after the nostalgia of rockpool rediscovery, it was refreshing to turn another leaf of the history books.

Until the next adventure, folks. BB x

Winds, Waves and Words

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s 18.00 over here in Saint-Malo and the heavens have opened. An Atlantic wind is battering against the windows and the heavyset black-backed gull that chased off Hector has given up on attacking the ashtray on the windowsill and taken his leave. I might head into town for dinner later, but for now, I’m quite content curled up on the sofa of my AirBnB with a book, a hot chocolate and the time to write. So I thought I’d start today’s post with a little history.

Saint-Malo has a long and complicated past. Originally a 6th century refuge for Welsh monks, including the venerable Maclou of Aleth who gave the town its name, the rocky outpost became a haven for Bretons fleeing the advancing “North-men” or Normans some two hundred years later. In the 17th century, its strategic location made it a natural hub for state-licensed piracy or “privateering”, which elevated its fortunes considerably and paved the way for a generation of wealthy explorers: Jacques Cartier, a native malouin, is credited with giving Canada its name (via the Iroquois kanata) and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, another son of Saint-Malo, established the first European settlement in the Falkland Islands, which – at least in Spanish – still bear their original Breton name: las Islas Malvinas, from the French Îles Malouines.

The city fell to the Germans during the Second World War as part of their Atlantikwall stratagem, and the skeletons of their fortifications still dot the Breton coastline: in Saint-Malo, the levelled ruins of German pillboxes rub shoulders with 17th century Vauban forts. Surprisingly, much of what you see today was carefully reconstructed, as around 80% of the city was destroyed by the Allies in their dogged attempt to drive the Germans from the old pirate stronghold.

Allied bombers over Saint-Malo in August 1944. The fortified isle of Grand-Bé is at the centre of the blast

Most of the German fortifications have long since been torn down, but you can still see the concrete bases of many structures on the cliffs beneath the city wall and on the surrounding islets of Grand-Bé. They make very comfortable places to sit and watch the sunset.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the town’s rich history is one of the biggest reasons I’m here. But the other is its wildness: there are plenty of sandy beaches in the south, but I don’t get any real kick out of sea-swimming unless there are rocky areas to explore. The southeast coast of England with its famous white cliffs is quite a sight to behold, but it doesn’t quite have the jagged beauty that the west has in abundance, and Brittany has it to spare.

I spent many of the happiest days of my childhood scouring the rock pools of Folkestone for tiny critters: gobies, blennies, butterfish, velvet swimming crabs and even, just the once, a pipefish. Brittany is only the other side of the Channel, so much of the shoreline is familiar. I can’t help keeping an eye out for anemones when I’m out on the rocks, especially the snakelocks variety – I always thought they were especially interesting.

Across the bay from Saint-Malo stands the islet of Grand-Bé, which can be reached on foot at low tide via a barnacle-encrusted causeway. A similar road stretches on to the Vauban fort on Petit-Bé, though a small section of that road remains under a foot of water even at low tide and must be forded with shoes in hand.

Grand-Bé offers a glimpse of what Saint-Malo must once have been: a windswept escarpment just off the mainland, inhabited only by lizards, gulls, a small colony of shags and a company of oystercatchers that can be heard all across the bay. Two of these noisy seabirds were standing in attendance upon Chateaubriand’s tomb, as though to keep him company. From this spot, on a clear day, you can hear the twittering of goldfinches, the cries of gulls, the occasional grunt from one of the shags and the endless piping of oystercatchers on the rocks below or in the sky above – and, of course, the ringing of the bells of Saint Vincent’s cathedral across the bay.

I wonder if the old Romantic was as bewitched by the wild birds of his native Brittany as his writing implies? He certainly had a real flair when it came to writing about nature. Perhaps that’s why he chose this spot.

I spent some time last night watching the sunset over Grand-Bé. I had left my Camino bracelet in the apartment, but I had brought a few other tokens with me. I often take a number of “lucky” objects on my travels: little souvenirs and keepsakes to remind me of home when I’m on the road.

Well, not home exactly. With no fewer than ten moves under my belt at the age of thirty (and just under half of them international) I’m still not entirely sure where home is. But they remind me of friendships and memories that mean a lot to me, and that helps with the loneliness that is a natural side-effect of traveling alone.

In my satchel, ever at my side, I carry my journal, my fifth and longest-serving since I took up the art twelve years ago. It’s coming apart at the seams and bound inexpertly by sellotape – hardly surprising for a little book that has come with me to work every day for the last five years, as well as on every adventure I’ve been on in that time. Concealed within is my lucky dollar, a ticket to the Prado in Madrid, a tawny owl feather, the plectrum that one of my Rutherford boys used to win House Music two years in a row and a perfumed letter.

There is one more keepsake that has been sharing the road with me this summer. It even came with me to America, traversing the Bayou, the Mississippi and the bright lights of Nashville. It’s a card from one of my students, one of many I received in my last week at Worth. The lengths this particular student went to so as to ensure I got the card, as well as the maturity of its message from one so young, are just two of the reasons this one in particular has come with me. I am many things, and a great many less, but I would be a writer – and so that is why I have always believed that the greatest gift I can ever receive is in the form of words. No physical object can ever surpass the depth of feeling that comes from such expression.

I have a bad habit of making people cry when I write them farewell letters (an equally bad habit I’ve adopted for leaving students), but I very nearly met my match with this one. The student in question signed off with a favourite quote of theirs from Lin-Manuel Miranda: “sometimes words fail me”. There’s any number of reasons they could have chosen that one for me – I might well have said the line verbatim in reaction to the behaviour of that class at least once – but it’s a powerful message for a would-be writer.

Words do fail me, and often. There have been moments this year where I have been genuinely speechless, from shock or awe or wonder. It is comforting to know that such a consummate wordsmith shares that affliction.

Tomorrow, I have decided upon a rather spontaneous adventure. I have already bought my ticket. All I can do now is hope that the weather holds. Then – we shall see what we shall see. BB x

Camino XXVII: Journey’s End

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Finisterre. The End of the World. It’s a fitting place to end the Camino, which can sometimes feel like it really does go ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Well, here we are at the end of the road. Kilometre 0. My great quest for the summer is over.

With a good thirty-two kilometres between O Logoso and the seaside town of Fisterra, Simas and I set off early this morning. One last six o’clock start, an hour or so before the dawn, to end the Camino as it began: in the dark. The churring of nightjars echoed in the forest around us as far as Hospital, after which the road climbed up over a treeless moor before slowly beginning to descend toward the clouded horizon beyond.

We passed a few alarming signs declaring ‘territorio vákner’, which didn’t make a lot of sense until we stumbled upon an enormous sculpture in the woods of a wolf-man. The ‘vákner’ was, according to 15th century pilgrim lore, a Galician forerunner of the werewolf legend, and one of a number of terrible beasts that beset pilgrims in the forests after Santiago. The more you know!

Less fantastical, though by no means less legendary, we found a Tupperware box on one of the stone walls deeper in the woods containing a number of breakfast options: yoghurts, bananas and pastries, complete with plastic spoons in case of need. The invisible benefactor, an eleven-year old local boy, was trying to raise money for a trip to Madrid. I tipped him generously via his piggy bank and enjoyed the breakfast I otherwise might not have had this morning. What a little angel!

Shortly after leaving the forest, as though out of a dream, the sea came into view. I have been so excited to see the sea after three weeks on the road and saving it as a reward for the final day was definitely the right thing to do. We came down into the busy former whaling town of Cee and had a proper breakfast of churros con chocolate, for the princely sum of 3.75€. And that’s including Simas’ café con leche. I’m going to miss how cheap this country is.

Having killed an hour, we pressed on north and west through Corcubión, which was being kitted out for a medieval fair. We detoured a little to see the coast, and were guided back to the Camino by a friendly local afflicted by throat cancer, who pointed us back to the road using a robotic device at his throat. We had not gone much further than Estorde when the sun came out, causing the white sands of the beaches to shine out like a beacon. Given the gloomy forecast for the rest of the day, we took a chance and detoured once again to one of the coves, finding it deserted. And boy am I glad we did!

This was what I walked five hundred and sixty kilometres for: truly, the treasure at the end of the rainbow. There were no pots of gold, but there might as well have been diamonds in the water: each gentle wave kicked up clouds of white sand that glittered in the sunlight like a thousand twinkling stars. Sand eels and mullets darted in silver shoals nearby and a sandpiper scurried up and down the shoreline at a safe distance from us. The way the forests practically tumble right into the ocean, ringed with beaches that shine a purer white than anything the Mediterranean can muster… I’m amazed the Galician coast isn’t as heavy a hitter on the tourist trail as the Costa Brava. Amazed – and grateful. Because from some of the graffiti on the town walls – no a la Marbellización – it’s pretty clear the gallegos don’t want it to have that level of fame either.

A special mention should be made for saint number two of the journey: Nacho, a Valencian who had set himself up on the hill overlooking the Langosteira beach with two paella dishes full of home cooking that he was handing out to passers-by, free of charge. He was quite insistent on this last point, maintaining that though he was between jobs he had enough money by the grace of God to live on, and wanted to share his luck with the world. We had a good natter about what constitutes a real paella, but above all it was really uplifting to meet such a good-hearted man from my grandfather’s region – because while I’m proud to have Manchego heritage, my grandfather was actually born in Torrevieja, which means my immediate ancestry is actually Valencian. Go figure!

We reached Fisterra just after one and checked into the albergue municipal, which was already quickly filling up. It is as well that we did, too, as it landed us the final stamp in the credencial and an additional compostela for completing the final 100km of the Camino. After a quick nap we grabbed a table at O Pirata, a very characterful port-side seafood restaurant whose staff (and hangers-on) really did give off the right vibes as a motley crew rather than a team of restauranteurs. Between our waiter, who might well be the fastest-talking man in Spain, the chef with his black bandana and earring, and the three musicians sat outside, strumming guitars and clapping along – not to mention the seafood itself, which was delicious – it was easily the best meal of the whole Camino. Best of all, they threw in a free ego massage, telling me it wasn’t just the La Mancha shirt that gave away my Spanish heritage but also my ‘actitud’. I’ve actually managed to convince quite a few Spaniards that I’m a native on this Camino, which is a huge thing for me. I’m one step closer every day to reclaiming my heritage!

After lunch, Simas went back to the albergue for a siesta but I fancied a wander around town before the forecasted rain came down. What I thought might be a museum/aquarium in the harbour turned out to be an open-air working fishery, where a raised walkway lets you look down on the fishermen at work, processing and sorting the morning’s catch. It’s a brilliant idea and a fascinating way to have a look-in behind the scenes – especially after enjoying the fruits of their hard work for lunch! One chap was sat measuring the many thousands of razor clams and sorting them by weight, which looked to be a truly Sisyphean task: it must take hours to finish before the next haul arrives and the task begins again.

Stamps and celebratory seafood platters aside, you can’t say you’ve completed the Camino unless you really do go all the way to the end of the road, which is another three kilometres down the coast to the windswept cliffs of Cape Finisterre. The pictures imply a lonely lighthouse watches the cape, but it’s also home to a hotel, a bar, a car park and a couple of souvenir shops, so it’s not as remote a spot as you might think. The steep banks of the cliffs were pretty busy when we got there, with both pilgrims and tourists from various parts of Spain, and it was a good place to bid farewell to several pilgrims I have crossed paths with on the road: Alan, the wannabe hostalero, and the French team of three, Jean-Paul, Adine and Philippe; as well as Liza the Belgian (whose wish was granted by beating me to the Cape) and Catherine the German (who wins the award for the most random encounters along the whole Camino).

I found a quieter spot lower down and sat there for a while, watching the waters of the Atlantic below. It was a good place to reflect. I let go of a lot of things at last, letting them drift from my heart through my fingers and out across the ocean. Down below, gulls wheeled and cried around the cliff edge while a sparrow and a redstart made a few dizzying sallies across the precipice. My eyes were trained on the waves, searching for one thing in particular, and after half an hour – in the wake of a fishing boat – I saw what I was seeking. Not the lonely gannet or flight of shags that rounded the cape, but a fleet of shearwaters, an endearing and highly acrobatic seabird that truly lives up to its name, flying low over the water with the tips of their wings slicing the tips of the waves like blades. I was far too high up to tell what kind they might be, but I imagine they were Balearics, given their size and number.

If the ghostly harrier and quail were the spirits of the early Camino, it’s the handsome shearwater that marks its end. While I’ve walked most of the Camino alone, I’ve had companions every step of the way, from the merry stonechats that have been with me every day to the nightjars that have kept me company in the twilight hours. If you can put a name to the sights and sounds all around you, you’re never truly alone on the road.

If you kept going in a straight line from here, you’d reach Long Island and perhaps even New York City. But unless you have the stamina of a god and the strength to match, that’s simply not possible, so here the road ends at last. I penned the words ‘Llévame contigo’ (Take me with you) into my faithful stick and planted it in the earth just behind where I had been sitting. I hope somebody does take it with them, and that it brings them as much joy and support as it has brought me.

I thought of its predecessor, and the feathers that had made it so memorable to other travellers on the road, and as I did, a couple of ravens suddenly appeared on the wind, soaring in circles around the cliffs below. One of those feathers I carried before belonged to a raven – so perhaps they were with me all along in spirit. I’d like to think that. According to legends of old, it was a raven that first brought the light of hope into the world.

Well, that’s a wrap. It’s now twenty to eight on Friday 28th August. The rain is falling outside and I’m booked on the 11:45 bus back to Santiago. I’m going to find myself a café near the harbour and do some writing while I wait, in this seaside town with which I have fallen in love. Galicia has been beautiful since O Cebreiro but its coast has utterly enchanted me. It feels like home, and yet like Spain at the same time. It feels like Edinburgh, Hythe and Olvera all rolled into one.

I will come back. There is more to the Costa da Morte than I have seen. I must come back. BB x

Camino XXV: Underhill, Over Hill

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After all that build-up to the grand firework display on the night of the 24th, the pilgrim party in Santiago was a little underwhelming. I suppose, like most things, it simply couldn’t live up to the hype. In some years, the entire facade of the cathedral is lit up with a phenomenal son-et-lumiere show while pyrotechnics close the fifteen minute performance. This year, however, the fireworks were set off from six different points around the city – but not the Praza do Obradoiro. I’m glad I gave up my three-hour vigil and went back to the albergue for something to eat at ten thirty or else I would have been pretty cranky! Fortunately, though almost all the fireworks were obscured behind the huge Concello building (meaning the crowd which had previously filled the square wound up massed into a thin wedge overlooking the park) I managed to find a good angle to remedy the situation.

I’m glad I got to see the cabezudos in action, though. I’ve often heard of this farcical summer festival but I’d never seen them in action until yesterday. It beats me how the dancers were able to move so easily with such huge objects on their heads, but they did. At one point they even invited the children in the audience to dance with them. My mother said she had always been a little scared of them, and it’s not hard to see why – they really are grotesque. I could see some of my contemporaries back home immediately assuming the festival to be racist, due to the over-exaggerated features on the two black cabezudos, but if you compare them to the others, they’re no more or less ghastly. I think it’s just the Spaniards laughing at the world and everyone in it as they always have done – and after their most recent car crash of a general election, who can blame them? Context is everything.

I set off relatively late this morning, leaving the albergue just before seven. If I was expecting a quiet escape from Santiago, though, I was mistaken: all of Galicia’s youth had descended upon the city last night (the 24th/25th being a national holiday, after all) and, in true Spanish fashion, they had made a full night of it. So when I descended into the city proper, the streets were packed with hundreds of twenty-somethings having breakfast in every available bar, café and pastelería. Unlike England, there were no scenes of drunken behaviour at all. The Spanish drink about as much as we do on a night out, but as their nights out last a full four hours longer than ours, it tends to work its way out of their system. And don’t get me wrong, but a Spanish breakfast of Cola Cao and a tostada is a much better end to the night than a dodgy kebab!

Leaving my long-buried memories of clubbing in my university days behind, I set off under a clouded sky toward the west. The cement Camino waymarkers helpfully reappeared, together with the yellow arrows, guiding me on to Finisterre, the end of my journey.

After the tedious stretch between Arzúa and Santiago, it was a welcome relief to rediscover some of the magic of the old Camino on the westward road, devoid of the post-Sarria stampede. Oak forests, Roman bridges and stepping stones replaced eucalyptus plantations and ironworks, and the merry stonechats who have been with me every day of the Camino reappeared, as though the same family had accompanied me all the way from Burgos.

Finally, as I reached the riverside haven of Ponte Marceira, I saw something I have been looking for since León: an otter. It was only a brief glimpse, and from a fair distance, but it was enough to be sure. For me it was exactly the reassurance that I needed after two days in a city that I was back where I was supposed to be: in the countryside again, doing what I do best – that is, walking and watching the world go by.

Having left my iPhone/earphone connector on the bus at the very beginning of the Camino (one of a number of accidentally jettisoned items including my sunglasses, shampoo, gloves and scallop shell) I have done most of the Camino without any kind of soundtrack whatsoever beyond the silence (or birdsong) of the world around me. There have been a lot of pilgrims on the road with AirPods in, which is a little sad to see, and more still talking of the podcasts they’ve been listening to. I really wanted to take in the meseta, silence and all, so I have deliberately saved an audible treasure for the final stages of the Camino: the BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Brian Sibley’s take on Tolkien’s masterpiece has a longstanding association with travel in my head, as my dad used to put it on when we went to the Lake District when I was a child. Consequently, though I must have listened to it in its entirety some twenty times since, there are still fragments that give me visions of the Lakes as crystal clear as the waters that lap upon their pebbled shores (the last march of the Ents in particular always conjures up the thundering falls of Aira Force).

I’m deeply attached to the films, but the BBC Radio version is something all Tolkien fans should know. Peter Woodthorpe’s Gollum is so good it puts Andy Serkis’ interpretation in a firm second place (and that takes some doing) and the Shakespearean majesty of Michael Hordern’s voice makes for a phenomenal Gandalf.

But it’s the firmer focus on the road and the journey that makes the radio adaptation so special when you’re travelling. The films glaze over it with stunning New Zealand visuals, but the radio drama gives Tolkien’s poetry and song the airtime it so richly deserves, and several of his walking songs have been staples of mine this summer.

I got as far as the attack at the Ford of Bruinen before arriving at my destination of Vilaserío today, where I had lunch with Liza, a chirpy Belgian pilgrim I keep bumping into, and three Ukrainian pilgrims from Lviv who had run out of money in Santiago but continued their Camino to Finisterre anyway, foraging and sleeping rough for the last forty eight hours. We bought them lunch to keep them going, and I hope others extend the same helping hands wherever they end up!

Tomorrow is another day. If I do as well as I did today, I will shoot for the coast and the old whaling town of Cee, but if I only make it as far as Buxantes, then that is no bad thing either. Before then, however, I have my second communal dinner of the Camino (I have managed to miss most of the places that do these somehow) with my old friend Simas. It’s good to have company once again. BB x

Camino XXIII: Music in the Forest

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After over two weeks on the road, I’m finally within striking distance of Santiago. The kilometre countdown on the much-abused concrete markers has dropped to below twenty, which is less than a morning’s work (I managed more than thirty kilometres before midday today). The end is in sight!

The final two days from Arzúa to Santiago are, quite possibly, the least appealing of the Camino. And that includes the much-maligned Meseta, which I actually really treasured! Whether it’s the busier pilgrim road, the lack of connection between the hundreds of last-minute pilgrims or the endless stands of alien eucalyptus, the magic slips away through your fingers a little as the finish line draws near.

Fortunately, I had my fill of magic moments to power me through the morning.

I was up at 5am as usual with the first of the pilgrims. The turigrino girls were up and about surprisingly early, though it turned out the reason behind their haste was their pre-Camino makeup routine. Thinking I could get the jump on them by striking out early, I set out as soon as I was ready, some fifteen minutes or so before six.

I’m not one for torches, preferring to accustom myself to the darkness, so my own headtorch remained stubbornly in my rucksack throughout the first hour of darkness, even as the Camino wound its way through the dense Galician forests and I lost all the aid of starlight on the road. What I gained, however, was a full immersion in the dawn that is lost when you charge ahead with a bright light. In an ancient forest west of O Carballal, after crossing a stepping stone bridge, I was suddenly surrounded by the otherworldly churr of nightjars. I recorded the sound and played it right back, and was rewarded with a sight of two hawk-like shadows performing their wing-clap display flight against a dawn sky through the trees. They must have clocked my ruse because when I heard them again they were deeper in the forest, but the martian churring followed me right to the edge of the trees, unlike finally the light of daybreak brought it to a sudden halt.

My replacement stick had finally assumed its full inheritance, adorned as it is now with a buzzard feather, two magpie feathers and a sprig of brilliant mountain heather. Somewhere out there, near or far, my old stick may well be traveling the same road. But its successor has done a fine job and I am grateful for its aid in carrying me this far. Lacking a traveling companion, I find a decent stick to be as good a friend as a warm fire in the darkness. And I’m getting a lot better at not leaving it propped up against things when I’m readjusting my clothes!

In the woods after Arzúa, I heard the distinctive reedy sound of a gaitá. Thinking it might be somebody practicing ahead of the regional (and national) festival on the 25th, I filmed a sound bite and moved on – only to almost walk headlong into the source further along the trail. A couple of youngsters, the elder probably no older than twenty, had chosen a spot beside one of the Camino markers, set a hand upside-down and were busking for passing pilgrims: one playing the gaitá (Galician bagpipes) and the other a drum. It more than made my morning, so I tipped them handsomely and stayed to listen for a while.

I stopped for brunch rather than breakfast at a witchcraft-themed café in Boavista (no tortilla, they ran out as soon as I got to the bar) and then slogged right on. The original target, Santa Irene, would have been fine, but it was still ten past twelve and the additional forty minutes on to O Pedrouzo – shaving forty minutes off tomorrow’s final push – were just too tempting to pass up.

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one with that in mind. A sixty-strong group of turigrinos beat us all to the Xunta albergue, evidently by quite some time: they’d lined their rucksacks in a queue leading from the door right up to the road, and some of them had even rolled out their roll-mats and got into their sleeping bags to wait…! Why they thought they might need roll mats on the Camino (as I didn’t see a single tent or any other camping gear on them at all) is beyond me, but perhaps this is their method: arrive early, camp out en masse and seize the first few beds.

On the plus side, while waiting in line with the handful not attached to the group, I was mistaken for an Andalusian by one of the Spaniards. Sure, she was swiftly corrected by a real Andalusian, but the intonation that clings on since the Olvera days still seems to be enough to create a temporary disguise. At the very least, it’s a good way to delay the inevitable ‘soy guiri’.

Well, I’ve done a final run for supplies at the local Día market. I’ve had an empanada for dinner and I have what I need for breakfast, so I can cut and run tomorrow morning. If I’m quick – and the last couple of weeks are good evidence that I am – I’ll be in Santiago for 9am, so I’ll try to get my Compostela before I check in. That would be ideal! But, as I keep telling myself, there’s no rush. I have sorted my lodgings for the next couple of nights, and it’s a room of my own, so for the first time in weeks, I will be able to really kick back and rest… before the real final stretch to Finisterre and home. ¡Hasta la próxima!

P.S. It occurred to me in Día that Spaniards don’t go in for personal catering like the English do. Grab bags, meal deals, milkshake bottles and salty snacks… they’re all designed to be shared. Is that more of a reflection on our culture or theirs? Are we so isolated a nation that our own supermarkets know we would prefer to eat quickly and alone, or are the Spanish so gregarious that a vendor wouldn’t even think of stocking something that would vanish in seconds if passed around? Just one to think about.

Camino XXII: Suckers

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I was woken from my afternoon nap by the melody to Greensleeves, of all the pieces in the world – the guitarist from Villafranca must have caught up to me. Now that my pace has slowed a tad, it’s likely I’ll be running into a few familiar faces over the next couple of days.

I set off late from Airexe this morning, being its sole inhabitant for a couple of hours after the Belgian pilgrim set off at five thirty for Ribadiso. I was in much less of a hurry, still mulling over whether to dawdle in Vilar de Donas and wait to see the peerless medieval murals of its famous church. Even at the disgracefully late departure time of 7.30am, the whole world was steeped in a sea of mist, from which only the tops of the trees and the hilltops of the valleys beyond emerged like the ruins of a sunken world, much like Portomarín yesterday.

I decided to make for Vilar de Donas in the end, seeing as it would be a relatively short one today (23km) and I had time to kill. It’s a small detour of 2km to the north from the hamlet of Portos, but you’ve got to time it right. I arrived shortly after 8am, and while the internet and guidebooks give various times, for the record, the church is open from 12.00, and no earlier. A local electrician told me I could seek out the ageing sacristan who lives in a house nearby and ask, but as it was still so early, I decided it would be best to leave him be – not least of all as he is in his mid-nineties! I did, however, get a reasonably good view of the church through a crack in the door, and I can only conclude that the 12.00 opening time is a crying shame: the church is at its most magical in the morning light, when the rising sun throws down a golden beam across the floor through the opaque marble window. I’ll have to come back and see this marvel again sometime.

The road to Melide cuts through a number of forests, from carefully planted rows of pine and silver birch to the once-so-alien stands of eucalyptus, which are such a feature of the Galician landscape. Most magical of all, however, were the truly ancient forests that the Camino traverses, with wildly twisting branches and an undergrowth so dense it would need a machete to pass through.

Sometimes the arching trees seem to create tunnels, as though intentionally sheltering the pilgrim road as they must have done for over a thousand years and more. The colourful turigrinos passing through had their heads down on their phones, unfortunately, but the marvel wasn’t lost on those few true peregrinos left on the road.

I reached Melide shortly after one in the afternoon, but it was twenty past by the time I found the albergue – by which time a horde of turigrinos (a pejorative term used by pilgrims to describe the sudden mass appearance of tourists sharing the pilgrim road for non-spiritual reasons) had descended, which meant my first queue for an albergue municipal of the whole Camino. Given that this is often a Camino staple in high season, I should really consider myself lucky!

More than lucky, however, I was certainly hungry, having eaten little more than the last of the homemade biscuits for breakfast this morning. Melide is famous for its pulpeiras – restaurants specialising in the Galician speciality, octopus – and the name thrown around for the last few days has been Pulpería Ezequiel, an award-winning family business on the high street. A ración of the famous pulpo costs 11€ and is more than enough to sate the appetite – and it really is sensationally good. Do drop by if you’re passing through. There are plenty of other options, but Ezequiel himself must have been cutting and chopping octopus all morning, since that was what almost everybody seemed to be ordering! One wonders just how many octopuses (octopi?) the Galicians get through each day, never mind the Spanish at large…

I’ll try to catch a pilgrim mass this evening, as there was none to be found last night. I’m still deliberating whether to shoot for Santiago a day early on Sunday, but we’ll just have to play that one by ear. Until the next time! BB x