Spain

When the Whales Came

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

As Escaselas. 12.01pm.

Rain. It started early this morning, while I was still fast asleep, but it’s coming down quite hard now. The bus has just climbed the hill north of As Escaselas and is rolling towards Sardiñeiro, its windscreen wipers working overtime. Lichen-coated hórreos, a symbol of the Galician countryside, stand shoulder to shoulder with new-build white houses with wide garages. That strange mix of ancient and modern is ubiquitous along the pilgrim road: here is a wizened fisherman in blue overalls mending his lobster creels in the shelter of an awning, above which a sign advertises (in English only) “hippie/chill-out/goa fashion”. The lady on the bus behind me talks down the phone in a Galician accent so thick it could be Portuguese, while a couple of free-spirited Germans discuss their next steps. My German is rudimentary at best, but I catch the words “Mallorca”, “Sontag” and “yogi”.

Now and then I recognise a patch of road from that summer two years ago, when Simas and I pushed on together for the Cape, in warmer days when the wind blew west and America still seemed like a land full of hope. Now, the news is full of fury as Trump’s tariffs threaten a global trade war, and the US government tells its citizens to “trust in Trump”. Americans, it should be noted, have been notably absent from the pilgrim trail over the last few days.

Three pilgrims return home on foot in coats that cover their backpacks, and one pilgrim comes back the other way, striking out for the last stage of her journey. The Camino is eternal.

Spooky by Dusty Springfield plays over my earphones as the bus pulls into the former whaling town of Cee. A crude iron sculpture on the seafront is all that remains of that heritage, besides its name, though there are honorary clues all over the place: Restaurante As Balenas, a number of whale-themed hotels, a couple of whale-shaped hobby horses in the play park and even a friendly mural on a wall near the bus station, offering a whimsical nod to that monstrous practice.

Whaling has been outlawed here since 1986. Spain was slow to adopt the ban and Galicia was one of the regions hit hardest, though by that point most of the whales had long since been driven to local extinction. Lately, however, these majestic creatures have been sighted off the coast again, after an absence of nearly forty years, including the greatest of them all, the blue whale – the largest creature ever to grace this planet.

Perhaps they’ve been driven here by the depleting of their feeding grounds further south. Or perhaps – and this is what some scientists believe – it is an ancestral memory that has brought them home, in spite of the knowledge they must have of their kind’s slaughter at the hands of man. Something stronger than fear has called them back, the same compulsion that makes the tiny swallow travel around the half world twice a year. The same compulsion, perhaps, that leads pilgrims of all stripes to seek the end of the world here, as they had done long before the legend of Santiago washed up on these shores over a thousand years ago.

There’s a small bust-up in Muros, where the bus stops for a change of drivers. The two German pilgrims get off for a smoke and return with their rucksacks. The driver tells them they’ll have to leave their bags underneath if they’re headed for Santiago, as the bus will fill up when we reach Noia. One of the two – the one who speaks Spanish – argues the toss, asking if they can keep them at their feet. This annoys the driver, who points out that other passengers will need the seats more than their bags. Keeping my rucksack on me nearly got me out of a nasty scrape when I was backpacking around Morocco, but here in Spain, there’s no need to be quite so defensive. ALSA, Spain’s largest bus company, actually gives you the option to buy up the seat next to you, which seems a bit selfish. Monbus – a smaller corporate creature by far – is a lot more democratic.

There’s an enormous queue for the bus when it reaches Santiago, almost all of them under the age of thirty. It only dawns on me then that the only young people I saw out and about in Fisterra were pilgrims, and few of them under thirty at that. Spain is much like the rest of the world in that regard: its youth abandon the towns and villages for the bright lights of the city in pursuit of opportunities in work or love, returning home only to see friends and family, or once they have a family of their own.

My digs for the night are within a stone’s throw of the cathedral – quite literally. I can hear the bells chime every half hour from my room. I made a flying visit to some of the local bookstores, but wound up returning to my old haunt in Casa del libro in search of a couple of histories on Tartessos, a current fixation of mine. So far, my specialist areas include:

  • Bandit legends and narratives
  • Spain’s founding myths (esp. Pedro del Corral’s Crónica sarracina)
  • El Cid & Frontier Epics
  • Al-Andalus & Spain’s Islamic heritage
  • Extremadura
  • 17th Century Spain (Under Felipe IV)
  • Gypsy culture and narratives
  • Spanish wildlife (esp. concerning Doñana)

Once I’ve consumed these two new acquisitions, hopefully I can add Tartessos to that list!

I did make it to Mass this evening, but that’s worth a separate blog post, I think. So keep your eyes peeled! BB x

Elemental

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Praia do Mar de Fóra, Fisterra. 12.31.

An enormous storm is moving in off the Atlantic. That’s what it says on the El País headlines on my phone. The signs were clear this morning: the wind was up and the waves were agitated, as though some supernatural force were stirring beneath the water out beyond the cape. Or maybe that’s just because I finished reading The Leviathan today and I have sea monsters on the brain.

That and the old English saying about red skies in the morning being a sailor’s warning.

I didn’t come all the way out here to hide away from the elements, so once the worst of the morning’s rain was over, I nipped into town, grabbed an empanada and made for the Praia do Mar de Fóra on the west side of the cape. There were still a few clouds stretched across the sky, but none so ominous as those that were splashed across the news from the Canaries this morning. I sat on a boulder with my feet in a small stream and ate my lunch in peace, having the entire beach to myself for the second day in a row.

It’s easy to forget that there aren’t that many places in England where you can appreciate the full force of the Atlantic. Most of the English coastline looks out across the North and Irish Seas or the British Channel, and none of those are in the same league as the Great Western Ocean. From my post at the edge of the beach, I can see the sea mist rolling in with each crashing wave. Some of the waves collapse before they hit the shore; others swell while they’re still far off, hulking and dark and full of threatening force.

The ancients believed that Poseidon, God of the sea, was the ultimate force behind the power of the ocean. As well as the deity responsible for waves and quakes both terrestrial and marine, he was also the lord of horses, perhaps stemming from an even older association between horses and the sea. Poseidon is believed to have fashioned the first horse from the waves in an attempt to win over the people of Athens, who ultimately spurned his gift in favour of the olive tree offered by Athena, a far more practical gift for a seafaring folk for the myriad properties of its wood and fruit. And then there’s the parallel between the nature of horse and ocean, both extremely volatile – at one moment calm and beautiful, at another restless and powerful, stirred into action by some powerful emotion.

It’s thought that some of these beliefs come from seeing the shapes of horses’ heads as the foaming crests of the largest waves catch the wind before they break upon the shore. Before the unfettered force of the Atlantic bearing down on this little bay like a besieging army, it’s not hard to see the likeness to an elemental cavalry charge in the surf.

I had most of my lunch and readied to scale the cliffs. A half-beaten track snakes its way up the slope – a snake with a sadistic habit for traveling in a straight line, that is. The cliff climbs 200m in less than a kilometre, so I had plenty of opportunities to stop and take in the beauty of the bay (or, alternatively, a breather).

As I began my ascent, a couple of waxbills saw me off, a bizarre African immigrant in this Celtic corner of the world. I found the half-eaten corpse of a guillemot a little way up, the only one of its kind I saw, though they do still breed here at the westernmost corner of their range. For the rest of the climb, I was followed by a pair of red-billed choughs, an incredibly acrobatic bird which seems to delight in its ability to fly like few others. Now hanging in the wind, now plummeting into the abyss before unfolding their wings and climbing back out of their death-defying dives, they appear to perform these feats of gravitational defiance for the sheer thrill of it, since they serve no practical purpose whatsoever. The peregrine falcon employs a similar tactic to strike its prey out of the sky, but while I did spot one wheeling overhead, it wasn’t hunting today.

Far out to sea, the occasional gannet soared by, its wings just above touching the crests of the waves. They were shadowed now and then by the squat-bodied shags leaving their crude nests to fish; beautiful creatures in their own right, but ugly, misshapen imitations before the slender, powerful wings of the gannet. Down below, just metres beneath their colony, the Atlantic roiled in aquamarine anger between the cliffs.

It was a dizzying spectacle with both my feet (and my hands) firmly planted on the ground. Goodness knows how the choughs see such a sight and feel compelled to hurl themselves at it, as though defying the gods themselves. But then, I was never much fond of rollercoasters either.

The cliff path works its way up to the watchtower of Veladoiro, where the wind howls through the bars of its iron-framed mast, before skirting the edge of a pine forest so perfectly arranged it must have been planted here as a windbreak for the villages in the valley below. The lithe shapes of lizards and at least one snake dart across the path ahead of me, and I find the snapped-off tail of a slow worm that obviously wasn’t fast enough, though by the wearing at the severance point it seems to have been there for at least a day.

At the edge of the forest I come across a hidden bay: Praia da Arnela. It’s hard to tell from Google Maps why this pristine beach isn’t more of a magnet, but the answer is obvious to the naked eye: it can only be reached by a steep descent from an offshoot of the nearby hamlet of Vilar de Duio. I haven’t brought a towel, and I don’t think I’d fancy climbing back up the cliffs even if I had, so I content myself with watching the waves roll in from the clifftop instead.

Turning my back on the sea, I start to descend into the interior. The fields of buttercups nestled between the forests on either side of the cape shine in two distinct shades of yellow: one a warm gold, the other a brighter, almost greener yellow. American and European, perhaps, though I’m not sure which way round. A single swallowtail butterfly dances into the field, its own golden wings lost in the shining petal sea.

The last time there was a great Atlantic storm, some of the mighty monarch butterflies were blown across the sea to our shores. I think that was in 2016, as I recall seeing one or two in Morocco and then, even more bizarrely, in Kent within that same summer.

Sometimes I wonder if esoteric anecdotes like these are worth recording. But perhaps it serves a greater purpose, as naturalists the world over try to understand the forces of the world around us by drawing together tiny threads such as these.

Back at Langosteira, I remove my sandals and continue along the beach barefoot. The relief as the waters rush over my tired feet is like nothing else. There are no swimmers out – it’s much too early in the year – but I’m happy to have my feet in the water again.

A single dunlin races ahead of me along the shore, a straggler from the traveling group of five that I saw from my window yesterday, perhaps. It will soon be on its way north to its breeding grounds in the Arctic circle. Much like the swallows who sing merrily from the telegraph wires in the fields here, you have to marvel at the courage and strength of these little wanderers who travel many thousands of miles each year, defying the elements to answer a call beyond their understanding: the call to come home, wherever that may be.

A less fortunate wanderer lies stranded in the sand, glistening in the sunlight: an enormous jellyfish. Not a false jelly like a man-o’-war, nor even a lion’s mane by the colour of it, though it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty, as some marine predator has already devoured its trailing tentacles, leaving the flabby and presumably inedible bell behind. A hollow has pooled about it where the waves have dug it a grave, after a fashion. On the off chance that it might still be alive, I carry it back to the tideline and lower it back into the water. The tide spits it back up again and it lands on its head, motionless. An ancient creature, practically unchanged since a time before life moved over the land, humbled by a force older than the world itself.

I’m back at the pensión now and taking a well-earned rest. There is Wi-Fi here, but it doesn’t reach quite as far as the last room in the corridor (which happens to be mine) so I’ve been using data to patch up the gaps. Quite a lot, by the looks of things, as it takes my app a long time to do the maths – longer than me, and that’s saying something. I’m feeling like it might be a good excuse to get an early night tonight, as I’ve got a few late ones coming up, so I’ll make the most of it while I can. BB x

The Shell Thief

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Pensión Doña Lubina, Fisterra. 21.20.

First Dates is on TV. I can never find the equivalent in the UK, but in Spain it seems like it’s always on. Tonight’s couples include a pensioner from Sevilla, a rocker in his fifties and a Colombian male model whose dealbreakers in a would-be partner include the term “vergón”. Spanish TV, like Spanish music, certainly doesn’t deal in subtlety.

I woke up around six this morning to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore outside – the same gentle woosh that I can hear as I write.

The sun crested the jagged bluff of Monte Pindo shortly after 8.15, so I slipped down to the beach to catch the light. A couple of dog walkers were out and about and a single pilgrim sat reading in the dunes, but otherwise the long curved bay of Playa Langosteira was empty. The tide had come in during the night, leaving a breadcrumb trail of seashells all along the tidal maximum. A beautiful sight, to be sure.

Or, at least, it should have been. Only, the only shells left on the beach were broken. It looked as though the sea had kept the best ones to itself and spat out the rest. As it turns out, the truth wasn’t far off.

A barefoot pilgrim stood a hundred metres or so ahead of me, turning something over in her hand. Satisfied with whatever it was, she moved further along the beach, stopped, and stooped to pick something up. Clearly, she was looking for seashells. She must have repeated the exercise about eight or nine times before I overtook her. I didn’t turn to see if she had more to find, but I did catch a glimpse of a large collection of seashells in the crook of her arm as I passed.

I’m not really one for calling people out. Anyone who knows me even in passing will know the last thing I ever want to do is to risk upsetting anyone, even when the matter seems ridiculously trivial. It’s a people-pleasing tendency of mine that I’ve never been particularly good at quashing. However, if there’s a line in the sand, it’s when I see someone doing something that threatens the natural world in some way. And this definitely constitutes a transgression in my book.

Before you think me a busybody, I feel I need to point out that this isn’t just high-handedness on my part. The law is on my side here. In 2017, faced with a surge in tourists in coastal areas (still a major problem today), the Spanish government passed the Ley de costas, which – to the official letter of the law – “forbids the extraction of any element of the public littoral domain, such as sand, shells or stones”. This makes it illegal to beach-comb in any part of the Spanish territory, from Galicia and the Costa Brava to the Balearics and the Canary Islands. Period.

If my experience of this country and its people is anything to go by, I’d be surprised if the Spanish police actually enforce this law, but the consequences of falling foul of it can be severe: the fines for collecting seashells range from 500 to 3,000 euros. The Mediterranean island of Sardinia is even stricter: taking large quantities of sand from its famous beaches can lead to a prison sentence.

There’s a very good reason for all of this. It’s easy to say that if we all took five or six shells from the beach on our holidays, soon there’d be nothing left to take. But there’s more to it than that.

Seashells are a fundamental part of the littoral ecosystem. The continual pounding of the waves eventually grinds them into fragments – the same fragments that make up the sand beneath your feet. In a way, your average beach is actually an enormous marine graveyard. Without the shells, there’d be less sand to go around, seriously threatening the thousands of creatures that make their home in the littoral zone and the birds that rely on them as a food source.

Discarded shells serve a second purpose. Nothing goes to waste in the ocean. Besides the obvious hermit crabs, who literally depend upon seashells to survive, an abandoned shell provides a much-needed shelter for smaller creatures like shrimps and fish fry, who use these temporary refuges until they are large enough to avoid some of their former predators, as well as a holdfast for barnacles, limpets and chitons. Larger shells may even harbour an octopus, a creature perfectly adapted to squeezing into the most awkward of spots to escape from predators.

Which they definitely need to do on the regular in these waters, given the Galician obsession with octopus as a delicacy.

Sorry… I got up on my pulpit there. In truth, I was mulling all of this over in my head as I read a signboard by the beach exit which detailed some of the above, while the beachcombing pilgrim stood washing every single shell she’d collected under the outdoor shower. I didn’t want to challenge her, but I couldn’t just let her take all those shells away. She laid them out in three rows along the wall as she washed them. She must have amassed around thirty in all, from scallops to periwinkles and everything in between.

When it looked like she had finished with the ablutions, I got her attention and told her politely to take one if she had to, but to leave the rest behind. She looked confused. I repeated myself in Spanish, but that didn’t seem to work either. She looked like she might have been Thai or Malay, so Spanish wouldn’t have been much use. I tried French. I pointed at the sign and tried to indicate that taking the shells was wrong – not that it would have done much good, as the sign was in Galician and Spanish and faded in places due to the ravages of sun, sand and surf, and thus presumably illegible to the average tourist. Nothing.

I even tried mimicking handcuffs and paying a fine. She just stared at me and held out one of her shells for me to take, presumably thinking I wanted one. I shook my head and said “illegal” a couple of times. She said “OK” and wandered off. I didn’t see where she went, or if she left the shells behind. She didn’t return to the beach, at any rate.

When I was a kid I got walloped for trying to stop a couple of older boys from stealing a frog. They had caught one in a bucket and were taking it away to put in their garden. In a fit of fury I still can’t explain, I snatched the bucket and legged it to the river to release the creature. I was pushed into the water for my insolence and given a couple of kicks for good measure, but I had achieved what I set out to do: the frog got away.

Was it my place to give that girl a ticking off? Probably not. But we have to stand up for the things we believe in. Without principles, we are merely waiting out our time on this earth. Our core beliefs give us grounding, a rock to stand on, which no wind or waves or wickedness can wear away.

I’ve got back onto the pulpit again. I’d better get off before I end up considering a career in the clergy. BB x

At the End of the World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Cape Finisterre, 20.11.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost Souls

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Calle de San Millán, Madrid. 21.03.

The gates of Hell are open night and day / smooth the descent, and easy the way.

Virgil, The Aeneid

At the foot of the mighty bridge that spans the gorge over the Río Tajo in Ronda, the yellowing ruin of an old pumphouse steadily crumbles into oblivion. Trees grow out of its windows and human and animal detritus clusters against its walls, as though they shrink from the searching light of the world beyond. Abandoned spots like this would be covered in graffiti in England; profane scribbles and indecipherable tags whose meanings will fade from the world long before their makers. A single graffito marks the eastern wall. Of all things, it is a quote from Virgil.

The memory came into my head as I stood before Goya’s Pinturas negras in the depths of the Prado, bewitched – and not for the first time – by the unfettered darkness on the canvas.

In the opinion of this jaded wanderer, there are few artists who can hold a candle to Goya, an artist whose style was shaped – or, perhaps, perfected – by the ravages of one of the darkest periods in Spain’s history.

The Prado does a fantastic job at telling his story. On the top floor, illuminated by the brilliant natural glow of several skylights, his early works shine with an innocent halo. Paintings such as El quitasol and La vendimia tell of a happier time, when Goya was young and using his gifts to make a name for himself in the circles of the rich and powerful, as many an artist had done before him for generations.

Descend to the ground floor, and some of his younger naïveté is stripped away like a layer of paint to reveal a cunning eye for detail and social commentary. Unlike the illustrious royal portraits by Titian and Velázquez which grace the walls further down, Goya’s subjects are painted as they are, without any false veneers of lustre or glory. Maja vestida has a cute smile, but she is a pale imitation of Maja vestida, whose knowing expression betrays a far greater honesty.

And then you descend to the basement. The lights dim. War comes to Spain, Goya’s former patrons flee for their lives, and the country descends into chaos. Goya sees it all and sketches furiously. The illness that robbed him of his hearing pushes him into a deeper, darker school of thought, and his subjects trade their rosy cheeks and playful smiles for pallid masks and devilish grins. At the same time, the faces become much more recognisably Iberian, replacing the stateless Western mannequins who previously adorned his tapestries. Still a master of light, Goya now perfects its dexter side, drawing on the darkness of the maddening world around him, culminating in the macabre frescos of the Quinta del sordo. The sunken, bulging eyes of Saturn and his gaping maw stare out of the canvas with a malice that is at once pitiful and horrifying.

An American girl is toured swiftly around the room by her imperious mother, the latter commenting loudly on the broader collection ‘back home in Washington’. A Latin-looking schoolboy fills out a couple of questions on a worksheet on one of the paintings and moves on. Two young parents push their infant child by in a pushchair. They cast Saturn a brief glance and move on, a little faster. A gallery official in black and red watches from a corner, but nobody needs reminding that photos are not allowed in here. Goya’s demons still have the power to strike terror, two hundred years later.

Out in the daylight, Madrid goes about its business. My footsteps take me back into the heart of the city. There are a lot of indios about: current estimates hold that they make up one in seven of the capital’s population. In the city centre, I’d wager the ratio is even higher. Pizarro’s pigeons have come home to roost.

In a side-street, two officers of the municipal police search a couple of North African men, who have their hands on their heads – “Qué hacéis por aquí?”. A carton of box wine lies discarded in the road, ignored by a street sweeper who is watching the scene unfold over his shoulder, sweeping the same dust in circles.

In Plaza Santa Ana, a small group of Africans have laid out their wares on white blankets and try to flog what they can to passers by in reluctant, almost disinterested tones. Clutched in their hands at all times are the ropes fastened to each corner of the blanket, ready to be drawn up in a moment’s notice. These unfortunate hawkers are known in Spain as top manta, and are usually more in evidence in the larger cities along the coast: Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga… wherever careless tourist money can be found.

It crosses my mind, as it has before, to strike up a conversation with one of them. To get their side of things. To hear their story. Something checks me: a sense that unfriendly eyes are watching. I scan the square.

Sure enough, standing in the shade of a plane tree at the edge of the square is their overseer: a surly man in a Cameroonian football shirt. He appears motionless, but his eyes are fixed on the street vendors, who occasionally return his gaze, like nervous shorebirds before a sleeping crocodile.

My speculation becomes flesh when one of the hawkers approaches him with what seems to be a question. The conversation is obviously not an amicable one, and the overseer is on his feet and shouting, followed swiftly by his companion, a big chap with dark shades and a military-style beret. The overseer barks at the hawker and sends him packing. “No eres más que un puto negro.” It’s a loaded insult, but since it’s contained, hurled from one immigrant at another, nobody seems to notice. Madrid’s shoppers continue about their business. Tourists sink half pints of Mahou and Amstel mere yards away. A lost soul staggers to keep his balance, either too drunk or too drugged up to pay the scene any heed. The two Latino vagrants sleeping rough in the shade of a nearby bush hardly bat an eyelid. One stirs slightly, the other draws on his cigarette, casting a gentle orange glow in the shadows.

As I turn down a street toward the city centre, I see a police car slowly crawling toward the square. I turn around, but the top manta touts have already got wind of the impending threat: their bags are slung across their shoulders and they are retreating into the shadows. They will be gone long before the police arrive.

Goya’s Madrid is a dichotomy: a place full of light and consequently of shadows also, of rosy-cheeked beauty and ugly avarice. This is no less true now than it was two hundred years ago: it just wears Adidas trainers now.

Tomorrow I leave the capital behind and make for the windswept coast of Galicia. I have never been much enamoured of cities, being inclined to agree with the author M.M. Kaye, who described them as “the breeding places of the very worst aspects of humanity”. My destination is the Costa da Morte – the Coast of Death – the wrecking place of many a luckless merchant sailor. But its name is deceptive: for me, it is a place of unfiltered light and hope.

The gates of hell are open night and day / Smooth the descent, and easy is the way / But to return, and view the cheerful skies / In this the task and mighty labor lies.

Virgil, The Aeneid

The mighty labour has begun. There are still fragments of my heart in need of healing after last year’s American adventure. Hard work and endless endeavour have been a good palliative, but they are not the solution. Finisterre healed my heart before. It will do so again. I am sure of it. BB x

The Hall of the Dead

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 13.45

A shadow lies upon his tomb, in Moria, in Khazad-dûm. The Company stood silent beside the tombs of the kings of old. There were many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them were large iron-bound sarcophagi of black marble. Frodo and the Company stood in awe, but Pippin felt a compulsive urge to reach for his iPhone so that he might share the spectacle on Instagram. He held it aloft, and for a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then it issued forth a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow.

“No photos!” barked the security guard, gesturing wildly in Pippin’s directions, before muttering a loaded “turistas” under her breath.

In the year 1563, Felipe II ordered the construction of an enormous palace in the foothills of Monte Abantos, partly to commemorate his victory over the French at the Battle of San Quintín, partly as a country retreat where he could hunt big game, but perhaps most importantly as a necropolis for the Hapsburg line. Here, entombed within the bowels of the largest Renaissance building on Earth, lie the remains of almost every king and queen of Spain of the Hapsburg and Bourbon lines.

To get here from Madrid, you have to catch a bus from Moncloa. Spain is steadily catching up to the rest of the world as a cashless country, but most of the local bus companies are still coin-operated. I was delayed by an hour because my first attempt to board was a flop: the driver thought I said “puedo cobrar” instead of “comprar” and wagged a finger at me, saying “yo cobro, tú pagas”. Granted, I had a cold, but I’m pretty sure I made myself clear. I was honestly so ruffled by his wagging humour that I forgot I did actually have a ten euro note on me, so I got off the bus and went in search of breakfast and a cash machine – and a few plasters for my wounded ego.

The next bus driver wasn’t a wisecrack, so I had a very enjoyable ride across the dehesa. To the north of the road to El Escorial, the snowbound peaks of the Guadarrama rise up out of the plain, its mantle pure and unspoilt by the ski-lifts and stations that criss-cross similar ranges in Central Europe. At one point, the road crosses the Valdemayor reservoir, and on a cloudless day such as this, the mountains rise again into the mirrored surface of the blue waters.

The centrepiece of El Escorial – as is so often the way with Spain’s grandest architectural treasures – is an enormous basilica, featuring a collection of saintly portraits, painted ceilings and a gilded reredos of jasper and red granite that stands an eye-watering 92 ft tall. As if that weren’t enough, the high altar is watched by the sentinel eyes of life-size bronze sculptures of Felipe II and his father, Carlos V, and their respective families, eternally offering their prayers to God above the crypt where their bodies are interred. It’s no great leap of the imagination to compare El Escorial to the Valley of the Kings: should it fade into memory someday, the discovery of the altarpiece alone would be an archaeologist’s field day.

The comparisons don’t end there. Much like the triumphal engravings of Ramses’ victory at Kadesh in Abu Simbel and Trajan’s Column in Rome, El Escorial’s “Sala de Batallas” (Hall of Battles) testifies to the martial prowess of the Habsburg line, depicting the greatest victories over the French, Moors and other enemies of the dynasty across over a hundred metres of fresco. That’s ten times the length of my mega drawing and eight times the height. I clearly missed my calling by four and a half centuries.

As well as a hoarding place for countless royal artefacts (including one of the largest collections of holy relics in the world, numbering around 7,500), El Escorial is most widely known as the final resting place of Spain’s monarchy from the early modern period on. These most haunting treasures of the royal palace can be found in the innermost depths of the palace complex, entombed within vaulted marble sarcophagi that contain the remains of princes, consorts, bastard sons and daughters and other high-ranking members of the Hapsburg line, right the way up to the present. The blank headstones above the sarcophagi in the last rooms sit waiting for Juan Carlos’ relatives and their progeny.

If that weren’t chilling enough, one of the rooms features an enormous marble monument to those of royal blood who perished before puberty, marked with A or B to differentiate between the Austria and Bourbon clans. With their famous predilection for morganatic marriages, it’s perhaps no surprise that so many infantes never made it to adulthood.

In the deepest reaches of all, far below the palace itself, is a golden chamber called the Panteón de los Reyes. This is the Habsburg Holy of Holies, where the bodies of the kings and queens were laid to rest: from Carlos V, who oversaw the conquest of the America’s and the birth of the Spanish Empire, all the way up to Alfonso XIII, exiled in 1931 by the short-lived Spanish Second Republic. In a single 360° turn you can see them all. There can be few places in the world quite like this, where you are quite literally encircled by the tombs of the kings of the past.

In such a sacred space, photos are, quite naturally, forbidden – but that didn’t stop a couple of Korean and American tourists from trying. I just carried out a quick sketch in my journal and was done with it. Nobody ever seems to mind the sketching. I wonder why that is?

Outside, the air is a lot less oppressive. A number of articles describe the location as “austere”, and I can imagine that in the grip of winter it may well be, but under the warm spring sunshine it is anything but. A cool wind blows down from the snowy mountains, but it is accompanied by a warmth in the air, sweeter with the scent of cherry blossom. Crag martins and wagtails twitter merrily over the pool, and in the dehesa beyond, I saw (and heard) a family of one of Spain’s most beautiful birds of all, the Iberian magpie, a relic of the Ice Age whose nearest living relatives can be found in eastern China. As I watched them hopping around in the branches of the nearest tree, a little owl flew into sight, calling to its partner in the valley below.

Finally, the greatest sight of all. As I made my way back to the bus station, a lonely black shadow came down from the mountains, casting an unmistakeable silhouette against the intense blue of the Spanish sky: a griffon vulture, the true king of these mountains. They were here long before the Hapsburgs and will be haunting these hills long after they have been forgotten.

I have been fascinated with vultures since the first time I saw one. That boyish glee I get when I see that shape in the ether hasn’t gone away after twenty years. I don’t think it ever will.

Austere? The building, perhaps, in true counter-reformation style, but the location? Hardly. I don’t think Felipe needed much convincing. If I had all that Habsburg money floating around, I’d have wanted to end my days here, too. BB x

Wishes and Migas

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Calle de San Millán, Madrid. 20.09.

The sun is just starting to set beyond the skyline. Down in the street below, Madrid’s colourful denizens are out for an evening paseo, dressed to the nines to the last man (and woman). The rumble of motorbikes is a constant accompaniment to the general hubbub and the occasional police siren soars above it all every now and then. The lodgings I’ve managed to snag come with a balcony that looks out over the crossroads below, so I’m treating myself to the noise of Madrid for a few days before retreating to the quieter shores of Finisterre, at the end of the world.

The capital is much as I remember it from my last visit, several years ago, though it makes a change to see the place under the warm spring sunshine rather than wrapped up in the chestnut smoke of winter. It’s inching toward 20°C outside, but the madrileños are still going about in puffer jackets and (fashionable) greatcoats as though it were 5°C. I haven’t brought any heavy-duty winter wear as I have to carry everything with me from Madrid to Galicia to the Canary Islands and beyond on this latest adventure, but I might pick up a few Spanish clothing supplies while I’m here in the city. I haven’t overpacked, for once.

During the course of my wanderings I stumbled (quite by accident) upon the Tienda de Deseos again. I found this strange corner of Madrid last Christmas, its walls covered with the scribbled desires of a hundred passers-by fluttering in the winter wind. Last year there were quite a few lonely hearts on here. This year there seem to be a lot more general “wishing for all the best in life” requests. I made a wish last year to find her – “wherever she may be”. This year I was a bit more specific. Beautiful though it was, I don’t think I’m quite ready for another trans-Atlantic situationship.

Even in the heart of the capital, there are clear signs that spring is here. The cherry trees lining the Calle del Arenal are dressed all in white. The swifts are here early, too – they must have come hurtling in on the wings of the rainclouds, because I’ve never seen the Río Manzanares so full.

There were a few posters on some of the bollards advertising an anti-hate march in defense of the Trans community, which I really ought to have stuck around to watch, as it’s one of the A Level topics for Spanish at the moment. A smaller group of protesters were picketing the Corte Inglés just off Sol, sporting the usual V for Vendetta masks and carrying telescreens displaying the slaughter of fish off the Spanish coast. Nobody seemed to be paying them much attention.

I treated myself at dinner with a rather upmarket restaurant modelled on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Capitán Alatriste books – dishes, decor and all. It didn’t disappoint one bit. I had my first migas in seven years and tried cochinillo for the first time. It was incredible, even though my taste buds hadn’t quite recovered from the usual end of term knockout cold.

On my first grand adventure across Spain many years ago, food was a luxury I rather recklessly decided to do without. Now that I have the means, I intend to make good on that dreadful error by exploring the best dishes the country has to offer as I go. I haven’t found any callos yet, but they’re on my list!

Please excuse the rather humdrum post today. I haven’t had any grand escapades yet! The real adventures start tomorrow… BB x

Shuffling Along

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I’m sitting in the rest area at Bristol Parkway Station, watching the blinking lights of cars cruise around below me in circles like so many coloured beetles in the darkness. If I’d made my original train, I’d be at my mum’s place by now. But there was an incident on the 20.35 from Bristol that the authorities had to deal with, so a twenty minute delay has turned into an hour’s setback as I missed my changeover. I’d chalk it up to some Friday night jollities from some of my ruddy-faced countrymen in the next carriage. The only highlight was the very comical collective groan from the other passengers when the announcement came through. Can I still use the term passengers? It’s been recently outlawed by National Rail, who apparently fear it sounds “too formal” – what has the world come to?

So, I’m stuck here for another half hour. I’ve wolfed down a meal deal and am now watching the world go by with my Spotify on shuffle. The holidays are here at last, so I guess it’s time to blow the dust off the blog and flex my rusty writing arm with a little exercise. I’ll use the first five songs on shuffle as a jump-off point and see where we go from there.

Stronger – Kanye West

Ah, the latter days of 2007. After largely eschewing popular music, my brother and I were simultaneously introduced to modernity with Now That’s What I Call Music! 65 around Christmas 2006, our first away from home during our short-lived attempt to up sticks and move to Spain. Maybe it was because it was a link back to the world we’d left behind, but I leapt upon the novelty, and it’s fairly safe to say that my awakening as an explorer started with that CD. I used to get almost all of my music from those Now! compilations. Thank goodness Spotify came along and broadened my horizons!

It was a good time for music, anyway. Rihanna was still pumping out hit after hit (Don’t Stop the Music had just hit the scene), Ed Sheeran was unheard of, and Kanye was famous for his beats and his bars, and not his antisemitism or his (now ex) wife’s rather large bottom. Those were happier times.

Bailando – Enrique Iglesias

Wind the clock forward around ten years. Durham’s Music Society released the theme for the summer concert (Around the World) and the Northern Lights – then in the early days of our ascendancy – hit the books to find a suitable number to fit the bill. I wasn’t anywhere near as talented as some of my peers (at least four of whom have gone on to moonlight as professional musicians since) so this was my one chance to take the reins with a song where I might be able to do something the others couldn’t – that is, singing in another language.

By that point, aged 22 and fresh from the year abroad, I was spoilt for choice. But let’s face it, it would have been a tall order to get an English a cappella group to sing the Arabic smash hit M3allem, and all the sevillanas I had committed to memory were much too demanding, even for those who could speak a little Spanish. Luckily, Enrique Iglesias was famous enough to provide a bridge between the two languages, and after some negotiation with my musical director, I managed to get Bailando onto the set. I put my heart and soul into my Grapevine arrangement, but I honestly had a lot more fun performing Bailando with the gang, not least of all on account of the choreography.

Mammati – Willie Mohlala

Somewhere at my dad’s place is a little red memory stick containing a number of MP3 files: mostly obscure Ugandan pop and folk music, with a few Dolly Parton numbers sprinkled in for a little variety. That playlist was the soundtrack to the various marathon road trips of my time in Uganda, since the full playlist was never enough to span the enormous distances we used to travel. Shazam still struggles to identify the greater part of that playlist, and since Willie Mohlala was one of the only artists labelled on the tracklist, he was one of the few to travel with me out of Africa. Him and Dolly, of course, though quite how she wound up in central Africa beats me.

AM to PM – Christina Milian

Given my guilty pleasure for early noughties R&B, I’m surprised it took me until the summer of 2024 to discover this banger. I have vivid memories of boogying to this one in a club in town with a girl I’d met on Hinge, the first of several attempts to move on from my American heartbreak. It didn’t come to anything. None of my dates have since. But I did pick up this little number, so I did manage to take something away from the experience. I’ve been using the same excuse to justify traveling more than four thousand miles to discover AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, but since that electric anthem has catapulted itself into my top ten, I’ll allow the hyperbole.

Get Me Home – Foxy Brown ft. Blackstreet

I did a Spotify audit the other day and found I’d amassed about 97 playlists. More than half of them (52, to be precise) are ones I made myself. One of them is definitely a ‘mood’ collection, staffed by Missy Elliott, Blue Six and the legendary Foxy Brown. It’s not one that gets an awful lot of airtime, but it is seriously groovy.

I Go to the Rock – Whitney Houston (with the Georgia Mass Choir)

The London Community Gospel Choir did a school visit to the girls’ school over the road when I was around fifteen. This was back before they were a big deal – and back when there was such a thing as the subject specialist initiative in schools that provided money for that sort of thing. I Go to the Rock was the song they taught us that day.

Like so many of the greats in the music industry of old, gospel was where I truly learned to love singing. It was a true release from years of staid hymnals – which I look back on fondly, but not with the same awesome power that gospel provided. It felt like singing from the deepest reaches of my soul. It’s probably no great leap to say that I wouldn’t have launched myself at the funk band if I hadn’t had that crucial awakening through gospel.

It’s a shame that global politics prevented me from sharing that pivotal joy for so many years. I will always carry that scar, I suppose. At least these days I am in a more tolerant establishment that understands the importance of offering diversity through music. I dread to think where the other road leads. I don’t doubt the talents of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, but if that’s what people like me will be limited to in years to come, my music tastes will be so much the poorer for it.

For the Love of Money – The O’Jays

Well, would you look at that. When I started writing this post, I was shivering in the upstairs waiting area at Bristol Parkway. I’m now inching closer to the rammed check-in desk at Gatwick Airport. Turns out most everyone on this flight has the same problem: directed to the check-in desk to collect their boarding pass, due to the sheer number of people on board. I could have dodged this by buying priority, maybe. But with prices up everywhere (the Alhambra visit is costing me nearly £100!) I decided to dodge the £8 priority add-on this time. That’s on me!

Money is the root of all evil – do funny things to some people. Spain is in the throes of an anti-tourist rebellion, centred on Barcelona, Mallorca and the Canary Islands. And not without reason: the tourist trade has been allowed to run rampant in some parts of the country, to the point where it has utterly destabilised life for the locals, forcing a dependence upon tourist money that only comes but a few times a year. Unlike Santa Claus, however, it doesn’t seem to be spreading much joy. Some protesters vented their frustration last year by hosing down tourists at cafés along Las Ramblas with water pistols.

I’m hoping to investigate this blight a little during my adventures over the next three weeks. I appreciate the irony of doing so as a tourist, but I’d like to think that by avoiding resorts and foreign hotels, I’m doing my part to contribute to the local economy in parts of the country that aren’t necessarily overrun. Speaking Spanish helps.

Well, ten minutes until take-off. My arm feels exercised. See you on the other side! BB x

On the Road Again

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I’ve got my third driving lesson of the summer this afternoon. They’re not going too badly, considering I had a three month hiatus after my last instructor was rushed to hospital, forcing me to cancel just two weeks shy of my test. I wouldn’t say I’m test ready, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s becoming more natural behind the wheel, and I’m hopeful that I will be on the road in wheels of my own before the end of my thirtieth year. That’s the goal, anyway.

Cruising around the unfamiliar roads of Somerset had me thinking about the freedom I will have with a car of my own. It’s the thing people tend to point out time and again when the subject of getting my driver’s licence comes up in conversation, but it’s honestly not something I think about all that often. Which is absurd, because when I do have the chance to get out and explore, I know I’ll be out most weekends if I can, especially in this wild and sometimes desolate corner of the British Isles. With Exmoor, Dartmoor and the Jurassic Coast on my doorstep, I’d be a fool not to.

I’ve been on a number of grand road trips over the course of my travels, and I thought I’d use some old photos as a launch to reminisce about a few of them: snapshots, if you will, of great adventures.

1. The Badia, Jordan. 3rd July 2015: 10:56am

At the end of my first week living in Jordan back in that sweltering summer of 2015, a couple of Dutch students from my language school, Bern and Marco, hired a van and offered to take a group of us out into the Eastern Desert, also known as the Badia, on a Jordanian road trip. It was a bit of a squeeze, fitting ten of us and our supplies into the damned thing, but it allowed us to see more of the country than the public transport system ever could.

Something that strikes you immediately about the Badia is how empty it is. The desert itself is vast, covering more than 72,000km. That’s larger than the Republic of Ireland, and it’s actually only a fraction of the greater Syrian Desert. Highway 40, the road that connects the oasis city of Azraq to the capital Amman, is a largely featureless drive across the edge of the Harrat as-Sham, often translated as the Black Desert. It is no misnomer. Forget your childish images of rolling sand dunes and palm trees. The Black Desert is an immense expanse of flat, black rock, stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions. The silence is almost as oppressive as the heat. One of my American friends, the enigmatic Washingtonian Mackenzie, used to play a game on the road, Camel or Human, every time something larger than a boulder appeared on the horizon. Usually it was a camel, but just every so often we’d pass a wanderer on the road, miles away from everything and everyone. Not exactly a forgiving place to break down.

2. Reinosa, Spain. 21st February 2016: 11.46am

I used a variety of methods to travel around Spain when I lived out there: the carshare app BlaBlaCar, the short-distance Extremadura bus firm LEDA and, latterly, the superb train network RENFE. For the longest journeys I leaned heavily on ALSA, Spain’s answer to National Express. Cheap and efficient, provided you had time to spare, they serve most of Spain’s larger cities and provided a very reliable means of getting around. I took the bus one wintry weekend to see my friend Kate up in Cantabria. It was a ten-hour journey – not for those who get bored or travel-sick – but it does take you through some of Spain’s most breath-taking natural beauty: the wild steppe of Cáceres, the cherry-blossom valleys of Plasencia, the high meseta of Old Castile and the snow-covered mountains of the Cordillera Cantábrica. Driving from south to north across Spain, you really do feel as though you have arrived in a totally different country when you step out of the car at the end of the day.

I hitched a ride south to get home with a friendly student who was heading back to Algeciras after visiting family in Santander. At over 1,000km, it’s probably one of the longest drives you can do in the country. Luckily for me, Villafranca de los Barros was on his way home. In a year where I hardly saw any snow – and where Durham got some of its best in a decade – it was spellbinding to see the northern reaches of Castile covered in a heavy blanket of snow and ice. I’ll have to come back and explore someday.

3. Piste 1507, Morocco. 20th March 2015. 11.45am

Another marathon road trip, and one of the most bizarre. My friend Archie and I hailed a grand taxi in Oulad Berhil for Ouarzazate, a desert town famous for being the location of choice for a number of movie studios who require a desert theme in a relatively safe location (including blockbusters like The Mummy and Gladitator). Our taxi driver, Ibrahim – whose name I only discerned from the badge on his windshield – was quite possibly the grouchiest, least sociable character I have ever encountered on my travels. Over the course of a three-and-a-half-hour drive across the rugged mountain valleys of Drâa-Tafilalet, he never said a word, despite our intermittent attempts to engage him in conversation. Perhaps he found us tiresome, or perhaps he was cooking up the plan he would later carry out to quintuple the price we had agreed back in Oulad Berhil, safe in the knowledge that Archie’s rucksack (and passport) was locked up in the boot of his car. I’ll never know. Archie fell asleep for much of the trek, but I spent the greater part of it with my eyes glued to the window, watching the world beyond sail past. I love road trips for that. I don’t think I could ever get tired of seeing the world.

4. Interstate 65, Alabama, 3rd July 2024. 7.40pm

It’s one number shy of Route 66, but it was a phenomenal introduction to the American road trip. The highway in question travels north from Mobile on the south coast of Alabama all the way up to the shores of Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana. I was only on the road for a fraction of it, from Birmingham up to Huntsville, but it was enough to make my eyes pop. Squashed armadillos, discarded tyre tracks and billboards were features I had anticipated to some degree, but the forests… I don’t think I was aware at all of just how forested North America truly was. The history books and the movies give the impression that most of the great tracts of forest were cut down, but in the American South – especially in the foothills of Appalachians – they go on for mile after mile, stretching across the land like an immense green carpet. The highways just cut right through them, dynamiting their way through hill and mountain as though they were merely molehills.

If I’d known how painful the destination would prove, would I have still made that journey?

Absolutely. Without a second’s hesitation. Some things are worth burning for. Some things are worth traveling all around the world to see, even if only for a moment in your life.

5. Boroboro, Uganda, 11th October 2012. 5.06pm

I thought I’d end this post with what is probably the best photo I’ve ever taken, and one that has a real story behind it.

One month into my first teaching post in northern Uganda, I was invited to visit the former headmaster, Mr Ojungu Hudson Luke, on his farm on the banks of the White Nile. It was an incredible experience, herding Uganda’s famous longhorn cattle through the forests and the driving rain, with one of the world’s greatest rivers thundering away in the background, and perhaps I’ll tell you that story and more as the summer draws to a close. On the way home, after three days without access to electricity, my camera was out of charge, bringing my frenetic documentary spree to a standstill. Uganda’s roads can be treacherous and breakdowns are common, and when they do happen, they can be final: I will always remember the graveyard of trucks and lorries between Boroboro and Lira, rotting at the side of the road where they collapsed. Luckily, we made it back to Lira with little trouble, just in time to meet a tropical storm riding in on dark clouds.

The lighting was spectacular: brilliant evening sunshine, heavy, dark clouds, vivid colours all around. Red African soil and a thousand shades of green. Not for the first time in my life, I gave the finger to the sunburn on my skin and rode the last hour of the journey in the back of the truck so that I could see the world with my own eyes. Determined to capture the moment, I took the battery out of my camera and tried to breathe new life into it by rubbing it between my hands and – well – breathing on it. The first roll of thunder came rumbling down just as I pushed the battery back in and bought myself a couple of seconds. With Luke Ojungu still hurtling up the road at quite a pace, I grabbed two shots of the passing countryside from the back of the truck before the camera died.

We were a hundred metres or so from home when a lightning bolt struck a tree just ahead of us, bringing half the trunk down across the telegraph wires, which exploded in a shower of brilliant sparks. We were lucky to avoid any harm, but we soon found out we would be without power for the best part of a week until the electricians came around to fix the problem. It was only after that, with power restored, that I was able to charge my camera and see what I had managed to capture: a beautifully evocative shot of the countryside around Boroboro, lined up almost as though on command. I have it framed in my living room beneath a matching frame of Kanyonyi, the silverback of the mountain gorilla troupe we tracked on that same expedition.

Do stay tuned – I think it might be fun to relive my Ugandan adventures with you, since they predated the blog by some three years! BB x

2023: A Year in Pictures

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January

2023 begin much like it is today: wet and windy. In keeping with the last seven years, the year began somewhere new: this time, in an AirBnB in Wilpshire, some two hundred and thirty-five miles from home. It had been a wonderful New Year’s Eve, but a fleeting one: cracks were starting to form in my relationship. I decided to ignore them and looked inwards instead. A few weeks later I saw a pheasant on a stroll around Wakehurst and had no idea that the very same bird would seek me out when things began to unravel several months later. Hindsight is a curious thing.

February

The villagers of South Willingham lost their bid to save the local forest from being turned into a bike park. I know it will bring much-needed money to the area, but a part of my heart always breaks a little when somebody carves up another patch of the earth for human entertainment. I wandered among the trees and soaked in the winter light. No footpath leads through the woods, so I might be the last person to do so. I also passed my driving theory test, but didn’t tell anybody about that for a while.

March

The man who doesn’t take a day off unless he’s dead or dying was very nearly brought down by a fever this term, reaching its peak the day of the House Music final. My very conscientious partner drove all the way up to my place to drop off a get-well-soon care package and gave me clear instructions to rest, but I dragged myself to the school theatre to support my boys in their bid for victory – and was not disappointed. Rutherford took home the House Music shield for the first time in over a decade. I didn’t fully recover until the following Monday, but I rode the high of their success for months afterward.

April

Seeking answers, I sought out the Camino – and the Camino provided. Within days I had found an incredible cast of characters, and had the Easter holidays been longer, I would have gone with them all the way to the end. I walked a hundred and thirty kilometres in just under a week with a Brit, a Dane, a Canadian, a Spaniard, a Dutch girl, a couple of Californians and the most charismatic Italian I have ever encountered – and I have encountered more than a few. I told myself I would be back to finish the job, but I didn’t think at the time that I would throw myself back at the Camino a few months later.

May

Matters of the heart came to a head. I drifted back to Wakehurst and sat on a grassy bank near the American plantation to clear my head. The pheasant appeared and sat beside me, keeping me company for the best part of half an hour. Say what you like, but animals seem to have a sixth sense for when humans are in distress. My mother’s cat made a beeline for my brother when he was in the doldrums in much the same way. It did not heal my heart but it did a lot to patch it back together. In the meantime, I went at my living room and restructured the place, hoping to find a new sense of direction by altering my perspective and my surroundings. It’s a lot easier to move a bookcase around when you don’t possess several hundred books, though.

June

I broke things off with her and felt awful about it – but seventy-eight reports, a bout of vomiting sickness in the boarding house and preparations for the school trip to Seville helped me stay on track. The Leavers’ Ball was more of an event than a formality this year, seeing as it meant saying farewell to a cohort of students who had joined the school at the same time I had. An immensely nostalgic music tour to Salzburg rounded out the month and found me playing the violin at the same bandstand I had played back in 2006, some seventeen years ago. In a very up-and-down year, June was a particularly erratic rollercoaster of a month.

July

I’m quite convinced that the answer to most questions can be found on the Camino, and I had unfinished business from the Easter holidays, so a mere two days after returning from Austria I was back on a plane and bound for Bilbao once again. You’ve probably followed me on that particular journey already, but if you haven’t, you can always start again right here. Three weeks and nearly five hundred kilometres later, I arrived at the end of the world and stared across the Atlantic to America. Someday soon, I’ll take my adventures across that ocean. But not yet.

August

August was a quiet month. August always is. I popped up to London a couple of times and saw some old friends, which was much needed – I have distanced myself from a lot of old acquaintances after the way they upbraided me over the Gospel Choir fiasco, and it took quite a bit of courage to resurface, even though it’s been some two years since. The social current flows fast in the capital city. London remains a charming place to visit, but I’m sure glad I don’t live up there. I’m a lot better at dealing with cities than I used to be, but I’m definitely a country boy at heart.

September

Term started late this year, meaning August was already over by the time the students returned. It wasn’t a scorcher like last summer, but the warm weather stayed with us for quite some time. A new wave of weekend activities and a house camera kept me busy at weekends, and I finally managed to host a party in the flat over the first Exeat of the year, using the old projector to beam karaoke onto one of my walls. I also got back into drawing, completing a giant poster for one of the walls.

October

Storms Agnes and Babet tore across the British Isles and put an abrupt end to the long summer days. Sussex remained relatively stable while the roads of the Lincolnshire Wolds turned into rivers. I spent the October half term with my parents and even made it to Manchester to see my brother’s first ever publicly exhibited artwork on the first floor of a fancy riverside hotel. I also wrote a pantomime for my school, but internal politics made it impossible to get off the ground. At least I have the backbone of a script that I can carry over to whichever school I head to next.

November

We lost the first round of House Music, but only by a single point – so there’s hope for my boys yet. More importantly, I bit the bullet and started learning to drive. Finding the time to schedule in two hours of driving during a working week is ridiculous – and probably the biggest reason I’ve put it off for so many years – but, steadily, I’m starting to get the hang of it. Or rather, I was, until a combination of sickness and cover lessons made it impossible to schedule in the last two lessons of term. Here’s hoping I can pick up where I left off in the new year.

December

December hurtled around at the speed it always does, though this year the last stretch did seem longer than usual. I managed to strong-arm Riu Riu Chiu back into the Carol Service at last, which the kids seemed to love, and helped to draw up the motion for the Students vs. Alumni debate, though I was not especially fond of the heavy economical slant in which it dragged the proceedings. My brother spent Christmas with his partner, so it was just my mother and father and I this year. Midnight Mass was bizarre – half an hour of forced carols before the Mass itself began at midnight (rather than the usual 11.45pm start) – but, traditions must be maintained. I blew the dust off Duolingo and got back into learning Italian after more than a year’s hiatus, though I daresay I’ve picked up a little in that time from my students.

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Madrid. Since leaving university I’ve made a point of seeing in the New Year somewhere new, but this year, for the first time since we met, I can finally celebrate it with my Spanish family, so I’m headed for the pueblo to see in 2024. I haven’t seen some of my cousins since my youngest counsin’s first communion back in 2019, so it’s a reunion that’s been a long time coming. Here’s to a good one, folks. BB x