travel

Up and Down

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

When I’m on the road, I have a real complex about fitting in. It must be a side-effect of being a linguist, but I cannot stand the idea that I might stand out as a foreigner, if I can help it. Usually it’s simply a question of dressing appropriately, but it also makes me think very hard about my accent when I speak. This has had some brilliantly cringeworthy outcomes, such as getting into a blazing row with a taxi driver in a French that has never been as fluent since, and defaulting to a makeshift (albeit stateless) American accent while riding the Amtrak train two weeks ago… The worst has to be that two-hour drive in a Luton van with a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman in my university days, where I was so self-conscious about my southern accent that I feigned a northern accent so as not to come across too posh… My housemate, a Wensley lass herself, took an exceptionally dim view of the whole affair. In her own words, my accent had only made it as far as Sheffield.

Fortunately, I’m in France, not Sheffield, and with just over a week to go until the Olympic Games begin, the city is so full of tourists that it’s probably easier to blend in as one of them than to ape any Parisian. So I caved and bought myself an Olympic T-shirt, since it’s unlikely to come back here in my lifetime.

I only have the one full day in Paris, so I decided to make the most of it and go supertouriste for the day. With Nôtre-Dame still under heavy repairs after the fire of 2019, and the Louvre fully-booked up for days, that left the Eiffel Tower, l’Arche de la Triomphe and the Château de Versailles. I didn’t really set out with a specific itinerary in mind this morning – I rarely do when I’m traveling solo – and the decision to join the queue for tickets up the Eiffel Tower was very much a spur-of-the-moment one. After all, the website said that all the summit tickets were sold out, and while the views from the second floor are good, who’d make the climb and not go all the way up?

Turns out the website doesn’t know jack. The queue was about half an hour long, but when I did get there the ticket seller simply raised an eyebrow when I inquired about the availability of summit tickets and said “bien sûr”. So if you’ve considered seeing the tower on your trip to Paris and you haven’t made any reservations, fret not – they always keep some to sell on the day.

Preparations are well underway for the Olympic Games here in Paris. The Olympic torch has completed its relay of the various départements, including far-flung Outremer, and is now circling the city in an ever-shrinking spiral. All around the city, cyclists are coming and going with pink signs in their panniers, pointing visitors in the direction of this or that event. Stadiums and stands have sprung into being like enormous steel mushrooms, and the avenue that stretches from Trocadero to the École Militaire now hosts a giant show ground, which looks like a building site from the ground but a lot more like a Roman circus from above.

It’s also impressive just how big the Bois de Boulogne is. Hyde Park may be a green lung for the heavy London air, but it pales in comparison to the dark forest that has clung on in Paris’ northern district, as though threatening to break the encirclement and rejoin its sister Meudon in the west, given the opportunity.

The summit of the Eiffel Tower really is quite something. Photos don’t really do it justice. There’s any number of skyscrapers that have now beaten its giddying record, but none so old, so charming, so immediately recognisable. It’s quite something to perch high above the City of Light, pigeon-like, and join the ranks of historical characters who have stood in the same spot: kings, shahs and statesmen, warmongers, tribal chiefs and Buffalo Bill. You’re more likely to be elbowed out of the way by an errant child angling for a better view or jostle for space with a Brazilian family taking every possible angle of each other than you are to meet any of the former, of course, but who knows? With the Olympics converging on the city, now’s as good a time as any to go stargazing up the Eiffel Tower.

I’ve been a bit reckless with the traveling this summer. I’d like to argue that this latest venture is purely tactical, with French being a very valuable commodity where I’m going, but it’s also methodical: it’s a very good way of keeping busy in the yawning maw of the summer holidays, which can go on and then some if you don’t find some way to keep busy. At the moment, one wedding after another plasters my social media feed as old friends tie the knot. It should make me smile, but on one level it always reminds me just how cut off my career has left me. That’s just one of many reasons I’m moving to a new job and a new part of the country this summer. It’s high time I hit the reset button and started from scratch.

But until then, I have the joys of the open road. Perhaps it’s my way of justifying my existence in these long, empty stretches we call holidays. I might have missed the boat festival in Brest by a matter of days, but I’m really quite excited to explore Britanny. After all – it’s supposedly the location of the indomitable Gaulish village of Astérix and Obélix. Between those two comic rascals and St-Malo’s long history of piracy, I should be in for a treat! BB x

Help! I Left My Heart in Nashville

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Imagine a city where every third man and woman is dressed in roper boots and ten-gallon hats. Bars with gaudy neon signs line the Main Street, bearing the names of stars of the Country music scene. Live music sails out of the windows of every floor. Every. Floor. A city where, despite its infamous popularity with bachelor and bachelorette parties, the folks still turn a welcoming smile on you and ask how you’re doin’. A city where, as the sun goes down, the streets seem to glitter with the reflected light off the rhinestone-studded outfits worn by revellers in the street.

This is Nashville. And it’s quite unexpectedly captured my heart.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that a self-described country boy with a habit of eschewing cities should find himself very much at home in the Music City where Country music is king. I am so glad I came here. And to think I didn’t even know much about the place beyond the occasional mention in the odd James Brown and Tina Turner number…! Thank you, Mackenzie, for opening my eyes to this wonder.

But hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s more to Nashville than just the frenetic delights of Broadway. First, let me take you on a detour to the strangest hotel I’ve ever seen: the Opryland Resort.

It might look like an enormous walk-in aviary, but it’s actually a vast hotel and spa complex. It’s free to explore, even if you’re not staying, but what a place…! It’s hard to know what is the most bizarre thing of all: the waterfall, the boat tours along the artificial river, the nods to American architecture (up to and including a distinctive New Orleans home) or the fact that all of this can be found within a gigantic glass-roofed building that looks like a recycled film set for Jurassic Park III.

Well, I did want to see the America that most casual tourists don’t get to see, and I’m not disappointed! Maybe I’ll be mad enough to spend the night here someday.

With our things stashed away in a much less outlandish (but nonetheless phenomenal) establishment, Mackenzie took me out onto Broadway for a bit of shopping ahead of a night bar-hopping and soaking in as much live music as a single night can offer. I’ll admit I was almost tempted to shell out on a pair of boots and/or a hat, but in the end I settled for a Country-style shirt. After all, it’s likely to get a little more mileage than the hat!

Kitted out in my new Nashville wear, we grabbed a couple of drinks at Luke’s 32 Bridge, where we met up with the rest of Mackenzie’s friends. One of the local bands was kicking up a storm on the roof with a couple songs I recognised. I’ve done my homework with this genre, which I confess is relatively new to me!

I caught myself singing along to Country Girl (Shake It For Me), Chicken Fried and Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy), all of which seem to be crowd favourites (and all of which have now found their way into my golden jukebox playlist on Spotify). More impressively still, they wound up their set for the evening with an almighty medley that included the one and only Play That Funky Music, the song I used to close gigs with back in my schooldays. And what a mashup…! Yes, I was taking notes! I might be on holiday, but I’d be a fool not to jot some ideas down for house music when it comes around.

We didn’t get any free drinks for the birthday hat, though birthday wishes were flying in from all directions from well-wishers on the street, which was sweet. The drinks we did get, though, were fantastic. It would be madness to come to Tennessee and leave without sampling the famous Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky, which I had in the form of a Fireball. Yum!

To quote Luke Bryan: I don’t want this night to end. But it did, like all good things do, and in the best possible way: with a little bit of chicken fried to share. I haven’t tried nearly enough of this Southern speciality, so I guess I’ll have to come back and remedy that someday.

Nashville is something else. If you’re even partially interested in good music, grab your boots and make a pilgrimage here as soon as you can. It’s got to be the most fun I’ve ever had in the city and that’s a fact.

Say, that tower looks like the Eiffel Tower. I wonder if that’s intentional. If that’s not a reminder from the universe that I need to spend some time in France this summer before teaching A Level French for the first time (God help me) then I don’t know what is!

See you again sometime, Nashville. I think I left a bit of my heart with you. BB x

Shooting Star

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Her father was a man “led by a star” as the natives say, and would follow it over the edge of the world and be no nearer.

Henry Rider Haggard, The Ghost Kings

We travel for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes you set out to see a place because you have a particular place in mind: maybe you heard about it somewhere, or saw it in a magazine, and need to see it with your own eyes. Sometimes it stems from a deep-seated desire to get away from home: “anywhere but here”. And sometimes, when the time is right, the driving force is beyond your control. It starts like a tide coming in, the waves rushing about your feet, warm and wonderful. Before you know it, the waters are racing back the way they came in a cascade of glittering sand and silt, pulling you into their wake, as though you’re standing upon the wake of a shooting star.

That is the force that has carried me here to Alabama. Something like it, anyway. It’s not exactly on the tourist trail. I’ve certainly not seen the Heart of Dixie appear in my social media feed over the years, whereas I dare say I’ve seen enough selfies in New York, Chicago and California to make like I’ve been there myself by now. But I do like to leave the beaten trail when I can. So here I am.

Independence Day found me on a boat in the Tennessee River, a mighty tributary of the mightier Mississippi, with a merry band of Americans celebrating their country’s national holiday the right way: beers in hand, country music blasting from the speakers, the immense American sky overhead, and the Stars and Stripes billowing out behind. I could hardly have asked for a more authentic way to celebrate the Fourth of July if I tried.

We spent almost all day out on the river, which may well account for the angry sunburn that has now morphed into one of the darkest tans I’ve had in years. Or maybe the burn came from standing in the wake of that shooting star, I can’t say. Either way, I had a lot of fun diving into the Tennessee River.

Some sights are so beautiful that you daren’t get too close, afraid that even the lightest touch might drive you mad, but I couldn’t leave America without some kind of contact with one of the two-hundred and fifty daughters of that legendary river that drains the entire continent of North America. Incidentally, it’s almost certainly the first time I’ve ever swum in a river. What a way to break a habit!

My host, the wonderful Mackenzie, had one all-American experience after another to throw my way. After watching the Fourth of July fireworks in a parking lot in downtown Huntsville, she took me to a diner for a proper American-style brunch of sweet tea with biscuits and gravy – consider me converted! – followed by a visit to Target, America’s legendary superstore, where I was amazed by the low cost of clothing. And to top it all off, we went to a baseball game at the local stadium between the Birmingham Barons and the local team, the Huntsville Trash Pandas.

Baseball – at least to this outsider – seems to be more of an event than a game. Nine innings across nearly three hours of play, broken up by a stream of events intended to involve the audience. Along with the opening national anthem, I clocked a kids’ race against the mascot, a couple of singalongs with a hype man and the sparkly cheerleaders, a cabezudo-style “space race” in support of a local enterprise and even a dance-off… all to keep your attention throughout the marathon experience.

With all that going on and more, I was very distracted, so I can’t say I’m any the more familiar with how baseball works, but it was such an incredible experience!

The fireworks after the game were even more spectacular than those that were set off the night before, which really is something – though deserved, perhaps, given that it was the home team that took home the win. The spectacle lasted a full twenty minutes, which is about as long as it took to leave the car park after the game. Everyone left in a mad scramble via the two exits to the car park, creating a logjam that went on for ages. One stereotype is true: America is a country that has yet to learn how to queue properly.

Nashville calls tomorrow. I have a good feeling about that. BB x

Slow Travel: The Highs and Lows of Amtrak

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s 17.09, it’s been over nine hours since I last ate something and I’m somewhere in the Alabama woods between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. If we were running to schedule, I’d be arriving in Birmingham in the next few minutes. But, as every American has gone to great pains to explain, the trains in the US never run on schedule. If you’re not in any particular hurry, it’s a phenomenal way to see the States, provided you’re happy to gawp at trees for most of the journey. Lucky for me, I’m easily pleased, and it’s been all I can do to peel my eyes from the window for the last eight hours or so.

The American South reminds me in many ways of Uganda. There’s something familiar about the immensity of the sky, the redness of the earth, the rusting abandoned vehicles and – especially – the enormous homemade painted advertising on homes, cafés and storefronts. The most American thing I’ve seen so far – beside the lone bald eagle standing on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain – are the countless colourful billboards advertising private law firms, demanding your attention with Colgate smiles in nauseatingly familiar language: Bart’s always got your back, Call ya girl Desi, IYKYK, that sort of thing.

Let’s forget any time pressure for a moment. Riding an Amtrak train is actually a really comfortable experience, and I’m surprised it isn’t more popular. There are charging stations for every seat, curtains for the windows, sturdy WiFi and a cheery Southern burr over the tannoy to replace the cold, automated replay of British trains. I’ve even got enough leg room to stretch my legs, and that’s taking into account the fact that the guy in the seat in front has put his chair back into full recline. I haven’t seen as much wildlife as I’d have liked over the course of my vigil, but I’ve still managed to clock a few deer, a whole lot of egrets and a few birds of prey, including the symbol of America itself. That’s not too shabby for a bit of on-board birdwatching.

To be honest, the only thing I’d change is the seat numbering, which is baffling – and very obviously a new concept, as even the ticket inspectors seemed to get muddled up by the numbers (which don’t really correspond to any of the seats at all). Folk don’t seem to mind, though. I think most of the passengers here have simply found an empty seat and made themselves comfortable, and all of them are quite happy to shuffle as and when a couple or family comes aboard. That’s one major difference to European trains. I was traveling in Germany once and still remember an officious German lady who made the entire coach get up and scramble because there was somebody in her seat and she absolutely had to sit in the seat she had been assigned. The human soul: the price of efficiency.

I ended my stay in New Orleans with a jazz fest, seeing a local band in Preservation Hall and then taking the Natchez steamboat cruise down the Mississippi with its attendant Dixieland band providing a jaunty backdrop. If it’s done one good thing for me, New Orleans has reminded me that there is hope for those of us who still believe in music bringing the world together. The Preservation Hall jazz band ticked more diversity-and-inclusion boxes than a school website: the trombonist was black, the saxophonist Latino, the pianist Scandinavian, the double bassist Japanese and the lead trumpeter Creole. I hate to admit it, but I’m still bleeding a little over the way my Gospel Choir was torn apart years ago. Maybe I always will be. That’s partly why I’m here in the States, in this limbo between jobs, between worlds: to try to put a seal on that episode of my life, and to remind myself that there are plenty of people out there who don’t see things that way. And where better than America, the great Melting Pot itself?

I’d better stop writing – it looks like we’ll be arriving soon. In the end, we’re only 50 minutes behind schedule. It’s funny how little that seems to matter! In the UK, there’d be apologies over the tannoy and prompts to get a refund via the website…

Alright America. I’ll admit it. Just this once, you have us beat on heart. BB x

Gators, Gumbo and Vanishing Cabinets

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Alright, so the primary reason for my trip to the States is to soak up the music out here. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that I could have saved a little and gone to Glastonbury, but frankly the idea of camping out in a field with thousands of party-goers sounds like Hell on Earth to me. I’m quite happy chasing a more traditional, more intimate range of older styles out here in the States. That’s why I’ve shelled out on a couple of jazz-themed events this afternoon. But before that, there’s one other major reason I decided to kick off my American adventure in Louisiana. The Bayou.

I’ve got a thing for swamps. I spent weeks of my childhood clomping around the misty reedbeds of Stodmarsh in search of bitterns and marsh harriers, while anybody else my age with half a brain was honing their social skills at the park or on the pitch. The Easter holidays required a ritual voyage to Doñana National Park, the ‘Mother of the Marshes’, which became something of a Mecca of mine. So to come to Louisiana and not pay a visit to the Bayou would be foolishness in the extreme.

Of course, it isn’t all that easy to get into the Bayou proper without a boat, or a car for that matter. Fortunately there are a lot of offers on the table to take you out of New Orleans and into the swamps. I threw in my lot with Cajun Encounters – it looked to be far and away the best one going.

The bus picked me up from outside the hotel shortly after eight, giving me plenty of time to wolf down breakfast. The driver, though not a tour guide himself, did a brilliant job pointing out the sights as he took us through the residential districts of New Orleans and out into the wilds of Slidell. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina is remarkably apparent, even twenty years on: together with the hulking wrecks of houses and ships, the skeleton of New Orleans’ only amusement park can still be seen arching above the trees, while the bizarre Fisherman’s Castle on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain remains the only building to have survived the floodwaters intact.

The tour begins beyond sleepy Slidell on the bank of an inlet of the Pearl River, where the swamp-folk came pearl fishing many years ago. The six of us in my boat were assigned the formidable Captain Zander, a former warehouse packer and a true Cajun to boot. To say we drew the winning ticket would be an understatement. As well as being a no-nonsense authority on the Bayou, he seems to know just about everybody out on the Pearl River – including Cindy, one of the biggest gators in the swamp.

You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to the presence of the alligators. I must have counted around forty by the end of the outing, from amber-skinned yearlings to hulking, black-scuted beasts, visible only by the unmistakeable silhouette of their snouts just above the water. Before you know it, you feel as though they’re just part of the scenery!

When I was a kid I had a picture book that listed the American Alligator as endangered – which is true, as back in the 90s it was facing the very real danger of extirpation. Since then, however, the environmentalists have stepped in to throw the spirit of the Bayou a lifeline, and they have returned in force: more than a million can now be found in the Louisiana swamps alone.

Summer is one of the best times to see Louisiana’s gators, but the heavy foliage can make it harder to see the other denizens of the Bayou. All the same, over two hours I clocked wood ducks, whistling ducks, a pair of high-flying anhingas, several ospreys, green, yellow-crowned and black-crowned night herons, roseate spoonbills, cattle and great egrets, a single great blue heron and, in one of the deeper inlets of the Pearl River, a family of raccoons – a real American experience!

It really was quite something to drift along the snaking rivulets that cut through the Bayou, shielded from the merciless Southern Sun by the trailing beards of Spanish moss hanging from the cypress trees – named neither for their origin or their species (being neither Spanish nor a type of moss) but for their resemblance to the long grey beards of the first Spanish explorers to pass through these swamps hundreds of years ago. I wonder if Cabeza de Vaca and his brave company passed through here on their odyssey?

Back in New Orleans, I grabbed some lunch at Mr Ed’s Oyster Bar, following a tip-off from my Uber driver. It’s easy to shell out on your first meal in another country when you don’t know how things work, and I ended up with a starter that could have fed three as well as a main and a drink – before factoring in the inevitable 20% tip expected in the States and, of course, the inescapable taxes. That said, one cannot come to New Orleans and not try the food, and I have to admit the crawfish étouffée has shot up into the top ten foods I’ve ever tried. It was absolutely sensational. Didn’t feel brave enough for the oysters just yet, but maybe next time!

When I came back to the hostel, it was to find that Room 302 was being taken in hand: three Mexican labourers were hard at work uninstalling the ceiling tiles to address the leaking air-con unit, which meant I had to linger in the lobby until they were finished.

I had the shock of my life after they left, when I returned to the room to find my locker open and all the contents removed, with the exception of two shot glasses from Prague (a gift for a friend). Clothes, camera, the cash my students gave me as a leaving gift – all gone. In a blind panic I took the stairs at a run to find the receptionist and let them know what had happened… only to get a knowing smile and a ‘forgive me’ gesture.

Turns out they’d moved all my belongings into a new room while the works were being done and hadn’t found me yet to tell me.

Crisis averted – at the expense of a couple of years off my life! I’m not generally that fussed when it comes to losing things on my adventures – one less thing to carry and all that – but as this is my first time in the States, I’d rather be prepared, not to mention have enough clothes to wear for the next few weeks! BB x

Don’t Sleep With a Drip (Call a Plumber)

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In the Southlands there’s a city / way down on the river / where the women are very pretty / and all the men deliver.

The Princess and the Frog

Two things hit you right away when you step out of the car and into New Orleans: the heat and the smell. Both are overpowering. The heat gets under your clothes and into your skin in seconds, as though you’re sliding into a sauna. The smell hits you like a wave: a heady mix of diesel, sugar and, above all else, weed. I’ve never been anywhere quite like it.

After the city complex that is Dallas/Fort Worth International, New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Airport felt much cosier – insofar as Americans do “cosy” when it comes to buildings. The lack of passport control caught me off guard, but then, it was only on an interstate flight. I didn’t get a stamp for the passport, which is a little annoying – it would have looked nice next to all the European stamps (a tiny compensation for Brexit).

I took an Uber into town, it being a Sunday and me having no idea where the bus set out from. Every American I’ve ever spoken to has only had bad things to say about their public transport, and besides, I figured an Uber would at least give me a local to talk to en route. My driver Calvinisha was a very charming New Orleans girl who was only too keen to point me in the direction of a number of food joints, namely Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar. I’ve added it to the list. She also added that I’d ‘just missed out on the swinger festival’. I didn’t ask her to clarify whether she meant that in the musical or sexual sense. In New Orleans, it could easily have been either.

I checked into my hostel on 1028 Canal Street and set out for a wander, very conscious that I needed an early night to avoid any jet-lag on my first couple of days. My room was empty but for a steady drip from a leak in the ceiling and a disembodied voice coming from behind one of the curtains: a British guy clearly playing some kind of MMORPG, telling his friend to “use black sword”, “send in a fire mage” and other strange and rather bizarre commands. Leaving him to his world of make-believe, I locked my things away and set out for a stroll.

It’s hard to describe my first thoughts of New Orleans and at the same time do the city justice. It is certainly a culture shock for a European country boy like me. Skyscrapers that dwarf most of London’s tallest buildings. Shops that look like El Rocío homes openly advertising voodoo, weed and “barely legal” strippers. At first glance, New Orleans is everything you might expect to hear about in 20th century Soviet propaganda about America: casual, sleazy, decadent. But when it’s 38°C out there and the humidity is over 70%, can you blame them?

It feels like this town ought to operate on a Spanish-style siesta timetable – and yet, even in the hottest part of the day, folk are still wandering the streets. You have to hand it to the pioneers and their descendants. Louisiana heat is not to be trifled with.

For me, this whole American adventure is kind of a test. I think one of the subconscious reasons I’ve never really thought about going to the States is because of my languages. Hear me out. I’m not the best at striking up a conversation with a total stranger, in a shop or bar or anywhere else – unless it’s in another language. For whatever reason, I’m a lot bolder in my dealings with strangers when it’s in Spanish or even French. I honestly believe that it’s a confidence trick – you’re focusing so much on getting the language right that you don’t stop to think about where you are, who you’re talking to. I’ve heard so much Spanish here and I’m instantly filled with a desire to leap into conversation, which I can’t say happens as readily in English. I’ll just have to work on that.

I came back to the hostel around seven thirty and tried to get an early night’s sleep. I was in for a bit of a shock: the dripping was actually coming down onto my bed, a full third of which was soaked through. Never mind the damp, the constant slap of water on the soaked mattress was maddening. It’s funny how you can doze off amid the constant hum and roar of a plane engine, but a rhythmic tap with keep you up. I tried taping it up, but after five minutes it returned with a vengeance, beating an even faster rhythm than before. I admitted defeat and curled up into the drier part of the bed.

I confess I was so tired that I didn’t have the energy to drag myself out of bed and tell the front desk, but in the end I didn’t need to – a guardian angel in the bunk next to mine had already phoned ahead and eventually the hostel staff allowed me to move to the bed across the room. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep so fast.

Tomorrow is another day – the bayou calls! BB x

Skylink

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Four days ago I was standing in the ruins of a Roman theatre in the Andalusian port of Cádiz, a contender for the oldest continually occupied city in Europe at over three thousand years old. Four days, one Leavers’ Ball and a ten hour flight later and I’m sitting in Terminal B for Bravo in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, built in the year 1974. The fact that Cádiz’s Roman theatre itself is relatively young – built around 70 B.C. – only adds to the stark comparison. The culture shock is real.

First impressions:

  • The Mississippi is huge. Enormous. It looked like a colossal brown snake winding across the plains into the distance
  • Cowboy hats seem to be worn unironically here – and with a frequency that would surprise you!
  • The selection of in-flight movies on offer is considerably superior to all the streaming services at the moment (heck, they even had both Dune movies)
  • Airport taxes – what the hell is that about?
  • Security was thorough but not nearly as austere as I expected

In case you haven’t noticed, this is my first time in the United States. I honestly have no idea what to expect, since until recently I wasn’t particularly interested in crossing the Atlantic for an adventure – well, not this far north of the Caribbean, at any rate.

But I did promise myself that I’d reward myself with a proper adventure if I landed a new job this year, and a promise is a promise. I just didn’t expect it to take me to the land of Sitting Bull and Civil Rights, that’s all!

I don’t have too much to report on just yet, beyond a general wide-eyed wonder at all of it. After all, I haven’t legally set foot in the States yet – that will happen when I touch down in New Orleans in a few hours’ time.

Sounds like they’re boarding in five minutes’ time. Not sure what a Deadheader is outside of a gardening context, but I’d better get my stuff together all the same. Starting to feel the jet-lag kicking in, but I hope I can shake it with an early night this evening! 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

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 XXVI: RICE, RICE, Baby

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve set down my bag for the night in O Logoso, a village up in the highlands to the west of the Great Lakes of Fervenza. It wasn’t yet one o’clock by the time we arrived, but I was persuaded by the images of a natural swimming pool nearby – and my shins are finally starting to complain, after almost three weeks on the road. I walk everywhere out of habit and that’s a fact, but even I have my limits!

I walked with Simas today, so I decided against shooting for Cee (in retrospect a wise move) and instead took it easy over the 23km hike toward Hospital. It’s a hell of a lot easier to stop to grab breakfast or a drink when you have company, so I took full advantage of Simas’ voracious appetite (the man puts food away like Logi in the old Norse legends) and had a Cola Cao and tortilla breakfast – possibly one of my last of the Camino!

It was great to have company on the road again. I’ve happily walked most of the Camino on my own, but it’s always enlightening to share the road with a kindred spirit – a memory shared is a memory doubled. I had time to reflect on the conversation I had with some of the other pilgrims in the albergue last night, too (which was marvellous, by the way, run by two very friendly abuela types who made us a home-cooked dinner to remember), and my line that it’s better to come away from the Camino with a lighter mind and a heavier load than the other way around (since no matter how many concerns I come out here with, I always seem to convert them through some unholy alchemy into the physical weight of books I collect along the way….!)

Simas asked for a brief history of Spain as we walked, which certainly helped to while away the time… I must have been yakking on for a good hour and a half at least, before I reached the 18th century, at which point my knowledge does run out all of a sudden, since it’s a period I’m not particularly interested in (it’s probably the ridiculous obsession with powder wigs).

We’ve met a lot of pilgrims coming back the other way – more than we’ve encountered heading to Finisterre, in fact. I guess those pilgrims mad enough to push on to the coast tend to be the ones who are equally mad enough to come back the same way. Collective insanity, Simas called it, and he’s probably right. Could you convince a friend to walk twenty to thirty (and sometimes forty) kilometres a day, every day, for four weeks? It’s a tall order unless you’re already bitten by the Camino bug…

After Santa Mariña the ground began to rise as we reached the edge of the coastal highlands. We didn’t quite see the Atlantic today, but we must be pretty close – I could smell the salt on the air as we came down the hill into O Logoso this afternoon, over the thunder of the river in the valley below. The countryside is certainly awe-inspiring: the tedious stretches of eucalyptus plantations between Sarria and Santiago seem a world away up here, while the endless wheat fields of the Meseta might as well be on another planet.

The stonechats are still here, as are the black redstarts and swallows – I even had two close encounters with a cuckoo today – but there are signs that the local fauna is about to shift one last time: I heard the cry of a full this morning from somewhere far away, and the Concello symbols on bus stops and hotels now feature the distinctive silhouette of a curlew – which, together with the rolling moorland, conjures up images of the north of England. I’m not lying when I say that this is probably the part of the Camino I have been most looking for to!

I think I’ve finally contracted a minor Camino injury in the form of shin splints – the merciless climb up and over Monte Avo today, even with the stick, probably didn’t help. I’m just grateful it’s happened this late in the journey, with just one day left to go – it would have been nothing short of torture had it happened last week, or worse, two weeks ago!

So I took it easy this afternoon and hit the I of the RICE method by taking a dip in the pool just up the road from O Logoso. Spain has a wealth of hidden piscinas naturales – many of which are in Extremadura’s mountainous north – and finding one this afternoon was just what the doctor ordered. Now, at least, I can apply the bandages I brought from my First Aid course before the end of term and take one more thing from my backpack before the journey home!

I’ll also make sure I eat well today and tomorrow. I’m conscious that my time here is running out, and the chance to dine out on delicious Spanish cooking won’t be so easy to find come the weekend… so roll out the bandages and roll on the bandejas! There’s only one day more to go. BB x