What a vast gulf there is between love and loved! It is measureless. Still, most people have crossed it in their lives, some of them more than once.
Henry Rider Haggard, The People of Mist
Summer rumbles along. August yawns before me, and once I’m settled into my new home at the end of the week it will be a quieter month than this very to-and-fro, up-and-down July. I’ve managed to book in some driving lessons starting next week, despite the ongoing national shortage of instructors, so I should count my blessings. I’ve also been very lucky to have traveled so far. I mean, honestly: four weeks ago today I was wandering around New Orleans. Three weeks ago I was on an island. Two weeks ago I was sitting atop Montmartre in Paris, eating frites and watching the sunset.
I really have moved around a lot this summer. I should be grateful. That’s what I tell myself.
The summer holidays are a rough time to handle heartache. There’s never a good time, but the holidays really are the worst. For dealing with affairs of the heart, the best things to have around you are friends and family who will listen, advise and support you, if not a job that will keep you too busy to dwell overmuch. All of these are close at hand when you live and work in a boarding school (or any school, for that matter, though the boarding scene does amplify most things).
Come the holidays, however, and you can find yourself cut off. Marooned. It’s like floating in a wide, wide sea, in a boat that has lost its motor, looking and hoping for the afterglow of the stars you’ve been chasing, even though you know both the looking and the hoping will hurt your eyes.
I love a good quest. It gives one’s life meaning, purpose. Something to come home and tell stories about. Seeking out my long-lost family in Spain – that was a quest. Walking the Camino for my grandfather José – that was another. Even the ten-metre colossus of a drawing I created at university was a quest after a fashion. In short, any endeavour that you put your heart and soul into is a quest. So perhaps you might forgive me for trying to catch a shooting star this summer, knowing full well that they are so precious precisely because they are fleeting.
It’s just because it’s in those fleeting moments that we truly feel alive that we hunger for them so.
The hardest relationships to walk away from are the ones where you both still care about each other. Where, by whatever divine prank, the whole world stood between you, telling you to listen to reason and face the enormity of the Ocean, even as you railed against it. Bloody Hinge! Bloody Atlantic! Bloody bleeding heart!
One of you must be the brave one and make the bitterest of choices. Somebody needs to be the one to say “good bye”. Good-bye is a powerful word, and one I try to avoid – it is so much more final than “farewell”. And even when it is the right word to say, it’s never easy to cut yourself off entirely from the person with whom you have come to share a corner of your heart. But one of you must do this, and that will always leave the other with questions. What more could I have done? Did I let the flame die out from a lack of attention, or did I snuff it out from too much? Had I the winged sandals of Hermes or the might of Moses to part the sea between us, would it have been enough?
Questions come easily in the silence of the summer holidays. So I’ve been going out in the evenings for long walks to clear my head and focus on the beauty of the world around me, as the year turns.
The harvest season has begun, and the wind among the gentle fields of barley can hardly be heard over the distant roar of the combine harvesters up on the golden hills. Hay is in the air and, every now and then, the faint smell of mushrooms. Autumn is waiting in the wings. Change is coming.
One thing I’ve noticed this year is that there are so many owls up here in Lincolnshire. More than I’ve ever seen in the south, that’s for sure. Owls are an omen of bad luck in many parts of the world, but here in Europe we chose to see in them wisdom. Perhaps that’s on account of their enormous eyes, or their ability to turn their head in seemingly all directions.
Last night I saw a barn owl quartering the fields after sundown, a ghostly silhouette against the evening sky as it flapped noiselessly overhead – or rather, noiseless in its wings, for it was shrieking as it went.
Barn owls. Flamingoes. Rollers. Swans. It’s a strange quirk that the most beautiful creatures make the most alarming sounds. There is nothing alarming about the wind in the barley tonight. It rustles softer than any sigh.
Nature is a powerful healer, and so is writing. I will make good use of both in the weeks to come, until life and work begins again. A new world is waiting! I have waited long enough. BB x
13.25. High summer. Somewhere in the Lincolnshire Wolds.
English summer skies are blinding. There’s an intensity to the white clouds that blanket this island in summer that demands a permanent squint, or a pair of good sunglasses. America – and even Europe – seem a long, long way away from here.
Six days ago I was sitting on a low wall among the ruins of an old boathouse on the largest of the Chausey Islands, a collection of low-lying islands in the bay of Saint-Malo. I’d never heard of them until the day before, when I saw that a local ferry company was offering day trips out that way, but I do love an adventure, especially one that goes well off the beaten track. Due to its remote location, there were only two boats a day from Saint-Malo: one to the island, and one from. Which is how I ended up spending seven hours on an island measuring just 1.5km across.
The Chausey Islands are a magical place. Quiet. Peaceful. Cut-off. It’s not so far from the coast that you feel lost – neighbouring Granville over in Normandy is a little nearer than Calais is to Dover, and in good sunlight you can see as far as the spires of Saint-Malo on the Breton coast – but far enough to feel like you’ve put some distance between yourself and the world. Even on a cloudy day, you can see the ghostly pyramid of Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the sea to the south like Atlantis. Or should that be Ys?
People have been living in these islands for centuries. The Vikings of old used to stop here regularly en route to their raids along the mainland, and you can still see the holes they bored into some of the rocks to anchor their longboats. The narrow channel between Grand Île and the other islands still carries a Viking name: the Chausey Sound, the southernmost “sound” in Europe. There were once a few farms here, and even a school until the last century. Now it plays home to French holidaymakers, who pass their jealously-guarded homes down through the generations, so I’m told.
I have a habit of winding up in places like this. Others travel to meet people, have a great time, see the world. I always seem to end up by myself, searching for myself, marooned with my thoughts. It’s not that I don’t set out in search of those things too – I just find my way to these spots quite naturally.
I found the spot I was searching for to the west of the island, on a low islet overlooking the ebbing tide beneath a crown of standing stones. But for the hulking black-backed gulls, a couple of oystercatchers and the odd lizard, I had the bay to myself.
I let my mind wander. I thought about a great many people, and wondered what they were doing at that moment in time. Were they happy? Were they wandering like me? Had they ever found just such a place and turned their thoughts to friends and lovers past? I think so. I think it’s in our nature to do just that in the far-flung corners of the world. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a sucker for a good Western: nothing sends you on a greater inward journey than the wilderness.
I had questions, but the answers didn’t come to me as readily as they did on the Camino last year, so I waited out the hours on a beach, reading Breton fairytales and burning under the sun. When the boat did come, it was to carry me back to Saint-Malo across a choppy sea that left half the passengers on the deck soaked to their skin, though the sun was shining bright.
I didn’t see as many seabirds as I hoped, but I did clock a guillemot taking its fledgling on what might well have been its first swim as the sun came out. I also came away with a number of close encounters with the lizards that call the island home – all of them a lot less skittish than their cousins on the mainland. I used to love looking for lizards in the countryside when I was a kid, so after the nostalgia of rockpool rediscovery, it was refreshing to turn another leaf of the history books.
It’s 18.00 over here in Saint-Malo and the heavens have opened. An Atlantic wind is battering against the windows and the heavyset black-backed gull that chased off Hector has given up on attacking the ashtray on the windowsill and taken his leave. I might head into town for dinner later, but for now, I’m quite content curled up on the sofa of my AirBnB with a book, a hot chocolate and the time to write. So I thought I’d start today’s post with a little history.
Saint-Malo has a long and complicated past. Originally a 6th century refuge for Welsh monks, including the venerable Maclou of Aleth who gave the town its name, the rocky outpost became a haven for Bretons fleeing the advancing “North-men” or Normans some two hundred years later. In the 17th century, its strategic location made it a natural hub for state-licensed piracy or “privateering”, which elevated its fortunes considerably and paved the way for a generation of wealthy explorers: Jacques Cartier, a native malouin, is credited with giving Canada its name (via the Iroquois kanata) and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, another son of Saint-Malo, established the first European settlement in the Falkland Islands, which – at least in Spanish – still bear their original Breton name: las Islas Malvinas, from the French Îles Malouines.
The city fell to the Germans during the Second World War as part of their Atlantikwall stratagem, and the skeletons of their fortifications still dot the Breton coastline: in Saint-Malo, the levelled ruins of German pillboxes rub shoulders with 17th century Vauban forts. Surprisingly, much of what you see today was carefully reconstructed, as around 80% of the city was destroyed by the Allies in their dogged attempt to drive the Germans from the old pirate stronghold.
Allied bombers over Saint-Malo in August 1944. The fortified isle of Grand-Bé is at the centre of the blast
Most of the German fortifications have long since been torn down, but you can still see the concrete bases of many structures on the cliffs beneath the city wall and on the surrounding islets of Grand-Bé. They make very comfortable places to sit and watch the sunset.
In case it wasn’t obvious, the town’s rich history is one of the biggest reasons I’m here. But the other is its wildness: there are plenty of sandy beaches in the south, but I don’t get any real kick out of sea-swimming unless there are rocky areas to explore. The southeast coast of England with its famous white cliffs is quite a sight to behold, but it doesn’t quite have the jagged beauty that the west has in abundance, and Brittany has it to spare.
I spent many of the happiest days of my childhood scouring the rock pools of Folkestone for tiny critters: gobies, blennies, butterfish, velvet swimming crabs and even, just the once, a pipefish. Brittany is only the other side of the Channel, so much of the shoreline is familiar. I can’t help keeping an eye out for anemones when I’m out on the rocks, especially the snakelocks variety – I always thought they were especially interesting.
Across the bay from Saint-Malo stands the islet of Grand-Bé, which can be reached on foot at low tide via a barnacle-encrusted causeway. A similar road stretches on to the Vauban fort on Petit-Bé, though a small section of that road remains under a foot of water even at low tide and must be forded with shoes in hand.
Grand-Bé offers a glimpse of what Saint-Malo must once have been: a windswept escarpment just off the mainland, inhabited only by lizards, gulls, a small colony of shags and a company of oystercatchers that can be heard all across the bay. Two of these noisy seabirds were standing in attendance upon Chateaubriand’s tomb, as though to keep him company. From this spot, on a clear day, you can hear the twittering of goldfinches, the cries of gulls, the occasional grunt from one of the shags and the endless piping of oystercatchers on the rocks below or in the sky above – and, of course, the ringing of the bells of Saint Vincent’s cathedral across the bay.
I wonder if the old Romantic was as bewitched by the wild birds of his native Brittany as his writing implies? He certainly had a real flair when it came to writing about nature. Perhaps that’s why he chose this spot.
I spent some time last night watching the sunset over Grand-Bé. I had left my Camino bracelet in the apartment, but I had brought a few other tokens with me. I often take a number of “lucky” objects on my travels: little souvenirs and keepsakes to remind me of home when I’m on the road.
Well, not home exactly. With no fewer than ten moves under my belt at the age of thirty (and just under half of them international) I’m still not entirely sure where home is. But they remind me of friendships and memories that mean a lot to me, and that helps with the loneliness that is a natural side-effect of traveling alone.
In my satchel, ever at my side, I carry my journal, my fifth and longest-serving since I took up the art twelve years ago. It’s coming apart at the seams and bound inexpertly by sellotape – hardly surprising for a little book that has come with me to work every day for the last five years, as well as on every adventure I’ve been on in that time. Concealed within is my lucky dollar, a ticket to the Prado in Madrid, a tawny owl feather, the plectrum that one of my Rutherford boys used to win House Music two years in a row and a perfumed letter.
There is one more keepsake that has been sharing the road with me this summer. It even came with me to America, traversing the Bayou, the Mississippi and the bright lights of Nashville. It’s a card from one of my students, one of many I received in my last week at Worth. The lengths this particular student went to so as to ensure I got the card, as well as the maturity of its message from one so young, are just two of the reasons this one in particular has come with me. I am many things, and a great many less, but I would be a writer – and so that is why I have always believed that the greatest gift I can ever receive is in the form of words. No physical object can ever surpass the depth of feeling that comes from such expression.
I have a bad habit of making people cry when I write them farewell letters (an equally bad habit I’ve adopted for leaving students), but I very nearly met my match with this one. The student in question signed off with a favourite quote of theirs from Lin-Manuel Miranda: “sometimes words fail me”. There’s any number of reasons they could have chosen that one for me – I might well have said the line verbatim in reaction to the behaviour of that class at least once – but it’s a powerful message for a would-be writer.
Words do fail me, and often. There have been moments this year where I have been genuinely speechless, from shock or awe or wonder. It is comforting to know that such a consummate wordsmith shares that affliction.
Tomorrow, I have decided upon a rather spontaneous adventure. I have already bought my ticket. All I can do now is hope that the weather holds. Then – we shall see what we shall see. BB x
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
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
I’ve heard various accounts of the pilgrim road across the Meseta. It is so often described as the most arduous stretch of the Camino, skipped by those pilgrims who find its endless expanses of featureless wheat fields uninspiring and/or dull. A dear friend and former companion on the road wrote to me yesterday, calling it “demotivating and mentally draining”. So I haven’t come out here under any illusions.
I’m only one day in, so I haven’t yet got the full flavour of the Meseta. But I’ll tell you what it has in abundance: silence. Spain isn’t a country that is known for peace and quiet – quite the opposite, in fact, being a regular contender for Europe’s loudest country – but if there is a corner of the kingdom where silence is as golden as the fields over which it presides, this is
It should be said, setting off a full hour before daybreak probably didn’t help (yes, I am definitely that pilgrim). The others in the hostel in Burgos must have found my coming-and-going at a quarter past five in the morning frustrating, though I did what I could to soften my steps. I would have thought I had learned my lesson last time, but for whatever reason I’m still working on the assumption that most places fill up quickly around midday.
Burgos was softly lit by a clouded moon as I took my leave of the Cid’s city. Beside the storks, those speechless sentinels of Spanish skies, I only saw two other living things on my way out: a street-sweeper hosing down the steps above the cathedral, and a solitary Japanese peregrino who took a wrong turn. Everyone else with half a brain – the city’s entire population and the rest of the pilgrims on the trail, for that matter – was still in bed, enjoying a few hours’ more sleep.
The sun was up by the time I reached the outskirts of Villalba de Burgos, the first stop on the road. Still no pilgrims, but the Guardian Civil made a couple of appearances as they patrolled the road in their car. Here I took my leave of the Arlanzón river, stopping only to refill my water bottle at a park fountain and to listen to the flute-song of a golden oriole concealed somewhere within the poplar trees.
The Meseta begins to unravel in earnest after the sleepy town of Tardajos, which I imagine presents a good introduction of what is to come. Half the town seems deserted, and this time that has little to nothing to do with the time of day. Squat, single-storey townhouses rub shoulders with taller, more modern homes, though in some cases it is just as much the latter that have their windows boarded up as the former.
I stopped at Rabé de las Calzadas to see if the local church were open. No luck. It looks as though the parish priest serves multiple towns, celebrating Mass first at one church and then another. You can sometimes get stamps in these spots, but it’s really candles I’m looking for – when I can, I like to say a prayer for my grandfather and great-grandparents, for whom I walk this road. They say the reason is that pilgrims would probably try to sleep in them for free and might not be as respectful of their lodging if they did. Which is understandable. So far this year, I’ve only found one I could enter. I’ll keep looking, though.
It’s a steep climb after Rabé up into the Meseta proper. The last green hills of Burgos give way to a sea of gold, unbroken at eye level but towered over by a host of wind turbines that make the place a dry parody of the North Sea: similarly featureless, though a great deal warmer.
I’m getting the feeling this is all coming across as rather maudlin. For a nature lover like me, however, this is bliss. If you can put a name to the sights and sounds around you, you’re never truly alone.
Since leaving Burgos, I’ve been accompanied most of the way by the friendly two-tone song of the stonechat. Families of three – a parent and two fledgelings – seem to pop up everywhere, unbothered by my passing in their tireless search for food. Warblers of every kind – willow, Sardinian, fan-tailed and Cetti’s – sing from the hedgerows, signalling the presence of a river long before it comes into view. Corn buntings, wagtails and jolly wheatears pop in and out of sight between the wheatsheafs. Swifts, swallows and martins fill the empty villages with sound, and hoopoes add a flash of brilliant black-and-white when disturbed in the parks and gardens along the way. In the vast Castilian skies, storks, kites, ravens and solitary griffons are a constant presence, and in the fields below, quail and turtle dove sing unseen, their purrs and whistles keeping the silence at bay. And butterflies of every colour and size are so abundant there’s a very real danger of stepping on them.
On the plateau above Hornillos, I even caught a glimpse of one of my favourite creatures of all: the slender, ghostly shape of a male Montagu’s harrier, quartering the fields like a runaway birdscarer. I haven’t seen one of those since my time in Extremadura, where they find the vast emptiness much to their liking.
I’ve come to a halt in arguably the strangest stop of the Camino so far. Falling prey to my own hubris, as I am often wont to do, I left Hornillos behind and pressed on to what several guidebooks call a “Camino favourite”, the remote Albergue de San Bol. Tucked away in a river valley just five kilometres shy of Hontanas, it is easily missed, and with so many pilgrims keen to race through the Meseta, that’s understandable. I got here at half twelve and found the place deserted, with a sign on the door saying it would be opened at two. I stuck around, taking the opportunity to wash my feet and sandals in the small pool and do some reading while I waited.
Five or six curious pilgrims came by to investigate. None of them have stayed. The first one, a German by the sound of him, asked about a place to fill up his bottle, shrugged and moved on. Another two came by, but went on their way not five minutes afterwards. A Dutchman made noises about staying on but disappeared without a trace while I was washing my clothes. Two Italians rocked up an hour later, who could easily have been my age… only, they were fresh out of school and keen to press on to Hontanas. By this point I’d already made the decision to stay, so I bid them addió and nailed my colours to the mast when at last the local hostalera showed up.
From her I learned the truth – the Camino has been quiet for a few days, but April and May were absolutely heaving this year. That’s probably due to the backlog of pilgrims like myself who haven’t been able to take the road for two years due to COVID. At this time of year, few pilgrims stop at this stage, unless they’re traveling in a group. Would I be alright if I were the only guest tonight, she asked?
Well, so much for my first “communal feel” albergue. On the plus side, it allows me one more day to really be my own boss. It isn’t often on the Camino that you get an entire dormitory to yourself, or the chance to watch the sunset in a place so idyllic as this. I’ve already paid for my bed for the night with the last of the coins I had on me (I really should have taken cash out in Burgos, as banks and ATMs are few and far between out here) so I’m going to kick back and really enjoy having this slice of paradise to myself for once.
There will be plenty of time to socialise on the Camino. But I’m in no hurry – if anything I’d like to avoid the crush in Santiago on Saint James’ day three weeks from now – so I will take my time and allow myself a few later starts from now on. And who knows? If I tarry a while, I might just find more stories in these slumbering villages than I would in the pilgrims tearing through this lonely stage.
Peace out. I’m getting some serious peace in tonight. BB x
With the summer exams afoot, we’re entering “gained time”. Assessments replace lesson plans, trips take kids out of circulation more frequently, and savvier colleagues do a stock check on their red/green biros (delete as appropriate) for a lucrative summer of script-marking. Since my job description covers not just every year group but also all the conversation classes for the exam years as well, my timetable takes an even larger hit than most at this time of year. As of today, I’ve lost an enviable eighteen hours a fortnight. A man could go mad with that much idleness – so, as I do every year, I set myself a project to fill the time.
This one’s pretty straightforward: read a chapter a day of any book – just one chapter, no more, no less – and reflect on it in less than a thousand words. That way, I’m hoping I’ll develop a better reading habit, as well as keep my writing arm flexed well into the summer. It doesn’t pay £3 per throw like the exam scripts do, but it’s good practice. And who knows? One of these days, when I finally manage to convince somebody to let me try teaching English again, all of this reading might pay off. But until then, I have time to kill and a library to devour.
Guy Shrubsole, The Lost Rainforests of Britain
Here’s a book I’ve had my eye on for a while now. Shrubsole knew what he was doing when he hired the illustrator Alan Lee, of Tolkien fame, to design the cover of his paean to the vanishing temperate rainforests of Britain. The gnarled, mossy arms of Wistman’s Wood might as well be an early sketch for Fangorn Forest. Even the choice of a jay for the single flash of colour is inspired – for what bird could be more evocative of the deepwoods of the British Isles than the oak-sower, a creature almost singly responsible for the very existence of our oak forests?
There’s a medicine within the woods that has few equals. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I can picture the trees I sought out when my heart was in a bad place. Brabourne, Canterbury, Durham – and even as far as Plasencia. Now I think about it, those “healing trees” were invariably oaks, every one of them. I’m no spirit of the New Age – I live just a little too far north of Brighton for that – but I can’t help but draw something from that coincidence. Is it because they’re the largest trees in the forest? The oldest, and thus the wisest? Is it because their thick branches reach closer to the ground than other trees, like outstretched arms? While the regimented conifers bristle from trunk to treetop with their arms held high in a stiff salute, the oak tree is a serene creature. Motherly, almost.
Shrubsole’s passionately written text takes the reader by the hand into the soaking air of the last remaining rainforests in Britain. I confess I never really thought of rainforests as a British entity, though I would be the first to admit that, when living abroad, my fondest memories of England were of grey skies and the sound of autumn rain over an English wood. I’m incredibly fortunate to come from a line of amateur botanists: my mother was brought up knowing all the different plants and flowers and their uses (as well as which fungi were best avoided), and though I was stubbornly fixated on my animals, she did her best to pass on what she had learned to me. Consequently, I don’t need an app to tell my beeches from my birches. However, I know I’m on an island in more ways than one in that regard.
Since the last Ice Age, Shrubsole writes, we have cut down a third of all the forests in the world, and half of that in the last century alone. In that time, while we awakened to the plight of the shrinking rainforests in the tropics, our own green treasures have been quietly slipping over the edge and into oblivion. The ancient Britons revered the forests that once covered this island. Most of us, however, are a lot less likely to meet a druid than we are that one person who says something along the lines of “such a nice view, shame about the tree” – as though this land were ours to sculpt.
“Plant blindness” is a reality we must accept. Put simply – in the words of Tolkien’s Treebeard – “nobody cares for the woods anymore”. It’s easy to get excited about conservation when it’s got two shining eyes that straddle the line between beauty and vulnerability, but it’s that much harder to extend that zeal to the silent world of plants. Lack of knowledge leads to lack of empathy. As both a naturalist and a teacher, one of my cardinal rules is that once you can put a name to something, it means so much more to you. Perhaps the reverse is true: if you know nothing, your heart won’t bleed when you tread on a bluebell.
Recent studies showed that only 14% of A Level biology students could name more than three British plant species, while an even more alarming survey indicated that 83% of British children were unable to identify an oak leaf on sight. I suspect if I brought in a few leaves tomorrow and asked my Year 9 students to identify them, I’d fare little better. And yet, they’re very aware of the deforestation in Indonesia and the deleterious impact of the palm oil industry. The grass is always greener – or at least, it would be, if we could tell it was grass to begin with.
I’m learning to drive this summer, and I’m not ashamed to admit that one of the only things that genuinely excites me about having a car of my own is the freedom it will give me to explore even more of this country on foot. I appreciate the irony. But with avian flu decimating our seabird populations last year – an article in The Guardian put the death toll at 50,000 – and more and more common land disappearing under the pressure for affordable housing, I’ve never been more conscious of the need to see our green and pleasant land – before it’s gone. Before the baseline shifts, and we learn to accept what was once unacceptable.
I had a couple of hours between lessons this afternoon, so I took myself for a wander through the estate. I found a toad beneath the remnants of a tarpaulin from the old forest school I used to run three years ago, and a merry carpet of bluebells in their dying days followed me to the deepwoods where a chalk stream gurgles southward on its journey to the sea. A silent pool of rainwater sparked into life as the sun came down, drawing three tadpoles into its warm gaze. Chiffchaffs sang at various intervals, and somewhere overhead, unseen, a buzzard mewed. I didn’t hear our ravens today, but I often do.
The druids were onto something. There really is a medicine in the woods. If only the whole world could see it! BB x
The Camino might be over for this year, but the adventure certainly isn’t. Before my flight back home tomorrow, one last challenge remained: to scale Monte Santiago and lay eyes upon Spain’s highest waterfall, the Salto del Nervión. Since I’m staying in Bilbao, which straddles the Nervión on its journey to the sea, it seemed only natural to go in search of its source. The fact that it springs from a mountain bearing the same name as the patron saint of the Camino clinched it. So, just after eight o’clock this morning, I grabbed my rucksack and poncho (just in case) and set off for the Bilbao-Arando train station.
Leaving the stained-glass masterpiece of Bilbao-Arando behind, I took the 8.25 to Orduña on the C3 line. It’s the furthest stop on the Cercanías line and the trains were running very consistently even through the holiday season, so I was pretty confident about getting there and back OK.
Orduña itself was just waking up when the train pulled in. I made a quick detour via an AlCampo mini-market to grab a picnic lunch: the usual fare of semicurado cheese, chorizo slices and a fresh loaf of bread, with a punnet of grapes to boot. I then doubled back, crossed the bridge over the railway and started to climb up into the hills.
Fortunately for me, somebody had the peace of mind to leave a clearly-labelled map outside the train station. I’d found a few maps online, but I was relieved to find a more reliable one at the start of the trail, so I snapped a photo and used it as my map for the day. I can’t find it online, so here’s a copy if you’re interested:
First things first: the climb was bloody steep. Easy to follow, but steep. And before long, I’d climbed up beyond the cloud level and was weaving in and out of the mist. Sometimes I couldn’t see more than ten metres or so ahead, and sometimes the road seemed to stretch on forever up the mountainside. A jay screeched at me from the base to the summit, and while it may well have been a number of them, I had the strange feeling it was the same bird watching my slow progress. And yet, whenever I tried to lock eyes upon it, I only ever caught a disappearing shadow between the trees.
In the deep woods of the Basque Country, when the clouds are at ground level, it’s easy to see how myths of the Basajaun – wild men of the woods – persisted for so long. God only knows what was watching me unseen in the mist.
I only met two other souls on the road coming down: a local man with a hiking pole in hand about halfway up and a jogger leaving the forest, which would imply he’d just run down the mountain. There’s a reason the Basques have a formidable reputation.
Near the summit, a spring of crystal clear water was a welcome find. I couldn’t help remembering a childhood memory of vomiting for days after drinking from a village spring in the Alpujarras, but the water looked so clean I couldn’t help myself. It was easily the most delicious water I’ve had out here – mountain water always is, if you can get it – though I was sane enough not to use the metal cup chained to the rock, which looked in dire need of a good clean. In a nearby tank, filled to the brim with the spotless spring water, a few tiny newt efts were swimming about.
After what felt like an age (but in reality only took ten minutes over an hour) the track suddenly came to a narrow crevasse which cut a path through the karst to the clifftop. With one last screech from the jay echoing after me, I put the cloud forest behind me, pushed the metal gate open and stepped out of the Basque Country and back into Castilla.
At first, the rolling clouds shrouded all but the peak upon which I was standing from view. I could just about make out the bizarre sculpture to an apparition of the Virgin Mary in the form of a colossal concrete block supported by a stylised tree looming out of the mist, but it looked like it had been fenced off and graffitied for good measure long ago.
More impressive by far was what I could see when I turned around. The Castilian sun began to beat down through the clouds, and suddenly the sheer majesty of the Sierra Sálvada began to unroll before me like a painting. I was lost for words. Pictures don’t do it justice, but they might bring you closer to that wonder I witnessed.
The breathtaking crags of the Sierra Sálvada give an indication of what to expect from the Salto del Nervión long before you reach it. It’s a drop of more than 200m to the bottom in places, and even the thought of kicking a pebble over the edge is enough to tie your stomach in several uncomfortable knots.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m absolutely mad about mountains. But there’s nothing funny about a drop of that height, particularly when it isn’t broken by any tree or slope on the way down.
Ironically, perhaps, some of Spain’s biggest creatures are perfectly at home here. The hulking shape of the griffon vulture was rarely out of sight during my wanderings along the clifftop, but nowhere more so than about the stark stack known as the Fraileburu – the Friar’s Head – an utterly unassailable column where many of the Sierra’s griffons had chosen to roost, haughtily observing the valley below. I haven’t needed my camera once on this holiday – my phone has done a more than satisfactory job – but I was missing it then more than ever. A decent telephoto could have worked wonders on the griffons riding the thermals below, as well as pulling the acrobatic choughs and the few pairs of Egyptian vultures into focus for good measure. Instead you’ll just have to see how many you can spot clinging to the cliff face below.
From the summit of Monte Santiago, it’s a fair trek to the Salto del Nervión. I didn’t stop often and I keep a pretty merciless pace, but it still took me the better part of two hours to reach the waterfall. Fortunately, the path cuts through tree cover for a large stretch, and the views are incredible – especially so as the sun had burned off most of the mist by this point, offering spectacular views down to Orduña, now some way in the distance.
The Mirador at the Salto was quite busy by the time I arrived (around one o’clock) but one look was enough. The river was bone dry: I might have guessed from the absence of any sound of crashing water. So much for the highest waterfall in Spain! It seems it’s only really in action after heavy rain, otherwise the Nervión is supplied by a network of underground rivers that ensure it flows year-round, while its primary spring in neighbouring Castilla has a tendency of drying up in all but the wettest seasons.
Still – box ticked, I suppose.
Perhaps more interesting than a dry waterfall is the nearby lobera, an ancient wolf trap built possibly over two thousand years ago by the ancient Basques to hunt wolves and other large game on the clifftop. In a fashion akin to the Native American buffalo jumps, the wolf would be chased into a funnel, with men beating drums on one side and the cliff on the other, driving the poor beast into a deep pit at the end of the funnel as its only escape.
I didn’t see any wolves during the hike, though they have been seen recently in the area after a long absence. Instead I disturbed an amorous couple who had straddled the large wolf statue and were enjoying each other’s company, though they had picked an exceedingly odd place: I can think of better spots for a tryst than the site of a Neolithic abattoir.
From the Salto del Nervión, I decided to fork east and descend back into the valley of Orduña that way. The trouble was, the map – which had been utterly brilliant thus far – was pretty dismal about suggesting a way back down bar turning around and heading back the way I came. One of the maps I’d found online seemed to indicate a track that led down through the forest an hour or so to the north of the Salto, but I couldn’t find anything like it. Scanning the east side of the valley during the hike didn’t show much either, beyond what might have been a dry river gulley running down the mountainside.
In the end, rather than face a possibly two or three-hour march to the north, I decided to follow the beginnings of a track that appeared as the cliff began to slope rather than drop. Whether it was made by man or beast I’m not entirely sure, only that it probably wasn’t the track suggested online and that it very quickly came to an end.
There are few things more frustrating than getting halfway down a mountain and realising you’ve lost the path. At least you can surrender going up, but on the descent, you have no choice but to find a way down somehow. So I did what I have done in the past, foolhardy though it seems, and cut across country.
This is a lot easier said than done when the cross country in question is a forest thick with underbrush that happens to be growing on the side of a mountain. The ground under my feet was not always stable, there were thorns everywhere and the animals tracks I was following – boar, I wouldn’t wonder – were not always reliable. The heat of the midday sun was similarly unwelcome, silencing the forest and making my every step sound like a cannon. The vultures circling overhead only added to the dismal state of affairs.
Twice I came upon what looked like a road, but rather than wind up on some local farmer’s turf (and potentially ending up in really cross country) I decided to stick to a personal motto (don’t ever, under any circumstances, f*ck with the Basques) and continue to forge my own path.
It took just over an hour to escape the forest. I don’t think I’ve been more relieved to see a tarmac road in years.
I made it back to Orduña’s train station with seven minutes to spare before the 16.45 train back to Bilbao. I must have looked a beardy, sweaty mess but I was past caring. Despite the mountain’s best efforts, I’d made it back in one piece.
My old English teacher once told me you can’t claim to conquer a mountain, a thing which has been standing on this earth since the world was young and will be there long after you have gone. I’m still hooked on the idea of climbing higher than the vultures – there are few things in this world more awe-inspiring than looking down on creatures that are usually specks in the great blue beyond – but I’ll hand it to him here. Mountains are ancient, treacherous things that deserve to be treated with respect.
I finished my time in Spain by summiting Santiago’s mountain, but the mountain very nearly got the better of me on the way down. A knock to my hubris – and a necessary one.
I’ll stick to regular cross country around the school grounds for now. I’ve had quite enough wayfaring for one holiday! BB x
Holy Week got off to a flying start last night outside Logroño’s cathedral, Santa María de La Redonda. It isn’t always easy to tell which towns will have a serious procesión, but for the record, Logroño goes the distance. It looked as though all the brotherhoods were out in force last night, garbed in white, red, green, black and blue. Crucially for me, they also beat out the same halting drumbeat from my memories of Holy Week in the south. Not every town does it, but you’ll notice if they do: it’s the ever so slightly delayed drum roll during the march that, once you hear it, you can’t unhear. It’s the suspense of the last days of Jesus’ life, as his followers waited to see if he would save himself. At least, that’s one way of reading into it.
I had supper with a rather awkward American, the only other guest for dinner at the albergue. He wasn’t even staying there, but appeared to have wandered in looking for a menu peregrino (the cheap three-course fare offered to pilgrims on the Camino). He had his reservations about how sociable people are on the Camino and pined for the quieter stretches, and from his less than satisfied reaction to the ‘vegetarian option’ he’d asked for, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing out here. He was quick to want to fact check my anecdote about his home state of California being one of the only places in the world named for a fictional location (it takes its name from the mythical island in Montalvo’s 16th-century chivalric novel, Las sergas de Esplandián) but I won’t begrudge him for it. After Trump and the fake news boom, who’d trust anyone?
I was definitely one of the first out of town this morning. Though I passed some pilgrims on the road a few hours in, from the speed at which they were walking I suspect they’d been lodging one or two towns ahead. As a result, I had pretty much the whole 30km hike to Nájera to myself – including the first hour and a half before sunrise, which is always one of the most magical times to walk the Camino.
Approaching the Laguna de Grajera from the east, I counted about six or seven night herons flying in from their roost somewhere beyond Logroño. You can just about make out the silhouette of one of them in the photo above, as dawn was starting to break. There were rabbits everywhere – more than I’ve ever seen in this country – and the morning sky was alive with the songs of blackbirds and larks. I could have waited for company at any point, but I do love to have that part of the day to myself. Self indulgent, perhaps, but worth indulging all the same.
There was even an icon of Nuestra Señora del Rocío on the lakeside. Whether or not I sang her into existence through various repetitions of Las llanuras ardientes and El Rocío es un milagro as I was walking is conjecture. It felt special to find her here, so far from her usual haunt in the marismas down south.
Now, while I needn’t have set off quite so early (the 8 hours in the guidebook is a joke, the trek is at the very most 6h30 with a stop for lunch) I did have my reasons, and one was to catch a very specific angle of the sunrise at just the right moment.
At the brow of a hill to the west of the laguna stands one of the famous Osborne bulls for which Spain is so famous. By the time I got clear of it – at around 8.20am – the sun was almost exactly behind it. I could not have timed it better. Point and shoot!
The rest of the walk was pretty straightforward. The ruins of the old pilgrims’ hospice at San Juan de Acre were picturesque and the Camino itself, though it cleaved close to the road on occasion, was quiet and easy underfoot. I let a couple of Dutch pilgrims overtake and continued to have the road to myself. The Sierra de Cebollera remained cloudbound for most of the walk, and I kept my hoodie on until I reached Nájera – it simply wasn’t hot enough to justify fewer layers, and that’s not bad thing!
Navarrete was stunning – easily one of my favourite stations on the Camino so far. The church is a classic Spanish affair: pokey and generic on the outside, and an immense explosion of heavenly gold within. I lit a candle for abuelo, left a story in the visitor’s book, sang through Thomas Morley’s Nolo mortem peccatoris (since there was nobody there) and moved on.
From Navarrete, the final stretch rolled across the hills before sloping down toward the cliff face of Nájera. Legend has it the French hero Roland fought a Syrian giant on one of these hills in a single combat that went on for days, but I was happy enough to see the familiar silhouette of the giants of my childhood: griffon vultures, circling high above the meseta in the distance. I didn’t keep a tally, but there were raptors everywhere today. Kestrels and kites – both black and red – and buzzards and booted eagles, these last in both white and brown. Since it’s still early enough in the season, some of them were displaying still, climbing high and then plummeting down in a sharp V with wings tucked in. Between that and the flute-song of woodlarks that followed me for the last hour before Nájera, I have been in seventh heaven all morning. Oh Camino, I have missed you!
The Albergue Municipal is filling up. Maybe I’ll meet some of these people later. But for now, I’ve done my write-up for the day and I could use a little shut-eye before I seek further adventures in Nájera this evening. Until the next time, folks. BB x
I left over an hour and a half to make my flight this morning, but I could easily have done it in less. Even with the extras (a few more items of clothing than originally planned in case of inclement weather), I’m traveling lighter than ever. Who’d have the fuss of a suitcase when the open road is so inviting?
I think I must have raced to the gate in my eagerness. It was almost deserted for some time when I got here. Only two or three others joined me in my vigil: a Spanish girl chaperoned by her mother, a Greek/English couple (yes, I googled the man’s passport symbol – call me a nosy Parker but the square cross had me stumped) and a woman who from her accent could only be Basque: one side of her head shaved, brow furrowed, a black hoodie emblazoned with the slogan ‘DESIGNED BY AN IMMIGRANT’ in block white capitals.
No tannoy for this flight – the attendant called out Bilbao almost as quietly as I did trying to call a student over in the canteen last week for his poor choice of language. She only changed her tune to ‘Speedy Boarding Only’ when the first six or seven of us were clear. Sometimes, just occasionally, it pays to arrive ahead of schedule.
10.18am, Bilbao Intermodal Bus Station
I’ll say this much for Bilbao Airport: it’s a lot less hassle than Gatwick. All in all I don’t think it took much more than fifteen minutes between touchdown and the shuttle bus.
As I thought, the skies over Bilbao when we landed were clouded, grey and low. They always have been on my visits to this corner of Spain, to the extent that clouds and the Basque Country are virtually inseparable in my mind. The Spanish author Miguel Delibes once said that the sky over Castile is so high because the castellanos themselves put it there from staring at it so much. While my kith and kin chase the coy heavens plus ultra, always in search of the new, the ever practical Basques bring the skies down to their level, coveting the Viscayan rain and wrapping their dark forests in mist and cloud. I don’t expect to be free of that shroud until we reach the frontier.
11.56am, near Pobes
I’m now racing south on the Bilbao-Logroño bus, basking in the intermittent glow of the Spanish sun. Craters of blue have started to appear in the sky as though punched through by some celestial artillery, and still the Basque line of defence holds.
Here below, the landscape is changing. The military ranks of pines encamped around Bilbao suddenly give way to a gentle blanket of beech trees. Patches of brilliant green herald the coming of spring to these hills, and limestone crags scar the mountains like bones – first in uniform grey, then bleached with that warm golden stain that is so evocative of Spain’s highlands.
And then, suddenly, the dark hills of the Basque Country fall away and the plains of Castile are all around me: a forgivingly flat golden country, nestled between the high crags north of Haro and the snowbound peaks of the Sierra de Cebollera to the south. Castles and monasteries dating back to the time of a real frontier sit atop the hills and knolls like childish imitations of the limestone cliffs behind, the handiwork of the greatest craftsman of all.
And there, racing over the fields near an Alcampo petrol station, is my first swallow of the year. It’s only a fleeting glimpse as the bus races on past a bodega and a Lidl in quick succession, but it’s enough to make my heart soar – higher still than those Castilian skies.
I’m drunk on all this scenery, in case that wasn’t obvious (the overblown choice of a frontier semantic field was probably a dead giveaway). Rehab is the usual cure. However – to keep in line with this post’s choice of imagery – sod that for a game of soldiers. I have a week and more to wander around my grandfather’s country once again. I can’t think of a better rehab than this.
5.27pm, Albergue Santiago Apostol, Logroño
Logroño is climbing back out of its siesta. I’ve spent the afternoon here and there, though perhaps more here than there. Here being the Albergue Santiago Apostol, the same place I stayed when I last did the Camino four years ago. The only thing that seems to have changed is the stamp for my pilgrim’s passport. That, and I’ve come alone this time.
The albergue is quiet. I’ve only crossed paths with a handful of other pilgrims: Joan i Laura, a couple of peregrinos from Girona, a French family of three and a German family of four. I expected the Camino to be busier during Semana Santa, but I guess if you have a week’s holiday you’d do the stretch that can be done in a week or less – that is, the last 100km from Sarria. Out here in La Rioja, it’s likely to be rather quiet.
That will make for a rather soul-searching experience, which is no bad thing!
I’ve gone for dinner and breakfast at the albergue, 1) to make sure I actually eat and eat well and 2) to meet some of the other pilgrims ahead of the 31km stretch tomorrow. And also 3) because, at 16€ for dinner and breakfast, it’s a steal. I hadn’t forgotten how affordable the Camino is, but it is nice to rediscover, as it were.
I ate my lunch (chorizo and queso curado in a fresh barra de pan) under a beech tree on the bank of the Ebro river. Spring may be slow in coming to England but she’s been here a while already. The beak-clicking display of the local storks can be heard every so often, even from the albergue, though a drumming woodpecker in the park was giving them a run for their money.
English and Spanish birdsong combined on the riverbank. Blackcaps, wrens and blackbirds supported a local chorus of serins, short-toed treecreepers and wrynecks. I don’t think I’ve seen (or heard) a wryneck since my first stint in Villafranca back in 2015, but I hadn’t forgotten its call. After scanning the branches for a minute or so I tracked it down to a lightning tree just a few metres from where I was sitting. They really do look bizarre, the way they move about mechanically, looking for all the world like the clockwork nightingale from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. The wryneck kept me company for most of my lunch and only took off when a dog walker came by, carrying an African grey parrot on his arm.
I’ll try to catch the first of the procesiones tonight. ‘It’s only Monday,’ said the hostalero at the desk, alluding to the fact that the pinnacle of Semana Santa is toward the end of the week. Even so, my pride as a Spanish teacher is at stake (I have just been teaching the topic to my Year 10s) and besides, I’m a fanatic for the pasos. You can blame my year in Andalucía for that. I’ll also see if I can’t locate the local legend of the Bookseller of Logroño that fellow English traveler George Borrow recounted in his book on the Gypsies of Spain, published a little under two hundred years ago – because what’s an adventure without a quest of some description? BB x
The Book of Barnabas 