Spain

April 16 2010

On board the ferry to Santander.

I was surprised to walk into a cabin that had a port hole. I said to Marianne that when I had crossed the channel with my family as a child and had a cabin we were never afforded such luxury. Looking out over the sun kissed waves as the cabin gently lolls I recalled how my grandfather had spent his early working life as a steward on board cargo vessels working eighteen hour days. Nonetheless he managed to complete a correspondence course on English, Mathematics and German as he had to leave school aged just 14 years to provide his mother with financial assistance. He said he had managed to save time working by smearing pork fat on the brass port holes to save polishing them so often. Within the space of two generations my suffering is reduced to what I should select from the menu on my i-pod to accompany such day dreaming. I listen to Respighi’s Fountains of Rome.

Unsurprisingly, I feel more at home onboard a ship than in an airplane. As far as I know all three previous generations of men in my family carved a living upon the ocean. My great grandfather Stephen Alexander was even born at sea. Watching each wave coming into and out of form are like the thoughts bubbling up from my unconscious. Do our thoughts connect the space between us as the sea does with all peoples and continents? I have lost count the number of times that either Marianne or I verbalises the others thinking. It is hard not to marvel at this capacity of mind without falling into familiar nouns; vast, endless, sublime while looking out to sea. It touches my heart with a familiar feeling of joy and a tinge of sadness and I wonder what my ancestors life was like as they plied their trade and I ask myself if my journey is to explore my place upon it. Perhaps we travel to escape the reminders of every day and exchange them with each continent for reminders of every life. Certainly, I draw comfort from this.

Before we departed my sister In law, Corrine, commented that you can always swim from a sinking boat. Marianne was speaking of the sinking of the Zeebruge and wondering what our crossing would be like. Corrine’s husband Sean wondered how long you could swim for. I commented that at least we have an ability to swim as opposed to flying. Better to know ones limits.

I phoned Maisie as the ferry left its mooring to say goodbye. We discussed one of her revision topics: Obama’s health care reforms as the ferry passed the uniform grey of docked Royal Naval vessels. She hears the chiming of the university clock tower from her flat, an hourly reminder of essay deadlines and exam timetables looming.

Later at dinner Marianne draws my attention to an item on the menu; ‘Crayfish (caught willingly)’. Lost in translation?

19th April 2010.

We have left a site on the coast where we rested after our crossing to Spain and, now we are in the mountains; a National Park. Jasper is keen for my attention and keeps nusselling under my hand as I try to write this.

I thought that the drive to the fist site was a challenge to my nerves. However it appears a gentle introduction to the road to here. I said to Marianne that the area reminded me of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Majestic mountains rise steeply along an undulating coast. The terrain is all limestone and, walking the coastal cliffs was like taking a trip down memory lane and walks long past as a child on the Gower coast. The flora is all limestone loving and, being the height of spring the lanes were full of flowers reminiscent of my past. I thought about taking some to press but remembered reading in Armitstead Maupin’s book; ‘tales of the city’ that one should never give a prostitute cut flowers as it is symbolic of being cut down in ones youth. I left them in situ and walked by throwing the ball for Jasper, pointing out the different ones I see to Marianne. My favourite are tight deep blue florets on stems that Marianne says they look like rosemary. They hang on sinewy branches over hot white limestone but rubbing the stems does not produce the expectant smells, rather disappointingly of nothing at all. Meanwhile I become pensive and spend time wondering, where Armitstead Maupin got that line and what does it say about me that I choose not to pick them? Perhaps we all want momentos of our travels, a marker that says ‘I was here and this is what I saw’. Acts of vandalism like people chipping off pieces of stone from ancient monuments or scrawling their initials on tree trunks. The blooms did look delightful however.

The site we left on the coast was set as an amphitheatre with each pitch given sea views over the bay below. Being spring, it was nearly empty. In comparison, the only other site in the UK I have enjoyed as much was a pitch on the banks of Loch Lomond. All others in the UK we have visited have been like mobile suburbia; caravans and motor homes rounded up in tight fields which leave me struggling for breath.

The area is almost like revisiting my boyhood. On the coast I watched two young men kit out in wet suits and spear guns. Jasper and I followed their wake through the azure sea from the coastal path above. Later, while trying to find a super market in neighbouring Llanes we took a break on the beach opposite the harbour. The beach was littered with many protrusions of rock giving secluded nooks and corners that were familiar to ones I used to sunbathe behind. It was with reluctance that we left Llanes beach as I had very much wanted to take a canoe ride around the points for the cliffs rose steeply from the sea with sea old sea caves perched high amongst them from times of changed sea levels in the past.

Yet, to the mountains we set and soon found ourselves in a limestone gorge with sides as steep as 1000ft, which turned and twisted through overhangs and narrow bends for mile after mile. Nets to catch rock falls were full, some had blistered and burst with no sight of the boulders they must have halted. The obligatory sign posts for ‘danger: rock fall’ in a red triangle littered the road side. What are you supposed to do if you are caught in one? Sit there and comfort yourself with thoughts like; ‘well, I guess I was warned that this could happen’.

On board the ferry we met Thom, who lived in Madrid. He caught the ferry from the UK as all the flights were grounded due to the Icelandic volcanic ash. He said that the Spanish holiday in the north while the south has been taken over by the British and Germans. Don’t go there he warned, try Saville instead. The only tourists we are running into here are the Dutch. Content perhaps with the cooler climes in exchange for this alpine landscape next to the sea. The small valley which we have arrived at is surrounded by a mosaic of steep sloping fields that give way to pines capped by snow clad pyramidal peeks that disappear from time to time in mist. The only sound is of the white noise of the river disappearing down the gorge and bird song pitched just above it.