Venice, sinking.

There are 50,000 tourists on an average day in Venice. 

No wonder it’s sinking under the weight of all those extra gelatos, pizzas and Aperol spritzers, carnival masks and murano glass. The 270,000 who actually live here must spend their days side stepping selfie congestion points (San Marco Square, Bridge of Sighs, Rialto Bridge), the crowds who roil through streets looking down at their smart phone maps desperately seeking their hotels, and the hawkers selling splat balls, fidget spinners and umbrellas when needed. Celebrities and their entourages add heft but I have no idea who any of them are (the Biennale and Venice Film Festival are in town).

Maintaining the necessary slow, steady pace required for the convivial sharing of a crowded warren can't be assisted by the sugar high everyone is on after an Italian breakfast. I thought our host, Alessandro, was just being a bachelor when he served a series of cakes and sweets, but that is apparently breakfast. On his part, he was curious as to why we kept saying we were going 'two doors down' for a coffee, which makes no sense in translation unless we were imagining sinking downwards for caffeine, into Dante's inferno perhaps.

In the day, the police try to keep a semblance of order on the canals in their regulation wetsuit uniforms, but in the backwaters there are still the local places and a quietness that settles in the evenings, creeping across bridges and disappearing into shadows of alleyways. 

(Venice, 08-09 August, 2017)

Uncommon humanity ...

The Sunday before Christmas and my local nail bar was heaving as the talons of the neighbourhood aimed for a final buff and polish before the festivities began.

Amid the fumes of acrylic glue, clouds of nail dust, and X Factor on the TV, hands were held, filed, massaged and painted by young Vietnamese some of whom, we now know, made it across the world into London in the back of a truck, just like the 39 who aren't here. All wanting a better life: a better health care system; a more comfortable income; somewhere their kids can have a better life.  

Recently returning from research in the south of France with British migrants and their responses to Brexit, I was struck again by the repeating themes, the same drivers: all wanting a better life; a better health care system; somewhere to have a more comfortable life on a small pension; somewhere where the kids can develop skills they need for a global future. But with their freedom of movement, no chance of ending up suffocating in the back of a lorry.

Common desires, uncommon humanity.

Short conversations ...

Andrew is looking every bit a jar head but is polite and sensitive, self-deprecating his intelligence. He left school and wasn't doing very much, so the army has given him a purpose. Laila asks him if he is scared. 'Oh yeah, of course'. We joke about occupational health and safety. He is in for life. Richard is under no illusions. The army is his way of paying back his tuition fees; four years to study history which he loved. He wants to teach in community college when he gets back. Ray just wants to say 'hello' and guess our nationalities. He was back from Afghanistan to train new recruits but hasn't been home yet.

USA infantry to and from Afghanistan (Honolulu, April 2011).

How to greet a turtle ...

Snorkelling off the black sands of Richardson's Beach, Big Island, among coral swirls, tang and wrasse, I was confronted with a snappy turtle trying to haul itself onto rocks to sun itself.

Now the proper way to greet a turtle is to raise a flipper in recognition as bus drivers do the world over on approach, and then gracefully ignore each other and swim away.

How not to greet a turtle is to do the following: hyperventilate into your snorkel, flap your flippers in panic, scare the bejeezus out of each other, surface at the same time, check each other out, decide simultaneously that each is ugly but harmless, and then gracefully swim away.

(Richardson's Beach, Hilo, Big Island, Hawaii, 2011)

The day le Tour came to town ...

The plans for the start of this summer's Pyrénéan stroll came to a sudden halt in Pierrefitt-Nestalas, as the bus driver announced the road ahead to my start point, Luz Saint Sauveur, was blocked. It remained a mystery to me why the route ahead was blocked until I started to see growing numbers of people camping along the side, various professional cycle team banners, and the iconic green livery of a Tour de France sprint marker across the road. Initial irritation turned into a small puja to the gods of cyclists and, by default, Tour de France lovers everywhere.

As there was nowhere to go until the road opened later that evening, I joined all the other residents, groupies and stranded, finding a spot  to settle in for a long wait until the Tour arrived later that afternoon. Sporadic team vehicles, officials, sponsors, media and merchandise cars, passing at varying proximity and speeds, from breakneck to 'buy a t-shirt' languid, kept us vaguely amused until 2pm ish when activity picked up and the tannoy announced the arrival of 'le Caravan'.

Le Caravan is the bit you never see on TV and probably never will because what people are really waiting for is to have things thrown at them by giant chickens and fromage on wheels. Floats representing each of the major sponsors toss key rings, fridge magnets, car window sun shades, haribos, biscuits, cheese, sausage, stickers, pens, water, newspapers, hats, and pennants (I got one of those). Children and grown up humans scrambled in the air and on the ground for the bread and circuses. 'Eye of the Tiger' and bubble machines pumped up the energy and a general feeling of surrealism.


After an hour of giddiness the caravan disappeared and again we were left with a mix of boredom and anticipation until close to 4pm when the sound of five helicopters overhead signalled that something was about to happen. In seconds, a lead group of cyclists, spotted jersey in front, blurred past. Then the peloton clattered through with glimpses of recognisable team colours; Moviestar and Ineos among them. Around them, between them, motorbikes and cars sped by with centimetres to spare. Another group passed to more cheers from the crowd; then a few stragglers; and finally just one, the cyclist no-one wants to be at the back of the field.

After waiting five hours in minutes it was over, and I realised that I was still stuck in Pierrefitt-Nestalas. It was too late for the evening bus and I tried hitching with no luck, so a €40 taxi fare finally got me to Luz. But seeing the hundreds of amateur cyclists freewheeling back down from the Col Du Tournelet, the end of the day's stage, and sitting with every woman, man and dog in lycra, from France, Spain, Italy, the UK, Australia and the USA, dissecting the result over a rosé while holding my hard won pennant, it was worth it.

 

All hail Newton’s sheep ...

Long have knitters suffered the mockery of others; scorned for our love of slightly out of fashion hand made sweaters waiting for the next Scandi noir to make them fashionable again; stereotyped as sad, lonely, most likely to be eaten by their cats when they die unloved and unnoticed in a cold apartment.

The sound of ridicule would only get louder if such people knew that, under the cover of winter's cold and dark, six of us gathered at the local yarn store for a 'yarn tasting' evening, to learn about the different properties of some of the 76 breeds of sheep in this country (plus a few foreign ones). As we  knitted up sample swatches, we analysed staple (how long), micron (how thick), crimp (how curly), lustre (how shiny), plie (how many strands spun together) and spin (a smooth worsted or a rustic woollen).

And all those qualities make wool, for which farmers in this country are paid 0.84p a kilo, miraculous. Sheep fibre does no less than explain the foundational laws of physics and maths. 

Want to get your head around topology ... any knitter knows that when you accidentally twist your joining row to knit in the round you are about to embark on making a Mobius strip ... and that's Topology 101. The Mobius strip has the mathematical property of being 'unorientable', which in a time of hardening identities seems a radical thing to be making. 

Spinners will refer to 'crimp energy’; the properties of yarn that cause it to twist and curl and fight back if you try to plie it in the wrong direction. ‘You can’t fight the crimp’, thus demonstrating Newton’s 3rd law of motion: 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. 

I'd argue wool also illustrates the laws of thermodynamics. The Conservation of Energy states that  energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another, i.e., from sheep to fibre to yarn to sweater. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that natural processes only run in one direction, and are not reversible. Once it's spun, there's no going back. Once it's steeked, there's definitely no going back.

So go ahead, mock as much as you want. Come the apocalypse, we're the ones you will be coming to for warm clothing and to be reminded about the underlying mechanics of reality.

Building walls ....

Trump is clearly not the first autocratic man to want to build a wall to protect his sand pit. China's Emperor Qin had a good crack at it. Berlin and Belfast's walls were not so visible from space but created their fair share of suffering. And in Britain ... Hadrian built 73 miles of symbolic power to delimit Empire from Barbarian (and judging by current politics I'm sure there's a few Scots who wished the wall was now a bit higher). With Hadrian's Wall came all the ingenuity that the Roman military industrial complex had to offer, including early renditions of blast barriers embedded in fort entrances to stop low wheeled enemy chariots rushing the gates.

Populating the forts along the course of the wall were some of the 56,000 soldiers in England at a time when the population as a whole was only four to five million. Troops came from Spain, Syria, Germany, North Africa with some attempting to serve out the 25 years it took to get Roman citizenship. Some stayed in the North, marrying into local communities and messing with the BNPs claim for some ancient, pure Britishness.

But not only did the Romans mix up the gene pool. According to our guide Colin, at Chester's Museum, Northumbria, they also bequested bits of the English language: 'fort' night (the amount of time you spent in the fort before returning to the main Roman camp); decimation (where every tenth man in a cohort was executed by his fellow soldiers when the cohort had done something naughty, like mutiny); 'you scratch my back' (after the need to get someone to scrape down your back to clean it in the communal baths); 'wrong end of the stick' (from the sticks with sponges on them used in the loo, and with the spongy bit obviously the wrong end you didn't want to get hold of).

The locals living around the excavated remnants have made an art of naming things after the wall: Hadrian's Haulage; Ale Ceasar; Hadrian Hotel etc. If Trump ever does get his border wall in the ground, I shudder to think that one day in the future, after it has crumbled like all walls and all empires governed by narcissists that think they will live forever, it will be excavated and put on show for tourists with a little gift shop nearby selling Trump lager, Trump chutney, and Trump fudge. As his wall is broken up and used in someone else's fence or road or sand pit, he will be reduced to a benign face on a tea towel.

Perhaps then, in the case of Trump's America, it is better to think of his wall as necessary for keeping his Barbarians in so they do as little damage as possible to the rest of the world.

Adventures of an anorak ....

My metamorphosis into an anorak continues ... took the long way to Shimla just so I could spend 5.5 hours on The Himalayan Queen, a narrow gauge railway covering 96km, 102 tunnels, 988 bridges including multi-storey viaducts, and 917 curves up to 48 degrees. Reaching 2075m, with gradients of 1 in 25, it was completed in 1903. Unfortunately the government is now building a new road below it, creating swathes of eroded mountain sides slipping away into the valley below, threatening to take houses, other roads and the rail line with it. The current solution is to spray patches of bare rock with concrete, and to position men with bags of tools at strategic points to patch things up along the way.

 

Two hours of sitting still ....

I know it's a cliche of my impeding age as I morph into a grumpy old woman, but it seems to be becoming increasingly difficult to get anyone to stay still for longer than it takes to check a twitter feed. My local cinema can’t run a 90 minute film anymore without at least three people having to go out to pee or get another drink. In a recent trip to the theatre, another 90 minutes without interval, it was all rustle and cough rather than rapt attention as I suspect Avengers fans had come in to watch Pinter’s Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston and were waiting for a fight to break out.

At a Sadlers Wells gig, featuring a no-interval, two hour solo performance of the full Bach cello suite accompanied by contemporary dance, the crowd was on its best behaviour to begin with, sitting up straight in perfect silence. But then edges started to fray somewhere around the half way point as backs collapsed and bodies leant forward blocking the view of people behind (the choreographer seemingly not taking into account the angle of the bleachers and sent her dancers too often too close to the front of stage so no-one in the circles other than the first row could see anything). Tersely whispered ‘please sit back’ started to reverb around the theatre, along with guilty explanations beginning with ‘but the person in front ...’. As the performance continued with the inclusion of sticky tape pentagrams on the floor, silent pauses, back projected shadows (which were pretty cool), ever more skipping and repeatedly throwing themselves on the ground, little plumes of light started flicking on around the dark as smart phones revealed just how much longer we had left.

Suck it up people! If it's art, suffer for it. If it's the Avengers: Endgame, sit still and pay attention to the pretty colours. Despite some warping ideas from quantum physics, time really will go no faster by checking your phone or fidgeting.

Le tren de ski

As evidence of the civility that comes with train travel I give you London to Schladming via Vienna:


1. Leave London on Eurostar early afternoon (unsurprisingly, generally the most expensive part of any European rail journey given the current British relationship with privatisation) to arrive in Paris for a leisurely early dinner. The city has conveniently arranged clusters of regional cuisine to match the train network hubs. So, Gare de l'Est means massive plates of proper things Lorraine, including sauerkraut and every edible part of a pig.





2. Catch the 19.06 Deutsche Bahn ICE to Frankfurt Flughafen with just one change at Mannheim in the middle: enjoy your comfortable, roomy seats, wifi that actually works and coffee that comes to your table.







3. Transfer to the joy of my life: the 23.54 OBB Night Jet to Vienna. OBB have hoovered up several of the night routes shortsightedly abandoned by DB in hindsight, as there appears a resurgent campaign across Europe to reinstate the night trains. €79 includes water, fresh linen, two excitable German travelling companions and the privilege of rocking to sleep as the train crosses the Alps (even cheaper if you can handle a six person berth but the luxury single occupancy is also there if you want it).










4. Wake up in Vienna at 08.27 (or a few minutes thereafter) having had fresh rolls and tea brought to your bunk as part of your €79.






5. Spend four hours in Vienna, embarrassing your Viennese friends by doing things like going to the Spanish riding school to see the Lippizaners because you've wanted to do that since you were a horse-mad kid; and eating in Cafe Central because Freud and Trotsky (and Hitler, which they don't mention in the publicity), and all the other tourists in Vienna did.

6. Jump on the 14.25 to Schladming with one quick change across the platform at Leoben. Most of OBB's trains plough through the Alps so there are spectacular views and big windows through which to see it.

And then, one stop before Schladming, with some of the worst blizzards the country had seen in decades, the local trains ground to a halt. But please note, British Rail Providers, it is when we have seen several metres of snow in such a short space of time that your snow ploughs can't keep the regional tracks clear, then, and only then, can you cancel a train and bring in the buses.

However, in fairness I have to confess that the return journey was less civilised, involving the continuation of the rail replacement bus service after a week of blizzards, now significantly overcrowded as they had to get not only increasing numbers of passengers in but our suitcases, skis and ski boots as well, followed by having to change buses 30 miles before Salzburg, then getting on a local train that was all stops, leading to the missing of subsequent connections back to London and the final resort of a flight home. We're still fighting with OBB, Trainline and God over who has responsibility.

Finishing Things

After 53 days over four years, 892km, 50,700 metres of ascent and 49,700 metres of descent, 100s of insect bites, several blisters, one pair of boots, a torch and a couple of t-shirts, I finally made Banyuls-sur-Mer, the end point of the GR10.

It had been a steep tumble down, one last cruel kick up on stony path, passing the fresh faces and good looking white clothes of those just starting out in Ibiza hats and impractical plimsolls, and then a final plunge into vineyards and olive groves. It would be pleasant on a cool day but the heat was scorching and the rubber of my soles felt increasingly bendy on melting tar. The trail eventually became a street and then a town that I’d been to before but didn’t remember in its current arrangement.

You think there would be some fanfare, particularly having belted out the last three hours without a stop in the full heat of afternoon, but the rest of Banyuls was heading to the beach, to a café, to the shops, completely uninterested in the sweaty remains of yet another hiker standing in front of the commemorative plaque on the wall of the Mairie. I took a selfie of my pack and headed for shade, a litre of red cordial on ice, another litre of water, a cup of Darjeeling, and later, a litre of coconut juice.

The heat made memories of this final stage an improbable smudge of hours into days, with only dust and cicadas threading time into a semblance of coherence as the trail rolled downwards to the sea. I tried to rank ‘the best of the GR10’, with the section from Plateau de Beille to Pic du Canigou as the possible winner with its deep valleys, rivers, peaks, and impromptu mountain lake picnic spots. But memories of Val de l’Aspe and l’Haute Pyrénées disrupt attempts to make hierarchies. So instead I made myself recall aspects of each day out of assemblages of trail, landscape, and body.

The first moments like the last ascend and descend, through forests, occasionally passing through or ending in a village that is dead to the world except for the few who return in the summer gathering respite from the towns. Between rifts, the trail opens up into a wide alpine valley and becomes a series of rural paths and old Roman road. There is a crescendo towards Pic du Canigou and then, en balcon, traversing its side, looking east through layers of blue, the ridges of foothills down to wrinkles and plains and lakes to the sea, the massif at my back receding behind cloud. Distance is interspersed with the need to scan the close at hand, looking to the feet to avoid cow pats, breaks in the trail, shaky rock hopping streams starting out life in narrow ravines. 

The landscape changes into dry, rocky escarpment that smells like home. Roc de France, one of several great granite outcrops, cracked and ready to roll, grandstanding over gnarly old beech lurching in all directions that look like they may come alive à la Lord of the Rings. I can’t get my bearings in the forest. It is soft under foot, padding accumulated over years of leaf fall, and dense canopy traps the heat so that despite the shade I drip sweat.

From Col de la Cirère, a partition is rent and heat radiates upwards and outwards, reverberating off stone. The trees become eucalypts but not quite, and the undergrowth becomes scrub smelling of sage. Farmhouses (mas), red tile roofs with Spanish outlooks, are tucked into corners with handy source pipes for impromptu showers. Archaeological sites promise that Hannibal has been this way. For a second, there is a motorway but also a cold Agrum from the first kiosk I see, downed in 30 seconds. It hits 41 degrees in the hell that is Col du Perthus and close to Col de l’Ouillat an entire family has conked out under some scraps of shade.

The final Col is a ‘drive to’ tourist destination, settled into forest; a place of giant pines quietly screening out the heat, overseeing BBQs and dog walking, camping and wild cows. The hum of cicadas heralds the arrival of fellow walkers: dripping Germans, French and the English Prof (long pickled in alcohol and nicotine but completing the Haute Route Pyrénées, so, respect).

The path weaves in and out of arbitrary frontiers; the border fence a sparse bit of barbed wire keeping out immigrant cows. Accents become less French and the yellow and red of Catalan is everywhere. There is fervent discussion at the table, and narratives of history recalled, handed down each generation over centuries to dig deeper the furrows of a dispute that is not going away any time soon. Other comings and goings overlay such conflicts. Passing time before dinner at Las Illas, I idle slowly around the village tracing Les Évadés: those fleeing Vichy France (including Jews, British pilots, and Walter Benjamin at some point); and coming the other way, those escaping Franco. The transnational also find their way here; the pied à terre expats, the hippies, the retirees.

The trail assembles such bodies, in passing, at a table or on a col, spaced out but connected in some way. A sense of stillness descends in rest, defining equanimity in the contemplation of cowbells and the sounds of a river, eating picnics and finally considering descent towards the valleys enfolding more and more people along the way, found tucked into nooks and crannies, creased into picnic spots among the rocks and the trees and the bushes, sitting by the side of the path in the middle of a forest, regarding life, circumnavigating mirror lakes to be disgorged at assorted hostels, gîtes and hotels.

I note the trail makes hard bodies, as I randomly pass the fit and naked, lying stoned on the rocks of a riverbed. I share a bunk with M&M, both in their 70s and both mountain walking for over 30 years with the wiry musculature of the much younger, such as the two Spanish runners I redirect through a forest; straight out of Vogue with nothing more on than black sports bra, shorts and wash board stomachs.

The motley crew gets motlier as we plunge down the final spurs and foothills to the sea, with each new batch requiring analysis. At the intersection of walkers and anoraks, a man at the opposite table is reading a book on European butterflies. I’ve seen some brilliant species today. There are three teenagers with springy ligaments and knee joints, one of whom carries an open umbrella for shade. There are the three young men, and Jackson the dog, sensibly avoiding a career by staying as long as possible in the mountains. A young woman all lean body and tattoos started out with a 22kg pack but is sensibly leaving some with an understanding gîte owner to pick up by car on her way back. There’s a young north American woman who really needed to speak English, had bed bugs, was abandoned by her friend when she realised what the Pyrénées entailed, and who hadn’t booked any accommodation. She was adopted by the Germans. There is Sam, who spends the afternoon drinking beer, then a jug or so of wine, then after dinner liqueur. I find him howling outside my very basic gîte, and being yelled at in turn by the locals, and get him inside where he collapses on a mattress downstairs. He wakes several times during the night to cough up a lung but spryly passes me the next day. Bastard. I analyse myself.

People come and go, and sometimes disappear. The gendamerie pull me over in Siguer and ask if I’ve seen a man gone missing. I had passed one going the other direction but too young I think for the one they’re looking for. My bad French may also have sent them in the wrong direction: le col and Lercoul being very similar when I say them.

I remember the wild things: the black horses of Plateau de Beille that investigate my yurt; fields of yellow and purple wildflowers; marmots setting off their high pitched alarm as wild cats stalk them over moraine. There is also the forest where the wild people live: in a clearing with pirate vans, tipi and horse. Little trails disappear into the shadows and the outlines of off grid shanties.

I remember wild weather. In the afternoon a storm would mostly threaten, with thunder barely raising itself into a clap and either deciding it can’t be arsed, passing over to somewhere else, or half hearted drizzle will accompany sleep until a clear morning repeats itself. But occasionally the clouds gather up their contempt into fat cumulonimbus and bring down hell on a hot earth, grumbling and cracking for hours. Half way to Porteille des Besines (2333m), it begins with a bank of black cloud speeding up the valley, swallowing me in its biblically dark path, and slapping wind and rain into the mountain. It ends after an hour just as abruptly, by passing through a curtain into a sprawling valley below. There must always be a willingness to be immersed in these elements, to be blown over by their great gusts, but just make sure to be swaddled in gortex while its happening.

After the outburst there is refuge: coffee, crepes, nutella, warmth. There is a feeling of gratitude to arrive at shelter, to sit on a wooden deck overlooking a river, as the storm growls its way down the valley, distant thunder echoed, replied to by an outstretched arm of black cloud. Ecogite Orrie de Planés is all brick and children, scoring slightly higher than the gîtes of Rouze and Esbints due to its immaculate sleeping quarters and Pink Floyd playing across the terrace in front of the pool. In the dining hall there are pictures of all the produce providers on the wall; the guardian points out whose veggies and cows we are eating.

Refuge Ras de la Carança is compact, with no showers except the icy blast of the rig next to the creek. The superbly clean composting toilet is 100m away. There are two roaming chickens and a dog that likes stick-throw and my yarn. Quietness descends with cards and scrabble, books and kindles. Py is a patchwork of medieval stonework, and 20th century cement and drains, ancient cemeteries and today’s artisanal beer. At Hotel Glycine, Arles sur Tech, I recharge myself and my gadgets, and plan to lie in on clean sheets, but the church bells peal ALL night, on the hour, outside my window opened to escape the heat on the top floor where the walkers are deposited so our smelly bags and bodies don’t offend anyone (though in fairness the hotel is very welcoming and the food is excellent, served in a courtyard under an ancient mass of ivy).


There is always the uncomfortable; the little scramble to Lescun paling into insignificance compared to Pic du Canigou’s chimnée; and that moment when I proclaim in bad French ‘Pour l’environnment, les Française doit arrêter manger le viande’, just as the rest of the table goes quiet and all French eyes turn to me. But most discomfort can be resolved by perspective. There are things over which I have no control; there are things I can get better at if I choose to practice (please, practice my French!); and the most difficult path does not have to be taken. I do not have to walk up an inclined ice pack and then leap from a hollowed out ledge onto the moraine at its edges. It may just be indicative of trust issues with my boots but I can always choose to scramble around the outside to get to where I need to be. 

Notes to self for the New Year 2019

Always remember that miracles can happen ....
It‘s 1.30am NYE, and tens of thousands of people are trying to get home on a sporadic night bus service. But lo ... what is this I see coming towards me down the street ... Yes! A taxi with its light on. Now it’s a whole block away so I think there’s no way it’s going to reach us before one of the throng of thousands hails it down first. But it gets closer and closer and I start to edge inconspicuously up the street past the bus queue trying not to draw any attention to it as my heart starts to beat faster at the possibility of a ride home (or from the several cups of coffee I now need to stay up past midnight) until, with just 20 metres or so to go, I unleash the inner seagull (that taxi/chip is mine, mine, mine) and sprint, throwing myself in front, and while the cabbie jams on the brakes, grab the door handle (rules of London cabs - they who hold the door handle own the cab) and throw myself and the Navigator inside. We are not allowed to spend any money for the rest of the month in order to recoup the cost but it was worth every penny. 

With such a good start to the year, what could possibly go wrong ....