Christopher Somerville

Tarka the Otter’s Devon

Aug 182007

Splashing through the shallows of the River Torridge, I was keeping half an eye out for otters. I knew my chances of seeing Tarka or one of his ilk mid-morning – even such a beautiful, hazy spring morning as this – were minimal.

Otters are essentially nocturnal creatures, and very shy of humans. But a mother and cubs had recently been spotted by day nearby, a mile or so downriver at Beam Weir. The sleekly furry little water-wanderers have been reported spreading once more along the rivers of North Devon after decades of near-extinction. Here in the country of the most famous – though fictional – otter of them all, I just couldn't prevent myself hoping against hope.

Henry Williamson wrote Tarka the Otter 80 years ago, covering hundreds of miles on foot with the local otter hunt and uncounted more on solo expeditions as he researched his story meticulously.

Wandering in his footsteps today around North Devon and the Country of the Two Rivers, Torridge and Taw, I found it quite astonishing to discover how little had changed at otter's-eye level – or, to put it another way, just how careful and accurate had been Williamson's descriptions of the river banks, the flood islands, the trees and meadows, the bridges, the flowers growing among the stones.

Roads have been built, railways closed, new housing thrown up around old town centres since Williamson lived and roamed here. But the rivers and woods, the high bogs and heather tracts of Exmoor have altered remarkably little.

Henry Williamson, born in 1895, served in the trenches during the First World War. This extremely sensitive, highly strung and romantic soul never recovered from the horror and the disillusionment he experienced in Flanders. From 1921 onwards he buried himself in the little North Devon village of Georgeham, seeking an escape from inner torment by exploring and writing about the wild and unfrequented landscapes of Exmoor.

When Tarka the Otter won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928, fame came, too. But it didn't make Williamson happy. He was a prickly customer, an outsider, who could be witty and charming or crushingly rude and intolerant as the mood took him.

In the 1930s he embraced Fascism with a naïve conviction that turned many of his friends against him. He almost drove himself mad, and did drive his family to despair and eventual break-up, by taking on the reclamation of a derelict Norfolk farm during the Second World War.

After the war he returned to Georgeham and spent much of the rest of his life in a spartan writing hut he built on the hill above the village. He died in 1977, author of dozens of books, recipient of no honours or public recognition.

All this sadness was far from my mind as I commenced my wanderings in the pawprints of Tarka. Through my hands in childhood had passed most of Henry Williamson's nature writings – Salar the Salmon, The Old Stag, Tales of Moorland and Estuary and, of course, the incomparable Tarka the Otter.

I loved them all – their romance and high adventure, their tiny details and flashes of humour, their absolute truthfulness to nature. The countryside of North Devon was for evermore to be seen by me through Williamson-coloured spectacles. For me he remains the supreme writer of the English countryside.

I started in the middle of Exmoor, its loneliest stretch of ground up at Pinkworthy Pond and the bare sweep of moorland known as The Chains. Heather and coarse grass squelched under my boots, water squirted with every step and the sharp, spring wind carried a curlew's mournfully bubbling cry.

Tarka would recognise the steely waters of Pinkworthy Pond where he hunted for frogs, and the remote goyal or valley of the Hoaroak Water down which he journeyed to the sea at Lynmouth. It was a boggy footpath that carried me seawards on the otter's track, a section of the 180-mile Tarka Trail whose waymarks I came across time and again on these foot expeditions in Henry Williamson country.

Down on the East Lyn Water I came to Watersmeet, a renowned beauty spot where the Hoaroak Water tumbles to meet the East Lyn among trees. Here, Tarka grappled with his mortal enemy Deadlock the otterhound, escaping hound and hunters to make his way to the sea and the safety of the coast.

I followed the cliff roads round to the great westward-facing scoop of Morte Bay, two miles of shining sand enclosed between the sentinel headlands of Morte Point and Baggy Point. Surfers were making the most of the wind-whipped rollers in the bay as I sat looking out to the Morte Stone, a rock rising from the tiderips where Tarka hunted bass. Later I caught the last of a spectacular red sunset out at the tip of Baggy Point, a favourite haunt of Henry Williamson's when he was living at Georgeham a mile or so inland.

In the morning I followed the final act of the Tarka drama from Great Torrington down the River Torridge, biking and hiking along the Tarka Trail from the mill house where Tarka hid on the waterwheel (still there) at the start of the hunt to the mouth of the estuary where the otter closed with Deadlock the hound and dragged him down to drown in the ebbing tide.

As the hunters stood round the body of the hound, "a great bubble rose out of the depths and broke, and as they watched, another bubble shook the surface, and broke; and there was a third bubble in the sea-going waters, and nothing more." So passed Tarka.

My last day in Williamson's North Devon I spent mooching around the writer's adopted village of Georgeham. The thatched cottage that he rented for £5 a year, last in a short row under the church tower, still carries the name he gave it, Skirr Cottage.

Just up the lane, a blue plaque has been fixed to the house to which he moved as his family expanded. But there's not a great deal else in Georgeham to commemorate the man who lies between Skirr Cottage and church tower under a black slate stone inscribed with his barn owl colophon or trademark and the simple comment, "Here rests Henry Williamson".

Up on the hill above the village at Ox's Cross, Williamson's writing hut is preserved in the grove of pine trees he planted. The views over fields, estuary and moor are stunning.

Inside the elm-board hut he built, Williamson's boots stand against the wall and his tatty old plaid jacket hangs across the back of his chair. A pair of spectacles lie folded on the blotter, as if their owner had just laid them down to go outside for a moment. I could easily believe that the man himself might appear in the doorway, perhaps to blare out, "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing in my hut?" – or maybe to allow me to shake his hand and tell him how his masterpieces of country writing had shone like beacons of delight in a boy's imagination.

Essentials

Getting there

Rail to Barnstaple (08457 484950, www.thetrainline.co.uk). Car: M5 to Jct 27, A361 to Barnstaple.

Getting around

Maps OS Landrangers 180, 181; Explorers OL9, 139.
Tarka Trail 180-mile circular walking trail connecting many Tarka sites. Meeth-Braunton (32 miles) suitable for cycling. Free Tarka Country leaflet with map, places to visit, information on cycle hire, refreshment stops: call 01271 336070.
Bike hire Torrington Cycle Hire, Station Yard, Great Torrington (01805 622633 ); Tarka Trail Cycle Hire, Railway Station, Barnstaple (01271 324202 ); Biketrail, The Stone Barn, Fremington Quay (01271 372586/07788 133738, www.biketrail.co.uk); Bideford Bicycle Hire, Torrington Street, East-the-Water, Bideford (01237 424123).

Staying there

Yoldon House Hotel, Durrant Lane, Northam, Bideford, EX39 2RL (01237 474400, www.yeoldonhousehotel.co.uk): stylish and welcoming, on the Torridge Estuary; double b & b from £110; short-break deals available.
The Croft, Ox's Cross, near Georgeham (inquiries 01271 816345, www.coastal-cottages.com): cottage where Henry Williamson lodged; self-catering weekly rate from £225 (low and mid-season), £545 (high).

More information

Henry Williamson Society (webmaster@henrywilliamson.co.uk, www.henrywilliamson.co.uk) offers talks, meetings, books, tapes and videos on the life of Henry Williamson. UK adult membership, £12; family, £15. Members can visit Williamson's Writing Hut at Ox's Cross, by arrangement.
Barnstaple TIC, The Square, Barnstaple (01271 375000, www.discoverdevon.com). Among useful publications available here are Tarka Country Explored by Trevor Beer, Pub Walks Along The Tarka Trail by Michael Bennie, and Henry Williamson, A brief look at his Life and Writings in North Devon by Anne Williamson and Tony Evans.
Background reading Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson (Puffin Modern Classics, £6.99). The Illustrated Tarka the Otter (Webb & Bower, 1985), with photographs by Simon McBride, is out of print but obtainable on-line.
www.northdevon.com

Dr Feelgood and the Canvey Delta

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May 052007

‘Cloud Nine, that used to be,’ says Chris Fenwick, as we gather round him on the Canvey Island sea wall. He points across Parkin’s funfair to a little upstairs clubroom beyond. ‘That’s where Dr Feelgood played their first gigs, a few dozen jammed in, a few quid if we were lucky, plus a pint each. I was really green as their manager then, but I knew enough to count the punters on the door!’

Pekka from Finland, a doctor by day and a Feelgood tribute band member by night, has a question – so when did things actually take off for Dr Feelgood? The Big Figure, the Canvey-born-and-bred R&B heroes’ original drummer, has been strolling the sea wall with us, a dozen outdoor-minded souls out of the hundreds of fans and followers who have come down to the ‘Canvey Delta’ – as we affectionately term this muddy, marshy corner of the Thames Estuary – to worship at the shrine of ‘the greatest local band in the world’. Now he nods. ‘Things kicked off big style when we started hitting the London pubs, forty miles up the A13 that way.’ The Big Figure points a leather-jacketed arm west up the murky Thames. ‘That was the pub rock scene back in the ‘70s. Bang! We were off and running. But Canvey was the backdrop, our home town, a very unpretentious and down-to-earth place. We were Canvey boys, pure and simple. Canvey made us all what we were. And we didn’t ever let each other forget that.

Lee Brilleaux, the gravel-voiced frontman of that famous first incarnation of Dr Feelgood, died of lymphoma in 1994. In his honour Feelgood fans gather in Essex from the four corners of the globe every year on the weekend nearest his birthday, 10 May, for the Lee Brilleaux Memorial. Chris Fenwick, the band’s manager since Day One, steers us on a nostalgic walking circuit of Feelgood sites around the sea walls of Canvey Island – sometimes, if our luck is in, with former Feelgoods for company. Then we drink a bathload of beer in the tiny, atmospheric Canvey Club, before sending the Oysterfleet Hotel reeling with a night of gale-force R&B. Revered rockers from the area – Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Kursaal Flyers, Larry Wallis of the Pink Fairies and Motörhead – jump up on stage with the current Feelgoods to trade Telecaster licks and thunderous drum fills. It’s a sweaty, chaotic, brilliant night, with any oversize egos left at the door and all proceeds to a local community nursing team.

Canvey Island, the flat piece of reclaimed marshland shaped like a horse’s skull that lies off the Essex coast of the Thames Estuary between Tilbury and Southend-on-Sea, is a Feelgood fan’s R&B Shangri-la. Where others see only a bleak shore seeded with chemical silos and cheek-by-jowl housing, we scent romance and adventure. No matter that many of us have come to know the real Canvey well, and have made good friends among the Canvey islanders. The moment we cross East Haven Creek we enter a parallel universe – the chancy but captivating world of Oil City where men are men and women are vixens, where devastating dames tap their scarlet nails on your wallet, and dodgy motors are forever screeching up with just the kind of bourbon-guzzling characters you’d step off the sidewalk to avoid.

It was Wilko Johnson, the Bard of Canvey, who created this fantasy island in our minds back in the early 1970s when he was Dr Feelgood’s guitar-slinger supreme. The Feelgoods were Canvey to their boot-heels, a quartet of sharply-dressed R&B belters who burst through the soft underbelly of the jaded post-Beatles music business like an uppercut from a private dick. Gruff-voiced Lee barked out the 100 mph, three-minute-maximum songs; John B. Sparks thwacked a bass impassively; the Big Figure played whipcrack drums. Wilko Johnson, meanwhile, thrummed his Fender Telecaster like a stuttering machine-gun and jerked around the stage like a bug-eyed madman. But the guitarist was far more than simply a showman. Wilko was a rock’n’roll poet, a master craftsman of tales and tunes. The songs he wrote presented sharp cameos of cheerful chancers down on their luck, of cheating girls and hard men, citizens of a harsh yet lively town he called ‘Oil City’. Each miniature chronicle came across as pungently and economically as a Raymond Carver short story.

‘Back when we were starting out,’ Lee Brilleaux once told me, ‘Canvey had an element of toughness, like most working-class places. Men were expected to be men. If you wanted to find a fight, you only had to spill another man’s beer or look at his wife. But there was a warmth about it as well. The funny thing was, Canvey was really a rural community in lots of ways. Everyone on the island knew us kids, and they’d look out for us. I grew up playing on the creeks, building pirate dens out on the marshes – a country boy’s background. We knew about tides, about birds and shellfish, alongside the bookies and the boozers.

’Wilko’s Johnson’s songs did not exactly detail the real Canvey Island, but they played around with it as a setting and an atmosphere. In Wilko’s Oil City, his hard-boiled protagonists watched the refinery towers burning at the break of day as they waited for some red-eyed rendezvous; they went places and stayed too long; they jumped up right out of a dream to find the front door wide open and the rain blowing in from the street. If a Wilko Johnson character was faced with an unfaithful girlfriend, he wouldn’t lose his cool or burst into tears: no, he’d just rasp, ‘I’m gonna get some concrete mix and fill your back door up with bricks – and you’d better be there waiting when I get my business fixed!’

One way of discovering Canvey Island – the Feelgood version – is to turn up at the Lobster Smack Inn on the sea wall on Memorial Friday morning, and join we Feelgood walkers on our R&B pilgrimage. Or you can nose it out on your own. The sea wall path runs right round the island, a superb 14-mile expedition. You can walk the eastern half with its tight-packed streets and shell-sand beaches, its marshes and huge estuary views. Or start at Benfleet station, cross the creek onto Canvey and strike out round the green western end, strolling for hours with only oystercatchers and marsh horses for company before ducking into the Lobster Smack for plaice and chips and a pint. Charles Dickens, that supreme appreciator of lonely marsh country, had Pip and Magwitch hiding out at the Lobster Smack in Great Expectations, and the old pub under the sea wall still somehow retains a tang of remoteness and of idiosyncrasy.

Wilko and his three Canvey Island compadres parted musical company long ago. The guitarist tours with his own band these days. Dr Feelgood are still on the road, too, other musicians having slipped into the shoes of the original Feelgoods over the years. Now the dust has settled, it’s no strange thing to see them all up on the stage on Memorial night, giving it plenty. And that’s what happens when Pekka and I swagger into the Oysterfleet this evening with our crowd, some sorefoot from the walk, all thirsty, all up for it – whatever ‘it’ might turn out to be.

Dennis the Dog is on the door and we give him a respectful hello. Then it’s into the ballroom, pints in hand. On the stage Wilko Johnson, the Big Figure and sundry band members past and present are giving the Feelgood songbook a good sound thrashing. ‘I looked for my baby all over in town,’ sings Wilko, up to the mic and back again with his tense clockwork strut, ‘I never seen so many women since the time they closed the factory down.’ He grimaces, bulges his eyes menacingly. ‘Midnight on the river, by the light of the flames; I’m staring at the water and I’m trying to fit a number to her name.’

We’ve stared at that water, too, today, and have seen the light of the flames flaring from the pipes on Shell Haven oil refinery. I stand wedged in between Pekka and Chris, glorying in the sheer escapist pleasure of hearing those tight, razor-edged Oil City tales of drinking, cheating and losing the plot as they should be heard – live, loud, and right here in their Canvey Island birthplace.

FACT FILE

Travel: Rail to Benfleet (08459-484950; www.thetrainline.co.uk), then taxi (01268-693355 or 680865). Car from M25 – Jct 29, A127, A130; Jct 30, A13, A130

Staying:Oysterfleet Hotel, Knightswick Road, Canvey Island (01268-510111; www.oysterfleethotel.de) – £56dble B&B.Lee Brilleaux Memorial Walk: Friday 11 May 2007; meet at Lobster Smack Inn, Canvey Island sea wall, 10.00-ish.

For details of gigs, recordings, Lee Brilleaux Memorial and all other information about Wilko Johnson and Dr Feelgood, visit www.drfeelgood.org

Extremadura, Central Spain, in Spring

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Mar 312007

Driving north across the plains of Extremadura I ran into an army of dust devils. Whipped up by the cold winds of spring, they rushed bowing and whirling across the flat landscape. In the vast fields the tiny figures of Extremaduran farmers, digging and hoeing in timeless labour, hardly bothered to look up as the spirals of dust and last year’s holm oak leaves sped by them.

Groves of crusty-barked cork trees, orchards foaming with pink and white blossom, rows of stumpy vines pruned hard back to the dark earth, brimming ditches lined with thrashing reed beds and whistling willows – these signs of a fruitful land were suddenly extinguished by a slate-grey curtain of rain marching in from the low dark sierras on the western horizon. All was blotted out. Five minutes later Extremadura re-emerged, arched over by a superb double rainbow in front of which flew a leisurely line of cranes, their ragged wings taking them north to their boggy breeding grounds thousands of miles from Spain. Rain, cranes, sharp winds and labouring farmers – all was exactly as my friend Frank Caňada, born-and-bred Extremaduran exiled to Britain, had described when he urged me to spend a few days of early spring in his native village of Navalvillar de Pela.

Spring and autumn bring the rains that turn the soil rich and the grass green, and they also see birds by the million on migration. Yet the regional name of Extremadura (‘extremely tough’) has been hard earned. This is a place that bakes in 40^o of heat in summer and freezes in sub-zero temperatures when winter strikes. And tough describes its people, often forced by poverty to emigrate, fiercely proud of their traditions, conservative to the backbone.

Ten minutes after knocking at the door of Frank’s parents, Antonio and Petra Caňada, I was sitting at their dining table, eating Petra’s home-killed pork and drinking tiny tumblers of Antonio’s home-made wine, with my rain-chilled feet perched to warm on the rim of a giant bowl of glowing embers. This was central heating, Navalvillar de Pela style, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Conversation spat and sparked as my Spanish phrase book took a battering. Antonio smiled ferociously at me from under his brows, an expression I well remembered from my previous visit to Navalvillar. That had been on a frosty January night, on the occasion of the village’s horse-centred Festival of San Anton. A confirmed and cowardly non-rider, I had found myself galloping recklessly between bonfires through the town’s narrow streets, under a starry sky. It was Antonio who had grasped me by collar and waistband and thrown me bodily up onto the horse before I could demur. Now, recalling my terror on that distant night, he smacked his legs and roared with laughter.

I lodged in the Casa Rural La Lozana in a back lane of Navalvillar – one of those splendid Spanish rural guesthouses that for neatness, stylishness and sense of welcome put most British B&Bs to shame – and spent every waking hour with the Caňada family. One day we picnicked by a lake in the Sierra de Pela, and I climbed with Antonio to a peak jewelled with violets and daisies. On Sunday, a beautiful cold day of blue sky, we went to church among flocks of black-clad crones, and I recognised the priest as the one who had stood with holy water on the Feast of San Anton to bless the cattle, horses, dogs, hamsters, cats and goldfish brought to the church by members of his congregation.

One day I spent on my own, venturing north through another rainstorm to the Monastery of Santa Maria at Guadalupe. This is arguably Spain’s most famous place of veneration. The huge walled monastery contains glittering treasure – paintings by El Greco and Goya, embroidered altar cloths, jewelled crosses; also an ivory Crucifixion, said to have been carved by Michelangelo, whose miniature Christ I saw kissed with great reverence by a young, black-clad woman. The monastery is also the setting for a tiny statue of our Lady of Guadalupe, so reverenced in medieval Spain that the Virgin of Guadalupe became patron saint of all Spain’s territories in the Americas. Dwarfed by angels, saints and pinnacles in her fabulously elaborate altarpiece, the Virgin stares serenely over the heads of tourists, guides and worshippers alike.

On a cold, cloudless morning I left Navalvillar and drove north. Fertile fields gave way to the harsher rock of the Sierra Brava. Snow capped the peaks, and the stone walls of the city of Trujillo shone pale on their high saddle of ground. Here I met up with Martin Kelsey, an expatriate Englishman who runs the Birding Extremadura company. Martin, I’d heard, might be able to get me within sight of that giant elusive bird of the open grasslands, the great bustard. Ever since learning in childhood of the extinction of Britain’s great bustards – hunted to non-existence on Salisbury Plain by 1832 – I had longed to catch sight of the big turkey-like birds with their handsome chestnut breasts and flashing white wings. The wide grassy plains of Extremadura, where male great bustards meet in spring to ‘lek’ (join in communal display) and mate with the rather drab females of their species, seemed my best bet, especially under the expert tutelage of a guide as experienced and passionate as Martin.

First, though, we took a swing through the city of Trujillo. It is just the right size to walk around in half a day, an evocative jumble of medieval houses and tight, steep lanes centred round a square where Francesco Pizarro stands a-triumph in statue form. The ruthless conquistador, who with his 180 men suppressed the Inca nation in the 1530s, inspired others to grow rich on the blood of South American peoples. Trujillo owed its prosperity to Pizarro and his followers. Nowadays he poses in the town square, sword on hip, staring from beneath his coal-scuttle helmet at the snogging teenagers and hurrying housewives of Trujillo.

My day with Martin yielded ornithological wonders – hen harriers flapping over the pastures, a colony of storks in a clump of dead trees, golden-plumaged griffon vultures and a rare black stork in cliffs above the River Tagus. It was nearer Trujillo, out in the broad green expanses of the Belen plain, that we went looking for my dream birds.

‘These are steppes,’ Martin pointed out as we drove down a bumpy road, ‘grasslands that have never been irrigated or intensively managed. They’re full of flowers and insects, and therefore of birds. Great Bustards do very well here – I reckon there might be five or six thousand in Extremadura.’

A stunning view opened out towards the snowy mountains. On a grass ridge not far away, chestnut-coloured dots were moving. Five magnificent male great bustards paced the ridge with long, powerful strides. Their white underparts, glossy brown necks and fox-red backs showed up dramatically against the sunlit green of the grass. We watched through Martin’s telescope as two of the birds bowed to each other, fluffing up their chest plumage and flicking their wings upside down to display the brilliance of the white under-feathers.

‘They’re practising lekking,’ said Martin. ‘In a few weeks’ time the females will be here, and these boys will have their work cut out to make their mark.’

Spring seemed stirring all over the steppes and sierras of Extremadura. Breaking free of its winter chains, the hard land felt full of vigour, full of life. I stood holding my breath, watching the great bustards flick from white to chestnut and back to white, and marvelled at my luck.

TRAVEL: FACT FILE

Getting there: Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) fly to Madrid from London Gatwick, Luton, Bristol and Liverpool; Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from East Midlands to Madrid and Granada, and London Stansted and Liverpool to Seville; Iberia (www.iberia.com) from Madrid to Badajoz

STAYING: Navalvillar de Pela – Casa Rural La Lozana, Calle Moreno Nogales 18, 06760 Navalvillar de Pela (Badajoz). Tel 00-34-924-824-291/924-860-428; www.lalozana.com. Dble B&B from around £42.

Trujillo – Casa Rural El Recuerdo (Martin and Claudia Kelsey), Pago de San Clemente, Apartado de Correos 28, 10200 Trujillo (Càceres). Tel 00-34-927-319-349; mobile 609-684-719/609-684-631; www.birdingextremadura.com. Dble B&B from £45; evening meal inc. wine £12.

BIRDING EXTREMADURA: www.birdingextremadura.com. Guided tour including packed lunch: £75 (1 person), £85 (2), £90 (3).

INFORMATION: www.spain.info

Walking in Tenerife

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Feb 172007

Walking in Tenerife

At the time of year when late winter is lingering over north-west Europe, everyone gasps for a half-term break with a smidgeon of sun and a smattering of fresh air. In the Canary Islands the clouds and the sun arrange things pretty comfortably between themselves – particularly among the steep little volcanic ranges in the northern half of the ‘capital island’, Tenerife. North Tenerife is green, it’s lush, it’s heavily forested, and it’s mostly temperate – that’s to say, cool cloudy mornings and warm sunny afternoons. What could be better for family walking? You can get in your 3 or 4 hours after breakfast and be by the pool or on the beach shortly after lunch. Late strolls in the cool of the evening are delicious, too.

One of our best family holidays, back when the children were little, had been spent walking the coasts and hills of northern Tenerife. Now, though, as we headed back to Tenerife after an absence of several years, our family dynamic had altered. Mary, the daughter that we had first taken to the island as a child of ten, had become a young woman of independent mind, while Ruth had metamorphosed from a university student who wouldn’t stir further than the nearest club into someone whose great weekend pleasure was exploring the hills and woods around London on foot. Bribery and cajolement, threats and promises were no longer part of the ‘let’s go for a walk’ scenario. It was going to be quite a change.

If you want to explore the green heart of Tenerife on foot, you can hardly do better than sign up with Gaiatours. It was their guide Pedro Mederos Fumero who introduced us to a couple of walks that stayed in the mind long after the holiday was over. Dark-haired and intense, Pedro turned out to be a mentor in a thousand – not only capable of reeling off the names of flowers and birds, but knowledgeable about every inch of his home ground, and as full as a shanachie of folklore, tall tales, traditional cures and general island enchantments.

We headed out for the Anaga peninsula at the north-east tip of Tenerife, a wild region of knife-edge ridges and canyons plunging to the sea, all clothed in the pungent and beautiful native greenery called laurisilva. ‘There’s not much laurisilva left in Tenerife,’ Pedro told us as we drove the corkscrew ‘dancing road’ out to Chamorga. ‘Laurels, shrubs, herbs – it’s something special, and Anaga is the best placed for it on the island.’

The lonely hamlet of Chamorga sat out at the end of the peninsula, its red pantiled roofs held down against the wind with large stones. Ruth and Mary were soon two dots on the distant mountainside as they strode out along the stony path. Pedro walked at a more sedate pace with Jane and me, pointing out the early spring flowers that spattered the rocks among the omnipresent prickly pear and yellow flowering genista. Wormwood grew there in tall jagged clumps. ‘The old people,’ said Pedro, ‘when they feel a bad spirit in the house, they make a fire with that and the smoke drives away the devils. Now you see this little plant? It is lengua de gato, the cat’s tongue.’ We let the fat round leaves slip between our fingers and felt their caress, as rough and dry as the lick of a cat.

Volcanic dykes formed banded stairways for us to climb. Out at the end of the peninsula we skittered along a high ridge and stood looking down on the Faro de Anaga, a stumpy, salt-rusted lighthouse like a toy far below on the edge of the sea. For two pins Ruth would have run down there and back, but with the afternoon leaching away it was time to head back through the terraces and laurisilva thickets to Chamorga.

Over the next couple of days we struck out on some walks by ourselves, trusting to the Sunflower guidebook and our own five senses. A memorable outing was to the Parque Nacional del Teide, the extraordinarily baked and contorted landscape around the snow-covered cone of Tenerife’s majestic 12,199-ft volcano, Mt. Teide. The Roques de Garcia route around the bed of the volcano’s original crater is a thoroughly popular and well-known tourist attraction, and we found it a stunningly impressive piece of natural theatre as we wound under cave-pocked cliffs and across slopes wrinkled like rhinoceros hide, passing lumps, bumps and stumps of dramatically coloured and shaped volcanic extrusions.

Our favourite walk of the lot, however, was the descent of the barranco or gorge of Masca, another expedition in the company of Pedro Mederos Fumero. Masca, a crowded little village perched on a precarious saddle in the mountains, was soon left behind, and for three hours we dropped slowly down the barranco beside a stream under tremendous rock faces, with Tenerife’s sister island of La Gomera caught in the blue vee of the sea ahead. The barranco has its own microclimate; the north coast had been cold, grey and rainy when we left it that morning, but here in the cleft of the mountainside we were warm and dry under a blue chink of sky.

The walls closed in until we were threading the gorge like ants in a corkscrew. Squirming under a great boulder that blocked the route, we slid into a cold pool and went on down through drifts of sowthistle and spurge towards the beach and our ferry boat. Pedro pressed his hand to his heart as he glanced up the towering walls to the sky. ‘I really love this gorge – the quiet, the flowers and the little sound of the water. It’s like all the best of Tenerife put into one place.’

Walking practicalities

Guided walks:

Gaiatours (tel 922-35-52-72; mobile 656-94-63-70; gaiatours@teleline.es; www.gaiatours.es ) offer guided walks in all parts of Tenerife.

Pedro Mederos Fumero (c/Dr Gonzalez 36, 38410 Los Realejos, Tenerife; tel 656-94-63-69) is an excellent, knowledgeable guide, very strong on local flora and folklore. He charges about £90 a day (i.e. about £22.50 per person for a party of 4).

Ranger-led tours, generally free, are available in the Parque Nacional de Teide (telephone for details: 922-29-01-29), and also in the Anaga peninsula (tel 922-63-35-76 or 25-93-29)

Independent walking:

Landscapes of Tenerife by Noel Rochford (Sunflower Books) contains 30 detailed walks in the north of Tenerife, as well as many car tours and picnic suggestions.

35 Tenerife Walks by David and Ros Brawn (Discovery Walking Guides) is another reliable guide.

NB – both books’ estimated timings for their walks are for tough, quick walkers – most mortals on holiday should allow much longer!

5 suggested walks

Chamorga to Faro de Anaga

(From Santa Cruz by car – road nos.TF11, TF12, TF123; bus 247)

Bear right on track up behind café, along spine of promontory, to viewpoint over lighthouse. Allow 2 hours there and back; 3-3½ hours if you want to reach the lighthouse, a steep descent/ascent.

Roques de Garcia, Parque Nacional de Teide

(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – coast highway TF5 to Jct 32, then TF21; bus 348)

A well waymarked circuit from Parador de la Cañadas. Hot, dry, rubbly underfoot – take water, hat, suncream. Allow 2-3 hours.

See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walk 11

Masca Gorge

(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – TF5, TF42 to Icod de los Vinos and Santiago del Teide, TF436 to Masca; bus 325 to Santiago del Teide, 355 to Masca)

Paved path, then stepped, then bouldery and rubbly gorge path, downhill all the way. Only for the sure-footed. Water, hat, suncream; walking stick/poles are helpful. Allow 3-4 hours.

From Masca beach, ferries to Los Gigantes (tel 922-86-19-18 or 922-86-07-26; www.losgigantes.com/nashira.htm); frequent bus returns to Masca, or taxi (£10 approx.)

Puerto de la Cruz, Bollullo Beach, and Café Vista Paraiso in Cuesta de la Villa

Lovely coast walk, ending with steep climb up rubbly hillside; best in afternoon/evening with sun behind you. Allow 2½-3 hours; or you can walk back from Bollullo Beach.

From Cuesta de la Villa, bus 101 returns to Puerto de la Cruz.

See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walk 1

La Caldera walks

(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – TF5, TF21 via Orotava, forest road to La Caldera signed on left just after Aguamansa; bus 345)

Many circular walks through the forests are waymarked from this popular picnic place which boasts a bar-restaurant, barbecue ovens, a children’s playground, toilets and picnic tables.

See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walks 3, 5, 6, 7 for more strenuous suggestions.

Fact File

Tour Company:

Thomson (tel 0870-165-0079; www.thomson.co.uk) offer a week at the very friendly and comfortable Riu Garoé Hotel in Puerto de la Cruz, handily placed for the best walking.

Tenerife bus travel: TITSA bus company (tel 922-53-13-00; www.titsa.com)

Local information: Puerto de la Cruz TIC, Plaza de Europa (tel 922-38-60-00; http://www.abouttenerife.com/tenerife/towns-puerto.asp)

Spanish Tourist Office: 2nd Floor, 79 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6XB (tel 0207-486-8077; www.tourspain.es)

Cadiz at Carnival

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Jan 272007

So much fun is exactly what it’s all about in the ancient Andalucian port city of Cadiz when Carnival comes round. I have often heard of the noisy late winter frolics here, of the riotously costumed groups of murgas or singers who tour the narrow streets packed onto floats, dealing out insults, sarcasm and innuendo in multi-part harmony. No-one is sacrosanct, from double-dealing local officials to the mayor, from national politicians to the Spanish royal family. Every street and lane gets jammed with crowds in the last stages of hilarity, and there’s no point even thinking of going to bed.

I have arrived in the city at breakfast time, aiming to have a quick look around while the streets are still negotiable. Cadiz is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Spain, a major port for over 3,000 years, a springboard for epic voyages of discovery, a cultural sponge. I wander the tight streets of the 18th-century quarter on its sea-girt peninsula, beside the port where big ships line the quays, through marble-paved squares whose gutters are spattered with brilliant dots of colour from last night’s carnival confetti. In the Plaza de las Flores, Peruvian vendors of cheap sunglasses and leather wristbands are already about, their broad faces upturned in entreaty to passers-by hurrying to work.

As the day advances the city of Cadiz runs ever more slowly, its shopkeepers and café waiters half distracted as they stand dreaming of tonight’s high jinks. It’s not a bad idea to get out of town for a few hours. David Rios of Ornitours has kindly agreed to take me off among the birds in the hills and countryside behind the city – this part of Andalucia is wonderful for birdwatching at this time of year.

We drive out to the lakes near Medina Sidonia, where explosive little scribbles of song from Cetti’s warblers are bursting from the scrub bushes. Soon, says David, there’ll be the annual influx of nightingales, making the woods ring with their beautiful fluting songs. We find the storks already paired and sitting on giant bundle-like nests at the top of telegraph poles and mobile phone masts. Everything in the bird world seems ready for spring and the mating game.

David can see I’m not much of an ornithologist, and he shapes the day accordingly. In the Venta El Soldao at Benalup we eat zurrapa de higado y carne de cerdo – bowls of squashed meat with caps of bright orange pork fat butter, scooped and spread on toast – under bunches of rabbit snares dangling from the ceiling. ‘When I was a boy,’ muses David, ‘people here ate little songbirds for tapas. A poor country and no food, you see.’

Beyond Benalup a lush country where horses graze chin-deep in grass leads to the abrupt little limestone walls of the Sierra de Los Alcornocales. Here a ladder that would have UK health and safety officials reaching for their closure notices rises up the rock face to a cave covered in 5,000-year-old paintings – a stag with great back-swept horns, a doe with her fawn sheltering under her belly, a clutch of flamingos, and a man with an axe in his hand.

We drive up winding mountain roads and come to Taco de Sancho, a white cliff rearing out of the trees where a dozen griffon vultures are perched on seemingly impossible ledges, their eggs already laid in the nests beside them. As we stare through the telescope and admire their bald heads and plumy neck ruffs, the last rays of the sun strike gold from their feathers and from the rock behind. It’s time to head back from the lonely heights, down towards Cadiz and the night of genial madness that lies ahead.

I walk the breezy alamedas or gardens beside the bay and out along a dark causeway to the castle, watching green waves slapping at the medieval stonework in the moonlight. Strange figures are seen scurrying into town – a pair of Chinese women straight off a silk screen, a gang of jolly bakers with floury faces under ten-foot hats. I drift townwards, too, nursing a paper cup of San Miguel bought from one of the long outdoor bars that have sprung up in every laneway. The streets are lit by carnival lamps and lanterns, and I shove my way to a corner under one of these. Confetti rains down from upper windows like psychedelic snow. No possibility of movement from now on – I have got myself wedged in a posse of mountainous ladies out for a good time, and my beer has already been upended by a dimpled elbow.

It’s about eleven o’clock when the first of the carnival floats lurches round the corner, its wheels brushing my toes. The float is crammed with 30 youngsters in shiny tuxedos, with centre-parted hair and Ronald Coleman moustaches. Drink and excitement have polished their cheeks. On catching sight of us they lean melodramatically outwards, eyes rolling upwards, hands pressed to hearts. Ten-part harmony envelops the street. ‘You know our beloved Clerk of Public Works?’ they sing. ‘He is one of the biggest jerks. He rips up the sewers and he leaves them to spray. And then he goes to dance the night away, away, awa-a-a-y! …’ And so on, belabouring a politician famous for enjoying himself at the public’s expense.

I catch as much of the meaning of the song as my neighbours care to translate for me – not very much, but this would be a marvellous spectacle even if the murgas were singing in Martian. They bend into the crowd and haul a couple of young women into the float as if landing a pair of fish. At last the tractor coughs out blue smoke, the float lurches into motion, and the singing lounge lizards and their captives fade off down the street. They are replaced by a trailer full of ‘pregnant’ singers – husky young men with hairy arms who fondle their swollen bellies as they sing about Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia and their newborn daughter. ‘Oh, Letizia! Oh, Felipe! You’ll have no worries feeding her or clothing her, you wealthy dad and mother. But oh, Letizia! Oh, Felipe! When are you going to try for another?’

On come the floury bakers (topic: the opening of a fast food joint in town), followed by a convocation of female monsignors in suspenders and high heels (scandals in the presbytery). It’s not exactly Lorca, and the singers will give Placido Domingo no close call, but my neighbours don’t care. Those are their friends and acquaintances up there behind the funny hats and false bosoms, and these are the subjects closest to their everyday lives.

In a shower of straw hats and a rain of gold-wrapped sweeties the floats pass by under the flickering lanterns. It’s a medieval scene, and as I gaze towards the waterfront after a party of singing conquistadores in plastic armour, dazed by the music and bonhomie, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a file of bearded men in coal scuttle helmets and glinting breastplates come swaggering up to Carnival from the darkened harbour, out of the shadows of the past.

Fact File

Getting there: Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) fly to Malaga from 9 UK airports; Iberia (www.iberia.com) from Madrid to Jerez and Seville; Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from London Stansted to Jerez and Seville.

Tour company: Mundi Color Holidays, 276 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1B6 (tel: 0207-828-0021; www.mundicolor.co.uk) organise tailor-made holidays to all parts of Spain, including Cadiz.

Ornitour Birdwatching Tours: 00-34-956-794-684; www.ornitour.com

Accommodation: NB Accommodation in Cadiz during Carnival is usually booked solid months in advance. Cadiz Tourist Office (see below) will advise. For early-bird bookers for Carnival 2008, two good bets are Hospederia Las Cortes de Cadiz, Calle San Francisco 9, Cadiz 11004 (tel 956-220-489 or 956-226-517; www.hotellascortes.com) which is centrally located and therefore right in the thick of the noise and music (you can sleep all next day!), from £60 dble per night, and the Parador de Cadiz, Avenida Duque de Najera 9, Cadiz 11002 (tel 956-220-905; www.paradores-spain.com/spain/pcadiz), nicely placed on the waterfront a little away from the main action, from £75 dble per night.

Cadiz Carnival 2007: 12-22 February

Cadiz Tourist Office: 956-008-450; 956-807-061; www.cadizturismo.com.

Spanish Tourist Office: PO Box 4002, London W1A 6NB; 24-hr info and brochure 08459-400-180; tel: 0207-486-8077; www.tourspain.co.uk; www.spain.info.

Sauris di Sopra to the Malga Pieltinis, Carnic Alps, NE Italy

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Sep 012006

‘When we see the mountains pouring water like this,’ sighed Ennio Rizzotti, ‘we know it is special rain.’ He gestured elegantly out of the rain-spattered, steamed-up car window at the spectacular waterfalls that were leaping out of every crack and canyon of the Carnic Alps. ‘I called the meteorological office in Udini last night to ask about the weather for today, and their reply was: "Ennio, what do you think?" And I think … we will be a little wet today!’

It had been raining fantastically for 24 hours, and showed no sign of letting up. The Carnic Alps, up in the north-east corner of Italy, were shrouded in thick shawls of mist and rain, every view insubstantial, smoky and dream-like. On higher ground it was turning to snow, as occasional glimpse of whitened peaks confirmed.

Not the ideal day to be setting out for a walk in the mountains, maybe. But there was a perverse, gritted-teeth pleasure in the prospect of experiencing the Carnic Alps in one of their equinoctial bad moods. And with Ennio Rizzotti – mountain guide, rescue leader and Himalayan adventurer – as my companion through the shadowed valleys, I knew I need fear no evil.

The road to Sauris snaked up through countless bends and tunnels. The mountain village had been completely isolated until the road was built after the Second World War to connect it to the outside world. We passed the turquoise-coloured Sauris reservoir, then wriggled through Sauris di Sotto (Lower Sauris). The dark wooden chalet houses sported hay-drying rails on their balconies and stacks of firewood piled for the winter against their walls.

On the edge of Sauris di Sopra (Upper Sauris) Ennio and I pulled on rain gear, snapped open an umbrella apiece and set off up a steep track through woods of beech, larch and pine. Ennio’s sharp eyes were soon zeroing in on edible fungi under the trees. ‘Many Sauris people come to pick them at this season. You should try this one.’ He pointed to an alarming-looking blob of orange jelly in the beech leaf carpet. ‘This is very good – chanterelle. Delicious!’ and he formed an appreciative circle with thumb and forefinger.

I was content to snack on wild raspberries as we climbed on through the dripping woods. We were making for the high pasture belonging to the Malga Pieltinis, one of the seasonal alpine ‘malghi’ or farms whose short summer occupancy produces milk, butter and cheese with a flavour that’s out of this world. The cattle had been up in the pastures since mid-June, Ennio told me, and were now ready to descend for the long winter to their parent villages in the valley below.

‘See these stones?’ Ennio pointed out a chute of pebbles and boulders across which the path threaded its way. ‘Avalanche path. If there comes an avalanche in winter, it will fall down here.’ Looking over the mountain slopes I could see dozens of similar destruction trails smashed by runaway tumbling snow. Ennio, himself twice buried by avalanches, shrugged fatalistically as the rain pinged off his umbrella and pearled in his eyebrows. ‘A little snow, a little rain … but you should expect such events if you go among the mountains, no?’

The path was sloping steeply now, climbing up the forest banks in slippery steps formed by the knotty roots of pine and larch. We passed a flock of lop-eared sheep being marshalled hither and yon by a pair of furiously yapping dogs while their shepherd looked on, a fag wedged in the corner of his mouth. Then the track steepened still further, with glimpses down to the vivid blue-green eye of Sauris reservoir opening in the dark face of the forest two thousand feet below.

The wind strengthened as the path climbed above the tree line, giving the pair of us a rough shove as we came out onto the level ground of the Pieltinis pasture. It was a striking sight – a pair of peaks sprinkled with fresh snow rising over an undulating green plain, on the far side of which the high pasture farm lay streaming smoke from its chimneys.

By the time we reached the buildings we were pretty cold and wet. A convoy of dogs came out to bark us in under the covered verandah, where a group of men gazed silently as we walked by. In the farmhouse kitchen Signora Adami stood at a wood-fired stove, stirring a big bowl of fresh polenta with a wooden paddle. Various girls and young women were warming themselves by a big open hearth while a couple of boys helped set a long table for what looked like lunch for an army. On the walls hung huge cow-bells, holy pictures and the snarling head of what must have been the father of all wild boars.

Once Ennio had explained what he and I were up to, the blank faces broke into smiles. Dreadlocked and dread-bearded Arduino Adami, the young cheese-maker of Pieltinis, showed us round his dairy where a big copper cheese vat steamed gently. Beyond in the cool dark cheese room, round truckles of formaggio di malga and brown bombs of smoked ricotta filled the shelves. Dry, damp, crumbly, salt, sweet – we nibbled and tasted and tested Arduino’s finest produce until lunch was called from the farmhouse.

Ennio and I were halfway into our wet raingear and preparing to leave the Adami family to its Sunday meal. But neither mother nor father – a heavily moustached man with hands like shovels and a basso profundo rasp of a laugh – would hear of it. Take that coat off right now! Put away your umbrella! Didn’t you hear me say that the polenta was ready? Well, then!

It was a scene such as I thought had vanished from modern Europe – a family sitting down 25 strong, along with the guests that God had sent them, to eat rabbit, chicken and potatoes straight out of the bowl. A great block of yellow polenta, sliced with cheese wires, took pride of place.

As the temperature dropped outside and the rain turned sleety, the firelit kitchen grew to seem the friendliest and most delightful place on earth. We ate and drank till our buttons squeaked. Over a glass of grappa infused with pine cones, two of the burly sons offered to drive Ennio and me back down to the valley. It was just as well. Full to the brim with drowsy contentment, I couldn’t have set out on that rain-sodden homeward path to save my life.

STEPPING OUT

MAP: Carta Topografica Tabacco 1:25,000 Sheet 01 ‘Sappada-S.Stefano Forni Avoltri’

TRAVEL: Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) fly to Trieste. A4, E55 to Trieste, Udine and on to Exit Carnia; SS52 to Tolmezzo and Ampezzo. In Ampezzo, right to Sauris di Sotto (13 km); continue 4 km towards Sauris di Sopra. Just before small bridge, with first houses of Sauris di Sopra visible ahead, dirt track on right (signed ‘2/E’) hairpins up from road. Park just up track.

WALK DIRECTIONS: Climb track through trees, a steep path at first, then easing. In 1½ miles meet a junction of tracks; one descends to right, but keep ahead (waymark ‘3/B, Malghe’) on path, following red, white and red ‘sandwich’ waymarks, numbered 218 on trees and rocks. In 300 yards bear steeply left uphill on path through woods, keeping a sharp eye out for ‘3/B’ signs, red-and-white waymarks and red arrows showing change of direction. In 2/3 mile, watch for the path forking up to the left to top of bank. From here you can see the Malga Pieltinis between its peaks; follow path to reach it.

Return same way; or follow road, keeping careful eye on map, via the malghe of Vinadia Grande, Malins and Festons back to Sauris di Sopra.

LENGTH OF WALK: 7 miles there-and-back, Sauris di Sopra to Malga Pieltinis; , miles there-and-back; 9 miles round trip via all four malghe.

CONDITIONS: Forest tracks and paths, some slippery and steep, some narrow; tricky waymarking.

REFRESHMENTS: Malga Pieltinis (open mid-June to end-Sept) offers lunch of cheese, meats, salad etc, also cheese, butter etc for sale. Other malghe, open for a similar season, offer much the same. NB – family hospitality such as Christopher Somerville enjoyed is at the pleasure of the occupants, and is not generally on offer!

ACOMMODATION: Borgo di S. Lorenzo, 33020 Sauris di Sopra (tel 0433-86221; ilborgodisauris@tin.it; www.carnia.org/alberghi/ilborgo) – self-catering apartments from £28 a night for 2. Eat at the neighbouring Ristorante ‘Pame Stifl’ (tel 0433-866331) and drink their Sauris-brewed beer.

GUIDE: Contact Ennio Rizzotti through Tarvisio tourist office (see below) or privately (Via Segherie 15, 33018 Tarvisio – UD; tel (00-39) 0428-644194/0333-290-1914; enniorizzotti@libero.it). Ennio Rizzotti charges c.£125 a day – i.e. £25 a head for party of 5.

INFORMATION:

Tourism: Consorzio Servizi Turistici del Tarvisiano, Via Roma 10, 33018 Tarvisio, Italy; tel (00-39) 0428-2392; www.tarvisiano.org.

Also: www.viamalghe.com.

Mud-walking in the Wattenmeer, Langeoog, East Friesian Islands, Germany

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May 012004

The shrieks that the teenagers from Kleve let go when they first felt themselves sliding knee deep into the black Friesland mud might not have been quite loud enough to waken the dead. But they certainly put the wind up the oystercatchers. Piping frantically, the birds with the shell-cracker red bills went skimming round our walking party as the screams, giggles and cries of ‘Scheisse!’ echoed across the salt-marshes and tidal mud flats of Langeoog island.

Arvid Männicke, his blond corkscrew curls flapping in the sea wind, laughed heartily at the trap he’d led us all into. Toting a shrimping net and a garden fork on his shoulder, he strode on ahead towards the open shore. An impish sense of humour allied to a broad knowledge of local wildlife, weather and tides make Arvid, owner of Langeoog’s sailing school, a good man to go mud-walking with. He’d invited me to join the school party in order, as he had put it, to ‘have a really good time getting muddy and dirty and wet!’

Langeoog is one in a chain of twenty-three North Sea islands that lie in a giant arc some five miles off the coasts of Holland, Germany and Denmark. The islands are remarkably similar. Almost all are attenuated strips of green-carpeted sand dune, each one with a red-roofed village, a north coast consisting of a giant windswept beach, and a southern shore of marsh and mud. Germany owns seven of these little sea-bound slips of land: the East Friesian islands, in whose flotilla Langeoog takes position towards the middle.

Apart from their lonely, moody beauty, what gives the Friesian islands their unique character is the nature of the shallow tidal sea, the Wattenmeer, that separates them from the mainland coast. This Wattenmeer is an enormous tidal sea some 280 miles long but only a few miles wide at best, filling and emptying twice a day as the North Sea tides ebb and flow between the islands. Here is the largest continuous area of tidal flats in the world, home to an astonishing number and variety of birds, plants, fish, insects and organisms too small and far too numerous to list. And the best way to get to know it, Arvid Männicke had assured me, was to get out there in your bare feet at low tide and feel that cold black mud squidge up between your toes.

Whatever those teenagers from the German/Dutch border, youth hostelling on Langeoog for a week, had been expecting of their Wattenmeer expedition, it obviously wasn’t this. Cawing and shrieking like gulls round a tip, they plodged through the mud. The girls threw their arms supportively round each other; the boys tripped and shoved one another. All good dirty fun, and the sheer effort of keeping their feet had sobered them by the time we reached firmer ground towards the edge of the salt-marshes, every pair of legs now clad in black stockings of mud like some saucy Berlin chorus-line.

‘OK,’ said Arvid, gathering us around him in a circle, ‘here we are in the salt-marshes, which the tide floods twice a day. So you can see that everything that lives and grows here has to be able to put up with salt, with being covered in water, and with lots of wind. Eat and be eaten – that’s the Wattenmeer’s rule. And humans eat out here, too.’

Arvid picked a stem of pink, papery thrift, and plucked up a fistful of feathery wormwood. ‘The islanders of Langeoog would make tea out of this,’ he told the youngsters, showing them the thrift, ‘to help them pee.’ Tee-hee-hee, went his audience. ‘And this one’ – he thrust the wormwood under their noses to let them sniff the sharp smell – ‘you could make into a very bitter tea, or put into your schnapps to make it delicious. An easy decision, I think!’

We reached the point where the salt-marsh gave way to the mud proper. This was no soft, treacherous slough of the kind that Arvid had led us through for fun, but a giant swathe of firm mud flats, ribbed by the tide. They stretched for more than a mile in breadth, out to the edge of the gradually incoming tide on the skyline. A thin spatter of rain brushed by. The air was full of the squeak and bubble of wading birds – oystercatchers, sandpipers, redshank, plover – and the raucous cursing of black-headed and herring-gulls.

When you walk out onto the Wattenmeer mud and feel it cold and faintly sticky under your bare soles, you are walking into a world of horizontals – the softly glinting mud flats, the line between sky and earth, the faint bar of the mainland across the water. Only the sinuous wriggle of a pale silver creek defied the straight and level, along with the stubby upper works and masts of the ferry inching its way along the narrow water channel through the mud banks to its mainland harbour of Bensersiel.

Five great estuaries feed the Wattenmeer, and the North Sea’s twice-daily tidal flood doubles the amount of water in the shallow sea. From a boat at flood tide, the Wattenmeer seems an immutable part of the North Sea, its islands truly isolated and marooned in the ocean. Someone sailing here for the first time would never guess that much of this mighty sea is shallow enough to stand in and still have your head above water; nor that the water is a timid impostor, regularly fleeing away between the islands to leave only thin curls of streamway and isolated pools behind.

We sifted shrimps and tiny molluscs out of a sea puddle, working from side to side, our hands held flat in the manner of shelduck beaks. Cockles and tellins seemed to float into our palms. Arvid pounced on a cockle before it could withdraw its digging mechanism into the shell, and passed it round the group so that we could admire the transparent, rubbery foot.

By now the teenagers were completely absorbed in the fascination of watching multiple forms of life emerge from the seemingly dead and empty mud. But they were still teenagers enough to want to make farting noises in the mud with their bare feet and to go sliding monstrous distances in a spray of black filth. Arvid, though, knew a trick worth two of that.

‘Right,’ he said, drawing a circle in the mud with the garden fork, ‘gather round here.’ The youngsters shuffled into a ring. ‘Just mud, isn’t it?’ He smacked the ground with his hand. ‘Can’t see a single living thing, can you? But all those birds we’ve heard and seen, the ones with the long delicate beaks, the curlews and the avocets – they can’t deal with the tough shellfish, can they? So there must be something in this mud for them.’

The fork plunged into the mud and brought up a fat wedge. Arvid broke it apart. Inside the foot-square block of stiff black matter were at least a dozen lugworms, fat and somnolent. They lay pulsing on Arvid’s palm. ‘And there’s millions of millions more down there,’ he told us, stamping with his bare foot. ‘The whole Wattenmeer is literally solid with them – one enormous larder for the birds.’

We made it back to the sand dunes and the island road without too many more muddy mishaps. The youngsters departed for their youth hostel. Back in my room at Langeoog sailing school it took me a good half hour to scrub myself clean. A faint, persistent fragrance of marine mud followed me round all day. And images followed me, too – impressions of that strange, bleak Wattenmeer shore packed with wildlife seen and unseen, the sense of endless space and time, and the melancholy, haunting piping of oystercatchers.

SLITHERING OUT

MAP: Langeoog Inselkarte map available from Langeoog Kurverwaltung (see below)

TRAVEL: Fly to Bremen with BA (www.ba.com), Lufthansa (www.lufthansa.co.uk), BMI (www.flybmi.com) or KLM (www.klm.com)

Train to Esens. Bus to Benserseil and ferry (04971-9289-25; http://www.langeoog.de/, or plane from Harle (04464-94810; www.inselflieger.de)

Island ‘train’ will take you and your bag to Langeoog village. Someone from Segelschule Langeoog will meet you.

WALK DIRECTIONS: This is a guided walk with Arvid Männicke (contact details: see Accommodation below). Route can vary, but always takes place on south coast of Langeoog and includes dunes, salt-marsh and mud. Cost: £3.50 adult, £2.50 child.

LENGTH: 2 hours approx.

CONDITIONS: You’ll get filthy up to your knees! Wear shorts or easily rolled-up trousers, and a warm windcheater.

REFRESHMENTS: None en route; cafés and bars in Langeoog.

ACCOMMODATION: Segelschule Langeoog, Postfach 1423, 26465 Langeoog (tel 04972-6699; fax 6611; segelschule.langeoog@t-online.de; http://www.segelschule langeoog.de inexpensive self-catering (apply for details)

Many other self-catering, hotels, B&Bs etc on Langeoog – see Information below.

INFORMATION: Kurverwaltung Langeoog, Hauptstrasse 28, 26465 Langeoog (tel 00-44-1972-6930; fax 693-116; kurverwaltung@langeoog.de;

http://www.langeoog.de/

Tolfa Mountains, Lazio, Italy

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Oct 012003

‘Ciao, Giovanni!’

‘Giovanni, buon giorno!’

‘Eh, Giovanni, come stai?’

Everyone in the little hill town of Tolfa knows Giovanni Padroni. The greetings rang out from doorways and on street corners as we prowled the steep cobbled streets under curlicued balconies and sagging lines of washing. Giovanni knows architecture, history, herbs, archaeology, farming and flowers, poetry and plays. He speaks of one subject as lightly and informatively as another. He loves his native town with a passion. I was lucky to have him as a walking companion and guide around Tolfa and its hilly countryside on this cloudy late autumn day.

The Tolfa mountains rise some thirty miles north of Rome, in thickly wooded ridges that climb to peaks a couple of thousand feet high. The ancient Romans built summer villas there to catch the cool breezes; alum miners dug canyons into a few of the hillsides. Other than that, the outside world has tended to pass by, rushing to and from Rome and leaving the Tolfa mountains as a high green world apart.

‘In 1799 Napoleon’s troops destroyed a lot of the town,’ ruminated Giovanni, cigar-holder between his teeth, as we stood breathless in the castle ruins on the peak of La Rocca, contemplating Tolfa’s great fan of pantiled roofs spread out below. ‘We don’t know exactly which part. In fact we don’t know a lot about the town’s history. But it’s full of beautiful old buildings – come, I’ll show you.’

We descended ancient paved laneways, ducked under Renaissance arches, and leaned gossiping in medieval doorways carved from the white volcanic trachite that caps the dark tufa lava-stone of the district. Views from the town’s many belvederes were stunning – fifty or sixty miles from the Apennines to the coast, Tuscany to the hills beyond Rome.

‘As kids in Tolfa just after the war,’ Giovanni reminisced, ‘we didn’t have a lot, but we had fun! Chariot racing along the Via Roma, wearing our school tunics like cloaks; sword-fighting with peeled chestnut switches, climbing La Rocca and the other cliffs.’ He puffed out fragrant blue cheroot smoke, grinning. At the Fontana di Canale laundry tanks below the town we gave good-day to a woman slapping her soapy socks and shifts (‘Ah, Giovanni! Buon giorno!’), and walked on down old cobbled droving tracks into the valleys to the east of Tolfa.

Pink blobs of cyclamen showed in the hedge roots, and the chestnut groves and medlar bushes were heavy with fruit. We sucked the sweetly rotting medlar flesh from the husks and spat out the seeds while Giovanni expatiated on the iniquities of the Allumierasci, the inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Allumiere, Tolfa’s deadly rival since time out of mind. ‘Provocative people,’ declared Giovanni. ‘They can’t get over their inferiority complex. And, let’s face it – we Tolfetani haven’t been able to stand them since the Pope gave one-third of our land to them five hundred years ago.’

We climbed an old track deep in the oak woods and came to the grassy plateau of the Pian Conserva. ‘Wild chicory,’ said Giovanni, digging up a plant with his knife. ‘Boil it, dry it, cook it in a pan with garlic, oil, peperoncino – we call that cicoria ripassata in padella. It tastes … ahhh! …’ He raised his eyes to heaven in silent reverence.

Giovanni and his friends have helped uncover many of the Tolfa mountains’ archaeological sites. Some of the most remarkable are associated with the pre-Roman civilization of the Etruscans. Here on the Pian Conserva, Giovanni showed me a unique section of Etruscan roadway, cut some ten feet down into the soft volcanic tufa. Wheel ruts made 2,500 years ago were still clearly visible in the floor of the cutting. Along the sides of this manmade canyon opened the arched black mouths of Etruscan cave tombs.

The Pian Conserva holds around 150 Etruscan tombs, ranging from simple hollows in the volcanic tufa rock to elaborate ‘houses of the dead’. In these round, domed tombs, silence falls – the silence of cold stone. Bats cling to cracks in the vaulted roofs. We inspected the stone beds on which the dead were laid, their heads resting in special compartments with a raised semi-circular rim. One bed held two of these, side by side, perhaps carved for a mother and her child.

Outside the tombs under a cloudy afternoon sky we idled on the grass, peeling apples and chatting. ‘My school friends from northern Italy couldn’t read Dante,’ mused Giovanni, ‘it was like a foreign language. But for Tuscans and for us here in the Lazio region it was like talking in our own dialect. Language – it’s really something to learn to love. I loved Shakespeare the first moment I read him. That man had a million things to say, and a million ways to say them, don’t you think so?’

At last we heaved ourselves up and went on, descending to the floor of the valley on white dirt roads among ploughed slopes whose mineral-rich volcanic earth shaded from grey through brown to red in the span of a single field. The peak of La Rocca beckoned ahead, a dark shark-tooth of rock against a darkening sky.

We battled down an overgrown green lane and came in the dusk to the hot springs of Il Bagnarello. Two square bathing pools lay cut into the rock, their clear blue water dimpling as the spring stream ran through them.

‘Good for rheumatism and for bad skin,’ said Giovanni as we sat dangling our tired feet in water as hot as a steaming bath. The splash of the spring and sigh of the evening wind were the only sounds. ‘A quiet place,’ Giovanni murmured to himself, dreamily, letting the volcanic water soothe the stone bruises away.

STEPPING OUT

MAP: Tolfa town hall has local maps for sale – CTR at 1:10,000 or IGM at 1:25,000. At Ignazio Padelli’s shop (Via Roma 106, tel 076-692-017), Ignazio will draw out the route for you on the map.

TRAVEL and ACCOMMODATION:

Exclusive Destinations, Wellington Gate, 7-9 Church Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN1 1HT (01892-619650;

info@exclusivedestinations.co.uk; www.exclusivedestinations.co.uk) – flight from London Heathrow or Gatwick, hire car, 3 nights dble B&B at La Posta Vecchia Hotel (06-994-9501; info@lapostavecchia.com; www.lapostavecchia.com): £676 per person. Superbly comfortable former palace, ½ hr from Rome Leonardo da Vinci airport.

Alitalia (0870-544-8259; www.alitalia.co.uk) fly to Rome Leonardo da Vinci.

Avis (0208-268-5482; www.avis.co.uk ) rent cars at the airport.

Driving: from airport, A12 motorway (NB Cerveteri-Ladispoli jct. for La Posta Vecchia) to San Severa junction; Tolfa signposted from here. Park in Piazza Nova, the main square.

WALK DIRECTIONS:

From Piazza Nova keep ahead along Via Roma to Piazza Vecchia. Left downhill past fountain; in 150 yd, right down slope of side road Via Canale, curving downhill past new houses, out of town to pass laundry troughs. In ½ mile pass barn on right; at electricity pole in fork of road just beyond, go left downhill on cobbled way to meet tarmac road. Turn right along road for ¾ mile.

At bottom of long slope, road goes under power lines and makes sharp right bend (3 warning arrows). Left on dirt road here (La Rocca and castle ruin seen over your right shoulder). Continue for ¾ mile to T-junction of track in woods, by electricity pole. Right up sunken track; at crest (150 yd), left over fence (2 blue blobs) into fields with Etruscan tombs (explanatory notice-board). Return to track. Left (downhill) to cross tarmac road by factory. On along flat dirt road on valley floor. In ¾ mile, left to cross Virginese River on concrete bridge. In 250 yd, right off dirt road at crossing of tracks (stone with blue blob on left), aiming for La Rocca dead ahead, to recross river and follow white road uphill.

This country road will take you back to Tolfa (3 miles). To visit Il Bagnarello hot springs – after 1 mile, where road bends sharply right and thicker concrete surfacing starts (beside electricity pole, where stone-walled track joins from left), keep ahead along grassy lane with vineyard on right. Lane descends among bushes to cross river (NB boulder scramble – could be dangerous after heavy rain) and climb, following electricity cables, to T-junction with good dirt road.

Left along dirt road. Cross river (probably dry) by humpback bridge (careful of hole just beyond!); continue to farmyard on corner of another dirt road. Left along road. By grey metal electricity pole and green metal gate, fork left; in 200 yards, left down steps to hot springs.

Return up steps; right along track to green gate; left to road. Right to Tolfa (3 miles), either walking or by request stop Damibus (c. 12.30 p.m., 4.45, 7.25).

LENGTH: c.11 miles.

REFRESHMENTS: None en route – take picnic and water.

READING: The Tolfa Mountains by Kari Austbo (from Padelli’s shop).

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