A Restful Weekend

 I peered at the face on the screen in some confusion.

"Excuse me, do I know you?"

"I'm your Blue Mountains correspondent," replied the other with some asperity.

I cast my mind back, a vague trickle of memory pattered over the jagged rocks of my mind.

"Oh yes, that's right.  Blue Mountains correspondent.  Yeah."  A little more seemed to be required so I followed up with an incisive question.

"Um so, how are things going up there?"

"Great," she responded with an enthusiasm so forced that I would have been suspicious if I hadn't been desperately trying to remember her name.

"What can I do for you?" as interrogations go this was rather poor but I was still trying to regain my equilibrium.

"Would you like to come up and visit for a couple of days?  It's a beautiful time in the Mountains and we'd love to see you again."

Faced with such an outright lie I finally focussed my attention.

"Really?"

She nodded with a smile normally described as brittle but which in my view had progressed to "splintered".

"No ulterior motive at all?"

The smile slipped or rather disintegrated and she finally broke down and admitted that she and her husband were currently caring for their two grand children under the age of four while the parents of said infants were rather selfishly enjoying a honeymoon.  Despite this revelation for some reason I agreed to make the journey to the Blue Mountains and give them another mouth to feed.

The word being the absentee stepfather of the deed it was only a few days later that I found myself on a train heading towards an idyllic weekend in the Blue Mountains with old friends.  I arrived and was handed a baby which promptly screamed at me.  To be fair that was my reaction as well.  Once both of us had been calmed down and greetings exchanged I offloaded the terrified two year old while the elder child politely ignored my existence and ran around the house.  I handed over the bottle of wine I traditionally bring to make a pretence of contributing something to the proceedings and my correspondent seized it with a desperation that made me seriously doubt if I would be drinking anything other than cordial tonight.

Once the children had been strapped into a soundproof room for the night we discussed the next days plans.  I was rather surprised to learn there were next days plans.

"We'll go to a park by the lake," announced my correspondent.

"I'm not particularly interested in parks," I replied.  My correspondent stared as if she had forgotten my existence.  Then as if I hadn't spoken she continued, 

"The kids want to feed the ducks."

"What to?" I asked.

The next day it turned out the threatened park visit wasn't an alcohol induced fever dream (I had managed to wrestle the wine bottle from my correspondent's frantic grip at some point during the evening) and some time after breakfast I, two small children that I had not the slightest legal responsibility for and my correspondent piled into a car and amid hysterical wailing that reached the heavens set out for the lake.  Said lake had a children's playground on the shore which was sensibly surrounded by the type of fence that adults fondly imagine is childproof.  This seemed like an excellent moment to drop the kids off for fun while I and my correspondent did literally anything else but apparently children's fun has to have adult witnesses.

Once inside the happiness compound I was assigned responsibility for the elder child, a girl of utter fearlessness who liked to run around no matter what might be in her way.  My duties were to keep an eye on her and steer her away if it looked like she was about to run into something that could kill her.  For a children's playground there were actually quite a few things that fitted that description and the little girl cheerfully ran towards all of them in turn.  After I had collapsed gasping on the ground my correspondent relented and asked me to look after the other child, a two year old (I think) whose mobility was somewhat impaired by the fact that he was recovering from a broken leg and he stopped to wail miserably every thirty seconds or so.

Fortunately he liked daisies.  He certainly ate enough of them.  This kept him quiet and my duties were reduced to intervening when rocks got in among the daisies.  He was quite a catholic eater and would happily chow down on the rocks if we let him.  It was imparted to me that letting him was an undesirable situation.  I got covered in drool fishing rocks out of his mouth while I left my correspondent to deal with the older child's penchant for high speed self harm.  Just when I thought we were going to have to put daisies on the endangered species list my correspondent returned and announced that we were going to feed the ducks.  This meant leaving the child protection compound and heading to the lake shore in the company of one child who would probably want to run into the water and another which would try and eat a duck if it got too close.  I was assigned the potential duck eater as the one I should attempt to protect from drowning.

The duck feeding actually went well.  Both children obviously liked hurling bits of bread at ducks and if the number of ducks who turned up was anything to go by so did they.  They say you shouldn't feed bread to ducks but then they say a lot of things and you can't listen to all of them, especially when you have two small children in your charge and drowning them is definitely off the table (I made a discreet enquiry to my correspondent on this subject so I can speak with authority).  Frankly I think the greatest danger the bread posed to the ducks was the sheer weight of it dragging them to the bottom.  It is fair to say that rarely have a small group of ducks been so well fed.  That's before you factor in the fact that I managed to hit a couple of ducks when tossing bread so there were probably one or two concussions as well.

That evening we listened to AC/DC and the Village People ostensibly for the entertainment of the children.  The young boy liked AC/DC so much that he stopped wailing hysterically.  Having heard AC/DC before I felt no obligation to follow his example.  Eventually I was put to bed with a dummy and a warning that if I didn't shut up my parents would be called.

The next day we intended to go to various gardens (the Leura Garden Festival is on) but the younger of the two children expressed his opinion of this suggestion by projectile vomiting over my correspondent and by the time she had washed, changed clothes, washed him, changed his clothes and generally contemplated her life choices it was decided to take them to another park.  This park had no lake but more play equipment that could hurt or possibly maim a fearless young child which who would tackle anything presented to her.  It also had a busy road which the young girl took a delight in running towards just to see how long it would be before her grandfather headed her off.  There were also cockatoos that looked big enough to swoop down and carry off the younger child should he irritate them.

Eventually when the adults were sufficiently exhausted to decide that the children must be tired out I was dropped at the nearest railway station and bid a fond farewell.  My correspondent commented that I should come up again soon.  Then we both laughed, my laugh was edged with hysteria.

Wrapping Things Up

 I had a wedding to go to.  This in itself was a surprise as I have reached the age where most of my friends are already married or licking their wounds after divorces with no intention of going around again.  However I have also reached the age where the children of some of my friends are now getting married and, possibly out of pity, one of these invited me to be a witness to his nuptials.  Out of surprise I accepted and realised that I now needed to acquire a wedding gift for the no doubt deliriously happy couple.  As it so happened I didn't need to acquire a wedding present but I didn't find that out until after I had bought one so they could damn well take it and look grateful.

Once I had successfully purchased an item which the recipients could at least pretend to appreciate without straining credulity too much I ran into the next gift related issue; wrapping.  For some reason gifts need to be wrapped.  I'm not entirely sure why.  Here you are handing something to a person that they have neither requested or done anything to deserve but apparently this isn't enough.  This offering has to be encased in multi coloured paper whose sole reason for existence is to be torn to shreds by human vultures slavering to get their hands on the loot.  Woe betide if you neglect this flimsy little token.  You lay yourself open to accusations of disinterest or laziness.  A tide of criticism from your social group will rush towards you leaving you gasping on a beach like a pilot whale with navigation issues.

Let's be clear, the wrapping does not protect the present, it is usually so thin and flimsy that it needs wrapping itself for its own protection.  The sole reason for the existence of wrapping is to add to the level of environmental devastation inflicted by the present buyer on a long suffering world.  I am also a dreadful present wrapper.  Jagged lines, sometimes ill matching paper and random bits of sticky tape result in a final product that looks like I got halfway through blending a clown before giving up.  This along with a card carefully chosen for its inappropriate nature is then presented to the recipient who mumbles a few words of thanks and rapidly hides it before any children can be traumatised at the sight.

For the present mentioned above I decided to get the store to wrap the thing for me.  This would result in a level of professionalism to the wrapping which would raise serious doubts as to whether I bought the thing at all and hopefully would drop the environmental karma points on the shoulders of the store personnel rather than myself.  Unfortunately I wasn't satisfied with the result.  In fact I was so dissatisfied that I decided to rewrap the thing myself when I got home.  The gift was somewhat bulky so I decided to be prepared.  I entered one of those stores that used to be called newsagents when they sold things that purported to inform us of the news of the day but are now reduced to selling lottery tickets and wrapping paper.  I was desperate to ensure that I bought enough wrapping paper so I bought five metres of the stuff.  I had to wait while they bulldozed a forest especially.  

Once I had assembled all the necessary materials, wrapping paper, scissors, sticky tape (there was a time after I broke a finger when friends and relatives received gifts sealed with surgical tape) I proceeded to not so much wrap as mummify the gift until finally a misshapen lump with odd angles and strange extrusions signaled my success.  Or if it didn't signal my success it signaled the end of my attempts.  Frankly the resultant parcel looked like something that could have come from the mind of HP Lovecraft if he had decided on a career in gift wrapping rather than spectacularly racist horror stories.  

With this wretched thing nestling in a bag hiding its shame from a fearful world I journeyed to the wedding, dumped it on the appropriate table and fled before anyone could associate my name with the hideous lump.  This attempt at anonymity was pointless as a single glance at the gift table would identify the giver although I'm prepared to bet that no one would be able to identify the present beneath.  Which I believe is the sole point of wrapping paper.

Travelling Hopefully - Cow Success and Snake Envy Edition

Of course my trip to Andorra La Vella triumphant though it was served as a mere interruption to the serious business of walking.  For a small country there is a lot of walking that can be done.  Since the country is about eighty percent mountain and twenty percent valley there is always another slope to be climbed and usually another spectacularly scenic valley to descend into when you’re tired of climbing (about twenty seconds in in my case).  In one of those valleys is a Tibetan bridge.  That is its modelled on bridges in Tibet apparently.  It is actually a giant suspension bridge that allows you to cross from one slope to another without the tedium of plodding through the valley below.  

Since the only people likely to come this far are probably quite happy with the valley plodding concept there seems to be little point the bridge.  The previous sentence is actually an understatement.  There is no point to the bridge.  It doesn’t lead to anything and the only thing you can do once you’ve crossed is turn around and come back unless you just want to keep walking until you violate the border of one of Andorra’s neighbours.  The whole thing is a tourist attraction pure and simple.  You have to pay for a ticket to get across as well as a shuttle bus to get you to the bridge in the first place.  Some of our company paid up and dutifully crossed the bridge.  Others like me continued proudly walking on terra firma which is why the bridge venturers got back to the hotel comfortably before us.  Next time I’ll take the bridge.

The final walk (at least it was the final walk for those of us whose knee finally gave out after giving good and faithful service) was a rather special one.  We headed into Sorteny Nature Reserve.  The trip notes gushed over the wildflowers and it wasn’t just flowers.  Marmots, wild boar, chamois and ptarmigans would be just some of the wildlife we didn’t see on the walk.  

Our walk would take us through valley meadows, up through forested slopes, onto somewhat more alpine appearing meadows, across narrow streams and finally end at a tarn or lake where lunch would be enjoyed.  At least that was the agenda if you were sensible.  Those whose last shreds of commonsense had deserted them could continue up to the top of a ridge where excruciating effort and the danger of vertigo would be compensated by 360 degree views over the countryside.  I gazed at the lake and the effort required to reach it and decided I had quite enough views to be going on with.

The lake was beautiful and the views across the valley stupendous and I regretted my decision not to climb the ridge not in the slightest.  I and one other sane person relaxed in the sun by a lake for an hour or so while our comrades struggled first up and then down the ridge.  We smiled smugly on their return and didn’t feel the need to greet them as they staggered in.

While wild animals didn’t exactly hurl themselves in front of my camera I was greatly pleased to encounter a meadow occupied by a number of rather handsome cows.  The clanging of their cowbells almost drowned out the shrill chirrups of the marmots who attempted to compensate for being invisible by making enough racket to wake the dead.  I was thoroughly satisfied with the presence of cows until I learned that a fellow walker had encountered and photographed an adder which the rest of us had missed.  I nearly wept with envy at the photographs.  Of course I could have been happy for my companion’s success and complimented him on some quite impressive photos.  There are many things I could have done in my life.

Also there was a report of bears.  We didn’t expect to see any but it certainly added a little urgency to the return journey.

Travelling Hopefully - Shoe Shops and Football Shirt Edition

 After three days of walking our tour leader graciously permitted us to have a free day.  He suggested we might like to go for a walk.  The response was somewhat underwhelming.  I for one had plans for my sudden liberation. Having seen some of the countryside I decided to visit Andorra La Vella the capital some twenty odd kilometres down the road.

La Vella sits in the central valley on the only piece of ground wide enough to hold more than two buildings abreast at roughly the same elevation.  There is an old town of course perched on the top of a small hill.  This being Andorra the small hill is perched directly below a large mountain.  The rest of the town seems to consist of duty free stores and designer shops mostly selling shoes.  You could be forgiven for assuming footwear was the only clothing Andorrans possessed.

I had little interest in duty free stores and none at all in designer footwear but I did want to get an Andorra football shirt and take a look around the old town.  Collectively this can be achieved in about twenty minutes, it will surprise no one who knows me that I somehow managed to take several hours to achieve these modest goals.

In fairness the old town was accomplished fairly easily.  I visited the Basilica of Sant Esteve and took a quick tour of the large (for early Andorra) house which was the centre of government until quite recently.  The government now operates out of a newer but not much larger building just across the square.  Apart from a handful of the obligatory narrow streets and elderly buildings that’s pretty much it for the old town.

The football shirt proved somewhat more problematic.  Andorra FC has a shop right next to the national stadium and I confidently made my way to said stadium to make my purchase.  I arrived at what I’m pretty sure was the shop to find it full of workmen doing renovations and no clothing of any kind on display.  Somewhat at a loss I wandered the rain drenched streets (did I mention it was raining?) and wondered what to do next.

Eventually I came up with a bright idea. A long street reached from the old town the length of La Vella and spilling into the next village which La Vella in a case of urban sprawl in miniature has largely enveloped.  This street and various associated malls etc was lined with shops purely directed at selling stuff to tourists.  I can say the preceding with confidence as there simply aren’t enough people in Andorra to provide a market to keep them all running.  Surely amongst these temples of retail there would be a souvenir shop selling football shirts.

Two and a half hours later having walked the length of La Vella I began to doubt my strategy.  Apparently if I didn’t want designer shoes or three quarters of a tonne of cigarettes (and a giant toblerone) then the city had nothing for me except a statue by Salvador Dali standing in the middle of a shopping mall.  I did take a photo because I felt obliged to have something to show for the day.  Finally almost weeping in despair I ventured into a large sporting goods outlet (shoes prominently on display) and found my target hiding behind a shoe display.

Covered in glory (and rain) I repaired to a local spa where a pleasant young woman rubbed bamboo over me.  For some reason I paid for this experience.  Feeling the day couldn’t get any better I decided to catch the next bus back to the hotel.

A modest but not unimpressive basilica 

Travelling Hopefully - Up Hill and Down Dale Edition

The time came more quickly than I hoped.  The next day after breakfast we gathered in sensible shoes and various other walking accoutrements and with varying degrees of enthusiasm set off for the bus stop.  The bus took us part way down the valley before abandoning us by the side of the road.  Our guide pointed at a narrow path clinging to the side of the hill that loomed over the road and indicated we should proceed.

I reminded myself that I had chosen this holiday and set forth without complaint.  A portion of that previous sentence is almost certainly a lie.  The up went on for quite a way, was replaced by down before circling back to up again.  Our guide assured us that this was simply an introductory walk and we wouldn’t always be gazing down onto the main road.  My only problem with the main road was that it seemed a long way down and we needed to get back there at some stage.

Our walk skirted the central valley which is the most built up area in Andorra largely because it’s the only place with a certain amount of semi flat land.  Still we managed to pass some pleasant villages and a small Romanesque church which received more photographic attention than it probably deserved.

We eventually plodded back to our hotel which was situated in the village of Soldeu which essentially caters for the ski season and as such appeared to be largely closed.  Apparently walking in the Summer is a tourist activity the Andorrans haven’t quite figured out.

The next day we did our first “proper” walk which took us around some of the more rural and picturesque parts of Andorra which, central valley not withstanding, is most of it.  There was climbing, descending and more climbing plus scenery.  For a small country Andorra is vastly overburdened with scenery.  The Pyrenees rise all around and crammed onto the slopes are forests, meadows, villages, the occasional tobacco field and cranes.

Yes cranes, Andorra seems to be largely under construction as builders attempt to insert hotels, apartments and other structures onto land that appears close to vertical.  Still it is very easy to forget that as you walk through a dripping forest, pass by a mountain stream and debouch into an unexpected meadow.  I got quite obsessed with the possibility of seeing cows, not normally an animal that excites my interest except in a restaurant, but for the first few days cows were noticeable by their absence (except in restaurants).

We visited Meritxell the religious centre of Andorra where  at a time sufficiently far removed from today as to make effective fact checking difficult villagers found a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child.  After a couple of false starts a church was built on the site to house the statue and Meritxell became the place to be religiously speaking in Andorra.  Tragically both church and statue were burnt to the ground in a fire a couple of decades ago (you can fact check that if you want).  A handsome new church has been built on the site but the statue is gone and the people of Andorra are bereft, apparently.

New church at Meritxell but no statue 

Travelling Hopefully - Arriving in Andorra

 A taxi having spat me efficiently onto the pavement at Barcelona airport I fled for the air conditioned interior as swiftly as my baggage would allow.  Here in the arrival section I would, if all went well, meet my guide and presumably fellow travellers for my walking tour of Andorra.

A few questions obviously need to be addressed first.  Let me deal with them now.

You booked a walking tour?  Yes

Really?  Yes

It wasn’t a mistake?  No

Sorry to clarify, you booked a walking tour?  Yes

Why?  It was the only tour that would take me to Andorra.

In my defence when I booked the tour I had been doing a fair bit of bush walking and I thought that further preparations along those lines would at least ensure that the experience didn’t kill me.  I was not expecting that an excruciating knee pain would be turn out to indicate that I had worn out all the cartilage in one knee.  Since this diagnosis turned up a fortnight before I was due to fly out emergency measures were required.  A compliant specialist gave me a cortisone injection and a prescription for some heavy duty anti inflammatories that I hope I don’t need.

With a frantic patch job holding my knee together (or at least masking the symptoms) I hopped on a bus which pointed itself at the Pyrenees.  Leaving the parched lands of Barcelona behind we headed into the lumpier bit of Spain.  Things got greener and considerably more vertical as we approached our destination.

Andorra is one of those anomalies of history that survives because nobody is quite prepared to do anything about it.  Back in the Middle Ages the place was ruled jointly by the Bishop of Urgell (Spanish) and the Counts of Foix (French) which made a certain amount of sense as Andorra was (and is) neatly sandwiched between Spain and France.  The rights of the Counts of Foix eventually wound up with their boss, the King of France and when the French king had an unfortunate encounter with a guillotine his rights were taken over by the President of France.  Thus the official rulers of Andorra are the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France.

This hasn’t really bothered the people of Andorra too much as they had three of the most certain guarantees of independence; they were poor, remote and had nothing anybody wanted.  Invading Andorra would not have passed any cost benefit analysis for either Spain or France and technically they already ruled it.

In the nineteen nineties they promulgated a constitution which politely invited both the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France to take less interest in the place from now on.  It is likely both these worthies had to be reminded where the place was.  Now Andorra has a parliament and the trappings of democracy although apparently the real power is still held by the six or seven local families who have always exercised real power here.

Andorra is essentially a large valley with a number of smaller valleys running into it.  As such flat ground has always been at a premium and the Andorrans have grown very adept at building on the sides of mountains.  You may have seen terraced agriculture in Vietnam and elsewhere, in Andorra they have terraced architecture.  Quite a bit of the country is built overlooking the rest of the country.

Into this land of mountains, valleys and terrible internet service came a bus load of eager walkers somewhat to the surprise of the Andorrans whose normal connection with tourists is a ski season and selling them duty free goods.  Andorra isn’t actually part of the EU and a daily stream of shoppers from both France and Spain turn up to take advantage of the lower prices.  Particularly in cigarettes, tobacco is and has always been Andorra’s only cash crop only now instead of smuggling it across the border their customers come to the them.

We are staying in the village of Soldeu which is essentially a ski resort which means in September it is almost deserted and most things are closed.  The scenery however is spectacular.  It’s difficult not to be in Andorra where you can touch a mountain simply by reaching out your arm.  Having bedded down in a large warm room I went to bed troubled only by the fact that the threatened walking started the next day.

Travelling Hopefully - La Sagrada Familia

 OK so let’s get the rest of the tour out of the way quickly. A walk through the old town, very nice.  Montjuic, very nice, Parc Guell, very nice.

Now with all that out of the way; La Sagrada Familia.  Very few things live up to their hype quite as spectacularly as La Sagrada.  The outside is a deranged piece of monumental architecture that almost looks as though it was grown rather than built.  This might be deliberate as Gaudi tried to incorporate natural motifs into everything he did.  For Gaudi the beauty of nature was the ultimate proof of the existence of God.  When it is completed it will be the tallest building in Barcelona and will be just a few centimetres short of the height of Montjuic, the highest point in Barcelona.  That’s deliberate as Gaudi would not set up his creation to be higher than God’s.

Past the tortured, almost organic stone work adorned with scenes from the life of Christ one enters the church.  I was astonished at the interior as I was expecting a continuation of the demented frenzy of stonework that marks the exterior.  Instead it is stripped back, almost minimalist with smooth curved stone lines creating a cool, largely unadorned interior.  Spectacular (I know I’ve used the word before but I’m struggling to find appropriate superlatives) stained glass panels surround the church cool blues and greens symbolising morning and the birth of Christ leading to savage reds and oranges symbolising nightfall and his death.

When a contemporary commented on the lack of decoration in the interior Gaudi responded “the church is the decoration.”  And this is perhaps the point.  This isn’t a cathedral set up to trumpet the power and majesty of the Catholic Church.  Barcelona already has a cathedral.  For all its size and lengthy build time La Sagrada is just a church, somewhere for people to come and pray.  When I compare it with the vast interior decoration and triumphalism of the Seville Cathedral I find the latter wanting as a place of worship.  La Sagrada Familia is a place of worship.

Or at least it will be if they ever finish it.