Escape to the Country

***WARNING, OVERLY LONG SENTENCE ALERT!*** 

If you’ve had any access to social media while you’ve been wherever you’ve been to this holiday, you’ll have noticed, along with the seemingly endless videos of your friends or celebrities chucking buckets of icy water over themselves for charity, the usual über-smiley holiday snaps and the I’m-not-trying-to-make-you-jealous-but-you-probably-will run downs of all the super-cool music festivals your super-cool mates have been to. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you).

The words ‘sheepdog trial’ and ‘tractor fest’, however, would not necessarily be odds-on contenders to make the Holiday Tweets Top Ten. I would like to redress the balance and strike an earthy blow for the country folk that don’t have the privilege (?) of being Martin Eavis.

Not far from my mum’s house, in the sedately jaw-dropping countryside near Builth Wells, there is a field.A farmer called John owns this field. Now John trains sheep dogs, very well as it happens and dogs are brought, as puppies, from as far as New Zealand, to learn from John’s expert tutelage. Whatever the weather, and it can it can be pretty beastly out here, he’s out there, passing on years of experience to his canine charges. The fact that John has MS and does all his work from the back of specially designed quad bike, is neither here nor there, but anyway, I digress.

On an unusually bright and sunny afternoon (for mid Wales), as the heather robed the rippling hills in its summer coat of royal purple, the field in question was amass with crooks (shepherds’ that is) as it hosted the first round of the Hundred House Sheep Dog Trials. Seeing no parking anywhere near the painted road sign, we engaged the 4x4 and trundled up the path. Upon seeing someone we presumed to be a competitor, we wound the window down, just as one of his dogs decided to shoot out into the path of the car! “That’ll do!” yelled the farmer angrily. “Steady on!” we thought, we hadn’t said anything yet! It wasn’t until he’d yelled it several times that my mother and I realised that he was talking to his dogs.

The parking, as it turned out, was on the field itself and it appeared that we were to be the only spectators. Across the bottom of this hedged-in arena the combatants (including one German and one from the Midi-Pyrenées) waited. Even at rest, the border collies were alert, eyes bright and ears pricked for the slightest hint off action.

Everyone knew his or her slot though and at the allotted time shepherd (or shepherdess) would stride, dog at heal, up to a stake marking the bottom of the course. There they waited until, from a gate at the top of the field came their quarry. Glancing skittishly this way and that, as if expecting something, the ruminant trio would begin to amble along the ridge at the top of the field. At an inaudible signal from their master, as if sprung from a bow, a black and white arrow would shoot from behind the stake and scorch up the hedge-line, ears pinned back, eyes homing in on the targets. Dipping briefly out of view it would reappear – much to their dismay – next to the sheep, who then bolted. Now came the trial.

In the centre of the field a system of gates had been set up to form a Maltese cross, through which the dog needed to direct the sheep through one vertical axes then a horizontal, before taking them across to a makeshift pen, this all in an allotted time. Using a series of commands and whistles, the shepherd would move his dog around the sheep, firstly from a distance and then, as the dog funnelled the sheep down off the hill, he would run in to direct matters at close quarters, using his own body and the crook.

Being new to this, it took a little time to see a pattern, but after a while, we could recognise “stand” as telling the dog to stop, “come by” to circle the sheep in one direction and the aforementioned “that’ll do” to call the dog off. What the different whistles meant we had no idea, but it was plain there was a huge amount skill and trust between and dog.

Not a small amount of frustration too. Many a time dog and shepherd would have two sheep lined up with the gate, only for the third to break rank and skid around it like one of those infuriating games where you have to put the ball bearing in a hole. The level of frustration could be measured by just how rapidly the shepherd flicked his crook up and down and when one dog refused to follow the line and cut corners not once but three times, that arm was going like the pen on a seismograph when the big one hit.

All of us sat in wrapped concentration (including our two usually fidgety Breton spaniels). We felt every success, near miss and failure and groaned inwardly as yet another team was timed out before completing the task. The dogs never seemed disappointed though, despite all the shouting and stick waving, merely flopping down to drink. For both them and their owners, it was same again next week at another trial not to mention every day at their own farm. A testament to the difficulty of this test was that, in more than an hour, we saw only two pairings succeed. Of such stuff champions are made.

Film stars too apparently…Two days later I found myself down in sunny Kent at the Biddenden Tractor Fest, a superbly organised little country fair about ten miles from Ashford. Among the stalls and attractions were a steam train converted to BBQ pulled pork; a mobile organ that played everything from “Dancing Queen” to “The Final Countdown”; some beautiful classic cars, a real-life gold prospector, a blacksmith, chainsaw sculpture, a plethora of farm vehicles and machinery and a dog and duck display.

This last intrigued me and it turned out to be a very similar, if much less serious version, of what I’d witnessed 48 hours before. Using ducks instead of sheep the shepherd demonstrated his art, working the crowd like a circus ringmaster. It began with two puppies running circles round a cage of ducks, already demonstrating the instinct that would lead them along the same route as their forebears. Moving up to older dogs, each part of the family, the shepherd gradually worked in more complex instructions, the dog seemingly second-guessing him at every turn, it was as if he had it on a string. Whistles replaced oral commands and it was soon clear the dog recognised the number of blasts reflected the number of words, for example: “That’ll do” becomes “peeeep-peep-peep!”

The final act was to set up an obstacle course, including a bridge and a slalom made up of small children, through which the collie Boots (doggy star of a forthcoming version of ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’) would herd the flapping birds. The children were encouraged to make sounds, such as rushing water or swishing trees but the implacable Boots didn’t bat a doggy eyelid and simply got on with the show, steering the ducks around like a canine Christiano Ronaldo (sorry!).  You hardly realised her master was there. Cue much applause as she flopped down (a little dramatically it has to be said) in her own bucket of water for a well-deserved thirst quencher. Showmanship aside, the shepherd never failed to remind the onlookers that these were working dogs and that sheep not shows were his livelihood.

Toasting the success of the fest that evening, I couldn’t help but think how far we have become removed from our countryside and our traditions and also from the ethic of trust and hard work that that imbues.

So next year, how about leaving V alone, giving Glastonbury a miss and catching an episode of  ‘One man and his dog’? Something tells me you won’t regret it.

Finding our Niche

The last few months have gone by in somewhat of a blur. A chaotic work schedule and my mixed success rate on the online dating scene meant that by mid-June: 1. I never made it to the Robert Louis Stevenson Way in the Cevennes at Easter (see previous post) and 2. I was left with a return ferry ticket and a week’s gite reservation in the SW France and no one to go with.

As usual, in these difficult situations, your friends step up and though he was loathed to leave the manic, Metro and manifestations of Paris for even a day, Dan (see many Paris posts) gamely sacrificed himself for a blokes’ road trip.

Having only passed my driving test at the end of March, it seemed somewhat of baptism of fire taking on a 550-mile run from Le Havre to Gimbrede in the Gers region.  This apprehension could have been compounded by a virtually sleepless night on the ferry but once I’d slipped back behind the wheel and rolled back onto terra firma, genuine excitement kicked in and I was soon speeding (to coin a phrase Mum!) along the immaculate autoroute toward Paris.

The reason why French roads are so good is because the money from the tolls (peages) is ploughed straight back into road improvement. That being the case, the A13 between Normandy and Paris was the best-kept motorway anywhere! 5 (FIVE!) peages in less than two hours and almost €20 Euros later, I rolled up to the RER (suburban railway) station in Poissy to pick up my friend and traveling companion.

Having basically been on the go for 12+ hours, I was happy to let Dan take the first stretch and after keying ‘Gimbrede’ into the sat nav. (more on that later) we were soon out of the capital’s gravitational pull and rolling south to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac (some music is just made for the road!). The road trip had begun in earnest. Two mates, shooting the breeze and clocking up the miles, this was more like it!

Une petite pause culturelle:

It’s a cliché and an inaccurate one at that, to say that French food is better than British. However, one area where those pesky stereotypers may have a point is motorway munchies. A crunchy, seeded baguette filled with slabs of rare roast beef, with crisp salad and a creamy horseradish relish, followed by a moist, tart blackcurrant pastry and a drink, for less than €10 or a Big Mac? Hmmm!

French is a remarkably descriptive language. Take the term ‘traffic jam’ for instance, a jam made of traffic, makes no sense, does it? Well, now take the French word for it ‘un bouchon’ or ‘a cork’; stopping up the road, not letting anything through, yep, I can see that. Well, whatever the word, just short of Orleans, we got stuck in an almighty one.

Not being in much of a hurry, went with the flow – or lack of it – crawling along at roughly 2 miles an hour, chewing the cud and humming along to ‘Don’t stop’. All joviality faded into front-staring silence when, after an hour, the recovery vehicle, carrying the burnt out wreck of a German-plated people carrier (replete with roof box no doubt laden with holiday luggage), trundled past along the hard shoulder. It just didn’t bear thinking about...

The mood lightened somewhat as we hit the A20 and the sat nav. registered 245 miles before our next change of road – this meant the turning up into the Gers and our destination, our much needed holiday, was in sight. As the miles ticked down though, we started to notice something odd. The arrival time on the sat nav. couldn’t possibly be right. It wasn’t going to take three hours to get from Montauban to Gimbrede, was it?

Indeed it wasn’t! Now, Dan, who was driving, had not been down this way before and therefore, was trusting Sat-nav. Susan (or whatever her name was). I, despite having done this road a lot with my folks, was too lost in scenery changes, conversation and lack of sleep to notice when Susan took us off the A20 at Brive and directed us west. By the time it had dawned on me, we were already 50-odd miles off route without a clue where we were headed.

A brief stop to check the road map (always have one of these handy) revealed that Susan, intent on showing us the beautiful towns and countryside of the Limousin and Dordogne, was planning on  taking us along the A89, off the motorway at junction 15 to then meander down the French equivalent of an A road to Bergerac and then on another to Agen. We were too far off route to head back to the A20 now, so off we went. “Ah!” I said to Dan as we pulled out of the service station, “Didn’t that big sign there just say that junction15 was closed due to the Tour de France?”

Sure enough, said exit was a mass of cones and road barriers, no going down there then. Susan quickly recalibrated and told us to come off two junctions later onto the D709 to Bergerac (please note that the longer the number, the smaller the road!). Off at 13 then…"12 miles to Bergerac" says Susan…"Road closed in 12 km, due to Tour de France" says road sign. Aargh! I’ve never been a big fan of cycling, but this was taking the Michel!

A quirk of French minor road signage is that they’re turned in a way so that you can only see them coming from one direction. If you’re coming the other way and at speed, hard mimolet! Hence we never saw the deviation notice until we’d steamed past it. Finding a place to turn, we found it partially blocked by a load of cycling support vehicles. I wound my window down... However, now was not the time to practice my French invectives, so it was back to the deviation.

By now, we were not the only ones who were lost. Susan had obviously not been programmed with Le Grande Boucle’s race calendar and so, as soon as we turned off the D709, she tried every way possible to get us back on it (this was made only partially amusing by the fact she couldn’t pronounce any of the road names). The combination of constantly recalculating sat nav. woman and deviation signs appearing out of nowhere and often behind us, almost led to the end of our trip.

Trying to ignore Susan and follow the deviations to Bergerac - is it me or do sat nav. voiceovers become more irritable the more you ignore them? - we soon found ourselves on roads barely wide enough for the car, with forest blocking views on either side. I was driving: tired, irritated and lost in dreaming up an anti-Tour Facebook page, when Dan said "Stop". Not being with it, I didn’t hear him, so he said it again, a bit louder, "Luke, stop". Still nothing. I’d seen the deviation sign up ahead, so was going to bloody well follow it... "STOP!!!!" Dan yelled, just before I crossed the junction into the path of a speeding black 4x4…

Screeching breaks, minor heart palpitations and quite a few “Sorry I almost got us killed” (s) later, we crawled off again and finally, we made it into Bergerac. Meandering our way through the town, we came to the river Dordogne, where, in the shallows, several renovated sailing barges sat wallowing gracefully in the early evening light. We were momentarily spellbound and despite recent near-death experiences, still having 70-odd miles to go and being at least and hour behind time, the sight seemed to infuse us both with a sense of calm.

Compared to previous stretches, the route into Agen was without incident until, once again, I noticed discrepancies between road map and sat nav. Susan. We were still in town and she was telling us we had barely 5 minutes to go. We knew our gite was in the middle of nowhere and this was certainly not that! Surely we needed to cross the Garonne and not head into the outskirts of Agen town.

Another stop, another road map consultation and the realisation that there was a suburb of Agen called ‘Gimbrede’. We had already phoned ahead to our hosts, Sally and Ian, who had agreed to put back their evening meal for us and now they were going to have to do so again. This was starting to become embarrassing!

Leaving the main road after Agen though, much of what had happened before was forgotten. The combination of light and landscape in this part of the world is unlike any place I’ve ever been – I’ve written about this before – and an awed silence fell on the car. “Do you feel like you’re away from Paris now buddy?” In response, a gentle nod.

The ever-narrowing roads now began to take on the names of the houses and homes that stood off them. Susan did her best with the pronunciation, but by the time we approached our destination, tears of laughter were rolling down our faces. Our favourite was definitely: “Loo Dit Gain dee Rozzas”, your guess is as good as mine!

The little hamlet of Gimbrede, total population 150, was a welcome sight. There was still time to over shoot the gravel drive leading up to the gite but after some 24 hrs on the road (since I’d left London the evening before) we crunched through the gate to be greeted by a bouncing Harris (Sally and Ian’s hungarian pointer) and the most welcome words ever spoken to a weary traveller: “There’s a cold beer in the fridge.”!

Before joining our hosts for dinner, we took a quick pause on the patio out the back of the Niche, the little stone cottage that was to be our base for the next six days. It was surrounded by a two-foot high lavender hedge, rolling fields of sunflowers spread into the distance and little copses of trees dotted the hills up to a little fortified village, in which the lights had just started to blink on. The only noise we could hear was the thrumming of bees as they moved from lavender flower to lavender flower. I turned to Dan and proffered my half-empty can, “Happy holidays, my friend.” He let out a long, contented sigh and clunked his beer against mine. “Happy holidays indeed!”

Note: Here's a link to a French road map, to orientate yourself with the various roads and regions from this post:

http://about-france.com/tourism/local-map-france.htm

Travels in my front room

I've been reading a lot of travel literature recently. I've always had itchy feet and the next best thing to going on an another adventure is reading about someone else's. The thing is what to pick? There seem to be so many weird and wacky tales, with even stranger titles, of people heading off to one out of the way place or another, on a seemingly vast array of improbable and inconvenient modes of transport: "My journey into pathos: a trip up the Atlas Mountains, backwards, on a 1920s tricycle with no saddle." for example!

I prefer the old school though, when what's original is within the book and not on its cover. Bill Bryson for one; but that canny observer of the world's little quirks has long since stopped writing about his road trips and has begun to delve into everything else: history, science, Shakespeare and his own past; but I mean even older school than him.

Any aspiring Paul Theroux could certainly do a lot worse than to pick up 'A Broken Road', the recently assembled and published third set of memoirs of Patrick Leigh Fermour. Now, if you're looking for proper adventures on inconvenient modes of transport, try from Holland to Constantinople (it was written in the '30s) on foot, at eighteen years of age!

Though many of the references are antiquated and hard to place at times, it would be difficult to find personal, cultural, topographical or meteorological observations as lovingly and vividly portrayed - one description of a thunderstorm outside the Church of the Forty Martyr's, near Tirnovo, Bulgaria, verges on the four-dimensional.

PLF, as he is referred to, has a wonderful connection with what he writes about and whereas many authors of his time can be regarded as curt and concise in their writing, Leigh Fermour often wanders off on not insignificant tangents, rather like a favourite uncle or professor might do when recounting past adventures. One superbly vivid and emotional account of the possible reasons for falling out with a friend, is quite terrifically frustrating. But I want to go back still further.

"Never work with children or animals" is a piece of age worn lore bandied about by many actors and performances. One that may have been muttered by the lips of Robert Louis Stevenson as he prodded, goaded and cajoled his recalcitrant "she-ass" Modestine across the Cevennes. I should mention titles again here. RLS's "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes", is, to quote the Cuprenol, "exactly what is says on the tin".

Though he wrote this little travelogue over a century ago, Stevenson's account could be a model for all those who have come after him (though many could still learn from his lexical economy). He rejoices in the schadenfreude of his attempts to pack and encourage his walking companion; he opines on all around, often not seeming to enjoy what he's doing very much, to the point that you sometimes wonder why he bothered; but where and when he finds a chink of light, he glories in it. I read the chapter 'A Night among the pines' over porridge one morning and I left for school with a spring in my stride much as RLS must have done after the morning's "inaudible summons" from the "gentle touch of Nature" and as he left money in the grass for his "night's lodging."

It would be impossible, however, to write about travel journalism without a mention of the man on whose journeys we all embarked time and again over the last thirty years, Michael Palin (I am currently devouring his latest, 'Brazil'). While he doesn't draw such poetic pictures as Leigh Fermour, nor is as prosaically sanguine as Stevenson, Palin is the observer's observer.

Undoubtedly he has the bonus of having a photographer and a recording team in tow and producers to organise his itinerary - just so that he's always just in time for that quirky village festival or able to interview prominent poets, artists or political figures. Even so, it is doubtful that anyone could milk as much from such opportunities as Palin.

The gentleness with which he picks up the irony of a transvestite being allowed to hold office in Rio while anyone in shorts is not allowed into the same building is unique to him. As would be the sixth sense to check the skyline of said city and notice Christ Redentor looking down beatifically on a 'sex motel', or the wheelchair-bound old lady in white amongst the crowds at the LGBT parade.

Nor could anyone else make us feel as much of a part of it. We are left mouths agape, much as he is, when he's challenged to comment on contraception by a favela DJ . It's as if our muscles begin to ache, just as his were surely doing, as he lugs shellfish around a Salvadoran market with celebrity chef Dada and in his company we feel equally at home meeting graffiti artists, transvestite public officials, mayors and feisty jungle activists. RLS, in his prologue to 'Travels...' describes every book as "a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it." It feels like we've all been Michael's mates for years.

Discovering Patrick Leigh Fermour was a revelation and his words, together with those of Stevenson and Palin, are an education in how to bring the extraordinary outside world into people's lives. Their secret? Well, whenever he arrives at a new destination, Palin goes on a little amble of orientation, while both Leigh Fermour and Stevenson travelled on foot. On our own two legs we have the time to both observe and opine on what's around us. So, if you're planning to go to Hel (a peninsular in northern Poland) in a hand cart, or head down the proverbial creek without a paddle, stop what you're doing, get off you high horse and walk!

N.B. I am planning to practice what I preach and head off on the Robert Louis Stevenson Trail in the glorious Cevennes (minus donkey), in the Spring holiday, starting around 6th April. If any of you are free, I'd be glad of the company.

Bibliography:

'Brazil', Michael Palin (2013) Pheonix books.
'The Broken Road, The Iron Gates to Mount Athos', Patrick Leigh Fermour (2013) John Murray (Publishers)
'Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes' (1879, my edition published 2013) Printed in Germany by Amazon Distribution, Leipzig