Getting there

Getting there.

Sometimes things just don’t work out: marriages everyone said were made in heaven end acrimoniously; family Christmases that with a few too many drinks unparcel old grievances; the job you were sure you had in the bag, the job to which you felt entitled, you didn’t get.

This happens.

On other occasions, despite infinite scope for calamity, the opposite occurs.

These were my thoughts as I sat at a picnic table in a motorway service station, somewhere between Nantes and Bordeaux, chewing on the day-old sandwiches we’d kept in a cool box during the night crossing from Portsmouth.

Spending a year in the Pyrenees, living a complete cycle of seasons (in our case autumn to autumn) had been a long nurtured ambition. And now, with both of us having scaled the financial cliffs obstructing retirement, we were free to make it reality.

Of course, it’s not possible to move without stuff. On the inside of the Golf’s petrol cap there is a helpful picture of a car showing five occupants and some suitcases indicating the tyre pressures that were required for such an undertaking. So, at the supermarket near where we live, I dully pumped them up to surprisingly high psi numbers and hoped that I’d got it right.

The car was very loaded.

A week before, other essential items had been shipped ahead by a company called Transglobal Express.

I’ve read about the distribution of lunches (tiffins) in Mumbai where workers' midday meals are collected from homes across the city of eleven million people by illiterate men with, nonetheless, a complex code of colours and symbols in their heads and wooden carts at their hands. It is claimed that every day every tiffin reaches the exact recipient at exactly the right time. And no-one, apart from the elite of the organisation, knows how it happens.

I would put Transglobal Express on this level. How is it possible to collect seven random items from an obscure address in rural Dorset on a Monday evening and delver them safely to an even more out-of-the-way place in the Pyrenees by Thursday lunchtime for a fee of one hundred and twenty pounds?

Of course, they are not using handcarts.

OK - so what were in these seven packages that were so necessary for our year in the mountains?

I’ll describe them from heaviest to lightest because I like to be systematic.

1] A suitcase of warm winter clothes - very sensible.

2 & 3] An electric piano keyboard and stand - Sound of Music, of course!

4] A bread maker because we’re not that keen on the national concoction; a collection books including the Oxford Book of English Verse and, for our little sofa next to the wood burner, a throw that we’d bought at a market in Mont Cuq, imported to England and were now returning home.

5] A sewing machine - you never know when it’ll come in handy.

6] Two food mixers which we will later discover are already provided in our rented house and a selection of patchwork fabrics and sewing materials. - watch this space for more information about these!

7] My guitar - naturally.

The Golf, however, is simply loaded with trivia: pants; socks; wellington boots; bathroom essentials like favourite shampoos, which we’re not sure are available on the other side of the Channel;

Marmite, of course; Assam tea, which is definitely not available and, for some reason that I cannot remember, coffee, which definitely is.

As you see, everything had been meticulously planned - nothing left to chance.

Thankfully, though, there are always surprises. We had not, for example, counted on the cat. But more of that later.

I’m never sure whether it is better to cut a long story short or expand a short story long. Actually, sometimes, I’m not sure whether the story is long or short. But that is nature of experience and, of course, time.

It did seem like a long day. The sandwich stop was the half-way point with the trip counter recording 328 miles, nearly all of them north to south. Ahead lay hours of tyres thrashing tarmac with the cruise control set at 80, apart from on the Bordeaux race track where you really need to slow down and keep your wits about you in order to avoid the formula-1-boys bullying their stuff.

Beyond that, the most expensive autoroute in France - the A65 - 25.50 euros for the 160km from Langon to Pau. Miles and miles of empty road priced out of the market, with sullen buzzards perched on the perimeter fence waiting in vain for road kill that seldom happens and slip roads indicating places few have heard of or have the slightest desire to visit.

But, but, but… somewhere north of Pau something happens. Silhouettes of giant sleeping whales intrude on the horizon. It is the first view of the chain.

The geology is interesting. At 2000 metres of altitude we discover fossil fish indicating a scarcely imaginable upheaval of submarine minerals to their present impressive height. Forces that imposed this starched collar between two parts of the continent clarified the concept of an Iberian peninsula along with its sharp cultural and climatic divide.

For us, however, as we speed at a steady 130 km/h south, the sight of the cloud shrouded mountains confirm that we will soon be there - the Pyrenees are within touching distance.

Then it all changes. Creeping through the motorway toll, the Golf takes its place in orderly queues of urban traffic and we slip, seemingly surreptitiously, around the town hoping not to be noticed by the men and women who have made their home here. And so we continue, until the way south opens up again and the grey humpbacks begin to reshape into craggier formations separated by, at this time of day and with such unwelcoming weather, gorges and valleys that, frankly, give the impression of being in a bad mood.

Weather is going to be a big thing during the coming year. The part of the Pyrenees to which we are heading receives, roughly, the same annual rainfall as Manchester, but the pattern of precipitation is quite different. Summers are characterised by long days of sometimes punishing temperatures that can end with cloud plumes boiling and building over the range, imposing alternative landscapes above and around the peaks. Anyone at altitude when this happens would do well to get lower as soon as possible before the groan of Nature’s artillery announces the start of battle.

Eclairages - lightning short-circuiting between the clouds, but especially foudre - brilliant, high voltage strikes at the earth, are the chief dangers. Seen from a safe distance both are aweinspiring, beautiful. Up close, however, it’s another matter. And the biblical-scale downpours that accompany the storms present further challenges to those caught out on the hill as water rapidly discovers the flaws in the most upmarket waterproofs, fills boots, blurs vision and nudges away at the mountains’ less stable masonry.

Snow, of course, is the other way in which the elements deliver water to the earth.

In 2012 two metres of it fell on the village during twenty-four hours. Parked cars hid from their owners and, overnight, the inhabitants’ gardens and courtyards, deprived of boundary walls, became a single shared white space. For once it was safe to jump from a first floor window, and there were some who did.

But this is rare. Higher up, on the other hand, it is a seasonal inevitability. Starting on the peaks, spreading down the gullies and the northern slopes and on to the tree line, dusting the forest and the high pastures, it accumulates its white depth throughout the winter. But it is the spring thaw that

irrigates this landscape and far, far beyond as streams boil with energy, overflowing, discovering new courses. Rivers accept the sudden wealth of water carrying it muddily and noisily down, down to the Gave d”Aspe. On then to the Gave d’Oloron and beyond to the elegant River Ardour growing, with each stage of its journey to the sea at Biarritz, more corpulent.

Other waters, though, do things differently. Melting into the fractured limestone of the massif they encounter a subterranean world of rivers, aquifers, sumps and caverns sufficiently voluminous to allow the construction of cathedrals. There are lakes, too, many of which will lie undisturbed for a thousand years. And some of this water will see the light of day again, bursting out of the earth in springs that give life to the creatures and plants of the mountains; springs that quench the thirst of rustic villagers and those that emerge far away helping to furnish the needs of distant settlements.

Today, however, as we near our journey’s end, the clouds refuse to release their rain, instead hanging aimlessly around the cliffs and summits with, apparently, nothing better to do. And driving up to the village the mists intensify concealing, for now, our new surroundings with nothing visible but the ethereal form of the church tower.

I have heard it said that you should never confront an enemy at the end of a journey and I have always respected this maxim. There were, of course, no actual enemies lurking in our adopted village - at least none that I knew of - but there was a problem. Arriving late to face the task of unpacking the car and organising ourselves into the new house was always going to be far too unpleasant. Luckily a friend in the village, who the week before had received our seven packages, storing them safely in his barn, had suggested we spend our first night in his ramshackle farmhouse. Gratefully, we accepted the invitation.

Pulling into the cobbled courtyard and finally turning off the engine of the Golf, we knew that he would not be there as he was working late that day. The key to the house, however, was exactly where he had described and, with darkness arriving alongside us, we climbed the ancient wooden stairs to his humble home, happy we had arrived safely but hungry, exhausted and not quite knowing what to do next.

Sometimes the smallest act of kindness, like a pebble tossed casually into a pond, can result in ripples of significance that spread way beyond the intentions of the benefactor. This, as I read the note, written in scrawly french handwriting and left on the kitchen table, felt like one such occasion.

Here, I have attempted to recreate it in translation: Dear J & K I’m at work until 22h. I’ll be back around 22.30h. I have prepared for your evening meal, some ratatouille that needs heating up and some pieces of veal that need cooking. There is some fruit, a bit of cheese and a bottle of rose in the fridge.

See you later.

Love - A With that, everything was, at least for the moment, OK; we knew what to do next.

But, there is always the unexpected. And on this occasion it came in the form of an insistent noise at the kitchen window. On investigation It turned out to be, of all things, a kitten, a stray, an orphan perhaps. The tiny creature had climbed a pile of concrete blocks, scaled a post leaning against the wall and, from its position outside on the ledge, was pawing the glass.

I opened the casement and with that slight sideways walk that cats do, it edged nervously in, crying plaintively as it did so. Obviously hungry and in need of shelter it stood still just long enough to give each of us a questioning stare before jumping to the floor and hiding under the dresser.

And in that brief moment when our eyes came together I recognised in it’s half-formed feline face, a look that was part apprehension, part longing - a look entirely appropriate for the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

September 6th. 2015