Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Alastair Humphreys, 2019

Extracts from As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Beneficiaries of the Estate of Laurie Lee.

Copyright © Laurie Lee 1969

Here Comes the Sun, words and music by George Harrison © 1969 Harrisongs Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Used by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited

Cover and interior illustrations by Neil Gower

All photographs © Alastair Humphreys

Alastair Humphreys asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source ISBN: 9780008331825

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008331832

Version: 2019-05-20

Dedication

For Sarah

‘Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces.’

Epigraph

‘You asked for it. It’s up to you now.’

‘But I was in Spain, and to the new life beginning.’

Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Imagine

Life

One Moment

Laurie

Direction

Adventure

Becks

Music Lesson

Progress

Into Spain

First Play

Hope

Encouragement

Preparation

First Walk

First Night

Marriage

Dawn

The Pram in the Hall

Swifts

Kleos

Reverence

Polar

Grace

Help

Choices

Fear

Casting

One Day

Lost

Rhythm

Baggage

First Light

Buscando

Manna

Health Check

Bravery

Privilege

Camping

Changes

Hitchhiking

Loneliness

The People of this Earth

Siesta

Daily Bread

The Music in Me

Jungle

Postman

The Greatest Day

Evening

Last Light

Treasure

Coffee

Kindness

Gambling

The Art of Busking

Alone

Fiesta

Respite

Chorizo

Cassiopeia

Party

Forest

Permission

Last Days

Mountains

Way Back

River

Thunder Road

Last Play

The Wall

Last Night

Into Madrid

Home from Abroad

Reward

It’s All Right

Photos from the Adventure

Acknowledgements

The Violin Case

About the Author

About the Book

Books by Alastair Humphreys

Books by Laurie Lee

About the Publisher

AND HERE I WAS at last. I had imagined this moment for years. My dream was finally happening. I had worked hard to make it this far, spurred on by the anticipation of how happy I would be. Yet now that it was beginning, I felt only afraid and lonely. I breathed deeply to calm myself. The air here smelled different from home – warm and dry. I looked beyond the pine trees and the red tiled roofs, over the blue bay, and on to the distant, forested hills. I wanted to flee and hide up in those hills. They looked so quiet and so safe. But I could not leave. At least, not yet. Before I escaped this town there was one task I must do, the burden that was scaring me. I needed to play my violin.

I was hungry. My pockets were empty. I had to busk to earn some money. But I had never busked in my life, never even played in public before. I was terrible at the violin. What on earth was I doing?

I could not bring myself to unpack my new instrument. Instead, I kept walking. I scrunched my eyes against the glare of the sun, crossing streets to cling to the shaded sides. My rucksack was cumbersome, heavier than I had imagined. I eyed a wishing well in a park. The water glittered with coins. I was both disappointed and relieved that the coins tossed in exchange for dreams were beyond my reach. It was a little soon to resort to stealing children’s money and wishes. I prowled the streets, nervous, eyes to the ground, scanning for loose change. I was looking for money, but mostly I was searching for excuses. The well is always deep with those.

Eventually I made my way back to the town centre, to what I had already concluded – two or three times – was the best plaza for busking. There were no cars, but plenty of pedestrians. A church shaded one side from the sun. Let’s get this over and done with, I told myself.

But my heart sank when I noticed that another busker had beaten me to it. A young man sat cross-legged in ‘my’ plaza, hunched over a recorder. This was not the time for an interloper! Usually, I would barely have noticed him: he was not a good musician and was playing very quietly. He wore a denim jacket and dark greasy hair fell over his face. He wasn’t charismatic and did not appear to be very successful (nor even conspicuously, successfully destitute). But today, as I dawdled in the shadows across the plaza, I saw him in a different light. He was a musician! He knew how to play songs! Not only that, but he had been brave enough to snaffle the premium spot in town. His hat on the pavement already had money in it. I wished I could be like him. I wanted to ask how much he earned, to be in his presence, to seek his wisdom and his blessing. But I was too shy.

I slunk off and found a different plaza, sleepy and set back from the road. I dumped my rucksack by the fountain. The sun was high now, so I stooped to drink and splash my face. My back was sweaty. A waiter unrolled the sun shade outside his restaurant. ‘Casa Gazpara,’ I read. ‘Vinos, Comidas, Mariscos, Tapas.’ I remembered how hungry I was. I had only butterflies in my stomach. Some drunks swayed and slurred on the other side of the fountain. I couldn’t even afford a dash of their Dutch courage.

I had not felt this apprehensive since the day a few years ago when I’d climbed aboard a small green rowing boat, picked up the oars and set off to try to row across the Atlantic Ocean. The prospect of playing a few tunes in a quiet plaza agitated me as much as colossal waves a thousand miles from land. But in place of storms and capsize, here I dreaded failure and shame. I was frightened of appearing a fool and worried what people would think about me. I knew this was pathetic behaviour for a man in his thirties, but the vulnerability was fascinating. What if I fall, asks the poem? Oh, but what if you fly?

I glanced around, then unzipped the violin case, furtively, as if it contained a gun. I was committed now, too far across the floor at the school disco to swerve my decision to ask the girl to dance. An apt comparison for I never dared do that either. I positioned the shoulder rest and tightened the bow. I had known that performing in public would be much harder than practising alone, which was why I had waited until today to try it. I had deliberately avoided getting accustomed to busking when the consequences did not matter. I chose to wait until it counted – until I was alone and penniless in a foreign country – because I wanted to experience the full shock of plunging in. I wanted to make this as hard as possible. I wanted that until I got it.

Pensioners watched the world go by from a bench near the fountain. They passed occasional comments to each other and pointed things out that caught their attention. One gentleman wore a Panama hat and yellow trainers; another was in a tweed jacket and dark glasses. Now they all turned in my direction, curious. I looked away, avoiding their gaze as I extended the legs of my new music stand. I tried to recall how buskers usually set everything up. I had never paid attention before. A gang of schoolchildren crossed the plaza, laughing and chatting. I pegged my music sheets onto the stand. A hush seemed to descend on the town and I stood lonely among the crowd. At this point a movie would cut to slow motion. I tuned the violin as best I could, fingers fumbling at the pegs. Don’t die wondering, they say. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, they say.

Die? Don’t be ridiculous! It’s only a bloody violin. Lo siento, España. I am so sorry, Spain. I lifted my face to the sun, smiled, took a deep breath, and began to play.

Imagine

SOMETIMES, WHEN I READ travel books, I say to myself, ‘You could put this book down right now, step outside, and just go. The sunlit road calling you. Nowhere to be but there. The freedom all yours to choose.’

Imagine.

If I could go, would I?

A dusty white road winding through orange groves. Summer heat and the tang of citrus. Cicadas shrill the still silence. A silver ribbon of river threads the green valley below. A cluster of stone cottages and the dull clang of a church bell. The blue smudge of distant mountains. The day long and open and waiting for me.

As I hike, I cradle an imaginary violin, snug under my chin, fingers dancing on the strings. My right hand plays the pretend bow and I whistle the tune as I walk. One of the songs of my life, soaked deep into my marrow, personal and precious. I break from a whistled verse to yell the chorus. Stamping the beat with my battered boots interrupts the rhythm of walking, but helps the exuberance bust out of my body. A song, a dance, a journey, all of my own.

The sun pounds and burns my back. But I relish it as a burnished medal for 20 miles earned each day beneath it. I have become lean but strong, stripped back. My pack contains the bare minimum, and that is enough. A blanket, bread, half a bottle of water. Strapped to the outside is my fiddle, the real one. It is fragile, smooth maple, and the magic key to this journey. Without it, I am ordinary – just another man tramping through Spain across the ages. But with this violin, I become a music maker and a dreamer of dreams. Tonight, beneath the stars in that village across the valley, I will bring music and laughter. My hat upturned upon the ground, dancers tossing coins as I play. They shine bright as they spin in the moonlight.

Wherever I walk, I sow happiness in my wake, and the world lies all before me. The weary satisfaction of physical effort beneath a summer sky. The focused simplicity of creating a living from the art you love. Carefree independence and the enticing spontaneity of the open road.

Just imagine.

If you could go, would you?

Life

I LOOKED UP. LET out a sigh. I was not in Spain, but somewhere near Slough, on a slow train bound for nowhere. I closed my book, a tale of sunshine, music and adventure. Monday morning trundled past, laden with drizzle and gloom. Flat-roofed pubs, warehouses, muddy park pitches. This was where I lived. This was my life.

Books carry me far away. I enjoy that, for I am cursed with fernweh, a yearning for distant places. Throughout my adult life I have either been wandering the world, preparing to, or wishing that I was. I grow excited every time I pack a bag and slip my passport into my pocket, but despondent when I arrive back home and put the passport away in a drawer. Returning inevitably disappoints, pricking my hope that going away might somehow have fixed my problems.

I first read As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning when I was a student, dreaming of travel and getting ready to live. Laurie Lee had never left England before he docked in Spain in 1935. He hadn’t given much thought to ‘what would happen then, for already I saw myself there, brown as an apostle, walking the white dust roads through the orange groves’.

Laurie’s hazy plan was to walk south from Vigo, exploring a new country and playing the violin to pay his way. He had no schedule or deadline. He slept under the stars, lived on bread and cheap wine, and flirted happily. Laurie’s book is a paean to pure adventure, free from responsibility, made possible by the music from his violin. Reading it whisked me away to sunlit hills and villages, and I dreamed of one day following Laurie to Galicia. I wanted the same uncertainty, freedom and excitement in my own predictable, routine-dominated life.

But there was one fundamental problem. I could not play the violin, nor any other musical instrument. I had learned the piano for about a year when I was 10, until my mum yielded to the tedium of getting a reluctant, talentless boy to practise and allowed me to quit. I remember the music teacher at school – a bully later outed as a paedophile – mocking my timid and tuneless singing in front of a laughing class. I burned with shame and fought back tears. Forever after, I dreaded music lessons. Today, merely the thought of having to sing in public makes me prickle with nerves. I hate karaoke or dancing. My heart sinks whenever I hear the line, ‘introduce yourself to the group and tell us a bit about yourself’.

Realistically, then, I could never busk through Spain. I had neither the skill nor the personality. Yet following Laurie’s route with a wallet rather than a violin would be merely a walking holiday. That was missing the point. So, for 15 years, I shelved the idea. Instead, I looked elsewhere for adventure. I cycled round the world. I walked across southern India and the Empty Quarter desert. I crossed Iceland by packraft. I rowed the Atlantic, spent time in Greenland and on the frozen Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. I was ridiculously fit. I hung out with intelligent, daredevil, ambitious misfits. Each expedition gave me ideas and skills for new journeys. They were miraculous days of joy and wonder. I even managed to turn these escapades into my career. I gave talks and wrote articles and books. I was the luckiest man in town.

But then, in life’s musical chairs, the music stopped. And I realised I had been sitting in this threadbare seat for years now, staring out of commuter train windows. I called myself an Adventurer, but I was not living adventurously anymore. I was no longer proud of the story I was writing. The woman next to me, late for work and furious, tapped her displeasure in a series of to-and-fro text messages at my shoulder, clammy in her perfumed blouse. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Beep-beep. Tap-tap-tap.

I shifted my focus to my reflection in the dirty, rain-spattered window. I didn’t like what I saw. I was bored with myself. I had grown up and settled down. For most people this is the conventional, accepted route in life. I envy them. But it was not working for me.

I wanted uncertainty and doubt in my life, and the courage, energy and spirit to face them. I needed to move in order to breathe. I craved being on the road again, inhaling the heady air of places new with just one difficult but simple goal to chase. Instead, I was trundling round and round telling old tales to pay the bills. I had given up.

One Moment

I GLANCED DOWN AT the book in my lap, closed my eyes, and sighed. Then, without thinking, I pulled my phone from the pocket of my jeans, contorting myself on the cramped seat to do so. But instead of the artificial escape of social media, today I opened Google.

‘Find a local violin teacher’, I thumbed.

A website popped up, I found an email address, and before I had time to dwell on it, I began to type.

Fri, 20 Nov 2015, 11:56

TO: Becks Violin

FROM: Alastair Humphreys

SUBJECT: Can you teach me the violin really quickly?

Every journey, every change in direction, begins with one tiny deed, quick to revoke and easy to forget. An action so devoid of binding consequence that there is no reason not to take it. No reason except inertia and fear. The hardest part of every adventure is this one moment, small yet significant. It is the decision to begin, to get moving, to push back the boundaries of your normality, perhaps even to turn your whole life around.

I hit ‘Send’ and went back to my book.

Laurie

LAURIE LEE AND I first met as teenagers, though he was 63 years older than me. Laurie lived in a lush valley in Gloucestershire where, emboldened by booze, he was busy getting his leg over with half the girls in the village. I was studying Cider with Rosie for English GCSE, avoiding eye contact with the teacher – all irascible nicotine and tweed – and willing the lunch bell to save me. Not for the final time, I envied Laurie.

Cider with Rosie is the story of Laurie’s childhood. It is vivid with eccentric village characters and tales of his friends roaming the countryside. Laurie grew up in a chaotic but loving home with his mother and six siblings. One of his earliest memories was of a man in uniform knocking on the door to ask for a cup of tea. Laurie’s mother had ‘brought him in and given him a whole breakfast’. The soldier was a deserter from World War I, sleeping rough in the woods.

Laurie left school at 14 and went on to become a poet, screenwriter and author. He procrastinated prolifically in the pubs and clubs and literary parties of London. When he did write, he worked slowly with a soft pencil, editing and re-editing obsessively. Throughout his life, Laurie was plagued by self-doubt and often considered himself a failure, despite the unexpected, extraordinary success of Cider with Rosie, which sold more than six million copies. He described himself as ‘a melancholic man who likes to be thought merry’.

The next time Laurie and I met, in our twenties, we were both looking for adventure. I was in my final year at university when I picked up an old copy of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, the sequel to Cider with Rosie, in a charity shop at the end of my street.

‘You’ll enjoy that,’ remarked Ziggy, the friend I was browsing with. ‘It’s about a guy wandering around Spain, half drunk with wine, and a bunch of dark-eyed beauties.’

Ziggy and I convened regularly in the greasy spoon café next door to nurse hangovers or refuel after frosty runs along the river. We spoke incessantly of travel and adventure ideas. Ziggy wanted to live in Africa. I wanted to hit the road. We were impatient for our course to end and the chance to charge across the start line into real life. Until then, I was burning off my energy with the university boxing club, muddy football matches and tomfoolery. It was fun, but what I really wanted was, once again, what Laurie Lee was doing.

Ziggy and I headed to the café with our small pile of books. I ordered mugs of tea while Ziggy found a table in the corner. He cleared a circle in the steamed-up window with his sleeve, then peered out. I took a slurp of tea and opened my new book. I have the same copy beside me today, faded and torn. It falls open to well-thumbed passages for I reread it almost every year.

Back then, I gorged on books about polar exploration and mountaineering. These tales on the margins of possibility – the best of the best doing the hardest of the hard – were exhilarating but unattainable to someone as callow as me. Laurie’s story was immediately different. It read like a poetic version of my own life. The cover showed a young man walking towards a red-roofed village under a clear blue sky. Bored with his claustrophobic life, Laurie dreamed of seeing the world. He didn’t have much cash. His mum waved goodbye from the garden gate. He felt more homesick than heroic. So far, so me.

I was disillusioned preparing for a career that did not excite me as much as I thought life ought to. I had gone to university only because all my friends were going. It was a privileged but naive decision, for it had literally not occurred to me that it was possible to do anything else. I was training to be a teacher, but dreaming of being an explorer. While my classmates sent their CVs out to schools, I researched joining the Foreign Legion, the SAS, or MI6. I wanted mayhem, not timetables. Today, it astonishes me how little I knew of life back then that I saw only binary options: the Legion, or lesson planning. Sensible and realistic, or thrilling but absurd.

‘How does anything exciting happen in a blasted office?’ Laurie exclaimed after taking a job with Messrs Randall & Payne, Chartered Accountants, when he left school. Laurie’s girlfriend urged, ‘If it isn’t impertinent to ask, why don’t you clear out of Stroud? You’re simply wasting your time, and you’ll never be content there. Even if you don’t find happiness you’ll at least be living.’

Soon after, Laurie wrote a brief resignation letter.

‘Dear Mr Payne, I am not suited to office work and resign from my job with your firm. Yours sincerely Laurie Lee.’

Direction

LAURIE LEFT HIS GIRLFRIEND and his home one midsummer morning and walked to London in search of fame and fortune. He had never seen a city before. He found work building ‘three unbeautiful blocks of flats’, pushing a wheelbarrow of cement through a tableau of Cockneys and con men whose priorities were petty theft, gambling and cheap cigarettes. A year later Laurie had ‘little to show for it except calloused hands and one printed poem’. But he was saving money, biding his time and summoning his nerve. ‘I never felt so beefily strong in my life,’ he recalled. ‘I remember standing one morning on the windy roof-top, and looking round at the racing sky, and suddenly realising that once the job was finished I could go anywhere I liked in the world. There was nothing to stop me, I would be penniless, free, and could just pack up and walk away.’

Laurie considered various foreign lands for his first adventure, ‘names with vaguely operatic flavours’. But a pretty Argentinian girl had taught him a single sentence of Spanish, ‘Deme un vaso de agua, por favor’.

And so Laurie chose Spain.

Fifteen years ago, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning sang me a siren song in that Oxford café. I have been smitten by Spain ever since. I love the evening light laden with citrus blossom and the rook-like chatter of old women, dark-eyed and kinder than they let on. I fell, too, for Laurie’s style of travel. He walked slowly and lived frugally (except after a windfall when he splurged extravagantly. Once he earned enough to buy ‘a few litres of wine’ and take a couple of girls up onto a roof terrace overlooking the city to share it). He camped on hilltops, bathed in rivers and enjoyed his encounters with the characters he met on the road.

Laurie shaped the way I came to approach my own travelling. Travel writers need not pretend to be infallible or invincible like the traditional stiff-upper-lip explorers. Journeys didn’t have to be sensational or competitive. Adventure was not only for self-anointed ‘Adventurers’. Laurie showed me a different outlook; that ordinary people could also see the world. I shouldn’t feel like an imposter. All I needed to do was go. I didn’t need experience or ability. Those I would earn along the way. This scrawny young poet gave me the guts and the permission to begin. Everything I hoped for in life was already out there, hiding in plain sight. I would only have myself to blame if I missed my chance at life. Enough then of the excuses!

I did not play the violin and so wouldn’t be able to busk across Spain, but surely I could do something? I was giddy with the excitement of youthful possibility. My student days were drawing to a close and it was time to decide my direction.

I sat down at my desk, shoved aside football boots and coffee mugs, and rummaged for a pen. I stared for a while at a blank sheet of paper, then began to write.

Oxford,

December 2000,

Dear Mr. Walker,

Thank you for offering me a teaching position at your school. I would definitely enjoy working here on a permanent basis. However there is so much to see and do in the world. If I was to settle into teaching now I am sure that I would enjoy it, but there would always be something gnawing at me. Therefore I have decided that I am going to go ahead with my original plan to take two or three years cycling around the globe. Deep down I know that [teaching is] probably the sensible option. However, even deeper down I know that if I have the chance to do something now and do not take it, I may always regret it.

Yours Sincerely,

Alastair Humphreys

Adventure

Fri, 20 Nov 2015, 18:07

TO: Alastair Humphreys

FROM: Becks Violin

SUBJECT: Re: Can you teach me the violin really quickly?

Hi Alastair, Thanks for your email. Wow, what an exciting challenge! I’d love to help you out and am sure we could arm you with a few tunes (with some dedication!) for your adventure …

Becks

Becks

YOU CAN BE SURE that an adventure plan is good if the idea makes you simultaneously excited and scared, and you are unsure whether it is brilliant or stupid. One flippant email had set something in motion. A dream became a decision. I was going to follow Laurie into Spain, and do it properly: with a violin and without money.

The morning after I heard from Becks I walked into a musical instrument shop for the first time in my life. I was not in the mood for borrowing a violin to try or searching for bargains on eBay. I needed to move swiftly and decisively before my unrealistic fit of enthusiasm faded. I glanced at gleaming saxophones and trumpets, then walked past the pianos and drums towards a rack of stringed instruments.

‘Good morning, sir. How can I help you?’

‘I’d like to buy a violin, please.’

‘Certainly, sir. We have a range of sizes and styles made from several different …’

I interrupted the shop assistant.

‘Which one’s the cheapest?’

He reached for a violin and presented it to me. It was the first time I had ever held one. I turned the instrument over in my hands a couple of times, feeling its weight and balance as though it was a cricket bat. It was lighter than I had imagined a violin would be. The assistant looked puzzled.

‘Perfect. I’ll take it.’

I had no idea what to do with my shiny new instrument. The thought of playing it for money was ludicrous. Nonetheless, I presumed it was a reasonable goal to learn a handful of songs before the summer. What should I choose? I allowed my mind to wander. ‘Thunder Road’, for sure. A Dylan song to appear bohemian, perhaps a jaunty flamenco tune or two. I’d learn them by rote and then turn up in Spain, ready to go. It would be tedious performing the same pieces over and over, but they should be enough to rouse a crowd and get them dancing in the streets. I pictured myself among spinning, smiling families and dark-eyed beautiful women or reclining in a mountain meadow with a feast spread before me – empanadas and jamón serrano and manchego cheese – and a bottle of Albariño wine chilling in the stream.

My first lesson changed everything.

I drove to my new teacher’s house, chewing my nails, frowning at the satnav, slowing for speed bumps on the housing estate, peering through the windscreen wipers. I parked the car and dodged puddles on the pavement, the violin dangling awkwardly at my side. I felt daft pretending to be a musician and glanced around in case anyone was watching. My tendency to worry what people think was a significant obstacle ahead of me. I found Becks’ house. It was an ordinary semi, the bins were full and the lawn needed mowing. I rang the bell.

When I had googled for violin teachers, it surprised me how many there were. Dozens of profile photos gazed out at me. How could I choose? There were plenty with glasses and neat hair: proper teachers, sensible and competent. Some were old and stern, others looked young, bright and earnest. Classical musicians, probably, teaching a bit on the side to get by. And then there was Becks.

Her photo showed a woman with waves of shoulder-length blonde hair standing ankle-deep in the ocean in a short black dress, clutching an electric violin. She had tattoos all down one arm and wore a skull ring. She glowered at the camera. Intrigued, I clicked her profile.

Background: world travels and touring with metal bands and rockers.

Musical influences: Iron Maiden, Slash, Prodigy, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.

I picked Becks.

She opened the door with a smile.

‘G’day, Alastair. Come in!’

I took off my shoes and Becks closed the door behind me. I couldn’t get out of this now. I followed her into the living room. A wizard’s shield and sword hung on the wall. Large models of orcs and goblins stood to attention around the room. I tried not to stare. I suspected our lives were very different. But that suited me. I like people who walk an unusual path and have a different perspective. I wanted a teacher who would laugh at my incompetence, not frown. I needed someone who thought my plan was worth a try even if it was likely to fail. Someone who understood the restlessness.

‘Sit down,’ said Becks, offering the sofa. She had tattoos on her feet, and black nail polish.

I sat, grinned and set about explaining my idea. I told Becks about myself, about Laurie, those dusty white tracks, and how I needed to scare myself again, one last time.

‘So, basically, like, erm,’ I concluded, eloquently, ‘I want to spend a month hiking through Spain next summer, without any money. I’m going to busk, like Laurie. But it is only going to work if you can teach me in time. We’ve got seven months. What do you reckon? Are you up for it?’

Becks laughed, an excellent Australian cackle.

And then we began.

I knew that a violin sounds famously terrible in the hands of a beginner. I had not realised the screech actually sends shivers down your spine.

I was going to fucking starve in Spain.

Music Lesson

BECKS GOT STARTED STRAIGHT away: pick up the violin, stick it under your chin and clamp it there. That’s the ridiculous way you have to hold it, like a balloon in a party game. Don’t worry; it’s not a Stradivarius. Relax! You won’t break it. Lightly balance the violin’s neck with your left thumb, keeping your fingers free to position on the strings.

Where should you put your fingers, you ask, for you’ve noticed the violin has no frets to guide you like a guitar? Well, that’s up to you: you must gauge the position, listen to the note and adjust your fingers accordingly. Hopefully, by the way, you tuned the strings: that’s your job, too.

Now, grasp the end of the bow, loosely, with the fingertips of your right hand. You use this awkward horsehair bow (correctly tensioned and lubricated) to produce the note. Draw the bow across the strings, neither too gently nor too hard. Perfectly straight. Not too fast, not too slow. You’ll get through these screeches, I promise. I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for this lesson. See you next week …

Oh, Laurie, why did you inflict the violin upon me? In the hands of someone who has dedicated decades of effort there are few more beautiful sounds. Listen to Yehudi Menuhin playing Elgar’s Violin Concerto or Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. How can such divinity flow from the same instrument with which I just made those first awful screeches? My spine shivers even writing these words! I did not have decades to learn. I had seven months.

Progress

I HAVE SPENT MY adult life cajoling myself to work hard and make the most of my potential and my opportunities. I have coached myself to behave more boldly and be more optimistic than my natural disposition. Adventure entails taking on things that scare you, risking failure and pain in pursuit of fulfilment. One reason I gravitated towards physical challenges in remote environments was to make me uncomfortable and fill me with doubt. You put a little grit into the oyster if you want a pearl.

But the more expeditions I went on (what Wilfred Thesiger described as ‘meaningless penances in the wilderness’), the more competent I became. My life of calculated risk began to lose the jolt of surprise that adventures were supposed to provide. This is the timeless addict’s problem, the slippery slope towards bigger doses and greater risks. I could keep doing the same stuff, but higher, further, faster – pushing my limits, pushing my luck – or else something needed to change.

Centuries ago, the word ‘adventure’ meant ‘to risk the loss of something’, ‘perilous undertakings’ and ‘a trial of one’s chances’. An adventurer was ‘one who plays at games of chance’. If I wanted to keep living adventurously, I had to veer from what I was good at and search again for uncertainty. Could something as gentle as learning a musical instrument count as adventure? I was beginning to think it might. The idea of busking terrified me. It was filled with risk, vulnerability, fear of failure and excitement. That was precisely what I wanted from adventure!

I quickly learned that the violin cannot be quickly learned. It is an idiotic instrument to use for enticing children to love music. It sounds hideous for a very long time. But Laurie crossed Spain with a violin, not something more beginner-friendly, so I was stuck with it.

I knuckled down to make the best of the time I had available, with a weekly lesson and an hour’s practice every evening. Laurie also practised daily, though without the luxury I enjoy of a shed beyond earshot of the family. He sometimes overheard complaints from downstairs of, ‘Oh Mum, does ’e ’ave to, ’e’s been on all night’. I briefly suspected foul play from my own family when my violin got stolen. Someone broke into my shed one night, ripping the door from its hinges. But while I never saw my electronics again, I did stumble upon the violin a few days later, propped up carefully at the foot of a tree behind my house. I pictured the burglar’s wife grimacing at his initial attempts, and him being sent back – in his mask and stripy jumper – to return the frightful instrument.

I was atrocious at the violin and needed to improve quickly if the plan was to become even vaguely viable. But I also discovered that repetitive rehearsal and incremental improvement had an allure of its own. Learning the violin demands deep concentration. As a compulsive multi-tasker, I found this forced focus calming. Late at night in my shed, my worries faded away for a while. I enjoyed the enforced humility of being a beginner and the mindful rhythm of committing to improvement.

I also glimpsed how enjoyable it must be to play music properly. Growing up, Laurie often played at dances in the village hall. He earned five shillings a night, plus lemonade and as many buns as he could scoff.

As adults, we rarely learn fresh skills or dare ourselves to change direction. We urge our children to be bold risk-takers, to show grit and open themselves to new experiences. We encourage them to try things like learning musical instruments. But us grown-ups? We hide behind the way we’ve always done things. We become so boring!

Adults are ashamed to be novices, and so we shy away from it. We draw comfort from being competent, even in narrow and unchanging niches. So we plateau and settle for the identity we have. We don’t stretch ourselves because that risks failure and pain. In fact, it guarantees it, for the pain of being stretched is how we grow. You are vulnerable when you begin something new because you are exposing your weaknesses. I had not been so incompetent for decades. I was surprised to realise that it delighted me.

My lessons with Becks moved from her home to a local school. I waited my turn outside her classroom, listening to the accomplished scales and arpeggios of the pupil before me. I browsed the noticeboards and wished I even knew what an arpeggio was. My nerves began when his lesson ended and the corridor fell quiet. The classroom door opened. I could not believe how young the boy was. His school uniform was far too large for him, and I had to resist the urge to accidentally cuff him round the ear as we crossed paths.

However, I savoured both the intrinsic difficulty of the skill and my faltering but undeniable progress from note to scale to ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. My favourite part of the lessons was when Becks took my violin and demonstrated a piece of music. I loved the magic that burst out of my very own violin, to hear what it was capable of. I was improving, but I was also running out of time. There was too much to learn. Every time I felt I was progressing, the next skill reduced me to a shrieking wreck again. Plucking the strings, playing a smooth note, moving from one string to the next, playing long notes, playing short notes, reading music, double stops, trills, vibrato … each week’s homework was a dispiriting catastrophe!

My hopes for an eclectic playlist faded as Becks and I laboured through the tedious pages of A New Tune A Day for Violin (Book 1). There was not a jaunty flamenco in sight. My debut gig would be the Grade 1 Music Syllabus that thousands of kids across the land were also hacking their way through. Becks even invited me to take part in her pupils’ end-of-term concert at the local primary school. The thought of being twice the height of the rest of the ensemble – knees round my chin on a tiny school chair – and the audience of proud parents was beyond even my levels of voluntary humiliation. I mumbled excuses, and Becks did not ask again.

Becks did a passable job of pretending she enjoyed my playing, fixing her face in to a pleasant expression of encouragement. Violin teachers must be a stoical, masochistic species. When you’re going through hell, keep smiling. Only occasionally did she wince or let her mask slip. One lesson Becks set a metronome to accompany me. I sawed away at the strings, nodding to the beat. It was working! I was playing in time!

In my excitement, I fished for a compliment, ‘Is this right?’

‘Erm …’

Despite my dedication through winter and spring, as the days lengthened I could still play only a handful of tunes. Dylan was out of the question. In fact, busking was out of the question. Only Becks had ever listened to me play, and I had paid her for the privilege. There was no chance I could earn a living from busking.

As my planned departure day approached, I acknowledged, reluctantly, that trying to survive in Spain with no money was unrealistic. Everyone had been telling me this for months. The only sensible option was to postpone the trip for a year until I became competent, or at least travel with my own money and just do a bit of busking for a lark.

But fortunately in life, the only sensible option is not the only option.

I booked my ticket to Spain, and I began.

Into Spain

I SAT ON THE harbour wall, gritty and warm, with my face tilted to the sun. Sea salt and engine diesel in the air. Halyards clanking and gulls circling. Back in 1935, Laurie’s ship docked in Vigo, a quiet corner of northwest Spain. Now I was here, too, at last. It was the first meeting of our paths since I had drunk in Laurie’s old village pub, the Woolpack, while dreaming of this trip. I envied how vivid this arrival must have been for Laurie, setting eyes on abroad for the very first time. ‘I landed in a town submerged by wet green sunlight and smelling of the waste of the sea. People lay sleeping in doorways, or sprawled on the ground, like bodies washed up by the tide.’

Here we go again, I thought: the start of an adventure. It had been far too long since the last one. I remembered the familiar belly-mix of nerves, melancholy and anticipation. After all the turmoil I had been through, I was jubilant that this was actually happening. I had thought these days were over. Laurie exclaimed, almost in disbelief, ‘I was in Spain, and the new life beginning. I had a few shillings in my pocket and no return ticket; I had a knapsack, blanket, spare shirt, and a fiddle, and enough words to ask for a glass of water.’ I had less money than Laurie, but more Spanish.

I picked up my rucksack and set off to explore Vigo. Graceful buildings flanked broad shopping streets, wrought-iron balconies on every storey. Meandering narrow alleys were hewn from rougher blocks of stone. A pail of water sloshed like mercury across the cobbles from a café opening for business, and I breathed the scent of geraniums. The waiter placed ashtrays on the wine barrels used as tables. Even after 20 years of travelling, I still cherish first mornings in a new place when every detail is fresh. Laurie described it as the ‘most vivid time of my life, the most free, sunlit. I remember thinking, I can go where I wish, I’m so packed with time and freedom.’

It was mid-morning, but Spain still slept. The streets were so quiet that I said ‘Buenos días’ to each person I passed. I climbed up to Vigo’s old fortress and peered down from its mossy walls. Terracotta rooftops jumbled higgle-piggle down to the harbour. Wooded hills curved green embracing arms around the blue bay, sprinkled with islands. Earlier, boatloads of carefree beach-goers had departed for those islands, laden with picnic baskets. I had watched Africans trying to flog them sun hats, their wares spread on tarpaulins for ease of fleeing should the police appear. I sympathised with the urgency of their hustle, the immigrant’s need to be enterprising. Like them, I had no money. I had been hard up before, but I’d never had nothing until today. Unlike the hat sellers, however, I was voluntarily penniless, so any comparison was absurd. I had a passport and permission to be here. At sunrise I had piled the last of my money into a small pyramid of coins on a park bench and walked away. I wished that I had bought a sun hat instead.

First Play

IT WAS TIME TO busk for the very first time. Throughout the morning I had hatched escape plans, justified delaying tactics and concocted excuses for compromise. But such self-destruction was not necessary. Not yet. For I had not failed. I merely had not begun. How our minds magnify that little step which separates where we are from where we wish to be! Leaping from a high rock into an enticing river; telling the boss you quit; speaking to the attractive stranger who keeps catching your eye: just one scary step gets us where we most want to be. But too often we flinch and build our own barriers instead.

The sun was high as I stooped to drink and splash my face in the fountain. The bleary drunks prodded each other and watched with bloodshot eyes. The fountain commemorated the Reconquista of 1809 when Vigo became the first town in Spain to expel Napoleon’s army. Trees lined the square and on three sides there were stately nineteenth-century buildings. The fourth side lay open, leading towards a shopping street. The pensioners on the bench shuffled expectantly and the man in the Panama hat mopped his brow. I mumbled an apology for the disappointment that awaited them. I flicked through my music sheets to find the tune I was most comfortable with, a nostalgic old folk tune called ‘Long, Long Ago’. I pegged it to the stand and took a deep breath. Then I began to play.

The ghoulish screech ripped the silence and my daydreams apart. Nails clawing down a blackboard. Shivers up the spine. I had hoped, somehow, that I might have become miraculously skilful since the last time I had practised. In fact, I was even worse than usual. My finger positions were all wrong and the bow trembled across the strings. Everyone turned in surprise. Screech, screech, screech! A sweat of shame and self-ridicule trickled down my face. Each note sounded jagged and raw. I lost my place in the music and had to begin again.

I threw my head back, screwed up my face and growled angrily. There was such a gulf between my ambition and my ability. The plan was doomed before it even began. I was an idiot. I had been too flippant, too idealistic. What a mess! I dearly wished I was not here.

It consoled me in my cowardice knowing that Laurie had felt much the same way before his initial attempt at busking. He was a proficient violinist, but he was young and beginning his first adventure. So perhaps we were about equal in our nerves. ‘It was now or never. I must face it now, or pack up and go back home,’ wrote Laurie. ‘The first notes I played were loud and raw, like a hoarse declaration of protest … To my surprise, I was neither arrested nor told to shut up. Indeed, nobody took any notice at all.’

I stood in the middle of the Praza da Princesa playing ‘Long, Long Ago’ over and over. Beads of sweat ran down my flank and into my trousers. There was no crowd of fawning fans. No cascade of coins. Not even a round of applause. Just indifferent Spaniards accelerating past. I had known this would happen. But I had not known how it would feel.

The timid averted their gaze and lengthened their stride. The stoical reacted by not reacting. A businessman glanced up from his phone but didn’t flatter me with a second look. A young woman in a leather jacket wrinkled her nose as though I stank. I was a visitor in her town behaving like a tedious fool.

I faced two options. Both were simple but neither was easy. I could stop playing, melt back into the streets and regain my blissful anonymity. It was so tempting. Or I could stick it out here in the plaza, daring myself to keep failing. If I quit now, the whole journey was over before I had walked a single step. I did not know how to catch rabbits, and I am more accomplished at foraging in supermarkets than forests. I had to earn money. I could not hide behind any excuses. I had no Plan B.

But what I did have was clarity. I had only one job to do. And I must do it with all my might. It was not easy, but it was simple. My legs shook. Half my head begged me to stop. But the rest of me, fists clenched, knuckles white, said no. Just finish this song. You can always ride one more mile, row one more minute, walk one more step, play one more song.

Hope

AN EMBARRASSED LAUGH BURST from my mouth after yet another tune fizzled out. But this time a man on the bench responded with a small smile. A smile! My busking had earned something at last. This was progress. But it was only a matter of time before people tired of me and the police ushered me away, so I turned to my best song. ‘Guantanamera’ was my jolliest piece and – being Cuban – vaguely close to Spanish music.

‘Guantanamera,’ I explained, hesitantly, to the bench, after stuttering through the closing notes.

‘Más o menos, more or less,’ said my ally, kindly. He was a mild-looking gentleman of about 60, resting a pile of heavy supermarket bags at his feet.

The men next to him continued to ignore me, stony-faced. In their situation, I would have done the same. Make eye contact with a crap foreign busker and he’s certainly not going to leave you in peace. Better to keep your head down and your money in your pocket.

Back in England, Becks used to dish out musical advice above and beyond trying to coax me into playing some of the right notes in approximately the right order. One afternoon she described what to do ‘once you’ve got a crowd gathered’. I raised an eyebrow at her sassy optimism.

‘They will all be clapping along to this,’ she proclaimed as I lumbered through a ponderous nursery rhyme. ‘Spaniards are very rhythmical.’

I resisted asking whether she had ever been to Spain, and sighed. ‘I honestly don’t think a crowd is going to gather to listen to this.’

There was no solace in proving myself right.

My stomach rumbled but I had not earned a crust. It was time for what is always a good plan when you are vulnerable. Be humble, look people in the eye, acknowledge your faults, trust yourself, trust the world, smile, then try your best. I wiped my eyes on my shirt, tidied my music sheets and started again. Song after song, I failed to snare my first coin. Every tune was strewn with errors. But I was enthusiastic now, a less timid person than when I woke that morning. I had to persevere, be patient, keep hoping, and trust the people of Vigo.

After what felt like a lifetime sawing away, one elderly gentleman rose from the bench. He walked towards me, stooped and leaning on his stick. He looked smart in his dark glasses and tweed jacket, with neatly combed hair. I anticipated his words:

‘Señor. Enough! Spare us. It is time to move on. Por favor. Give us back our peace, I beg you.’

But he did not say that. Instead, he put his hand into his pocket.

Surely not!

The old man pulled out a coin and handed it to me with a small smile. And I thought I was going to burst with exhilaration and amusement and relief. I had done it!

Nor was it just a copper coin. He gave me a whole euro! In the weeks of doubt before departure, my mantra to prevent me from wimping out of the trip had been, ‘If I can just get one euro, somehow, I can buy a bag of rice. With a bag of rice, I can walk for a week. Walk for a week and after that anything becomes possible. Just one euro. That’s all I need. One euro. Somehow …’

That gentleman gave me much more than a euro. He gave more even than a bag of rice. For he gave me hope.

Encouragement

NOW: A COIN IN my case and hope in my heart! I had earned my first busking money. A euro! A bag of rice. A beginning. I held the coin up in the sunlight and kissed it. I was rich!

Laurie had a similar delighted epiphany that something as intangible as a mere song could be converted into cash. This alchemy revealed a world of possibility. ‘I felt that wherever I went from here this was a trick I could always live by.’

Shorn of fear, I dived back into my repertoire, looping through my five little songs again and again, but this time playing with joy and confidence. It is probably no coincidence that more success followed. Two elderly ladies laughed at me, fumbled in their handbags, and gave 50 cents each. I had predicted that I would earn nothing in Vigo and that it might take days before I got my act together. I saw myself picking ears of wheat and pilfering crusts from café tables. But instead, I was rich on the very first day! And, like most wealthy people, I now wanted even more.

I sawed away, panning for gold, giddy and greedy with the rushing release of nerves and the thrill of exhibitionism. And the money: so much money! I gazed in awe at the three gleaming coins in my violin case.

A lady strode through the plaza – jeans, blouse, smiling – aged about 50. She looked both prosperous and friendly: promising. She paused and peered into her handbag as though preparing to give me something. Then she changed her mind and walked on, flipping her hand at me. I presumed that she had noticed how bad I was. Oh well … nearly … At least someone had considered me.

Later, as I was packing to leave, the same woman returned, and this time she gave me a euro. She explained that earlier she had no change in her handbag. This was becoming decadent!

Laurie was also struck by gold fever, recalling, ‘Those first days … were a kind of obsession; I was out in the streets from morning till night, moving from pitch to pitch in a gold-dust fever, playing till the tips of my fingers burned.’

A sturdy pensioner sat down to rest. He groaned as he lowered himself onto the bench, bracing his hands on his thighs. When he heard me playing, he did not smile. He watched with his jaw set and face expressionless. I grew nervous. After only a song or two he signalled me to stop, waving with his palm downwards in the Spanish fashion.

‘Am I really so bad?’ I wondered.

He beckoned me over and motioned for me to sit beside him on the bench.

I was rushing, the old man explained, playing too fast. I needed to allow space in the music.

‘You know the expanding ripples when you throw a stone into a lake? That is music. The silences make a tune. The unique pauses are what make a life. My name is Antonio. Now, play me “Guantanamera” again.’

I returned to my violin. I left spaces. I played, as much as I was able, with passion. I really tried. When I finished the song, one of the drunks leaning on the fountain laughed and called out, ‘más o menos’. His pals showered me with the lightest ripple of applause. And Antonio dropped a coin into my violin case. It glittered with treasure like an overflowing pirate’s chest. Four whole euros!

Antonio then launched into a rambling philosophical monologue that I only half grasped, explaining that my journey and my life was like the children’s game La Oca. In La Oca you have to be willing to roll the dice and go for it. If you want to move forward, you must risk and accept whatever triumph or disaster comes your way. I was a free spirit, like the swan in La Oca, he said. I should feel proud of what I was attempting, and be as brave as I dared to be.

After a sleepless night and the day’s exhausting emotions, Antonio’s kind words brought a lump to my throat. It was just the rousing speech I needed to get me over the next hurdle. It was time to walk.

Preparation

I SCOOPED UP MY bounty and carted it to the supermarket. Up and down the air-conditioned aisles I went, fizzing with happiness, browsing carefully. I was not saddened by all I could not afford, only tantalised by how much I could.

How best to spend my money? I calculated fastidiously, focusing on calorie-to-price ratios rather than taste appeal. It was a good thing to consider every purchase. Too rarely at home do I ask, ‘do I need this or merely want it?’

What if today had been beginner’s luck though? The food those five shining coins granted me might have to last a long time. But I decided that I should never earn more than I needed when I busked, and nor should I hold any money in reserve. Boom or bust would keep me nicely on edge.

I made my choices – bread, rice, two carrots, an onion and tomato puree. I considered the smallest packet of salt, turning it over and over in my hands, but at 30 cents it felt too indulgent. I opted for an extra carrot instead, then carried my basket to the checkout, hoping I had done my sums correctly.

Only now, as I stuffed food into my rucksack, did I give any real thought to the actual journey. Hundreds of miles of hiking lay ahead, alone, finding my way, sleeping outdoors, hoping for food. This uncertainty had not troubled my mind until now, proof that the concept of adventure ought to be broader than rugged men (or me) doing rugged stuff in rugged mountains. I had walked a long way before. I’d slept outdoors for months on end. I was comfortable with being uncomfortable. The traditional expedition aspects were what I knew well and had done many times.

I sat on the pavement, ripped off a chunk of bread, unfolded my map across my knees and studied it for the first time. It was the same brand I had used cycling round the world – Michelin – and the familiar cartography and design was reassuring. The shadings of higher ground, the red pin kilometre markings, the green scenic routes. But the specific unfamiliarity of this map also thrilled me. A new lie of the land to learn. All those fresh and unknown names. I tried the sounds on my tongue. Ponteareas, Vilasobroso, Celanova … so many unmade memories beckoning me towards them.

I planned to follow Laurie’s route loosely, perhaps as far as Madrid. I had a month of freedom, and the capital lay roughly 500 miles away. I needed to get a sense of the distances I could cover out here, but that sounded about right. I had no schedule. I would just follow my nose and see where I ended up. I didn’t mind. Laurie mentioned only a handful of place names in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. These would guide me, but I wasn’t concerned how I threaded the necklace. I was not aiming to replicate Laurie’s walk, only to follow its spirit. I would find pearls of my own along the way. I brushed away crumbs, folded the map, flexed my knees to judge the weight of my pack and joined Laurie walking out into Spain.

First Walk

THE FIRST DAY WAS long, loud concrete drudgery. Before I even got out of Vigo I had to slog through the expensive, in-the-action central streets, the poorer rings of tower blocks, then the car showrooms, industrial parks, out-of-town shopping, and – eventually – the expensive, almost-in-the-country suburbs. Laurie did not suffer this misfortune back in the 1930s when the boundary between town and country was much clearer.

Pavements are hard and bruise your feet. I looked forward to the varied footfall of paths and fields. The day was hilly, hot, and my pack was bastard-heavy. It’s difficult to find a place to pee in a city if you don’t have a penny to spend in a café. City planners consider only cars. Their oily, noisy highways steal the best routes, choking, hooting, scaring me, and making plain the absurd slowness of walking in today’s high-speed world. Pedestrians are neglected, or forbidden and forced onto circuitous routes. I walked with my eyes down, dodging dog shit, trudging through shredded tyres, broken glass and fast food plastic. Decades later, in the era of cars, Laurie reminisced about his Spanish experience. ‘I was lucky, I know, to have been setting out at that time, in a landscape not yet bulldozed for speed.’

At last, though, Vigo was behind me, and I walked inland, away from the sea. A thousand rivers and streams had the opposite idea. They pushed past me, rushing towards the Atlantic. All of man’s movements here had been channelled into this single valley, shaded with eucalyptus trees. There were no quiet parallel routes, nor could I head for open high ground and make my own way. If you leave Vigo to the east, this is the way you come. So I joined the procession. Cars, buses, lorries, and me: all going our own way. All, for now, going the same way. But I was the only one walking, and walking on a busy road stinks.

When I pedalled away from my front door to cycle around the world, aged 24, the scale of what I was taking on overwhelmed me. I was burdened by doubt as to whether I had chosen the right path in life. By going away, I discovered a deeper appreciation of everything I left behind. This heightened the significance of the unknown I had chosen in its place, and raised the stakes of my gamble.

Later, walking across India, I missed my new wife. I berated myself for trading comfy evenings on the sofa with Sarah for a lonely, ascetic hike. Three years later, however, by the time I was sweltering in the Empty Quarter, things had changed and I was just damn glad to be far from home. Laurie wrote of ‘how much easier it was to leave than to stay behind and love’. But my disloyalty soured the relief of the escape.

Here, finally, on this July day in Galicia, I had the balance of emotions about right. This was precisely where I wanted to be right now. I was enjoying refreshing my Spanish, reading every billboard and shop sign I passed. I liked the novelty of my new hiking poles, and my shiny trainers felt good. I was neither too homesick nor too desperate to get away, nicely nervous rather than swamped by foreboding. I smiled thinking about Laurie’s worries when he walked away from home. ‘The first day alone – and now I was really alone at last – steadily declined in excitement and vigour … I found myself longing for some opposition or rescue, for the sound of hurrying footsteps coming after me and family voices calling me back. None came. I was free. I was affronted by freedom. The day’s silence said, Go where you will. It’s all yours. You asked for it. It’s up to you now. You’re on your own, and nobody’s going to stop you …’

Off the highway by late afternoon, I followed an empty lane through sleepy old hamlets, home to more goats and chickens than people. The hot air smelled of dusty yellow grass. The landscape was more expansive than England’s. It would be a long walk to each horizon. There were small mosaics of meadow whenever the land lay flat enough for vintage tractors to mow. Overhanging apple trees and unripe vines taunted my hungry belly as I eked out my bread. I pinched a grape, but spat it out – sour grapes for my theft.

Every village had a fuente, an old stone fountain. They were often shaped like a large gravestone built into a wall. A stream of water cascaded into a trough. I drank at each one, the water cold and pure, then dunked my head. I was pacing myself and taking care not to push too hard. Usually, I launch into expeditions hungover and sleepless from final preparations. I charge off with such enthusiasm that by evening I collapse exhausted, muscles screaming and sunstroke-dizzy.

A tetraplegic watched me from his garden up the hill. He was enjoying the sunshine in his wheelchair. I shouted hola, and waved. He could not wave back, but I hoped I provided a few seconds of distraction. When I feel caged by ordinary life, I told myself, I should think of that man, trapped inside his body, rather than feeling sorry for myself.

The rolling hills and heavy pack punished my unsuspecting legs as I climbed steadily towards a ridge of pines. The valley floor lay quiet and hazy far below. I waded through crisp bracken and ducked under the coconut fragrance of yellow gorse. I emerged in a village of steep alleys, stone cottages with closed doors and dogs going berserk at me.

A door cracked open at the noise, and an inquisitive old woman appeared, bent like a question mark. I raised a hand in greeting and called out that her village was beautiful.

‘It is, if you like mountains, I suppose,’ she grumbled.

‘Do you like mountains?’ I asked, hoping to elicit a more cheerful response.

‘No.’

She slammed the door.

First Night

AS DUSK APPROACHED, I grew anxious. I was uncertain where to sleep. The amygdala, deep in the primitive brain, warned of the old dangers of the night.

‘Play safe. Hide!’ my instincts urged, tugging at me, keeping me safe, avoiding horrible imaginings, just as they had done before I busked. I knew I would have to camp every night, that hotels would never be an option on this journey. Right now I wanted to burrow deep into the woods and hide like a fugitive.

Then the voice of experience chimed in. It was low and quiet, but it reminded me that I have worried about the first night on every journey I have been on. Yet once I accept that I must do it and get on with it, I always love the simple act of finding my home for the night and making myself safe and comfortable. The memories of the past beckoned me down the road.

Given the opportunity, I prefer to head high and reach the top of the next hill before stopping for the evening. The views are better from a hilltop, the toil is behind you and you gift yourself a gentle start to the next morning. Even when I am tired, I reprimand myself if I put off the hard work until tomorrow. Only in winter do I camp below a hill, when I will appreciate the early climb to warm me after a cold night.

That first evening in Galicia I tossed down my bag on a grassy hilltop in the lee of a eucalyptus tree. I flopped beside it, peeling off my sweaty shirt and socks, and admired the long views across the valley towards the sunset. Laurie might have enjoyed the same view. There was not a building in sight, though at times I heard distant sheep and dogs, a mile away and 80 years ago. Breeze rustled the pale leaves above my head. I sat cross-legged on my sleeping mat, lit a tiny fire ringed with stones and perched a pan of rice on top. I hummed to myself, enjoying the newness of being back in the old routine.

A plump, noisy bumblebee flew into his hole beside my bed. He and me, our homes together tonight. A green woodpecker rattled in the woods. The pan bubbled. I lifted it from the flames to cool. The gloop smelled burned, but I salivated. I ate half my rice as crickets chirped in the meadow, before forcing myself to put down the pan and save the rest for breakfast.

As dusk settled, I wriggled into my sleeping bag, sheltered from the breeze. I was glad not to have a tent blocking the view. The pink moon rose, gliding as it broached the horizon. I love this part of the wanderer’s day, watching the azure sky thicken from cobalt to midnight blue and – eventually – darkness and sleep.

I reached for Laurie’s book and turned on my head torch. Its brightness reduced the world to only the text and pitch blackness. Our journeys spanned the best part of a century. The gulf of Hiroshima, the moon landings, air travel and the internet separated our times. But the velvet contentment of well-earned rest beneath the stars bridged the gap and brought us together. Laurie was new to this outdoor life I loved. He took to it fondly. I read, ‘Out in the open country it grew dark quickly, and then there was nothing to do but sleep. As the sun went down, I’d turn into a field and curl up like a roosting bird, then wake in the morning soaked with dew, before the first farmer or the sun was up, and take to the road to get warm, through a smell of damp herbs, with the bent dawn moon still shining.’

I have a tradition before falling asleep on long journeys: I choose my favourite bit of the day, and what I am looking forward to tomorrow. This habit stems from gruelling times when the magnitude of an expedition felt crippling, and the loneliness magnified it. It helps me to fall asleep feeling optimistic, for the day’s last conscious thought to be positive before I surrender my brain to its unsupervised night of processing, filing and dreaming. There is always something good about each day, even if it is only the prospect of sleep. And tomorrow, too, will hold promise if I choose to see it, whether in a cup of tea, anticipating rest at day’s end, or the glory of reaching the furthest shores of a continent.

I ached, yawned and smiled: a sweet cocktail for sleep. I had earned this rest. As I do every night, I whispered goodnight to my family, using my wife and children’s nicknames. It brought a brief knot of sadness to my belly. The moon cast shadows over the field. It was peaceful on the fringes of the wood. Nobody knew I was there. Today, I had stood up in public, played the violin and passed my test. And I had walked. I had done everything the day asked of me. My journey had begun.

Marriage

BY THE TIME I finished cycling the world I was skinny, skint and spent from four years of singular focus, ascetic living and tens of thousands of lonely miles. Soft beds hurt my back, social gatherings made me anxious, supermarket aisles looked impossibly decadent. Reflecting on this, it is not surprising that such an experience eroded and hardened me in ways that would take years to resolve, some of them only with writing this book. Your first adventure moulds you; everything after fits into the impression it made. But I was unaware of all this. I only knew that I was proud to have achieved something exceptional for the first time, relieved that it was over and happy to be back with Sarah.

I had loved Sarah for years before pedalling off in tears. I was sad to go but too restless to remain, convinced that there must be more in the world than I could find at home. Sarah didn’t want to come with me: a decent job and a hectic social life sounded better than banana sandwiches, a tiny tent and endless bloody cycling. After four years apart, I threw my frayed cycling clothes in the bin, put my penknife into the cutlery drawer and moved in with Sarah.

We were very different, but our worlds sat together comfortably. Sarah wore a suit, went out to work for a big firm of accountants and then came home to relax in her pyjamas with DIY and soppy TV shows that made her cry. Uncertain what my future held, I wrote my first book, sitting at home all day in my underpants. I gave talks at schools (fully dressed) and trained for a marathon. I needed Sarah’s cheerful confidence and competence, her poised assurance that life was mapped out and under control. I’m not sure what was in it for her. Sarah is not interested in the things I love: expeditions or books or exercise. Corporate tax is not my strong point. So we helped each other keep things in perspective. Opposites fit snugly in a jigsaw.

I was halfway through a 20-mile run on a cold autumn morning when I decided to ask Sarah to marry me, slipping and sliding along a muddy footpath by the Thames. Rain lashed my face. I love running in weather like this. As I ran, I imagined two routes in life. I was sorry I could not travel both. One was the open road, with all the world to explore, and the joys and struggles and lessons that would unfold. It was selfish, feral and solitary, but tempting as ever. The alternative was unknown: marriage, children, a different search for fulfilment. A family, and all our joys and struggles and lessons together. Without these connections, I feared I would become a rootless drifter.

A cracking story is not a life. Knowing how way leads on to way, I made my choice. I was still eager to explore the world, to keep pushing myself hard and to make the most of life. But I looked forward now to sharing that with Sarah.

I jumped into the river to confirm that I was thinking straight and hadn’t gone mad, then ran back home to ask Sarah if she would like us to spend the rest of our lives together.

‘I take thee, Sarah, to be my wedded wife … from this day forward, for better or for worse.’

‘With this ring, I thee wed.’

We left our wedding reception riding a red tandem – tricky for a bride in a long white dress – with fireworks bursting overhead. As our honeymoon plane curved its great circular route over the Arctic, Sarah slept, her head against my shoulder. Her blonde curls covered her face, and I gazed out of the window at the endless expanse of ice below.

My wife and I clinked bottles and sipped cold Big Wave beer in the Hawaiian sunshine. The sound of the ocean carried to us on the warm breeze. But that beguiling Arctic ice lingered in my mind. To my surprise, I sensed that my tide of post-cycling exhaustion had finally receded. Were those years of yearning for stillness and community being pushed aside again by the clamour of restlessness and ambition? Polar literature had always entranced me, and I pondered the enormity of Antarctica. Endeavour, endurance, discovery: could I hack it there? The prospect was both terrifying and thrilling.

I despised being a one-trick pony, that guy who had once done something interesting and never stops talking about it. I have had a fortunate life and the only challenges I’ve faced are those that I have set myself. My ego, and my desire to be acknowledged as a serious adventurer, demanded a new trip. I had become beguiled by the macho lure that bigger is better, that expeditions were a way of sorting the strong from the weak. (Laurie wasn’t immune to this either. Long after walking across Spain, he admitted that part of his motivation had been to show off to girlfriends.) I was, to borrow from Robert Macfarlane writing about mountaineers, ‘half in love with myself, and half in love with oblivion’.

Feeling a little guilty, I put down my beer bottle and sloped away from the poolside to email a friend.

Hi Ben,

Having a wonderful time in Hawaii – been out whale-watching and running this morning.

But I can’t stop thinking about my future expeditions. So I decided to write and ask in all seriousness if I can join your South Pole expedition? I am writing because I will regret it if I do not, but also because you know me well enough to be able to say ‘No!’ without embarrassment or worry …!

Look forward to chatting in the New Year when I get home. Hope you have a warm, sunny Christmas, like me,

Al

There were already three of us competing in this marriage: Sarah, me and adventure.

Dawn

I STIRRED IN THE silent hues of dawn, shivering. Too cold to sleep, too cold to get up. I lay uncomfortably for a while before conceding that I would not fall back to sleep and the morning might as well begin. The hills of Galicia were colder than I had expected for the summertime. I stood, stretched and dressed. My sleeping bag was dew-damp as I stuffed it into the rucksack. Yawn, blink, pack, leave. Into the distinctive moist-earth smell of the early hours, the air raw in my nostrils. It was still dark, but there was enough moonlight to walk without a torch. I padded through villages, the only soul astir. Valeixe, Vilar, Crecente … It was hard to keep heading east on roads that hairpinned and looped as they hugged the contours of the hilly landscape. This early, I was content to walk along country lanes to speed my progress. When the world woke and cars returned, I would return to the fields and footpaths.

The road was a single lane of potholed tarmac, crumbling at the edges, among smallholdings of corn and grapevines. A white dog pricked its ears as I filled my bottles at a village fountain, but it offered only a couple of sleepy barks of protest. The water glinted as it splashed, and sounded loud in the stillness. A solitary streetlight darkened the dawn sky around it. Barns and dry-stone walls were built from blocks of lichen-mottled stone. I ran my fingers along their gritty surface and sprouting clumps of soft moss. A rose bush spilled over a garden wall, and even this early the scent was strong. As the moon set in the purpling west, colour crept back into the world. Morning had returned.

Then the rising dust as the dew dried, the coming of heat and the yeasty presence of farm animals. A pair of blackbirds hurtled across the lane at ankle height, pouring torrents of noise at each other. In the passing blur I could not tell if they were courting or scrapping. A common confusion. My shirt, damp from yesterday’s sweat, steamed with my body heat in the early light. A church bell and the distant jangle of sheep bells amplified the quiet. It was many hours before I spoke to anyone. I reached into my pocket for some bread. It was so stale that I had to use my molars to tear off lumps. I didn’t mind, for it made the enjoyable act of eating last longer. I set a brisk pace as there was a village on my map that I hoped to reach in time for a lunchtime busk.

The first time Laurie played his violin in Spain he was frazzled from the sun, and a glass of wine had gone to his head. He ‘tore drunkenly into an Irish reel. They listened, open-mouthed, unable to make head or tail of it.’ Then he tried a fandango and ‘comprehension jerked them to life’. An old man danced ‘as if his life was at stake’ and afterwards ‘retired gasping to the safety of the walls’. Laurie went on to play in markets, inns, cafés and the occasional brothel along his journey. His instrument became ‘a passport of friendship’. I hoped that might hold true for me. But I was certainly never going to be allowed to perform in a café, never mind anywhere more exotic.

My prompt start got me to the village in good time. The school playground was lively and noisy and I hoped the same would be true of the plaza. My timing was good: the café was busy and customers were walking in and out of the bakery, the bank and the small grocery. I rested on a bench for a few minutes, drank some water and ate a carrot. Then it was time to busk.

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