Going ‘home’ from home Part 1.
A story from the early years of our Mallorca adventure. When ‘home’ meant the old farmhouse Cana Cavea, and also England. Now, with a son a daughter-in-law and six grandchildren, home is unequivocally Mallorca.
In 1990 we were invited to a wedding in England. Instead of flying, we opted for the adventure of driving ‘home. We’d take the ferry from Palma to Barcelona, drive across northern Spain and then on through France to Calais. Our new Ford XR3i, unsuited for the country lanes of Mallorca, was ideal for the long journey.
The travel agent told us to to get a certificate for the islanders’ discount.
Anticipating a bureaucratic nightmare, I preferred to pay full price and avoid the ulcer, Sandy disagreed. As we entered the Felanitx Ajuntamiento (Town Hall), I expected queues, paperwork, stamps, requests for extra documents and more queues. The receptionist asked for my residence card, which was in my car a kilometre away. So begins the paperchase, I thought. She curtly dismissed me and turned to Sandy, who presented a card from her handbag. The girl typed the ID number into her terminal, and a printer zipped back and forth. She tore off a sheet with our details, stuck on a stamp, franked it, asked for 200Pesetas (₤1.50), and handed Sandy the certificate. Returning to the agent, we got almost 50% off the Barcelona ferry tickets.
On a Friday evening in October, we loaded the car, locked up Cana Cavea and headed for the ferry. Driving down the hill into Palma, a crimson setting sun reflected off the bay from behind pale purple mountains. Like migrating birds, a stream of planes headed north from Son Sant Joan, suggesting the end of summer. Joining the city traffic, we skirted the bay on the Paseo Maritimo with its busy street cafés, restaurants and hotels to the Trans-Mediterranean terminal.
The ferry sat huge against the dock, wisps of smoke drifting from its funnel, barely visible against the night sky. Vehicles ahead of us moved off, and we negotiated the steep ramp onto the car deck. At the reception, we collected our keys, stowed our things in our four-berth cabin, and when the ferry sailed, we went on deck. Leaning on the ship’s rail, looking beyond the luxury yachts, we watched Palma’s beautiful illuminated Cathedral disappear as we sailed west. Passing sparkling shore lights, we turned north into open sea en-route for Barcelona. Excitement turned to fatigue, and we went to bed, rocked to sleep by the gentle motion of the ferry. When we awoke the coast of mainland Spain was in sight.
We entered the port of Barcelona, passing rusty hulls of working merchant ships. We tide up near the steel tower, Torre de Jaume I, that supports the Port Cable Cars travelling between Montjuïc mountain. By 09:00 Barcelona was behind us as we drove west towards Zaragoza, from where we would head north to Pamplona, famous for the running of the bulls during the San Fermín festival, a journey of almost 500Km. The traffic on the autopista was light, and we sped through the thinly populated countryside, passing the odd lorry and occasionally being passed by a high-performance car. For most of the route, the old road and autopista were interwoven, crisscrossing each other on grey concrete bridges out of character with the landscape. Travelling through that rugged land, I thought of the Peninsular War, and how the British and Spanish had fought Napoleon’s armies across that open hostile terrain. The sheer physical slog of it all.
Zipping along the open road, music streaming from the radio with mountain winds buffeting the car, I was filled with joy remembering hours spent parked up on the M25.
At a speed 160km/hr, we sped past a column of sixteen National Police transit vans with mesh-covered windows, filled with police in riot gear. Only when I saw the vans receding in my rearview mirror did I realised what I’d just done. ‘Oh well. It was too late to put the breaks on now’.
Just before Zaragoza, we stopped for coffee, and to fill up with petrol. The station attendant was amazed that the children spoke both Spanish and Catalan with equal fluency.
By 12:45 we were on the Pamplona inter-city flyover looking down on factories and high rise apartment blocks. With no sign of the old fortress city in that urban sprawl, we decided not to turn off. It didn’t look like a place for eagles to roost for the night. We drove on.
It was barely lunchtime. With Pamplona behind us and San Sebastian, our second planned stopover, less than 100Km away, I couldn’t believe we’d travelled so far so quickly. We turned off into the hills. Within minutes we were in a fantasy land of green pine-clad mountains, Swiss-style chalets, and cattle grazing on sloping meadows. Periodically, a waterfall spilt over the road and fell on down the mountainside. I wondered how much it would cost to buy a home in this beautiful place, then thinking of winter in the Pyrenees I dropped the idea.
After meandering up serpentine roads, we came to an old lodge restaurant on a peak and stopped for lunch. After eating we gave Rohan, then eleven, the money to pay the bill. The young waitress asked, “Is this your money?” Rohan replied in Catalan, “If you like” and put the cash in his pocket. She laughed and made to box his ears.
As we got to the door after paying, the waitress called Rohan back. She gave him cornettos for him and Tayrne, stroked his face and said goodbye. While the children ate their ice creams, we stood by the safety rail overlooking the valley floor far below. Then, we set off for the coast and San Sebastian, the first place I’d visited in Spain in August 1968. The holiday in that beautiful city, yet another story, was the topic of conversation as we drove down from the mountain through tidy villages.
“That was over twenty years ago, it won’t be the same now,” said Sandy. With the vision of Pamplona in my head, she was probably right.
We drove through the suburbs to where there’d been an aquarium and bar overlooking the fishing harbour and island in the bay. Stepping from the car was like stepping through a window in time. As if, at nineteen, I’d blinked and was now standing in the future with a wife and two children. The place hadn’t changed.
I was quickly brought back to earth when I paid the equivalent of ₤10 for two Cokes a coffee and a beer. Inflation is one thing you can always depend on.
We booked into a hotel in the east of the city close to the French border. With a few hours of light remaining, we returned to the bay area, and I found the hotel from that distant holiday. The facade was the same, but it had been renovated. Sadly the old world Spanish bar opposite was boarded up. The place was straight out of a Hemingway novel. It had: old heavy wooden door icebox fridges. Serrano hams hanging from the ceiling smoked by black tobacco Celtas and Ducados, and a row of toilet cubicles that opened straight into the bar. There’d been strange cross-hatched bottles of anis and San Miguel beer with white painted labels straight onto the bottles.
We strolled around the beach, stopping where a group of boys were playing football. Rohan, unable to speak Euskara, asked in Castilian if he could join in. They said he wasn’t a local so he couldn’t play. Rohan replied in Catalan he was actually English and didn’t want to play with them anyway.
We sat and watched, but Rohan couldn’t hide his disappointment. After a while there was a huddle on the sand, one of the boys walk over to Rohan. With a sideways flick of his head, he said “Ven”. Rohan didn’t need to be told twice, he was off across the sand like a shot with the boy hot on his heels. Sandy, Tayrne and I continued on our walk around the bay.
On our return, in failing light, we heard Rohan calling for the ball and cursing when he didn’t get it. After many adioses and buen amigo back-slapping, we dragged Rohan away from his new friends.
We returned to our hotel and slept the sleep of weary travellers at the end of the first leg of our journey.