A bus ride back to the Sixties

or perhaps to a post-apocalypic world. In the early Seventies I backpacked the equivalent distance of twice around the equator, much of it along the fringes of hippydom. I was keen to find out the changes in forty years. A bus ride to the eco-village of Beneficio, near Orgiva in the far south delivered enlightenment of a kind. About two hundred live here in an assortment of yurts, tipis and homemade shelters. Visitors are welcome to stay at the communual tipi and join thirty or more for the evening meal of dahl and chappaties or rice and veggies. A five-foot wide fire dominated the tipi and there were magical moments when stars shown through the open top or the shadow of dreadlocks danced against the wall like an Indian´s feather headdress to the sound of violin, clarinet and a dozen drums. However, the music and free-wheeling conversations of the earlier days had been replaced by a woeful ignorance on how to live successfully and sustainably in a near-cashless society. Dialogue is challenging when you ask someone where they are from and the reply is as likely to be an unknown planet as it is a country. I pointed out easy ways to make life more pleasent - using car windshields to sprout beans, black plastic pipe for solar hot showers and intensive raised beds for gardening.
In the village I met English ex-pat builders living a similar hardscrabble existance. There dilemma was how to plough with a pair of mules and help refugees from the city who were weary of fighting police and just wanted to grow food to survive. One of the mule´s was too old the other too viscious. I gave them my business card informing them I was both an equestrian consultant and a compost expert.  Well-stewed tea gives life to the jaded and tranquilizers calms the crazy; as for ploughing, a better alternative are goats followed by pigs. Then, the cost of dead stock removal came up, I gave them the www.wormdigest.org website and told them that a composted mule will make a raised bed that will keep them in veggies all year. After five days I left, wondering why some people choose to live a post-apocalypic life when the buses run and markets flow with fresh fruit.

Walking Blues

My first walking experience was similar to my first biking trip - I got it all wrong. I´ve been in the company of walkers for the past month and am full of admiration of how they cross countries, if not continents, effortlessly. There are three tricks to walking: the first week you should only average 25km a day, you only carry 10% of your body weight and there is no need to carry three day´s supply of food when you pass through a village every three hours. I did over 40km the first (and only day) which left me knackered. My error was compounded in that many of the cheap pilgrim alburgues are closed for winter, the weather is bad and their is nobody else on the trail to commisserate with. I missed the advantage of the bike and the ability to cook and camp anywhere. The bike still works, although we both know 3,500km has taken its toll. I´m only a day´s ride from Sandander, the departure point for the ferry to the UK. Tomorrow I leave the bike here and take a bus to Madrid, the following ten days are a mystry.

Go south until butter melts, then turn west

Those are the instructions given to mariners sailing to the New World - I only wish my navigation was so simple. Somedays I have brilliant sucess and other days dismal failure. Yesturday I experienced both. I ask for direction at a gas station on the edge of a city, the Spanish are generous with time and kindness in helping wayward strangers, however, it is like memorising the hand signals of an orchester conductor or perhaps, a priest giving a blessing. More then an hour later I bike past the same gas station after a stint on the motorway.
Then in the evening I need to find a village not marked on the map, then find the house of a woman named Angel to get the key to the hostel. I expected to be there by 4pm, but I had a series of punctures. I´m ruthless in reducing the weight on the bike, I hyrate at a bar instead of refilling my water bottle and can,t find the pin-hole puncture in the growing darkness without water. The yellow arrows painted on the road or walls cannot be seen in the darkness, despite all this I´m safe and warm in the hostel by 7pm.
Tomorrow I leave the bike at auberge at San Vincente, near Sandander, and set off to walk the Camino along the coast for two weeks.