In the scheme of things, in the scheme of the last 18 months, the loss of a car is just a small bump in the road. Perhaps that’s why I felt the tiniest tingle of relief as it was loaded on a trailer for a sliver of cash. Effectively a burden gone, another potential disaster-in-waiting purged. Plus who wants to pay for petrol at the moment anyway?
So with an empty carport and a sliver of cash I am left wondering what does one do with cash these days? Wave it in front of a card reader? Hide it under the mattress? Feed it in stages into the soulless void of a self-service surveillance checkout? I know I could put it in the bank, but that would involve a drive to the nearest branch in Wollongong and, well, see above.
No hasty decisions. The last time I made a hasty decision I bought a car and that didn’t go so well. I think the purchase came about as an expensive alternative to comfort eating after the ultimate, exquisitely executed ghosting. Buyers Beware. A spoonful of newfound adventure and fresh horizons, with the mid forties option of sleeping in the back. I slept in the back three times at $3,333 a night, and never very well.
So I don’t really have fond memories of that car, not in the same way as the almost as demanding Outback. And thus the day it went on that trailer it was almost like a release. And I could just go for a walk instead…
A walk first through the cemetery, my gateway from home to Woden storm drains and the afterlife. The vibe pretty much the same at both. Between, the purgatory of brutalist office block festering in diesel bus fumes and detours. Yonder the pearly gates of Westfield.
But I am not heading in that direction just now. Instead, life and joy and wonder. Sunlight and flowers and bees. Simple pleasures you see on foot, absorbed at a natural pace. Suburban magnolia peeking above fences, wattlebirds clucking in the callistemon, the honeyed smells of acacia. A hum of spring release and endeavour, all the way to the golf course.
A man talks loudly on his phone, the sound of a work call in between the wattle and magpies. We have all done it but I feel slightly irked by this intrusion. As if this spectacle of life, this annual miracle of rebirth is simply a backdrop ignored for talk of Gantt charts and stakeholder management.
Technology huh. Like this whole lane assist thing that new cars seem to think you want. Along with no key and handbrake. Welcome to 2023, I feel, as I take advantage of a bargain rental deal for the weekend. Cue a logistical feast of car-based activities, including Bunnings and IKEA and a drive to the tip. But there’s also a bit of time for at least a mini road trip.
Trying to manoeuvre around potholes in spite of lane assist I head south into Namadgi National Park. For all of Canberra’s interwoven parks and hills I want to feel that wilderness, that overpowering sense of nothing but me and the world. No cars, no phones, no storm drains. That almost but not quite realisation of being the first to tread into something undisturbed.
I’m in the Orroral Valley, which has in reality been quite disturbed by former homesteads and satellite tracking stations and – in 2020 – an army helicopter sparking a bushfire that went on to impact 80% of the park. If you didn’t know it you might not notice today, but a closer look reveals burnt stumps, scarred trees and charred stones.
From here I’m swiftly rising above the valley and eventually into another more untampered. Over a rise bedecked with fresh eucalyptus and large granite boulders and into the sinewy hollow of Nursery Creek. I like to think so named as a place where nature and life can breathe and evolve into something remarkable. Though probably more likely a place name claimed by an invading pastoralist slightly drunk and reminiscing about some nurse he once harassed in downtown Gundagai.
The walk ends at Nursery Swamp, which doesn’t feel particularly swampy today. Late winter has been dry, almost as dry as the sandwich I force down on the end of trail bench. A couple of scarlet robins espy me from a small bush, knowing there will be crumbs. Keeping a watchful distance until I depart. Sweet, and less in your face than a magpie.
Yes, those spring magpies. On the first warm day of the season I took my lunch out to a nearby bench to eat it in the sun, only to be harassed by a magpie. On a lovely, golden afternoon in Mulligans Flat, peace and contentment was obliterated in one fell swoop from a magpie. On the bike, well, I think one ride notched up a double figure attack count from more than one magpie.
It was a long ride to be fair. A part training part test ride. No hasty decisions when it comes to a car, but reckless abandon when it comes to a bike. An e-bike no less. Free of registration costs and petrol costs and faulty transmission (though maybe a dodgy Shimano) plus not enough room to sleep in the back.
Yes I’m not yet 50 and yes I will still use my other, conventional bike as well. But I feel this can take me further and higher and faster. Expand my horizons. And, with food and coffee stops, probably expand my waist. Among the losses, there’s still something to gain.
There is a colony of koalas here, and I was pleased to come across one in the first hundred metres of my walk. It was around midday and hot, exactly the kind of conditions in which you should not be out walking. But with this early sighting, the pressure was off – no more relentlessly craning one’s neck upward in the usually forlorn hope of spotting a bulbous lump that isn’t a growth protruding from a eucalypt. I could instead loop back to the car concentrating more on keeping the flies from going up my nose. Yes, they are absolutely back.
Still, should you wish to rise from this indulgent slumber, another hour or so east will bring you to the western fringe of the Blue Mountains. Suddenly things change, and not just the petrol price rising thirty cents a litre in as many kilometres. The day trippers are out in force, the coaches idling at every single possible lookout, of which there are many. The escarpment top towns of Blackheath and Katoomba and Leura are brimming with people shuffling between café and bakery, spilling down like ants to the overlooks nearby. Below the ridge, however, and the wilderness wins. Only penetrable at its fringe, placid beneath a canopy of ferns and eucalyptus.
With the undeniable passage of nature there are sure signs that winter in Canberra is slowly ebbing away. There have been a few recent days in which I have left the house without a coat, while the sunlight is waking me up well before seven and allowing me to read almost until six. Wattles explode, daffodils unfurl, the odd fly is resurrected and finds its way into my living room for what seems like all eternity.
Or it can be wonderful, arriving a little before rush-hour and just after the parking attendant has gone home. This yields a quiet fist pump of glee and a good mood in which to walk the parklands. Along the river, the tide is high and holding on, and clouds part to release the sun. Forget the roar of traffic along the Embankment, and the mould-tinged sails of Sainsburys, and focus instead on the flourishing green of the woods and bounteous swathes of wild garlic. Embrace the chirping birds and walk with the hope of encountering a deer.
Look down upon manicured fields and be thankful that this is indeed upon your doorstep. A doorstep in which the land and sea meets, producing conditions that are often frustrating but usually fruitful. Beyond the chav-filled potholes of the city, a land of strawberries and cream or raspberries and cream or just cream goddammit.
No doubt many of the loftier residents of Salcombe were in jovial mood; not only from their elevated perch surveying the ambling peasants seeking a cheap pasty, but with the news of a royal baby to join the ranks. Does it have a name yet? I can’t even remember. Have the Daily Mail criticised the parents yet? Oh probably.
And so, the unexpected and unplanned once again yields some of the most memorable moments. Waiting in a small layby among the gorgeous fields of Devon in the warming sunshine could be worse. Being patched up and guided to Totnes for repairs by endearing locals eager to provide a helping hand (and earn some pennies) proved heart-warming. Spending a few hours in Totnes, charmed and enlightened by good coffee, markets overflowing with abundance and leafy riverside walks. And the satisfaction of rediscovering batter bits with malt vinegar (good work Mum!)
Such are the ample proportions of the landscape here that the coast path between Strete and Blackpool Sands struggles to keep to the coast. The barriers are too immense, and the trail cuts inland as it dips down towards the bay. But this too is something of a blessing, for not only do you make it without falling to an inevitable death into the sea, but you become once again immersed into a countryside apparently so utopian. Farming must still be productive here, despite the temptation to become a campsite or a tearoom or a paddock for some pampered hobby horses.
It was a more placid day departing the north, incrementally brightening on my journey towards London and then onward to Salisbury; the very heart of a conceptual south. Perhaps near here, somewhere within the borderlands of Wiltshire sits that romanticised version of England; of thatched cottages and village greens; of tinkling brooks and sun-dappled woods; of church fetes and coffee and walnut cake. Perhaps, indeed.
Praise the Lord for a pint outside in the open air, soaking up the sweetly chirping birds and the smell of the country. And thank the almighty for a gentle downhill totter back to the car, parked beside the marquee on the green next to the church in the contented village of East Knoyle. Everywhere around here is easy to suspect as a secret filming location for Bake Off.
“When I were a wee lad you didn’t see us lot wasting our time with Instagrams of food and posing for selfies,” Dad clearly didn’t say as I took a photo of some coffee and cake and indulged in a selfie. Because this wasn’t Yorkshire and neither was it the 1940s anymore, though you suspect some in Shaftesbury would be pleased to turn back time. At least to the years before that bloody advert sent people flocking to a hill to take Instagrams and selfies.
Back in a more reassuring south, a morning in Salisbury offered increasing photographic opportunities, marvelling at the famous Cathedral with its famous 123-metre spire and its famous clock, a renown reaching as far and wide as Russia. The water meadows glowing under the sunlight, it was briefly warm enough to amble in a T-shirt, a clear signal that things were still on an upward trend. The birds continued to tweet and to chirp and to wade and to pose in such land of growing abundance.
Bluebells really were in profusion across England at this time, evident everywhere during this sojourn in the south and among the storm-laden lands of the north. Spreading across the country like the philosophy of Nigel Farage, only exponentially more unifying and much easier on the eye. They would have been a clear highlight, if it were not for that slab of coffee and walnut cake in Honey Street before catching my train west. A very perfect bookend to this haphazard instalment of North and South. And preparation for the tea and scones still to come.
Indeed, the weather didn’t bring too much to grumble about and my shorts proved a justified inclusion on the continent. There were countryside ambles and meanders through parks, Easter egg hunts in the garden and trips to the market. All the usual trappings of life on the French-Swiss border in Ville-la-Grand, snow coating distant peaks while spring was springing all around.
Annecy, on the other hand, is a gem of a place to take in an ice cream or do whatever you should please. From the hive of construction that is Annemasse station, a pleasing hour long train ride delivered my nephew Guillaume and I to what has been described as the Venice of the Alps, largely on the count of a canal infiltrating a few of the streets and – possibly – gondoliers wailing about their need for Walls Cornettos.
The waterways and the flowers and the daytrippers milling about eating ice cream largely find their way towards the jewel in the crown that is Lac d’Annecy and its quite dazzling surrounds. Clear, glacial water hosts an array of boats, encircled by forests, villages and rapidly elevating peaks. It’s a popular spot to row or cruise or be a hoon on a jetski. Or even pedalo for half an hour in a large figure eight. Everybody loves a tourist.
The frequent sight of tourists eating ice cream impels one to wander the streets like a tourist to seek out an ice cream. Heavily topped cornets increase in frequency back near one of the canals, and a large queue meanders from the serving hatch of Glacier des Alpes. Patience may be rewarded with sublime ice cream but neither Guillaume nor I had much patience and opted for a perfectly satisfactory version nearby. Safe from the clutches of any devious gondoliers.
And so, the last evening in France turned out as sunny as the unseasonably warm sun that was soon to fade away in Great Britain; to be replaced by a storm so irritating it was awarded a name (Hannah), heralding a permanent return to long trousers. One last slice of gateau would compensate for the impending doom, and cap off a very fine Easter; my first in the northern hemisphere since 2006. So, fake summer or real, it was undoubtedly one that will go down in history.
Nearby, the sleepy hamlet of Port Quin is celebrating in its sheltered spot, nestled between the hills that ooze out along its harbour to suddenly plunge into the Atlantic. A walk out to a headland marking the entrance to this enclave is a touch more blustery; the reward solitude and drama and vistas that make the heart sing and the heart ache. And ice cream that makes the heart say uh-oh we’re in Cornwall again aren’t we, better brace ourselves.
A little above The Strand, under wonderful, warming sun perched a wonderful pub overlooking the ocean. A pub that served up a local tribute, a tribute to the seas and skies, the clifftops and harbours, the wind and rain and storms and sun. The seasons battering and bathing and cajoling and churning the charisma and spirit into this magical Cornish land. Spring has arrived, and so have I. Cheers.
gbpilgrim 