the travel bug bites again
Apr 26, 2010 Life is better without air travel. Better for the planet, of course, and better in every other way too. Why queue for hours in a windowless hangar, breathing stale air and being scanned and X rayed at every turn, when you could be sitting on a train, looking out of the window or reading a book? In an airport, a window with a view of the runway feels like an exciting find: look – daylight! A plane! A patch of sad-looking grass! It is not exactly an enriching experience.
Being stranded in Barcelona last week was the best thing that has happened to me for a long time. My friend Sam and I had considered doing the trip overland, as we did when we went to Venice last year to do the research for The Perfect Lie, but the train was so expensive, and we were so pushed for time, that we ended up getting a flights-and-hotel deal through Expedia.
We spent five days walking around Barcelona, getting everything I need for the novel I’m writing. This included an unscheduled outing to the police station when Sam’s bag was stolen by a thief so subtle and skilled at his art that you had to admire him (expect an ‘at the police station’ scene to appear in the novel). On the third day, Thursday, we heard that all the UK airports were closed. By Friday we realised we needed to make our own arrangements to get home, and on Friday afternoon, we spent several hours on the hotel’s wifi, frantically booking things up. There were no spaces on the Saturday or Sunday ferries from northern Spain to Portsmouth, so we bought tickets for Monday, and set off on Saturday morning.
The journey started at Barcelona Sants station, where we checked that our train existed and that our tickets were valid (half price for people who can use the internet! that part of the journey, at least, will be covered by the theoretical BA refund). We sat at a café opposite the station and let coffee segue gently into lunch, as we read our books with the sun on our faces. The train was comfortable with masses of legroom, and set off at the exact second it was scheduled.
Sitting by the window, looking at the sandy earth, the vineyards, the clusters of houses passing by, the Pyrenees in the distance, I realised how much I missed proper travelling, the slow kind. The sort of travelling in which you cover the ground, and get a sense of what lies between departure point and destination. I wrote for hours, frequently stopping to gaze out at Spain passing by, and read for a bit, and tried to close my ears to the trio of British students at the end of the carriage, braying in a Bullingdon-type manner about their lives, though, to give them their due, they provided a certain degree of unwitting entertainment to all the homeward-bound English speakers on board.
We walked through night-time Bilbao to the hotel, put down our bags in the room, and headed straight out for a slice of tortilla and a glass of wine. I had assumed Britain was the only European nation that did proper binge-drinking, but Saturday night in Bilbao suggests otherwise, though the crowds were good-natured and no one was fighting or being sick. We sat outside a bar beside the river, away from the worst of the crowds, and watched the midnight world go by. In the morning, a tram took us past the Guggenheim to the bus station, and a bus took us along the coastline to Santander.
By this time we were meeting other people with tales to tell: two Dutch women who were planning to hitchhike if they couldn’t get a bus; a British couple who seemed only to have the haziest of ideas that their flight the next day might be disrupted.
In Santander, we found a gracious seaside town with wide boulevards, golden beaches and grand old buildings. Our random hotel booking in Barcelona had netted us the Santemar, which was wonderfully dated, with striped wallpaper, floral bedspreads, and spectacular sea views from our sixth floor room. The man in the next room was violently ill all night, so I suppose that my only complaint was that the soundproofing could perhaps be improved.
It was easy, the next morning, to spot the Brittany Ferries terminal: that’ll be the place besieged by anxious Anglo-Saxons and Spanish TV crews. Inevitably, I met someone I know from Falmouth in the boarding queue, making her way back from Egypt with her family. Despite the huge numbers of foot passengers, boarding was straight forward, and in no time we were sitting on deck reading our books and bidding Spain a fond farewell. The Bay of Biscay was flat calm, and although the boat was full, there was always a place to sit if you looked hard enough. There was plenty of camaraderie, with everyone swapping stories, and twenty four hours passed delightfully.
When we were an hour or so from Portsmouth, things changed. Everyone wanted to get off the boat and back to their normal lives by this point, so everyone stood as close as they possibly could to the door. We used our elbows with the best of them, as I was desperate to get a train that would get me to Exeter, where I was picking up our car, in time for me to get back to Falmouth by about midnight. And eventually, we were on dry land, and through passport control, and in the taxi queue, and at the station, and on the train.
At Exeter, I found the car, which James had left there on his way to a work thing in London, complete with the warm cardigan and can of Diet Coke I had requested. As I was driving out of the city, the ten o’clock news came on the radio and informed me that the airspace had been reopened. Two hours after that, I was home.
It has given me the travel bug all over again. I could have stayed in Barcelona and tried to push my way to the front of the queue at the airline desk, but I’m so glad I didn’t. I have been reminded that a journey made by metro, train, tram, bus, boat and car is far richer than one made by aeroplane. Thank you, Eyjafjallajokull.
