Saturday, October 28, 2017

Honeys, I'm home...

Cortijo Romero, vegetarian, holistic, English-speaking, holiday venue in the hills of Andalusia, bans phones & internet in the same way schools do & for the same reason: to discourage thoughts & connections with a personal life beyond the community. I suppose if you have a job you hate that’s welcome but if not, you feel a bit severed and it can create group dynamics that are... well, a bit schooly. I went there for a week of group walking in the Alpujarra, and that part was fabulous. All the treks were all a coach-ride away so less of the day was spent on foot than I expected but our guides were fantastic in a constant herding-cats situation, dealing with a big group with diverse needs and speeds. My own annoying-trait was to want to know more about each place we visited - the geology, history, map-location... (see above lament about no internet) but no-one could complain about the routes & views ~ this was a week-long blast of bliss to set anyone up for an English winter. My personal highlights, apart from the general joy of walking daily in glorious sunshine under a searing blue sky, were: the cliff scramble above cerulean seas from Playa de Cantarrijan to a tiny deserted bay and then back for a fish lunch at a beach restaurant ~ the walk from TrevĂ©lez, highest village in the Sierra Nevada, looking down on the dazzling golden poplars, and ~ top favourite this ~ the walk around old Granada listening to a fantastic talk by architect & historian Raphael Anderson.
With passion equalling his scholarship, Raphael's talk not only brought vibrantly alive the story of this ancient city, once supremely important & still beautiful, but also showed connections across the centuries from thousands of years ago: powerful controlling forces corrupting from within, now as then. Does the history of Islam, doomed by the unification of Spain into a single-state religion & deprived of all their advanced learning with the iniquitous burning of books in 1499, have parallels today in the perilous state of our democracy, debased within and distorted by our media? You do right, perhaps, to wonder...

And now a welcome return home, to grab again the vibrant threads of real life. I gather I've missed the launch of a new open-mic music venue and probably much else.  But fear not, Frome fans! Normal service will be resumed next week.

No comments: