march-2012

IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS Three more travelogues for inspiration
FEATURES | ANDALUSIA
“Touring on a horse seems to bring out the
best in the people you meet”
she planned to visit. Instead, she ended up with a plain
bay mare used for breeding mules who, at 12, was the
equivalent age as herself. She was called La Marquesa
and had been lent to her by the Duke of Wellington,
whose estate at Molino del Rey was originally
presented by Spain to the fi rst Duke of Wellington
(known as the Iron Duke) in gratitude for his driving
Napoleon out of the country. After a large breakfast in
the estate manager’s house, and with her saddlebags
(which I still use on all my long rides) and rucksack
crammed with few clothes and far too many books,
including Don Quixote – Volume 1, she set off.
That she was in some kind of heaven during
her month’s ride through Andalusia is evident: her
passions – religion, food, horses and architecture –
were there for the taking. She went to mass almost
every morning and, as a result of her Spanish lessons,
sometimes understood the sermon: certainly she
could discuss religion with the priest afterwards and
often did. She marvelled at the buildings and villages
she came upon – the church and pilgrim’s hostel
at Tiscar on its mountain pinnacles; the Moorish
castle and renaissance church at Huelma among
olive groves; the shrine of the Virgin of Cuadro in the
Sierra de Mágina; the cave dwellings at Jódar and
the 16th-century Palacio de la Rambla at Úbeda. She
learned how to cook proper paella over an open fi re
and helped to prepare Sunday feasts, which often
involved skinning and gutting a rabbit (“having killed,
plucked and drawn many hundreds of ducks, geese
and chickens in my time, I did not feel squeamish
about the procedure,” she wrote), frying it with garlic
and parsley before stewing it. Of course, she fed La
Marquesa fi rst thing in the morning before she went to
mass – that goes without saying, for her love of horses
was absolute. She put them before herself at all times
AN INLAND VOYAGE
BRUSSELS In 1876, fi ve years
before he penned Treasure
Island, RL Stevenson went on
an adventure – a 322km canoe
journey through Belgium and France. Along
with his great friend, Sir Walter Simpson, he
paddled from Antwerp down the Oise River.
A TRAMP ABROAD
MUNICH Setting out to walk
across mainland Europe, Mark
Twain found much to please
and amuse him in Bavarian life.
His resulting thoughts on these ramblings
were published in 1880 and are still
well-thumbed today.
and never stopped learning more about them.
Her enthusiasm was infectious and her fascination
with the minutiae of life hilarious. She had always
suffered from a weak bladder and her accounts of the
sanitary arrangements, or lack of them, wherever she
stayed (she was frequently reduced to peeing in La
Marquesa’s stable in the middle of the night) are as
natural to her as her descriptions of a fi ne 17th-century
façade in a town square. She was often caught short
for, as she discovered, “You are never alone for long in
Spain”. For that reason she felt safe and her long love
affair with Spain began.
“I had seen human beings as God meant them to
be,” she wrote towards the end of her journey. “Touring
on a horse seems to bring out the best in the characters
of the people you meet… The innkeepers and their
wives and children, the families who put me up,
the parish priests and their curates, even the much-
abused Guardia Civil, had all been out to help me; I
had enjoyed only the most friendly and unselfi sh traits
in their characters, which added to the extraordinary
beauty of their countryside and made me feel that I had
ridden through the garden of Paradise before the Fall.”
Faced with the complications of modern life, my
mother’s return to a simple way of doing things, and
to the value of living in harmony with nature, was
the recurring theme in her life and her Andalusian
adventure was an important part of this. As a bolshie
teenager, I didn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of
what she had achieved back then. I do now.
Two Middle-aged Ladies in Andalusia is reissued
this month by Eland (£12.99, travelbooks.co.uk)
easyJet fl ies to...
Malaga from 12 destinations and from Seville from
London. See our insider guides on pages 152 and
175. Book online at easyJet.com
LOVE AND WAR IN THE
APENNINES
VERONA
Eric Newby’s 1971 memoir
describes his escape from a
WWII prison camp through the stunning
highlands of northern Italy and his romance
with a local girl who later became his wife.
TRAVELLER | 65