Never Again

Jeremy Cameron

Description

Elderly British men display a variety of annoying habits. They write letters to the newspapers; they drink too much; they reminisce about the old days; they make lewd comments to younger women; they shout at the television screen; and they go for long walks and get lost. Jeremy Cameron chose the last of these options. Trying to emulate Patrick Leigh Fermor's feat of 1933, he walked from Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Leigh Fermor was a legendary figure. Scholar, multilinguist, beautiful prose stylist, war hero, tough guy, charmer and famous lover: Cameron is none of these things and he also suffers from a heart condition. Rest assured that there will be no tedious details of operations or stoicism in this book. Nor will there be descriptions of understated generosity, quiet irony or British phlegm. The main point of travel is to recognise the virtues of staying at home. When at home, it is not possible to get bogged down in Alpine snow, fall over on one's face on Kosovan tarmac or suffer a comprehensive mugging on deserted roads in Greece. Nor does one have to speak foreign languages, eat foreign food or, above all, drink terrible tea. It is about two thousand miles from Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Thirteen countries lie in wait for the walker. They have many wonderful sights and much fascinating history. Readers will not find them in this book. They will, however, find a number of stories of varying authenticity and some very dubious observations about life. By the time Turkey arrived, Cameron was utterly and completely fed up with the whole process. Never again would he do anything quite so stupid. He is currently walking round all the places in England beginning with the letter Q.

Sujets

• Travel writing

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909930452
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

NEVER AGAIN
A Walk from Hook of Holland to Istanbul
Jeremy Cameron




First published in 2014 by
Signal Books Limited
36 Minster Road
Oxford OX4 1LY
www.signalbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2014, 2017 Jeremy Cameron
The right of Jeremy Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Signal Books Limited or Andrews UK Limited.





Introduction
In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor, later the doyen of British travel writing, walked from Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Leigh Fermor was eighteen at the time and had a fiver (later stolen) in his pocket. In his rucksack he carried a tweed jacket, two pairs of bags (trousers), a dozen pocket handkerchiefs, his pyjamas and an army greatcoat.
Leigh Fermor had several advantages. He was brave. (He later had a heroic war, mostly behind enemy lines.) He was intrepid. He didn’t mind getting covered in snow. He picked up languages in a fortnight. Everyone wanted to be his friend: he stayed with bargees and barons, the latter putting him up for weeks on end. He was seduced by beautiful erudite women. He also, apparently, didn’t have anything else to do; the whole enterprise took him three years. And he wrote beautiful prose.
Most people, including me, couldn’t ever write as well as Leigh Fermor. Furthermore I can’t write about tenth-century history or architectural gargoyles either. In every possible respect I was unworthy of comparison with the great man. But it seemed a good idea, buried in the depths of a British winter, to set out on his trail of long ago.
I was certainly not going to be intrepid, however. I was going to live in as much luxury as possible. I was not going to sleep under hedges; I did all that when I was young and stupid. Now I was sixty two years old and generally knackered. Three times already I had failed to walk across Europe, and then I was thirty years younger. I had a bad knee. I might not last the week. When I told my sister Sarah what I was doing she immediately said: ‘Have you made a will?’ I thought this was unduly pessimistic; and, incidentally, I had not made a will.
Patrick Leigh Fermor died, very old, after this journey began. He would never know that someone had tried to emulate his epic feat. I carried on, however. The chance of reaching Istanbul (as Constantinople now is) looked infinitesimal but it seemed a fitting memorial to attempt it; and, like Leigh Fermor, I didn’t have anything else to do at the time.
I set out at the end of November and wrote up the account every night. This is it.



Part One


Day 1: Holland: Hook of Holland to Rotterdam
You could hardly see Hook of Holland.
At eight o’clock in the morning it was pitch dark, the wind was blowing a howling gale and the rain lashed so hard that the dock was barely visible. Welcome to Holland.
Not much happens in the Hook. For advice about walking to Rotterdam I was directed to the tourist office. The tourist office was, needless to say, shut on Thursdays. How could I get to Rotterdam? I had been searching the map for any route out of Hook of Holland that didn’t involve motorways. I couldn’t find one. I wandered about aimlessly in a circle. Then, through a stroke of massive good fortune, I stumbled across a sign for a cycle path. Of course! Those good old Dutch, of course they have cycle paths. My problem was solved.
Proper planning, needless to say, might have overcome some of these initial difficulties and helped me to locate all the paths I needed. But I don’t do proper planning.
The cycle path went in a big arc. I didn’t care where it went as long as it went somewhere. We passed through farmland, full of sheep and greenhouses and dykes. The rain hammered down and no-one was about. When the rain didn’t hammer down the wind still blew a gale; apparently it was Force Eight last night. It was cold.
Something must have happened to Massluis. The town centre is small and relatively old, based around a piece of water, either a canal or a river. However, the vast majority of the very large town, at least nine-tenths of it, has been built in the last decade. It’s modern, soulless, totally without a shop or pub or café or, in the daytime, people. I had a cup of tea and marched on, munching my cheese and Marmite sandwiches.
The cycle path came down to the river, the vast seaway that makes Rotterdam the busiest port in the world. A flotilla of barges, boats and ships of all sizes slipped back and forth. The port of Rotterdam has over six hundred ‘havens’ or mooring points. On the other side of the water lies an endless line of oil refineries, masts, chimneys and smoke. On my side benches were placed at intervals for people to admire the view. They must be very hard up for a view.
Then came the docks themselves, always interesting, some now tarted up as gastropubs but most still busy with shipping. The weather deteriorated further. I had not intended to walk as far as Rotterdam but carried on because there was nothing else to do. It was over twenty miles: and then what a sight it was.
In my travelling days, Rotterdam and Djibouti were known as the twin arseholes of the world. Djibouti is one of the many places I have set out for but not reached. Rotterdam I had not even set out for. (Incidentally, I have since heard that there is a third contender for the world title - Stroessner, in Paraguay, named after the late dictator.) Rotterdam is a poor city, or at least a city with poor people in it. The road to the city centre led through nondescript suburbs, cheaply dressed citizens and shops catering for the impoverished or immigrant - cheap food, tatty jewellers, kebab bars, the usual. Multicultural, I heard it described as later. Poor, in other words. Then, suddenly, a massive collection of monstrous buildings covered the sky line.
Some of them were futuristic glass palaces, some were sub-1960s shopping complexes. All were hideously ugly. It was as if the mayor had commissioned an Ugly Contest and told all the architects to do their dirtiest. No co-ordination between buildings had ever been mooted. No theme except ugliness had ever been planned. Everything had apparently been dropped at random from the sky.
In contrast, the fine old town hall served as a marker in the centre of town. Near it, the tourist office was not only open but helpful. I bought some more maps. I still don’t know where I’m going but now I might at least know where I am when I get there.
I know only two words of Dutch. One is tulipen which, if I have got it right, is self-explanatory. The other is pronounced ‘noken’. I don’t know how it’s spelled and it is unlikely to be in any dictionary and certainly not a phrasebook. However, neither word is likely to be of any use to me on this trip so I had a look for some new words in the phrasebook tonight.
Some words of Dutch are not very different from other languages although when they say them it sounds as if they’re about to be sick. Other words, though, are impossible. How can I possibly be expected to remember the word for ‘please’: Alstublieft ? By the time I have put down the phrasebook I have forgotten it. It is out of the question to try it in a café when buying a cup of tea. I would sound ridiculous. I shall have to be rude instead.
My watch has stopped. I shall just have to get up when it’s light and go to bed when it’s dark.
Later... Ok, Ok, I take it all back. Everything I said about Rotterdam is unjustified, unfair and, of course, wrong. I accidentally gatecrashed a party celebrating an award given to an investigative journalist. A woman there told me that a year ago her father died in Buxton, Derbyshire, where I was born. She also told me that Rotterdam is a vibrant, cultured, beautiful city, rebuilt after destruction in the war and then rebuilt again into the monstrosity that it is today. She loves it. So does everyone else. Only grudging losers think it is hideous.
I think it’s hideous.
In Buxton she used to walk up to Solomon’s Temple, the nineteenth-century folly above Burbage where my parents lived at one time. Before I was born, when my father was away at the war, my brother Michael learned to open the front gate and escaped from the garden daily. Whenever she couldn’t find him my mother had to walk all the way up to Solomon’s Temple to bring him back.
Day 2: Rotterdam to Dordrecht
The new day begins with plasters: they have to be placed on all the sore bits. Unfortunately I am so stiff in the mornings these days, even at home, that I can’t reach my feet at the best of times; two cups of tea and a walk round the house are necessary before I can get the socks on. That’s even without walking twenty miles the day before. Putting plasters on the blisters today was a major job. I strapped myself up and set off.
The road to the river led past more of Rotterdam’s sky-seeking monsters, then over the fine new bridge. Most of the day ran through suburbia - out of the city, past Feyenoord’s massive football stadium, in and out of motorways. What a boon these cycle paths