Deep in the Heart of Dorset

I call myself a psychogeographer, as I plod across the fields of Wessex or, more frequently nowadays, the Caminos of the Iberian peninsula, I often feel I'm in danger of breaching the Trades Description Act. Sure, there's plenty of psycho, probably more than is healthy for a woman of my background and breeding, and girt, humungeous dollops of my beloved geography but if you're looking to radical derives through urban edgelands a la Ian Sinclair then I'm definitely not a good example of the genre. 

Every which way but loose ...

Take last weekend, for example. Not for me forty-eight hours exploring the nitty-gritty in nearby Bristol. Rather, I jumped in my car and set off for the familiar, comforting hills of rural Dorset. I'm safe here, aren't I? Sure, I get my kicks from trudging up volcanoes and hiking hundreds of kilometres of mountain and meseta but here, in my safe Wessex homeland, nothing can happen, right? 

Desire lines, striations across my soul

If you scratch the surface the landscape will bleed. Profusely, excessively, like the non-stop sobbing of tears, speaking to me of loves lost. The earth beneath my feet laced with memories like a minefield, every step an encounter with the past, stirring yearning and a deep desire. I am the land, the land is me, carved from clay, chiselled from chalk, and laid down to rest. 

Deep, down below, someone is stoking the fires of hell

Something isn't right. Something is very, very wrong, even though the sun's out, spreading warm tentacles across my naked forearms and raising a moist sweat. Am I, Sian Lacey Taylder, out of kilter with the land or is the land out of kilter with me? It happens, sometimes; on a hot summer's day back in 1988, lost in the labyrinthine folds of West Dorset the landscape hounded me out and more or less expelled me. What I'd done for it to take umbrage so I really don't know, perhaps I'd become complacent, a bit of a braggart: 'oh, me and the land, we go back such a long way, nothing can tear us apart'. But now I never take it for granted, even though it appears to be my destiny - or fate- to walk the paths and the tracks alone and into eternity, a sort of Kubla Khan de nos jours. 

How green are my valleys?

It occurs to me, as I move seamlessly from my Cretaceous to my Jurassic, unable to move forward in time, that I'm turning into a long-playing record, wearing myself into a deeper and deeper groove at fewer revolutions per minute, from 45 to thirty-three-and-a-third. Well, not so much a groove as a canyon, whose walls are steep and slippery, not that I have any desire to escape. I tread the paths from day to day, year to year with weary eyes red-embered like burnt out stars. This is all I need: to walk and to walk and to walk ... because I can't do anything else.

Get into my groove

If there were an English shire to which you could trust your soul you'd put your money on Dorset, a supinecreature with come-to-bed eyes. You wander lazily through its scarp and vales on a sultry summer's day and all is right with the world. Tell me, then. What happens when the earth beneath your feet rises up and goes for your jugular? The day drags on, I slip deeper into Dorset, deep into my subconscious, deep into my own private uber-gothic. Deep in the heart of Dorset, here be dragons.

The roof of Dorset, the roof of heaven

Cut loose for the myths of the borderland, it's between the scenes I ramble: faster, faster, faster until my lungs are fit to burst. But can I out-pace my past? Can I hell! I comes creeping up behind me, dragging me down with its overbearing, overpowering gravity. But still I walk, because that's all I know and it's all I can do.

The night is a wire 

Deep in the heart of Dorset is my Faust. One night, deep in the heart of the nineteen-eighties we sat down together in the woods and hatched out our plan, raising a glass of Pernod-and-black to seal the deal. Oh what bliss it was, to be alive back then, in a landscape full of possibilities. I sold my soul; not for rock 'n' roll, worst luck, but to the earth beneath my feet. From thereon in, for the rest of my life, everything and - more importantly, everyone - would take second place to my pursuit of landscape and the incessant need to keep on moving, to never, ever stop. Love and life and happiness? To the back of the queue with hope and prosperity. And stability. Obviously stability. especially stability. I am the land, it unhinges me.

This way lies madness. And all the joyous treasures of human existence

You think that Deep in the heart of Dorset is all patchwork pastoral and Laura Ashley landscape twee. You think it's all Enid Blyton Famous Five or Thomas Hardy costume drama, Poldark without the porn. You think it's all fifty organic shades of pastel green, bland and anodyne. If I tell you Deep in the heart of Dorset is all prelapsarian nature red-in-tooth-and-claw you'll snigger and gently - and very politely - mock my neo-romantic leanings and get back to your Deleuze and Guattari. This is what happens, you'll say, when the subjective is given its head. Give them the facts, Sian Lacey Taylder! Give them the effing facts!

The Dorsetshire Gap: Everything that Dorset now is, everything it ever has been and always will be flows through this void

I lasted thirty-six hours, dear reader, and then I had to head for home. Deep in the Heart of Dorset I lost my heart and my soul as well as any remaining vestiges of perspective. And somewhere up there, in the roof of Dorset, I said farewell to love and humanity. From now until the end of my days there is only the path and the lie of the land, everything else is beyond me.

Love in the Heart of the City

 Me and Mexico City, hopelessly and utterly head over heels in love. We go back a long, long way; 26 years, to November 1989, if you really must know. New Kids on the Block sat atop that barometer of popular culture, the Hit Parade, suggesting that the halcyon-haloed decade that was the 1980s, had already fizzled out and was imploding, quite unspectacularly, as a wet fart rather than a damp squib. 

Naturally, I use Mexico City - or el DF (day-efe) - as a case study for my A level geography students. I tell them that were you to put your ear to the pavement you'd hear - and feel - the city's heart beating, to a loud, dissonant and idiosyncratic pulse. It has a reputation for being dirty and dangerous but worse things have happened to me in the English countryside. In my own home, to be precise. 

In any case, the city has cleaned up its act environmentally, if not politically, judging by the number of tooled-up riot police lining the streets of the centro historico (or centro histerico, as one waggish taxi driver liked to call it). In any case, in Mexico as everywhere else, the presence of security forces on the street is usually evidence of the state protecting itself rather than its citizens. 

Though I now consider myself a 'veteran' of travel in Mexico and Central America, twenty six years ago I was pretty much a virgin, having never ventured beyond the confines of Western Europe. Thus arriving in Mexico City came as something as a shock to the system and although, like losing one's viginity, that experience of waking up for the first time in the world's greatest city is one that can never be replicated, the thrill is still there. Benito Juarez International airport - named after the contintent's first indigenous president - was once on the outskirts of the metropolis but has long since been swallowed up by the city's inexorable growth and is only a few kilometres from the centro historico. Although, at long last, the construction of a new airport was finally approved in 2014, until it opens in eight years time, travellers arriving by night will continue to enjoy one of the world's great nocturnal wonders, circling the illuminated City, light stretching out towards and beyond the horizon on all sides, pitching above Zocalo with tail-lights sparking like red stars in slow motion, vertiginuously below. After a long and interminable flight the heart skips a beat, it feels like coming home.

The first time, twenty six years ago, my close friend The Consultant and I were en route to  Nicaragua to spend some time with the Sandinistas whom we would subsequently witness being bundled out of office by a rag-tag, improbable opposition. Mrs Thatcher was still in her pomp, we were two of many who fled political reality to follow ideological flights of fancy elsewhere. After five months circumnavigating the isthmus we returned for a final week in Mexico City, our Sunday departure affording views of the sparkling, snow-capped summits of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl through the one-day-a-week clear air. 

In 1989 I was not who I now am and when I returned in 1997 my personal landscape was much altered and The Consultant was no longer at my side. I remained naive but now I was a lot more vulnerable, undermined by memories oozing from the crumbling edifices and the sinking soil. Everywhere I went I heard Sinead O'Connor's haunting tones: nothing compares to you. Was she singing about The Consultant or Mexico City? Or both? 

I passed through again in 2001 then in 2007 with my sister. Two sisters on holiday together; sounds like a nightmare but somehow it worked. She spoke no Spanish so I was in charge; the pain, if not absent, was now just simmering away, the past beginning to be drowned out by the present. Time was working its wonders. In 2008, following a disastrous attempt to migrate to El Salvador, I foreswore Latin America, told myself I'd never return and set my sights on Spain. 

Never say never, of course. I turned 50 and somehow squirrelled away a bit of cash; raging against the imminent fading of the light I yielded to the feisty temptress that is my inner physical geographer. She demanded fire and earth, I whisked her away, back to Mexico and Central America. It was supposed to be for one last time but we're already planning next winter's return. 

I'm now a tutor, psychogeographer and PhD student, specialising in landscape experience and cultural geograph so the first trip of the vacation seemed a logical one: a derive across the city to see whether, in the light of the seismic autoethnographic shifts that had changed so much of my character, it had changed.

The Cathedral, the largest in Latin America, stands in the heart of the city, by the Zocalo with its immense Mexican flag. If I were to delve deep into the recesses of my psyche, where landscape and memory dwell, these two symbols of Mexico City would loom large.

Alongside with the physical geography, I was also keen to explore the changing nature of religous place and space in Mexico and Central America, not least because the region played an instrumental role in reconfiguring and re-orientating my Catholic faith. Above, Julia Klug protesting, in the Zocalo, not against the Catholic Church per se but against its numerous abuses. A brave woman! https://www.facebook.com/JuliaKlugmx/. Below, a nun selling street food.

The Clausura of the sixteenth centuty nun and proto-feminist, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, now a university catering mostly, it seemed, to catering studies http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/SorJuana/

After the Cathedral, my next port of call is invariably the market, drawn by the noise, activity and chaos. The Latin American market remains, for me, a constant source of fascination.

 

The state protecting itself

Zona Rosa - the posh part of town

Edeficios borrachos: sinking and shifting buildings

Monument to the Revolution. Plus striking teachers.

The security quarter

That was the summer that was: TransCantabrica - Stage Three, Elorrio to Areatza

One day soon I'll learn how to draw the route on the map

She's got legs

And she knows how to use them

Thus sang the bearded wonders ZZ Top back in their homage to the shapely limbs possessed by some members of the female sex. I could never work out whether the trio's 1983 hit was tongue in cheek or not, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and agree that their lyrics are laden with postmodern irony. Let's imagine that when they composed those lines they had in mind my lacerated, sunburnt limbs beginning to accrue sinew and muscle. And let's suppose that they eschew the white stiletto for a chunky Vibram sole.

Always a Virgin Mary, obvs. But Urkiola is a sensuous syncretism of paganism and Catholicism

The Santuario de Urkiola, an enchanted oasis of green amongst the stark whitewashed lustre of the Basque Mountains

It's all very well singing the praises of our chunky calves and thighs but what happens when they, like the water in Mallorca, don't do what they ought to? Tuesday's plan couldn't have been clearer, to join the GR123 and follow this around 'the back' of Anboto into Urkiola Natural Park where I'd reserved a room at the Hotel Santuario (which I highly recommend, though you won't find it on any internet hotel booking site). I thought I'd left early enough to avoid the worst of the heat but by the time I'd located the track out of Elorrio it was already 31 degrees and it wasn't yet nine o'clock.

I more or less knew right then that it wasn't going to work but I felt I should persist a little longer. It wasn't just the heat, of course. Picture, if you will, a three-way Venn diagram in which each of the circles represents (i) inclement weather (including excessive heat) (ii) weight of rucksack (mine is just about tolerable for thru-hiking purposes) and (iii) corporeal harmony (or lack thereof; turns out I walked the whole of the #TransCantabrica with a very slight limp): that morning I found myself slap-bang in the intersection of all three.

After an hour’s toil I capitulated, returned to Elorrio and took the bus to Durango and then the Puerto de Urkiola. Call me a cheat if you will, if I hadn’t resorted to public transport I might have melted on the mountain and trickled into the clints and grykes of the limestone like a sliver of molten lava returning to earth. 

The cave of Mari, the Lady of Anboto has her main dwelling. Legend says that it is usual to see her in the mouth of the cave, on days of good weather, combing her pretty blond hair with a comb of gold in the sunshine. It is not rare either to see her spend nights as a great ball of fire in the sky above Anboto or toward other places of the Basque Country where she possesses dwellings like the nearby Oiz or Aizkorri. Depending on where she is found there will be good or bad weather.

Now, several months later, when I think back to my brief sojourn in Urkiola, the memories are shot through with images of lustrous white rock, shimmering under a hot sun. And against this almost overpowering backdrop lay the sylvan folds of the Sanctuario de Urkiola, a Tolkienesque refuge of bucolic sanctity surrounded by the bombastic piety of these cathedrals of rock. I say ‘almost overpowering’, but not quite wholly; it didn’t intimidate or send me into paroxysms of faux deferential ‘I-am-not-worthy-ness’. I am the land, the land is me; we are one and the same thing. I don’t fear the liminal immensity of the mountains for they are a reflection of myself.

Untzilintz

Blood on the rocks: it's mine, almost an Aztec-like offering to Mari (see below)

And in Urkiola I don’t just become the landscape, I become the Basque landscape; with every step along the trail the earth beneath my feet oozes into me, dripping with the fricatives and palatal glides of Euskara, the Basque tongue. I want to say Euskara is a thing of great beauty but that would run the risk of you misunderstanding what I mean by ‘beauty’ because it’s nothing like your orthodox notion of prettiness, nor do hackneyed clichés like ‘rugged splendour’ do it justice, rather its sensual appeal lies its idiosyncrasies, a language full of nooks and crannies. They’re like the dimple in your lover’s cheek, the part of her/him that really turns you on. Listen as I run these place-names past you: Unzillaitz, Udalaitz, Elgoin, Anboto, Aitz Txiki, the language charges the landscape with erotic energy and when I climb Anboto the next day, with only a light daysack on my back, it’s like electricity sparking of the rocks as I scamper up the mountain’s steep slopes of whitewashed limestone.  

View from a ridge

Climbing Anboto

Then the next morning it all falls to pieces. Through the grey light of a drizzly dawn an SMS conveys unbelievably bad news and I spend the next day shrouded in a gloom that’s darker than the dank fog which surrounds me; I think about quitting and going home, what use I am here, alone on the hill? 

 

If only ...

If Anboto was the zenith, the dripping, cloud-wrapped slopes of Gorbeia were the nadir: of the whole #TransCantabrica and possibly any walk I’ve ever done. Neither the mood nor the mist lifts; the intention was not to climb to the summit but to spend the night at a refugio close by. It’s a steep, hard climb; the rain comes down harder and there’s a constant drip-drip-drip from the pine trees. The forest tracks crumble, the woodland paths mosey through dense undergrowth then traverse a rock pavement – slippery when wet. 

A dreich and dismal day

 But I have a map – more on the theme of Spanish maps in the next episode - and even in the thick mist I know where I am. Trouble is, I don’t know where the refugio is, or rather, as I reach the location where I expected it to be, the refugio isn’t there. My insistence that the refugio should be here confounds two Basques who, even though they know the mountain well, are also, briefly, under the impression that its contours have shifted. Until we ring the refugio and find out it’s 1 km away, another 200m up the slope. It would be wrong to blame the map, away from the camino and without its ubiquitous yellow arrows I have to learn to navigate again; let’s just say that the map didn’t really facilitate effective interpretation.

Fortunately my saviours from nearby Bilbao, have come by car and they offer me a lift to the nearest hotel, all the way to Bilbao if necessary. The road uncoils around the mountainside and now I really don’t know where I am. Later that evening I text my friend to tell her I’ve been given a lift off the hill by two men and she expresses some concern. The truth is it never occurred to me that fellow hikers might be anything other than Good Samaritans; we share the outward symbols of our tribe: boots, rucksacks, cagoules. Maybe I should qualify that by saying high-quality boots, rucksacks and cagoules; we recognise each other by the nature of our apparel, the connection and acknowledgement is immediate, my trust in them is absolute. But they have names, of course: Iker and Joseba, I still remember you.

Only later, in a relatively expensive but deliciously warm and dry hotel room do I unfurl the now damp and tattered map and work out my location, the spa town of Areazta. The latest news from Wells is still bad but a little less stark; the consensus is unanimous, there is nothing I can do. The hike must go on.

Bliss. And maps. Again

The day’s story in Tweets

ramblanista I was meant to be in a bunkbed in refugio/albergue up on Gorbeia (1600m), not this posh hotel room #TransCantabrica pbs.twimg.com/media

ramblanista In fact, apart from the knowledge that I'm in this (relatively) expensive hotel room, I haven't got a clue where I am! #TransCantabrica

ramblanista Mil gracias a Iker y Joseba, que me rescataron de la lluvia y niebla en Pagomakurre, Gorbeia y me llevaron a Areatza #TransCantabrica

ramblanista Many thanks to Iker & Joseba who rescued me from mist & rain at Pagomakurre, Gorbeia and gave me a lift to nearest hotel #TransCantabrica

NotThatMrsBrown @ramblanista Is there any complimentary writing paper, sure to be a clue on there ���� #lostinspain

ramblanista @ClaireBrown2008 I'm a geography tutor and student now, the only things I can read are maps! (And I DID read the map correctly!)

ramblanista Tengo que decir que no estaba perdida, sabia exactamente donde estaba. Pero el refugio no esta donde creia estaba! #TransCantabrica

ramblanista I have to say that I wasn't lost, I knew exactly where I was but the albergue wasn't where I thought it was. #TransCantabrica

ramblanista @Graeme_SoW Turns out Albergue I was looking for was 2km south & 200m higher but not marked on the map. I'm having issues with Spanish maps