There lies a vale in Ida,
lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian
hills.
The swimming vapour slopes
athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps
from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On
either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges
midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far
below them roars
The long brook falling thro' the
clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the
sea.
Behind the valley topmost
Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning:
but in front
The gorges, opening wide apart,
reveal
Troas and Ilion's column'd
citadel,
The crown of Troas.
The Greeks might have
their Mount Ida, the Japanese Mount Fuji, the hippies over in Glastonbury have
their knobbly Tor but yesterday the unfeasibly handsome María Inés de la Cruz
and I came across our own little paradise. Our very own Pico Bonito; a part of South
Somerset that will be forever northern Honduras.
It’s fair to say
that during our prolonged hibernation beneath the duvets in La Villa Ramblanista
our thoughts have wandered to warmer climes; it was all I could do to tear María
from the laptop where she was searching for a cheap flight back home to El
Salvador. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ I told her, ‘we haven’t even got enough money for
a cheap day return to Weymouth.’
So for the first
time this year we flexed our pale limbs under the warm, West Country sun –
well, my limbs are pale, hers are, as ever, a deep golden brown – our thoughts were
still very much on the exotic. After nibbling on a pasty in the sublime
surroundings of Wells Market Place we drifted out to and along the old railway
line that, once upon a time, connected the ecclesiastical with the agricultural: Wells to Shepton Mallet
It was there that Maria noticed the shapely outline of Dulcote Hill. ‘Are you
thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked. I nodded, images of the beautiful Pico
Bonito flashed before our eyes like cartoon pound signs.
 |
| Dulcote Hill, Somerset |
 |
| Pico Bonito, Honduras |
It’s difficult to
find any accurate information on Pico Bonito. It’s now the focus of a national park, in the Nombre de Dios mountains not far from the Caribbean port of La
Ceiba and the Moskita coast. We’ve been there before, of course, but we’ve
never got much further than the crystal-clear Rio Zacate. Apparently the first successful
ascent didn’t take place until the 1950s and since then only a handful of attempts
have been made. The expedition takes a
good ten days at best up vertiginous slopes with dense vegetation.
The ascent of
Dulcote Hill, in contrast, doesn’t take more than a good ten minutes scrambling
through thicket and scrub and in the absence of poisonous snakes such as the
fer-de-lance the only threat to our safety came from slipping through the rusting
fence designed to keep the likes of us out of the quarry. I’ll tell you
something for nothing; there’s nothing like a ‘Private: Keep Out’ sign to prompt
a Ramblanista sortie into the
forbidden.
If the north, south
and west slopes of Dulcote Hill are precipitous, its west face is a vertical
wall of rusty-grey rock because it is, of course, a disused quarry. Just as
well our summit celebrations weren’t over-effusive; one false move and either
of us could have toppled over the edge. It was a languid afternoon so María and
I lay under the sun enjoying the sublime view of England’s most exquisite
Cathedral City.
In a couple of years’
time both María and I will be celebrating an important birthday; as we hopped
and skipped our way back down to the picture-book literary village that is Queen’s
Sturge, an unspoken we discussed what we might do by way of a party. You didn’t
have to be a psychic to know what we were both thinking. That evening, sipping
on out gin and tonics back in La Villa Ramblanista, the intolerably handsome María
Inés de la Cruz fired up the laptop.
‘Shall I?’ she
asked, her voice hoarse with anticipation. I nodded. ‘Cheapest flight from
London to La Ceiba won’t be any less than eight hundred quid - call that a grand come 2013.’
‘We’d better start
saving then ...’
