  Dear E.,—Can you manage to get off some time in May and go bicycling with me in Norway? Blank’s have offered me a passage to Bergen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dear W.,—I can manage your date, but don’t quite feel drawn to your country. Norway is all mountains, and I want a little archÆology. I had been thinking of Provence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dear E.,—No objection to Provence. Blank’s will give us a passage in one of their colliers to Bilbao, and we can ride in across the Pyrenees. You must allow me some mountains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dear W.,—It’s awfully good of Blank’s. But once at Bilbao, why not stick to Spain? Toledo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dear E.,—Very good! Spain first; and Provence second string if necessary. There’s a boat sailing about May 20th. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The casting vote was indisputably the collier’s; but our plans were not quite so inconsequent as this conclusion might lead one to infer. Some nebulous notion of a Spanish expedition had been miraging itself before our eyes for several seasons previously; and it is the nature of such nebulous notions to materialise accidentally at the last. Hitherto we had been awed by the drawbacks; for Spain had been pictured to us as positively alive with bugbears. Travelling was difficult—nay, even dangerous; the people were Anglophobists, the country a desert, and the cities dens of pestilence. The roads were unridable, and the heat unbearable. We should be eaten of fleas, and choked with garlic; and to crown all our other tribulations, we should have to learn a new and unknown tongue. The knight who plunged into the lake of pitch had hardly a more inviting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The owners said she would sail on Thursday; but Wednesday brought down the captain in a highly energetic condition, and confident of catching the midnight tide. We had to make a bolt for the docks by the last train of the evening, and groped our way to the Amadeo through a haze of coal dust, only to be met by the intelligence that the captain had gone home to bed! There was nothing for it but to camp in the cabin, where night was made constantly hideous by the coal roaring into the after-hold: and next morning found us out in the middle of the dock, sitting on our tail with our bows pointing to heaven. The coal for the fore-hold had failed us, and a luckier rival had ousted us from our berth at the staithes. The morning was occupied in resolving a general tangle; for every ship in the basin seemed to fall foul of all the others in turn. Soon a second tide was lost. And when we regained the staithes there came another break in our procession of coal We flung ashore in despair. But a more hopeful sight saluted us when we returned. The Amadeo lay out by the dock gates, long and low, with her main deck but eighteen inches above the water. At last she was fully laden; and we sailed on the Friday morn. So long as we remained in Tyne Dock we had not judged ourselves conspicuously dirty; but we showed as a crying scandal when out in the clean blue sea. The mate even bewailed the calm weather. If we “took it green” once we should be clean immediately. But such heroic methods of labour-saving we very contentedly excused. Meanwhile we made leisurely progress, for the Amadeo was no greyhound. “She never yet caught anything with steam in her” according to her despondent engineer. Saturday’s sun set behind Dover—the great cliffs looming darkly over us, and the town lights showing like pin-holes pricked through the blackness to the glowing sky beyond. Sunday showed us the grim teeth of the Caskets; and the weird natural dolmens of Ushant were passed the following day. But Providence still continued to temper the wind to that very About Wednesday evening the captain began to wax very bitter concerning Spanish lighthouses, and we went below better satisfied that deep water should last us till dawn! But the first rays of light showed us a long line of blue peaks high on the horizon to the southward, and within an hour our voyage was over. “In we came—and time enough—’cross Bilbao bar.” It was from the sea that I had my first view of Genoa and the Italian Riviera, and the seaward approach to Bilbao deserves no meaner comparison than this. The romantic hills reared themselves from the water’s edge, unwinding their veils at the touch of the early sunshine; and the sparkling villages clinging to the cliffs round the shell-shaped harbour of Portugalete made a picture which might have been borrowed from Lugano or Lucerne. A tumult of tossing peaks was piled in disorder to the eastward, above the smoke of the iron furnaces in the winding valley of the Nervion; and far away to the westward, ridge upon ridge fell sloping down into the blue waters of the Atlantic; sometimes breaking off so sheer at the finish that the ore ships could actually moor Neither were our first impressions of the people less favourable than those of the country. And that though they were formed in the Custom House, which is scarcely a promising beat. These hospitable officials were if anything over-considerate; for we were only anxious to pay and have done with it, while they were all intent on excusing us, if they could find any justification under the code. At last, however, we were allowed to purchase our freedom; fled to our machines amid a haze of reciprocal compliments; and a few minutes later were drifting along the road to the westward, with no more care for the morrow than flotsam on uncharted seas.
The busy industries of Bilbao have unfortunately gone some way towards marring its lovely situation. Its valley is choked with smoky factories; and its mountains are one vast red scar from base to Beyond the blight of the quarries, the scenery is of the type of our own Welsh highlands—steep, rocky ridges and gullies, thickly clothed with bracken and scrub oak. Even the railway has a most charming ramble, hunting its own tail up and down the long, steep, corkscrew gradients of the inland valleys. But the road clambers along the deeply fissured coast line, and no free agent will elect to follow the rail. Our first stage, however, was but a short one, for it was evening when we quitted Bilbao. Castro Urdiales gaped for us with its cavernous little calle, and we dived in to seek quarters for the night. Surely a town so close to Bilbao might have been expected to be inured to visitors! Yet our It is a fortunate thing that a traveller’s needs can be guessed without much vocabulary; for our first task was to order our supper, and mistakes may be serious when you have to eat the result. The enterprise, however, is not so hazardous as one imagines. Like Sancho Panza, you may ask for what you will;—but what you get is “the pair of cow heels dressed with chick peas, onions and bacon which are just now done to a turn.” After all, we did not fare badly; mine hostess was a damsel of resources, and our old pilot prompted us vigorously from the rear. It was he who suggested the “lamp-post”—a threat at which we jibbed somewhat visibly. But the girl plunged promptly into the kitchen behind her and returned displaying the “lamp-post”—which was a lobster. As to the three weird courses which followed him, our One might travel a long way along any coast line before finding a prettier haven than Castro Urdiales. The nucleus of the town, with the church and castle, is perched upon a rocky promontory, whose cliffs drop sheer into the deep water, and whose outlying pinnacles have been linked up to the mainland by irregular arches so as to form natural wharves. A little harbour for fishing-craft nestles under the cliff to the eastward; looking back along the coast to Bilbao, and the bold conical hill with the watch-tower (reminiscent of Barbary pirates), which guards the entrance to the harbour of Portugalete. Yet all this fair exterior hides a hideous secret, and at last we surprised it unaware. We were well acquainted with sardines in England, and it had not escaped our cognisance that sardines were commonly bereft of heads. Castro Urdiales is a city of ambitions. It is keeping pace with the era, and in 1901 its most antiquated alley had been already dignified by the title of “Twentieth Century Street.” Since then it has developed a ponderous steel bridge in the harbour, and thrown out a massive concrete break-water from the end of the modest jetty. But its progress is not to be deprecated where it does not interfere with its beauty; and now a comfortable Fonda has supplanted the humble Venta which was our first lodging on Spanish soil.
Our road next day still followed the mountainous coast line, and we descended at noon upon the roofs of Laredo, a delightful little town, climbing up the steep hillside above its tiny anchorage, and facing the great mass of SantoÑa, the “Gibraltar of the North.” This imposing fortress lies across At Laredo we dined, and as Spanish meals are the subject of much needless apprehension, perhaps we may pause to say a word in their defence before proceeding further upon our way. We begin with Desayuno or petit dÉjeuner, and here, in a genuinely Spanish mÉnage, chocolate will generally take the place of the Frenchman’s cafÉ au lait. It is served in tiny cups, very hot and very thick. It is really a substitute for butter, and you eat it by dipping your bread in it, washing it down with a glass of cold water, which you are expected to “sugar to taste.” The peasants, however, eschew this fashion as new-fangled, and content themselves with a draught of wine or a thimbleful of “the craythur.” This is not recommended by the faculty, but travellers have sometimes to be content.
Dinner, or Comida, is served about mid-day; the nominal time varies, but it is always half an The cooking is by no means deserving of all the strictures that have been showered upon it; for most nations know how to cook their own dishes, and only come seriously to grief when they try to imitate French. The dreaded garlic is used but sparingly; oil is a much more dominating feature. But then oil has a double debt to pay, because Spaniards make no butter. At all events the food is plentiful, and “St Bernard’s sauce” will cover a multitude of deficiencies; for appetite is a blessing that is seldom lacking to the traveller in Spain! After dinner, the CafÉ. And a Spanish cafÉ is a most noteworthy assemblage. It is comparatively empty in the evenings, for the Spaniard’s homing instincts are much more strongly developed than the Frenchman’s, and he seldom quits his house and his family circle after dark. But in the early afternoon it is thronged to repletion with all But the heat of the day is now passing, and the traveller must answer the call. His road is at Meanwhile we pursued our career to an intermittent orchestral accompaniment—a tune in two keys, like M‘Alpin’s drone and small pipes, but far more powerful and piercing than the most brazen-lunged piper could blow. Occasionally we met the musician. He is only an ordinary ox-cart—a pair of wheels, a pole, and a plank or two, actuated by a pair of sleepy kine. In Galicia the yoke is fastened round the necks For the amount of lamentation that can be extracted from one dry axle is a thing that is scarcely credible even when it is heard. The natives encourage it. They have one theory that it pleases the oxen, and another (far more probable) that it scares the Fiend. But at any rate it has no apparent effect upon the Spanish teamster, who lounges along in front waving his goad like a drum-major’s baton; or sleeps—yes, sleeps—on the summit of his yelling load. Verily the man who first invented sleep must have been a waggoner! This evening, as we were crossing the ridge between two parallel valleys, our ears were saluted by the unmistakable long-drawn scream of an impatient locomotive. Our map showed no railway, however; and we were just beginning to plume ourselves on an important geographical discovery, when we caught sight of a single ox-cart—200 feet But the bicyclist has one grievance in Spain which is not so easily avoided as ox-carts, and it is about the end of the second day that the iron of it begins to enter his soul. Thenceforward for ever he cherishes a deadly and undying rancour against the Spanish dogs. We had been partly prepared for the infliction beforehand. The captain had mentioned them, and had talked of ammonia pistols; but we spurned the suggestion with humane horror. We knew quite well that all foreign dogs were brutes, but we were confident in our own benignity and scornful of “methods of barbarism.” And in these noble sentiments we persisted—for about a day and a half. Next morning we were awakened out of our beauty sleep by the yellings of some miserable cur in the Fonda patio;—“Hurrah! there’s a dog getting hurt,” was our simultaneous comment; and ere we recrossed the frontier we had registered a grim resolve that next time we would bring revolvers, Well, we are not the first (nor the last) whose amiability has been ruined by “dogs barking at us as we pass by”; and when every brute in the countryside, from the toy mongrel to the wolf-hound as big as an ass-colt, dances yelling and snapping at your heels for half a mile together, it is not entirely surprising that patience should wear thin. Of course there are stones. The Guadarrama district in particular produces a beautiful white quartzose,—hard and heavy, with many sharp angles,—an excellent article to throw at a dog. But what is a pocketful among so many? Besides, you often miss them, and never hurt them enough. Truly I could feel no sure confidence in anything short of a loaded revolver. But only a very even-tempered man could trust himself with that ultima ratio within reach of his fingers; and I cherish a rooted objection to “going heeled” in a civilised land. Perhaps a lion-tamer’s whip with a loaded butt and a bullet at the end of the lash may prove effective enough to compromise upon. Meanwhile there is some silver lining to the cloud. There are already some convertites among Beyond Torrelavega there is again a parting of roadways. One passes along the coast by Santillana, the birthplace of Gil Blas; and the other through Cabezon, threading the mountain glens. They reunite at San Vicente de la Barquera, another minor seaport of Cantabria, less progressive than Castro, but quite as attractive after its style. The town lies at the extremity of a tongue of land between two wide estuaries. It is the meeting-place of the two long bridges which cross them, and its precipitous acropolis and arcaded market-place afford endless studies to the lover of the picturesque. San Vicente had got a hideous secret of its own as well as Castro, only at San Vicente it was hardly a secret—in fact, they were rather booming it as a show. An old sunken coasting vessel had recently been recovered and beached in the estuary, and its hold was positively teeming with The Cantabrian Sierras, already sufficiently majestic, now reach their culmination in the acknowledged monarchs of the range—the Picos de Europa, the landmark of all the old navigators who once steered their Mexican argosies into Gijon or Santander. This vast mass of snow-crowned peaks forms a most imposing spectacle. They are great “cloud compellers,” and are seldom entirely clear. But they are sometimes seen unveiled in the calm of the early morning, an apparently impassable barrier filling half the horizon towards the south.
Yet the road which we have taken to guide us aims right at the very heart of them, and at the little village of Unquera it bears up square to the left. A copious sea-green river (officially known as the Tina Mayor, but invariably styled the Deva by the inhabitants) comes hurrying down at this point from the mountains, and charges the great ridge of limestone which edges the coast-line like a natural sea-wall. We look in vain for the outlet: Turning our backs on the sea, we enter a noble valley, walled in by crags of Alpine grandeur, and populated by families of Imperial eagles swinging to and fro their eyries, high amid the cornices of rock; but the pastures at the foot of the steeps are everywhere level and placid, and from Unquera up to AbÁndames can scarcely be called an ascent. There is a waters-meet just above AbÁndames, and the traveller as he approaches it begins to experience considerable misgivings concerning the future of his road. If it will but condescend to follow the valley, there seems just a chance that it may emerge as a staircase; but when it bears resolutely to the left to knock its head against the precipices of the Picos, he resignedly concludes that now there’s nothing for it but a lift. A deep notch in the crags lets out the river, and here the road slips in. There seems every prospect that it will be promptly confronted by a precipice and a waterfall; but beyond the first notch is a second, and beyond the second a third. At every turn the It is but a few miles since we quitted sea level, and we have risen but little on the way. Yet the cliffs that edge the roadway make but one leap of it to the clouds, and their tops are streaked with snow. Here rises a staircase of gigantic terraces; here a fringe of crooked fingers, black and jagged against the sky; here a range of sheer bluff bastions, like the cubos
At the hamlet of la Hermida the valley makes a momentary attempt to widen; but this little ebullition is promptly squashed in the grip of the mountains, and the great beetling cliffs once more shoulder in upon the defile. The effects seemed finer than ever, for the clouds of a gathering tempest were tearing themselves to ribbons among the jagged aiguilles, and their streamers were pierced and illuminated by the level rays of the setting sun. Not till we had burrowed our way for some fifteen miles through the roots of the mountains did we escape at last into the upland vale of Liebana; and looking back on the snow-wreathed fangs behind us, wondered (like Ali Baba before his cavern) what had become of the crevice from which we had just emerged. |
|
