Month: May 2022

An inauspicious start.

I spent a two week holiday in Mallorca earlier this month with Jane, my partner. It was my fourth visit to this fantastic island and one that I had long-wanted to make. But it had seemed impossible without taking the plane (or going via Barcelona), so my decision to stop flying for environmental reasons seemed to have put paid to any further visits. Then I discovered you could take a ferry from Toulon, in the south of France. We were booked to go in April 2020.

Needless to say, the pandemic put paid to this, although the cash we had spent on tickets remained on credit with Eurostar and Corsican Ferries. With the melting away of most travel restrictions this spring it looked like we could have a second attempt at the trip.

Paris is a major rail interchange for many parts of western Europe these days and I’ve used it a number of times. It’s very straightforward transferring from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon for all stations to the south of France using the Metro, although on a previous trip I had my phone stolen. This time there were no such problems and we safely arrived in Toulon about 11 that night. There was then almost a whole day to kick our heels in the city before the ferry left, and after an overnight crossing we arrived at Puerto Alcudia at six o’clock in the morning.

It was an inauspicious start to a very dismal day. It was dark, cold and windy and nothing was open. We didn’t know how to get to our first pre-booked apartment although we did know it was several miles away. After some time I found an open cafe and we had the first of many Mallorcan coffees. We then began walking but a careful study of a map told me we were going in the wrong direction. Returning to the town I eventually found a bus stop and we jumped aboard. There was still time to kill before we could get our keys, and it was at the next cafe that we discovered we had left the Spanish phrasebook at the previous one…….. At eight o’clock we were able to collect our keys, only to discover that we had actually paid and been booked in for the previous night when we were still on the ferry. Groan…….

After several hours settling in and recovery time we decided to visit S’Albufera, Mallorca’s main wetland. It’s a few miles away from Alcudia by bus and should have taken about twenty minutes. But the roads were heavily congested, vast numbers of passengers were getting on and off and the bus’s ticket machine was faulty, causing constant delays. The sprawl of Puerto Alcudia along the coast road seemed endless. I decided it was time to get off without knowing where we were. It turned out to be another hour’s walk past countless hotels, gift shops, bike outlets and other tourist tat before we reached the reserve entrance. We arrived at five only to be told by a uniformed member of staff sitting in a pick-up that the reserve closed at six. I couldn’t believe my ears. On a previous visit with my mother we quite openly arrived post-evening meal to watch night herons leaving their roosting trees and heading for their feeding pools. So there was just about time to walk up the entrance track to the visitor centre (which was closed) and back before we had to leave. I don’t think Jane was very impressed.

Fortunately things DID improve……….

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Peregrinations (part two).

Part of the remains of the Cwm Coke Works, near Beddau

A couple of weeks ago I drove down to Cardiff with my mate Jonathan to see Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets at St David’s Hall. Nick was one of the founder members of Pink Floyd. A few years ago he put together a band to play music from “the Floyd’s” earlier and arguably most creative years, prior to Dark Side of the Moon. No Roger Waters dirges here, thank you very much! The gig, originally scheduled for spring 2020, was postponed, postponed again, and then again. You had to hope that Nick would still be fit enough to eventually play. That Wednesday, it finally happened, and he was. I don’t think he could be described as the most original or inventive drummer in the world, but he sets a rock-solid foundation for the other musicians around him. At the age of 78, it is astonishing that he is still able to undertake gruelling sequences of one – night stands, and to keep alive some of the most compelling rock music of all time.

I won’t say much more about the music, other than this : both Jonathan and I are of the opinion that the 22-minute long track “Echoes” (on the album Meddle) is one of the most sublime pieces of rock music ever created. I personally believe it should, and eventually probably will, be considered alongside the great classical music of its era. I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to cope with experiencing it live. But as we left the venue we agreed that the version of Echoes which ended the second set was a bit of a let-down. It was as if the band were wary of reproducing the space and tranquility which so permeates the studio version. Or perhaps they were unable to do so?

But I digress. My next encounter with peregrines, on the way back from Cardiff, was in a very different setting to the previous one; from the sublime to the ridiculous, you could say. I have briefly visited the Cwm Coke Works site twice in recent years. It only finally closed down in 2002, so I must also have seen it in all its working glory on earlier visits to the Valleys. I just wish I had given it the time it deserved as photographic subject matter, because this extensive site is now derelict and rapidly being demolished. Last summer I heard the unmistakeable calls of peregrines there so vowed to re-visit the site during the breeding season if at all possible.

The Coke Works bar and coffee shop, Beddau. (Mural hand-painted by Jenny Ross)

At first it was very quiet. A raven was calling and song birds singing from the woodland which is rapidly regenerating around the site. Then came the sounds of two peregrines in conversation. I spotted one bird circling low around the building in the main picture and shortly later J. picked out the female hunched down in the dirt on an inaccessible part of the site. Later the male brought her some food, and when she stood up you could see two tiny white downy bundles beside her. It is worth mentioning here that at the time Derek Ratcliffe wrote his masterwork The Peregrine Falcon (publ. 1980) it was virtually unknown for the species to nest on man-made structures in the UK : now it is commonplace. I suppose this site gives the birds all the security they need, but it was strange to see such dignified creatures in such delapidated surroundings.

A group of naturalists appeared on the coal tip behind us and I discovered that one member of the party was Carys Romney, who I had also met by chance on a previous visit. She is an ecologist and the leading light behind the Cwm Tips Appreciation Society. She told me about her new venture – a peregrine- and cwm tips-themed bar/coffee shop in the ex-mining village of Beddau a couple of miles away. As you can see from the picture above, there are some fabulous murals there by the artist Jenny Ross, and I can certainly vouch for the quality of the coffee! So why not give the Cokeworks Bar a visit if you find yourself in the area?

NB : I hesitated before posting details of the peregrines, but it should be noted how well-known and valued the birds are locally; and how they are protected by some very keen site security staff.

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