What is it all about i wonder. I try to fathom what my hopes were when embarking on this trip such that i might now understand what i am seeking. Experience, experience, experience is all i can find. An understanding of a country, its people, landscapes wildlife and climate. Ok been here done that, now what?
As i approach the last week of my time here with no further decisions needed about where to go, i need instead to make decisions about whether or not to return. For what, is my question, for what?Getting my australian journals into electronic form is the only reason i have found, although the challenge of hitching a lift on a cargo boat adds excitement, but the complexities of how to move easily carrying weighty journals and no place as yet, to return to make the prospect both of interest, yet daunting.
I could return to Nolsoy, to Levi's little room for £15 a night but it is small and without a desk, the house full of interesting people and already feels too much family like. There, that was that my intention, to escape family and expectations made on me or more perhaps the expectations i place on myself as regards my life and immediate family.
Yes, I was searching for freedom, to take away my sense of routine and obligation towards others, to have some time just for me. Moving to a house i already describe as too much like family is not the answer. i need a small hideaway, somewhere i can be self sufficient and alone but find company of friends if i need it.
No, it is more than that, it is me wanting to understand what there is for me now in life. I am not content to stay home, clean after AirBnB guests (although they certainly give me the money to run a car and not fret too much) but i dont want this to be all there is for the next twenty years. Airbnb, bridge, biking and grandchildren is not enough, i feel ill fitted for this role and still want more from life. Perhaps live somewhere new, learn something new.
I have never understood holidays, dont know how to 'do' sitting around by a pool, eating and drinking. Dont know how to live in close proximity with strangers nor yet be comfortable alone without an ease of movement and ability to feed myself sustainably. So i dont know, am i on holiday or on a quest? Perhaps i would be more settled if i understood the difference.
Perhaps i can find an answer if i think of 'holidays' i have taken over the years:
An expensive Holiday Fellowship walking week: prissy, nothing in common with my room mate. A very disappointing 40th birthday treat for myself, the concept of which i had totally misunderstood, made me feel eighty not forty. Sherry on arrival. Dressing for dinner.
CTC cuba bike touring trip: over the edge a bit too hard, too little fun or music, too much bland samey hotel food and no contact with ordinary people. I understand the simultaneous Exodus trip was more expensive but local accomodation and contacts, more laughter and local foods.
Bridge fortnight in tunisia. Dare i say i enjoyed this? Enjoyed the luxury of the facilities, the learning purpose, the mixture of excursions, exploratory in nature, with plenty of room for personal explorations.
Spinning week in yorkshire, when i was seventeen or eighteen, camping and a weeklong workshop. I enjoyed that, loved learning, loved being there yet without actually having to explore and be the tourist.
Machine embroidery week in Northumberland. I barely left the grounds, enjoyed the company of my roommate and worked long hours. I dont remember the food and have no idea now of where we were. It was unimportant. Total immersion.
Two weeks wandering the hebrides: moments of aloneness, togetherness, loneliness, generosity, drunkenness, decisions and indecisions, moments of fear but long summer days, machair, sea and the company of others also moving on. Two weeks, not long enough yet somehow just long enough.
An unplanned whole year in australia, bridges burned, nothing to come home to. A sense of being compelled to do something with my time, to make some sense of it, which slowly grew into a freedom of moment and a freedom of movement. It takes time on the road to be on the road.
One long weekend organised trip whilst in australia, walking to wilsons prom, climbing sand dunes, crazyness and achievement. The joys of sharing a warm can of beer.
Swim camp in spain. Never intended as fun, very isolated and controlled but a good technique experience. Wouldnt do another.
You might think that at 60 i might know what pleases me yet it is so hard to fathom and money is always the curtain shrouding it all and shaping each experience as it grows. The long, overland, rough exploratory, back of lorry, holiday trips have always attracted me but been priced out of my budget. I guess i try to recreate them in a small way alone.
What defines a holiday and what a journey? I have come on a journey yet am expecting it to be a holiday. I find those who travel with a prescribed agenda have a romanticised notion of the freedom of travelling alone. They know nothing of the loneliness or the constant need to be thinking ahead, planning the next move, picking up the pieces and always always, wearing stale clothes.
The ferry is immersed in another fog field. I set my alarm last night for six am and have escaped on the 6.25 am bus. Forgoing breakfast, for which i had paid, i am on the 7am ferry. It is another day in the fog and i would rather spend it in Torshavn than Sudoroy.
Yesterday was brighter than it might have been and i easily found a lift beyond Sumba, to the lands end, the most southerly point, Akraberg. We walked to the lighthouse. An american was packing up camp at the lighthouse where he had stayed overnight, risking being swept over by the wind. Three times in the last ten days emergency services have been called to accidents high on the hills, people getting lost in the fog or falling fatally. This is not a country to be treated lightly.
I cannot yet read the clouds but i know when they suggest it would be folly to explore height. My danish driver tutted and tutted endlessly about the american, whilst wiping sheep muck from her shoes, before starting out on the high buttercup route back to Vagur. By now, the road was shrouded in dense fog, the apparently stunning Beinisvøro cliffs nowhere to be seen. She was an inexperienced driver, a woman my age but stalling on hairpin bends and terrified of the roads, hesitant and anxious. I wanted to drive her car for her and it made me recall a moment from a distant winter journey in Newfoundland, when an officer of the law turned and said, 'I'm sorry mam, but you're gonna hafta drive this vehicle' as it materialised that the guy giving me a lift had no licence.
I walk to the small lake where children play, pond dipping and paddling.
I call in at the tv and radio shop and ask to view the Ruth Smith exhibition, i see her work differently now, my Danish lift told me stories of knowing her children, of how they were ill dressed and neglected, how all she would do was paint paint paint. She drowned around the age of 45 in a suspected suicide, i look on her work with changed perspective.
I meet a stained glass artist, view her work in the library but do not fall in love with it as i have with that of Trondur Patursson. I try to hitch to Fámjin, and get a lift on my last hope car for the day. After walking two or three miles in spitting rain, i decide to call it a day when he stops. Fámjin? he says, i cannot take you far. We speed through the tunnel and soon i stand at the end of a small single track road, Famijan is a further 9k along a tiny winding mountain road. I check the busses and find the second, and last bus of the day, will leave Famjin in seventyfive minutes time. I fasten my coat and wait for cars to come my way, i only need to get there, order a waffle and coffee from the outdoor cafe and view the original faroese flag, made in protest by a student wanting independence in 1919.
A bright, smiling, student health care worker picks me up. We have a half conversation about care, about children in care. there are questions i need to ask, but the edge of what is polite and what is safe during a nine kilometer car journey is unclear to me. I ask the reasons children go into care, she struggles to answer. drugs, alcohol, abuse, neglect, I offer, she agrees but still struggles to find the words she wants and then says, you know some people cant even look after themselves and then they cant look after their children. She drives faster than i like on narrow roads and hairpin bends. My older sister is also training in social health care she says. She drives confident that nothing is coming the other way. my younger sister is with a foster family. Im sorry is all i can say and she shrugs, its ok. I see the car before she does, to my right a steep drop, in front a descending hairpin bend and crash barrier. She shrieks and pulls over, we dont quite touch the crash barrier or the car, she reverses and drives on.
I arrive to find the cafe is closed. The tide is out, the bay a dark rocky seaweed garden with rocks nosing from water beyond. A narrow channel through the rocks and shallow water is marked with poles, boats nestle in the harbour, fishing these waters demands care. Wandering beside the fishing huts i learn the elderly owner of the cafe is dying of cancer. I wander and wonder about life and death.
The faroese flag was not fully recognised until the second world war when the british demanded faroese ships fly it, rather than the Danish flag as denmark was now occupied, germany territory. The intervention of the british was a turning point in faroese independence. as significant as it is for the faroese, for me, the flag is just a flag and a reason to visit, the germans, chattering in the church ignore my greeting and give me no eye contact. i turn for home.
I leave the village, happy to walk out onto the mountain road, knowing that a bus will come and will stop when i hail it. Two unusually large cars pass me by, mercedes. Most people here drive small cars as befits small roads. I see two souped up, escort like, cars wind up out of the village and wonder where they have appeared from, i did not see them and the village is an end of the road place. I turn towards them, hold out my thumb and am surprised as the bright red, almost rally car, with danish plates whizzes to a stop beside me. A smiling face and long blonde hair greet me and i climb in. She is a teacher and has been visiting family with her aunt, indicating the blue car in front of us. We compare notes about pressures on pupil progress and behaviour in class. She regrets that denmark is heading the same way as the uk. I am lucky she is heading back to her father in Vagur which is also my destination.
It is late aftenoon and I sit in the library reading faroese history and legend until seven pm.
