Uncategorized – The Irish Rover

Atalaya

In the late autumn of 2015, we set out from Sevilla to walk north for as far as we could, before the weather turned cold. On the fourth day we reached the small village of El Real de La Jara. It was my second time of walking north from Sevilla. The place where I previously stayed was not available, but I was able to reserve Hostal La Encima.

It turned out that the hostel was out on the edge of the village, in an industrial area, an unlikely site for pilgrims. As we tramped past factories and warehouses, we started to wonder if we had made a mistake in our directions. But there it was, at the far end of the road.

There was a bar connected to the hostal with extremely friendly and hospitable staff. We obtained our room key, and after a refreshing cold beer, we went to our room, via an adjacent entrance door. And that evening we ate a delicious plate of garlic shrimps and drank a bottle of local wine at a table on the pavement, sitting under the stars.

The next morning breakfast was served in the common area that ajointed the rooms.

I struck up a conversation with the guy who served the breakfast and I commented that it seemed to be a strange place for a hostal, rather far from the tourists and pilgrims. He said that most of their clients were connected to the mines or to the industrial area. I was not aware that there were productive mines in the area. I learned something new.

In late 2022, my investment research produced Atalaya Mining (ATYM) as a firm prospect. When I got into the details, I found that their main copper mines were just north-west of Seville and they had promising discoveries in both Galicia and in Sweden. Now I don’t know if ATYM has ever been a client of Hostal La Encima, but my gut feel was that this was a good one. I made a substantial investment in AYTM.

As of today, that investment has increased by more than 165%.

I believe that successful investment is a combination of skill and luck.

It helps that I have always been a lucky guy.

Travelling light

‘The most important thing in life is not to have the most, but to need the least’ (Plato)

In this era of conspicuous consumerism, of ‘shop until you drop’, of buying more of what you already possess, and loading credit cards with money that you don’t have, I consider myself to have been most fortunate in having parents who had a ‘waste not, want not’ attitude. We had the basics, but no more.

When I left home at 18 to migrate to Canada, my posessions barely filled a very small suitcase. Apart from the clothes on my back and the shoes that I was wearing, I had a couple of shirts, underwear and socks. I had also my football boots and a sweater for when the weather got colder. There wasn’t much else, for the case was very small.

My ambition was to see as much of the world as I could, so keeping my processions to a minimum became a priority. For the next 20 years, I roamed, working for a time in each destination, to Canada, Australia, US, England, Nigeria, Venezuela, Peru, slowly enhancing my IT career. Sometimes I was employed, at others I was a contractor. Regardless of the mode of employment, I made a point of never leaving a project before it was completed to the satisfaction of the client. My professional reputation was important to me.

When I eventually settled down in England and had a family, my minimalist habits still prevailed, with one exception: my collection of books. They were intended as an intellectual investment for my dotage when I might be no longer able to travel. In the meantime, they remain unread in their bookshelves in England, for I am not yet ready to put my feet up and wait to die.

And now in Cape Town for the past nine years, I am still ambitious to see some more of the world, not as an old-age-pensioner-tourist on a cruise or bus, but as a traveller, with my pack on my back, and the open road ahead. Walking from village to village with a light backpack, through towns and cities, I realized how few are the possessions that I really need.

Setting out from Bayonne to walk up the Baztán valley to Pamplona, and then west to Burgos

Way back in 1965, just before I left home, I saw Cliff Richard and the Shadows in a concert in Belfast. One of their hit songs was ‘Travelling light’. I often sang that song as I walked along on one of my pilgrimages.

One day soon I hope to walk another pilgrimage and sing it again.

Jimmy Carter

In 1977, ‘The Complete Book of Running‘ by Jim Fixx was published. It was credited for starting the boom in competitive road running in the US, and soon after, globally. When I arrived in Caracas in late 1978, there was already established a dedicated group of runners, who met most evenings in the Parque del Este.

Despite his reputation for being a symbol of health and fitness, Jim Fixx died in 1984 of a heart attack while jogging. He had a previous history of smoking and being overweight and had underlying health issues. But I suspect that he died doing what he wanted to do.

Jimmy Carter, the then-precedent of the US, took up jogging in 1978. He was often to be seen trotting around, with his body guards puffing along with him.

He hit the headlines in 1979, when he collapsed during his first race, The Catoctin Mountain Race, a hilly 10 km that started beside Camp David, the presidential retreat.

But he was fine later, with no lasting ill effects, and turned up for the award ceremony.

He was born on 1 October 1924 in Plains, Georgia, the son of a peanut farmer. He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946, with whom he had four children. He served seven years as a naval officer and was president 1977-1981.

When I drove from California across the southern US in 1977, on my way to Canada and eventually the UK, I passed through Plains, Georgia. It seemed like an unimpressive dusty rural town. I didn’t stop.

My only ‘near-contact’ with Jimmy Carter was in 1984. I was at Jorge Chavez Airport in Lima, waiting to collect a colleague, Richard Austin, from Miami. Richard was scheduled to spend a few days conducting a quality assurance of the software product for which I was responsible. The flight was very late, with no explanation. Finally it landed and soon after a group of VIPs strode through arrivals, led by Jimmy Carter. Apparently all was delayed because of his late connecting flight.

In 2002, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts. From what I know of the man, the award was well deserved.

In his autumn years, he and his wife worked tirelessly as volunteers building, renovating and repairing affordable housing for needy people. They lived modestly and when they travelled, it was commercial rather than first class or private.

Rosalynn Carter died 19 Nov 2023 at the age of 96 and Jimmy Carter on 29 December 2024 at the age of 100.

May they R.I.P.

Ironman

When he played on a beach with his older brother in the south of France in the late 1990s, little did I know that Philip would become a serial-achiever. In addition to some of his achievements that I mentioned in my previous blog, he was about to become an Ironman.

In case you are not aware, an Ironman triathlon is a long-distance race that consists of three consecutive stages: a 2.4-mile (3.9 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.2 km) bike ride, and a 26.2-mile (42.2 km) run, for a total distance of 140.6 miles (226.3).

The original Ironman World Championship was held in Hawaii in 1977 and has been held annually ever since. It is the culmination of a series of qualifying races around the world that take place throughout the year.

Together with another brother, Bob, Philip completed his first full marathon in Barcelona in 2017. It was with Bob that he previously cycled from England to Venice

Bob and Philip after finishing the Barcelona marathon

For his Ironman triathlon, Philip chose that of Tempe, Arizona, about 350 miles west of San Diego, where he lives with his partner, Nicole.

Waiting to start the 2.4-mile (3.9 km) swim

Nicole’s finger pointing to Philip in his green cap

One 40-mile lap completed, 80 miles to go

Their little dog, Milo, looking out for Philip

With his medal and not looking even slightly tired!

Philip finished in 14h48, well within the cut-off time, and professed the next day that he was ‘definitely sore, but not as bad as he expected‘.

Oh, to be young again!

So, I have updated my previous blog with my son’s achievement, and I added two that I had overlooked – both Bob (2012) and Philip (2019) completed a skydive. You can read the updated version by clicking here.

I suspect that I will have to update that blog many times before I go on my last walkabout!

Footsteps

I never wanted my sons to follow in my footsteps

I preferred that they walk beside me for a time

And when I eventually tire

They will go further than I could have ever imagined possible

Although I was happy in my primary education at Carnalridge – the school was about 100 m from the entrance to our farm, the strict discipline of a 1950’s grammar school education in Coleraine, with its constant threat of corporal punishment, grated with my yearning for independence. I left school at the earliest opportunity and soon after I set off to seek my fortune. I’m still seeking!

Thankfully, times and teaching methods have changed, and my sons were never caned, kept in detention after school and made write hundreds of lines like ‘I must not forget my homework’. It may now be hard to believe, but grammar schools in the UK and Ireland were like that. It seems to me that the strict discipline was intended to break rebellious spirits. In my case they failed.

In comparison, my sons received an excellent primary education at Lyndhurst in Camberley, well followed by Salesian College in Farnborough. All four boys achieved a plethora of ‘A’ levels, the UK equivalent of university entrance.

In Lyndhurst, all four were there in Andrews’s last year.

They were all very much involved in their school sports from an early age, and I loved taking them to their many varied sports – football, rugby, cricket, basketball, javelin, judo etc .

John receiving an award at Lords, the home of cricket.

John in action with the Camberly youth team

Both Andrew and John pursued the academic path, attaining degrees from Imperial College in London and the University of Southampton respectively. Bob and Philip took a sabbatical from studies, before embarking on careers in accounting and software development.

Andrew and his mother outside the Royal Albert Hall

Between them, my sons have travelled in more than 60 countries and territories, and they have resided and worked in Australia, New Zealand, US, France, Spain, Germany, as well as being road warriors in several other countries. At this rate they will soon overtake me!

They are all competent skiers, thanks to a UK artificial slope and Lotta’s introduction to Swedish ski slopes.

Andrew and Bob at Breckenridge, in Colorado, where Bob used to work.

Andrew, Bob and Philip are accomplished long distant cyclists, with treks from the UK to Chamonix and Venice and Philip across the US coast-to-coast.

Bob and Andrew about to set off from Camberley to Chamonix in the summer of 2009

And arriving in Chamonix many days later

Philip arriving at the west coast of California after cycling 44 days and 4800 km from the US East coast.

Until I suffered a stroke, for many years I was an enthusiastic mountain hiker, mainly in Switzerland and France, but also in the UK. My sons have climbed further and higher than I have ever done.

Andrew in the Andes with a street dog that adopted him.

Philip on the summit of Kilimanjaro at 5895 m

Bob and a friend on the summit of the dormant volcano Mount Taranaki at 2518 m, on the north island of New Zealand

And all had an excellent music education, with Andrew excelling on the piano. His grandfather and great-grandfather, both musicians, would have been proud of him.

Andrew entertaining at a wedding reception.

And there were a couple of wannabe actors in the family…

Bob about to go on the set of a Robin Hood movie

Philip’s volunteer work is impressive. At his own cost, he participated in projects in Tanzania, the Philippines, and Mozambique.

Philip on a volunteer assignment in Tanzania

Both Bob (2012 in New Zealand) and Philip (2019 in California) completed skydives.

And Philip is now an Ironman!

Yup, they have gone further than I could ever have imagined, and there’s almost certainly more to come.

Déjà vu

My first five years were spent in a wooden house on the Loquestown Road, that passed by the village of Glenmanus. The little house was one of many that ringed a large field, temporary accommodations that were provided by the local council for destitute or near-destitute families. It was just after WW2 and there was much poverty. Thanks to my mother’s uncle Bill and one of his fields across the road, my father was able to start his fledgling poultry farm, subsidized by his talent as a semi-professional pianist.

Eventually, my father was able to get an ex-serviceman’s mortgage, and had a small bungalow built on another of Uncle Bill’s fields, about a kilometer up the Coleraine Road, close by Ballywillan Church.

In that era our bungalow had no utilities. Water was carried from a nearby well. The toilet was a can in an outside brick house, that my father emptied on the farm’s midden heap. Light was by means of oil lamps. The only heat was from the kitchen stove and on occasional weekends, from a fire in the living room. The winters were bitterly cold, and we took hot water bottles to bed. I still remember there often being ice on the inside of the bedroom window.

In time, an electricity service reached the house, and the box room (store room) was converted into a bathroom, with the toilet flushing to a cess pool some fifty metres down the slope.

I left home for Canada when I was 18, in 1965. It was then that I realized how relatively poor my family was. We lacked so much that Canadians took for granted. We had no central heating. My poor mother had no fridge. Perishable food was stored in a pantry, that had access to the outside air. She had no washing machine, all being done by hand, including sheets. She had no dryer; she depended on a clothesline and a ‘drying wind’ day. And a shower was unheard of.

Some years later, when I could afford to help them, I sent them some money to install a shower in the bathroom, and later, to install a heating system. The result was not a great success. There was not sufficient water pressure for the shower to be more than a ‘pissing flea’, and the central heating seemed to do little more that gurgle and leak. My parents remained by their kitchen fire and little changed.

Some many years later, I find myself in Cape Town. It’s cold and the lights are about to go out again for the second or third time today. Candles will be lit, or we will have yet another early night.

It’s like ‘déjà vu’ all over again!

Mugged

Granger Bay Boulevard runs from the ocean alongside the Waterfront complex to Main Road in Green Point. Where it crosses Beach Road, on one side are the buildings of Somerset Hospital and on the other side a five/six storey derelict building, that looks like it has been possessed by the dispossessed. The grounds are usually littered with rubbish, and I can imagine that a typical affluent international tourist on the way to Water Front could be feel rather intimidated by the neighbourhood.

The road continues past the Fort Wynyard military complex to the rear of the Cape Town Stadium. Across the road is another block of land that has been taken over by the homeless, with shacks made of wood, tin, plastic and cardboard, and the area strewn with rubbish.

But jointly or severally we have walked this road at least once a week for the part 5-6 years and never encountered a single problem, until Friday 16 September, when I was alone and felt a sickening thud on back of my head. I knew nothing further until I found myself on a concrete bench beside the Stadium. I could see nobody around and I still had my backpack, but I didn’t want to check if I had been robbed. I decided to walk to a wall at McDonalds, but I have no recollection of getting there. But I do remember finding nothing missing from my backpack. It was then I realized that I was bleeding heavily from my head. I needed to get home to get cleaned up.

I guess that I had concussion, because I wanted to order an Uber, but I could not remember where I lived. Somehow, I managed to walk home and our security immediately saw that I was in a mess and called for an ambulance. I got in the elevator, but again I couldn’t remember where my apartment was. Security took me to my door and a few minutes later an ambulance arrived. I was taken to the Christian Barnard hospital.

For the next two or three days, all was a bit of a blur. I was convinced that I had been mugged, but as I had not been robbed and there were no witnesses, the doctors assumed that I had tripped, had a blackout, or had another stroke. A chunk of my hair was shaved off, so that the laceration on my head could be stapled. Similarly, my left knee and right ankle were bandaged. As I had a previous history of having had a stroke, had previously had a blackout, and I was on my own – Lotta was in Sweden visiting her parents, the doctor did not feel that I could be released under the circumstances, and I was placed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), under observation.

I was subjected to a battery of tests, to the end of identifying the cause of my collapse. The only suspect was a narrowing of the artery to leads to my right leg, and while there, the surgeon inserted two stents, as a precautionary measure.

In the meantime, Lotta had been made aware and had returned as soon as she could get a flight. The next day she walked the area to see if she could find any witnesses to my assault. She found some construction workers who had seen two thugs hit me on the head from behind with something heavy. They had shouted and chased them away and left me on a bench near the stadium. Knowing myself, I probably thanked them and assured them that I would be fine.

When Lotta reported this to me and to the doctors, I felt a great sense of relief. It had really bothered me that in future, I could be walking along on one of my pilgrimages and suddenly have a blackout. The fact that the doctors had found nothing obviously amiss, I found encouraging. After six days, I was discharged, with a prescription for three more drugs to add to the four I have already been taking!

It has now been over three weeks since I came home, and I am almost back to normal, albeit the progress having been very slow, especially in the first ten days. My hair is starting to grow back, so I am less looking like a monk as each day passes. The sun is getting warmer, the birds are singing, and summer is on the horizon. All is looking good again.

Now for a haircut!

Going for it

‘One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you wanted to do. Do them now.’

(Paolo Coelho)

BC (Before COVID), I had a clear vision of how I wanted to spend whatever time I had left – four months in South America, similar in Southern Europe and the rest in South Africa, repeated ad infinitum. That was my ambition. ‘Following the Sun‘ was my mantra and it seemed to be within my grasp.

Until COVID came along and screwed up the world.

Now we are all in life’s waiting room. And governments have seized their opportunity to legislate and control us. But given their inevitable incompetence, they will mostly fail, and we will eventually regain some independence., albeit probably with another useless layer of bureaucracy.

In the meantime, I continue with my efforts to improve my ability in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. In Spanish, I am conversant and relaxed, in French I can defend myself, and in Portuguese I still valiantly struggle, but I hope to eventually sufficiently improve.

My linguistic goal has never been perfection, but to be able to communicate effectively, with a minimum of glaring error. I will always have the intrusion of my Irish accent, and that I am unlikely to lose.

At school, I was never a great student of Latin and French, although I generally achieved acceptable marks. I never understood why we bothered to study languages. I received no encouragement from my parents, who were monolingual. My father always said that he had had enough of Europe after his six years of war service, and he never ever wanted to return. My mother used to say that ‘the only good German was a dead one’, a view that caused many a clash between us. I understood her bitterness, but I also felt that my generation and our children had to turn the page and start a new chapter.

I first travelled around western Europe in 1968, and it was then that I was bitten by languages. I was fascinated by the communication challenges, and when I later realized that ability in Spanish and Portuguese could open new opportunities for me in Central and South America, I was well on my way.

And I have been going for it ever since!

The Clock

Every day I sit at my desk, looking toward the green wall of Signal Hill on my left, and the South Atlantic Ocean to my right. To be tired of that view, one would be tired of living in Cape Town, to paraphrase the reputed saying of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Directly in front of me, across the red-tiled roofs of an apartment complex, stands the clock tower of Reddam House (http://asb.reddamhouse.com/), a well-respected private school.

But despite the reputed quality of the school’s teaching, the accuracy of the school’s clock leaves a lot to be desired. During my almost five years of living here, the clock has rarely displayed the correct time. It has always been a few minutes slow and it has frequently stopped for days after a heavy rain storm or strong winds. Recently one of the segments of the clock face disappeared in a high wind, and for a time, there was only one hand on the side facing me. To compound the confusion, the four faces of the clock don’t all display the same time, on the occasions when the clock actually works!

I confess that I find it very frustrating to see a clock that is often only accurate twice a day. But here in Green Point, we have a reliable alternative: the Noon Gun. Every day, save Sunday and public holidays, it booms across the city, at precisely 12:00. And these days, the guns are fired by an electronic signal from the South African Astronomical Observatory.

,The Noon Guns – there are two of them, with one as a backup, stand above the city at the end of Signal Hill. This historic time signal has existed since 1806. Originally the guns were located in front of Cape Town Castle, but were relocated to their position on the hill in 1903, no doubt to the relief of the city residents and all pigeons.

The guns were cast in 1794 and were brought to Cape Town during the 1795 occupation. They are reputed to be the oldest guns in daily use in the world.

If you stand in the square by the Cape Town Stadium, at precisely noon, you can get a practical example of the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. You first see the puff of smoke from the cannon and what seems like at least a second later, you hear the boom, for light travels at about 300 million metres per second, almost a million times faster than sound, which trundles along at only 340 metres per second. The difference is even more apparent from further away at the promenade along the ocean.

It sometimes occurs to me that Reddam students have excellent local conditions to enable them to conduct experiments to measure the difference between the speed of sound and light.

But they can’t rely on the accuracy of their clock!

Tour Saint Jacques

If you have ever been to Paris and passed by Notre Dame or the Louvre, you may have seen the Tour Saint Jacques. It stands alone in a small park, near the right bank, a block from the river.

The first time that I saw the Tour Saint Jacques was in 1978, when I was looking after the apartment of friends on rue Tiquetonne. On my daily training run to and along the river, I used to pass the Tour. At that time I was not aware of its history.

Many years later, I was based in Paris, with a small apartment on rue de Lille, one short block from the river on the left bank and opposite the Louvre. It was during that era that I read many of the books of Alexander Dumas, several of which were based in the area in which I was living. Many nights I wandered the streets of the old city, imagining what it may have been like in the era of Dumas’s novels and searching for landmarks that may have still existed.

The Tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was built in 1509-1523 on an existing church, during the reign of Francois I, and funded by rich butchers of the nearby market of Les Halles. It became the departure point for pilgrims setting off on their potentially difficult journey to Santiago de Compostela, some 1,500 km away in Galicia, in north western Spain. According to legend, Charmagne founded the original church to shelter a relic of James the Great.

During the French Revolution, the church was destroyed. Eventually the remains were sold as building materials, on the condition that the 54m high tower was preserved.

In 2003, restoration of the Tour was started and finally completed in 2013. I have never seen the completed work, as I left Paris in 2007 and have not since been back.

For several years during the restoration, the tower was covered (photo from internet)

The restored Tour Saint Jacques, as seen from Rue Nicolas Flamel (photo from internet)

This morning, locked down for the 63rd day of the Covid-19 virus in Cape Town, walking my umpteen lap of our basement garage, longing to be on another Camino to Santiago de Compostela, I suddenly remembered Paris and the Tour Saint Jacques.

And a new ambition was conceived…