AN INTRODUCTION....

Me at the top of the Shard

I like to travel. No, scrap that. I like 'being places'; the getting there can be a bit of a bind these days. I turned 68 last April and my body has been telling me that for awhile now. Last year in Spain I got food poisoning and I thought I was going to die. You do think you are going to die as you get older and something happens to your body. When your body starts to ache and creak you tend to run to the health centre looking for help; at least I do. I also get depressed in the winter or in days that are dark and cold and wet...and we get a lot of those here in Derry. I think it's called SAD which is a very appropriate name for it, I guess. For that reason I like to travel, mostly to Spain where the sun shines for most of the year and it's warm, hot even. But I like cities too, scenery and new places. I like to visit places I haven't been to before and sometimes I like those places so much I want to go back. I don't want to live there, wherever 'there' is, except maybe in Spain. For several years now I have been going to that area south of Malaga, resorts like Torremolinas, Benelmadena and especially Fuengirola and maybe one of these days I will actually buy an apartment or town house there. For now, these are just holiday resorts; not a home away from home.

Looking towards St Paul's from the Shard

Home will probably always be Derry. How many years have I left on this planet; a few? 10? 20? If I do live that long I will be much too old to travel so I need to make the most of the time I have left. This year I didn't travel as much as I wanted to; next year I hope I will do better. I was in Spain in January and am going back again in November. I've just come back from 5 days in London and I've made it to Dublin a few times this year. And that's it. The body isn't what it used to be even if the bank balance has never been so good. (No, I'm not rich; like Lee Strasberg in "The Godfather Part Two" I'm retired and living on a pension so don't be getting any ideas).  There are still places I want to see. I haven't ruled out crossing America, possibly by train or bus. I never wanted to go to India but now I have made friends there through Facebook and it is a possibility. I want to go Scandnavia, parts of Italy, France, Germany and even Moscow and St. Petersburg. Am I being greedy? Probably, but then maybe I have always been greedy. I like to travel and the purpose of this blog is to talk about my travels, past and future. It would be nice if some of you could join me.

PORTSALON

I'm not sure Portsalon counts as 'travel' since you can get there now in just over an hour by car from my home in Derry. It was different when I was a child. We didn't have a car and the bus only ran once a day and in one direction only which meant if you got there you couldn't get back..at least until the following morning and if it now only takes an hour or so, back then it could take up to 3 hours or more, at least coming home since the bus spent an hour going round Fanad before hitting the narrow roads to Derry.

My mother, father, me and Terence

I don't know what age I was when I first went to Portsalon. In those days we had a small, thatched cottage a little up the Corry Road. I have no real memory of the house but I do remember the barn and the pigsty and the pigs. I caught measles there one summer and had to be kept in the dark, which was easy as sunlight seldom penetrated the interior. Eventually, the house kind of gave way and we moved to Drum, a little down the road and closer to the beach. It was a big, draughty house and my mother believed it was haunted. It was mostly surrounded by fields and there was a very large tree at the front that I loved to climb. When I was 13 we stopped going to Portsalon as we had done every August that I could remember. It was no longer 'a family' thing but over the years until my father died my mother and I would still visit and stay with friends or in B&B's. There was an hotel; a massive, glitzy affair overlooking the bay and out of our price range. Finally it burned up, lay in ruins for awhile and is now the site of several apartments and holiday homes.

Me with cousins Jim and Maurice at Drum

My childhood memories of Portsalon are of long summers when the sun was always shining, of the Clintons and the slanty rock, of hiding in the corn with my cousin Terence and watching the tide come in. Back then, we knew everyone who lived there but after my father died and I stopped going, looking further afield for 'travel' I lost touch with the local inhabitants. The place became more popular and people started building holiday homes there; today it is hardly recognizable from the Portsalon of my childhood. One of the first to build a holiday home there was my cousin Terence, now married with his own family. He built it on a plot of land overlooking the golf course and the bay and there were no other houses near him. Today there must be a dozen or more. Indeed from the moment you turn at what we called the Crossroads there are holiday homes all the way to the pier and beyond. After Terence died his widow, Marian, sold her home in Derry and moved into the Portsalon house permanently. His older brother Vincent also sold up in Derry and moved to Fanad, but to a more remote spot closer to the lighthouse.

Yours truly overlooking Ballymastocker Bay

The surprising thing is that while I have no real attachment to the place anymore, my cousins keep going back and a summer doesn't pass without one segment of the family entrenched in a number of houses there. When the Hynes family had their big reunion some years back, it was in Portsalon and not Derry. Now there are at least 4 generations who think of it as their home from home. But the original generation is dying out; how long after they are gone will the next generation and the one after that continue to go there? I once envisaged my ashes being scattered on the beach there but not anymore. If anything it will be in Spain I will be scattered. The long beach, the one between Knockalla and the village, is still breathtakingly beautiful and unspoiled. It isn't easily accessible from the road and people being what they are, won't walk the length of themselves as we say, to get there. Some years back 'The Observer' newspaper voted it the second best beach in the world after one in the Seychelles. I will continue to go back but less and less now I have found Spain. Of course, if we had Spanish weather here I would never have left in the first place.

The Hynes family reunion (and me, of course)

ENGLAND (1)

Over the last year or so I've noticed that my memory is fading. Perhaps that's not unusual for a man of my age but do I think it's permanent and a little worrying? Well, yes but I am trying to get on with it. I mention this fact as it will bear on my memories of some of the things I post here. I will try my best to stick to 'the facts' and I will never post something I know to be untrue.

Tom and Gladdie

The Old and the New - The Tower with the Gherkin.

When my father died my cousin Gladdie (Gladys at birth, but apparently she changed it to 'Gladdie' in later life), and her husband Tom decided I needed a holiday. I can't remember if it was the same year my father died or the following year but I have a feeling it was around the same time (1968) as I went to London on my own looking for work in 1969. At the time Tom and Gladdie lived in Tring; all I remember of Tring was of a pleasant small town and that they lived in a nice house in what I guess was a large estate of similar houses...oh, and the sun seemed to be always shining.

They took me to London for the day. As I was a 'tourist' they assumed I would want to go to The Tower of London and Madame Tussauds. I have a vague memory of the latter and I remember seeing the Crown Jewels at the former. I have been going back to London virtually every year since but have never felt the need to visit either of these places again. I am not a fan of crowds or waxworks though a very small part of me might want to pay a visit to The Tower again someday. (I have been to the outside of it several times since). 

As I said, in 1969 aged 19, I finally flew the coup and went to London for the summer, looking for temporary secretarial work. My mother agreed to my going on condition I get an address from a local priest. I remember him telling me to go to the Irish Centre which I think was in Camden Town and then being referred to an Irish boarding house in Kilburn. I can't remember the name of the woman who ran it but I do remember the huge meals she served up and sharing a room with two guys from Kerry, also in London for the first time. They were working on a building site; I for a secretarial agency and we hung out together, (a trip to Soho where the older guy disappeared into a strip club), despite the fact they seemed to be speaking a foreign language, (it was English but not the kind of English I was used to).
I liked London; I knew it was my kind of town as Frank might say. I had no trouble getting work. I saw a lot of theatre and the following year I went back but with two friends from college. That's another story.

SCOTLAND (1)

Grassmarket in Edinburgh

I went back to London in the summer of 1970, again to work and taking Kathleen and Dominic with me. Our friend Carol was already there, having moved permanently to London a year earlier. Initially we stayed with her, near Regents Park, before moving to a place of our own. It started well and I still have fond memories of the early part of that summer, (queuing up for the premiere of "Woodstock" after work; even the electric failure in the Underground that meant having to walk home from work one hot evening), but strange as it might seem now I was in a relationship of sorts with Carol. Did I care for her? Hand on heart, I can't honestly say. She was an eccentric but then I'm an eccentric and we probably fought more than we kissed and made up, but when she chose to move Dominic into her bed my male pride was hurt. I packed my bag and decided to go to Scotland and visit my friend Raymond.

I took the overnight coach from London to Edinburgh and told no-one I was going; drama-queen or what? (I phoned Carol when I arrived; this time we did kiss and make up, long distance). I remember we arrived in Edinburgh very early in the morning and knowing Raymond would still be in bed I decided to have breakfast in the bus station cafe. There was one other customer, a heavily built Margaret Rutherford type woman in tweeds at another table. She was making a fuss about her order and being generally obnoxious. Two buses had arrived from London and she had been on the other bus; I was glad she wasn't on mine. Suddenly she fixed her eyes on me and insisted I join her. I did.

Yours truly at the top of the Scott Monument

She introduced herself as Madame McCrea of McCrea, (apparently that was her clan). I was interrogated and I lied. I told her I was going to Cambridge when, in fact, I was going back to the technical college in Derry. The next thing I knew I had agreed to go home with her, or at least help her home with her 'luggage', (one large bag). We had another small breakfast of sorts and I was introduced to her 'companion', a frail younger English woman who simply looked down her nose at me. Before leaving Madame McCrea insisted I return for dinner that evening, bringing Raymond with me.

Of course, I had no intention of  going back. I didn't like this woman and I positively loathed her companion but when I got to Raymond's and told him the story he insisted we return. I do remember enjoying the dinner and that Madame and Raymond hit it off but one other thing stands out. In the middle of the meal, the companion started choking. At first she simply coughed and tried to act as if nothing was happening before having to rush to the bathroom, pursued by Madame. She returned, flushed and frowning, and shortly afterwards, Raymond and I left but not before Madame set me up on some strange blind date with a male friend of hers who was going to show me Edinburgh.

SCOTLAND (2)

The Royal Mile

Maybe one day I will tell you everything that happened to me on that trip to Edinburgh but not now; I'm not ready to expose myself so publicly at this stage and so early on in proceedings so I will stick to the PG rated version. I did meet Madame McCrae's friend as arranged for that first sight-seeing trip of Edinburgh. I was to meet him on the front steps of some building, (I'm not sure which one), around Princess Street. As I approached I saw a number of people standing around including a fat lad in a kilt. I prayed to God for it not to be him; it was.

I don't doubt for a moment that he was a nice guy; after all, he was putting himself out to show a total stranger his home town but an hour or so of his company was more than I could take. I hadn't the heart to tell him we weren't connecting so I 'lost' him by nipping into a large store. Of course, I couldn't lose Madame McCrea. She had promised to arrange an interview for me with someone she knew in the Council, (she had connections apparently and was also fencing in the Commonwealth Games that happened to be running in the city at the time, or so she said and who was I to question her veracity), so I continued to visit her and the silent companion and attended the interview as arranged.

Looking towards the Castle

My summer job in Edinburgh lasted only a couple of weeks. I was employed with another young guy (sadly I have forgotten his name and he was a very nice, and very innocent, boy), as a statistician on a one-off project working the night shift in a large office. We had the place to ourselves and very little work to do; it was definitely easy money. I got digs with a Miss McNeil, a lovely old lady who was only too happy to let out her spare room for a couple of weeks to a nice Irish lad. (That's me, in case you are wondering). When the council job finished I became a volunteer at the film festival where I met a very nice Susannah York who was there for a screening of her movie "Country Dance". All of this happened almost 50 years; some things you never forget.

BACK TO PORRIDGE....

We are, of course, interlopers. We discovered this little oasis, this little slice of Holland, in the south of Spain in January 2018 when we were forced to look for an apartment pdq. If the apartment itself were no better and perhaps even a little worse, (no wi-fi connection), than others we had stayed in, its south-facing and very large balcony sold it; we had the sun on the terrace from early morning until it set.

The location, too, was less problematic than I first thought; two minutes to the promenade and beach and about fifteen minutes to both the train and bus stations as well as a couple of excellent supermarkets and the Myramar cinema complex. I also discovered I could walk to El Cortes Ingles in about twenty-five minutes which, as Mary-Kate herself would say, is just a good stretch of the legs.

The apartment block itself is called Embajador and we liked it so much we made enquiries on long-lets and found we could get a booking in the winter for 815 euros a month which is why we are here now for the whole month of November. If I could buy one of the apartments I certainly would but the owners won't sell individual apartments; with this location and this terrace they would probably retail at around 180,000 euros at least.

I said it was a little slice of Holland and so far finding anyone not from that part of the world has proved elusive; even the signage is largely in Dutch and Spanish and the first half dozen television stations are Dutch only. No matter, as my friend the late Michael O'Sullivan would say, old bones need heat and while the sun shines as it does most days I can think of nothing better than sitting on my terrace warming them old bones. There is also a very good-sized swimming pool which I may yet dip my toe into and a nice bar restaurant on the ground floor where you can pick up the internet. This is only the fourth day of a month long holiday. Cadiz is yet to come. (Back to porridge is to be taken literally; we are having it every day at breakfast).

TORREMOLINAS

A quick jaunt into Torremolinas this morning. The entire town centre is basically a building site as whole streets disappear to become one gigantic pedestrianised area. It will certainly look spectacular when it's finished though it seems to me to be a job that's been ongoing for a few years now. Still, when it's finished (this December, apparently), it should provide a very nice space to sit and have your glass of vino not to mention your tapas.