Lindisfarne

Cul-de-Sac

When Lionel Stander (Dickie) pushes a stolen car, with dying Jack MacGowran (Albie) at the wheel, into the picture at the beginning of Roman Polanski’s 1966 film, “Cul-de-sac,” he probably wasn’t thinking of St Aidan and the early Christians in Britain, but he was most definitely following in their footsteps.  It is a weird, and wonderful, causeway that links Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, to the mainland, (and it still traps a few incautious travellers every year). 

The BFI one-line synopsis of this film reads: “An eccentric couple living on a small island are terrorised by gangsters,” and there is something about this statement which resonates beyond the film and into the reality of this romantic outpost of civilisation.  When the tides draw back in summer the gangsters, in family sedans, mobile homes and charabancs, flood into the car park, and trail around the village, swarm over the ruins and wind their way into the castle, intimidating and intruding upon the eccentric locals, of whom there are more than a couple, but less than a couple of hundred.  On the website http://www.lindisfarne.org.uk/general/welcome.htm you can read the following statement:  “The small population of just over 160 persons is swelled by the influx of over 650,000 visitors from all over the world every year,” and although these visitors bring prosperity, and perhaps happiness, the disparity of numbers can be quite terrifying.

 

Once the tide begins to rise, however, the majority of visitors slip away and peace returns.  If you have timed it right, and the tide cuts the island off for the evening, you can almost feel you have the place to yourself (and a few seagulls) and the sense of isolation that St Aidan must have found here in 635 AD when he founded the Priory can be imagined.  It becomes an island.  There is peace.  The wildlife, which can flock as much as the trippers, at least keeps itself to itself, or flocks in the more remote areas.  A seal, head above the water, bobs in the waves.  As seals do.  As seals have done since the Ice Age or before.  It watches me, camera inadequately pointed, inadequately lensed.  This is no David Attenborough crew, and he (or she) knows it.  God, I love a seal.

But, back to the past.  Hard to really get the picture of 635 AD.  The Romans:  long gone (Flavius Stilicho, c.365 – 408, was the General most responsible for the withdrawal of Roman forces from Britain).  The Vikings:  not yet really up to much (their raids on Britain didn’t begin ‘til the end of the 8^th century).  Picts:  having disposed of the 9^th Legion they seem to have slipped into Art and Design in northern Scotland (spectacularly as it happens).  Martyrs:  past their heyday (though the custom was still alive).  And St Aidan.  Represented in art by a stag (so perhaps quite a chap?) – born in Ireland, trained on Iona (a small island just off the south-west tip of Mull in the Hebrides) and sent to sort out Northumbria by his friend King (later Saint) Oswald who had recently (633) defeated (and killed) the Welsh King Cadwallon of Gwynedd at Hexham and reclaimed his father (King Ethelfrith)’s kingdom.  So Aidan walked across the causeway to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and set up camp (in 635).  It must have been quite a journey.  I have just checked and from Iona to Lindisfarne would probably have taken weeks if not months!  It is 272 miles, according to the AA, and though the roads are probably slightly better these days the traffic is more intense!

So what was going on?

The Dark Ages (roughly the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance – though scholars still dispute the Dark/Middle definitions)?  A time of extraordinary artistic production (e.g. “The Book of Kells” - but don’t try and get that on your Kindle, or the motherboard might erupt - but also e.g. “La Divina Commedia.”)  A time of consolidation and reformation (if that word hasn’t been misappropriated?)  The Romans had left the islands of Britain without a core in any sense and yet Christianity was becoming something of interest.  In 597, a Roman monk named Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to England (the land of the Angels) and in 601 he was enthroned as the first Archbishop of Canterbury.  Though Augustine died in 605, and despite his lack of success in converting the indigenous population to Christianity, he started a trend which did eventually catch on, though Ireland, having been evangelised by Patrick (385 – 461), was way ahead at the time (it had become almost exclusively Christian by the early 6^th century). 



It was St Columba (or Colmcille) who, with twelve followers, founded the monastery on Iona in about 563.  He was born in Donegal in 521 (and is not to be confused with St Columban, who was born in Leinster in 540 and who ended up in Bobbio, in Italy) and died in 597.  Among his many achievements which impressed the northern Picts was the expulsion of a water monster from the river Ness.  Anyway it is unlikely that St Aidan knew Columba, but he was originally from Ireland and was certainly on Iona in 635, as it was in that year that he was sent to Lindisfarne, with the specific remit of replacing his predecessor who was reputedly too rough in his missionary tactics.

Aidan was consecrated Bishop and made his headquarters on the island, where he set up a monastery which specialised in training English boys to become missionaries among their countrymen.  According to the Venerable Bede, St Aidan “was a man of remarkable gentleness, goodness, and moderation,” and his practice was to recycle, rather than accumulate, any wealth, so that any surplus went to the benefit of the poor.  Aidan survived the death of his friend and patron King Oswald, and was fortunate in having the continued support of his successor, Oswin, but when he was murdered in 651, Aidan died of grief a fortnight later.

At this point, on August 31^st 651, a seventeen year old Northumbrian by the name of Cuthbert had a vision of angels accompanying Aidan’s soul to heaven and he became a novice at the monastery at Melrose.    In 664, in the company of St Eata, he went to Lindisfarne, but in 676 he went to live as a solitary on one of the remote Farne islands some distance off the Northumbrian coast.  He was called back to the mainland to become a bishop in 684, deftly swapping Hexham for Lindisfarne with his friend Eata, but only managing two years there, before, sensing his imminent death, he retired finally back to Inner Farne, where he died on March 20^th 687.  St Cuthbert had a touch of the St Francis about him, with a keen interest in birds and wildlife, but also a very charming and practical nature.  Bede refers to him repeatedly as, “a child of God,” and he was deeply attractive to his flock.

As an aside, in the meantime, there had been an ongoing problem between the Celtic Church (following from St Patrick, but illuminated by the Ionians) and the Roman Church (stimulated by Pope Gregory) about the date of Easter, which reached something of a conclusion at the Synod of Whitby in 664, when King Oswy of Northumbria voted in favour of Rome and the Celtic die-hards retreated to Iona.  Although the fixing of the date of Easter is still being discussed to this day, it was the Venerable Bede, born in 673 near Jarrow, (and who died in 735) who wrote on calculating time and it was by using his exposition of the Great Cycle of 532 years - the interval between two ‘identical’ years – that the Church was able to calculate the date of Easter.  Bede’s scholarship covered many areas beyond Christianity and although his most famous work, a key source for the understanding of early British history and the arrival of Christianity, was “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum” or “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” (which is also the first work of history in which the AD dating system is used), he also wrote of nature, of how the earth was a sphere and how the moon influences the cycle of the tides – very advanced stuff at the time.

Anyway, when Cuthbert died in 687 the monastic community on Lindisfarne started a cult in his name. It is known from the history of other cults, such as those of St Wilfred, St Columba and St Brigid, that a major cult would have required a beautiful Gospel Book. The Lindisfarne Gospels was probably begun as the major icon for the cult of Cuthbert.  This work is one of Britain's greatest art treasures, and it was almost certainly made on Lindisfarne between 680 and 720. The gifted artist-illuminator was called Eadfrith, who was bishop after Cuthbert, until his death in 721. Although it was written in Latin, the manuscript contains the oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into English, added between the lines by another hand around 970. The Lindisfarne Gospels reflect many influences: native British, Celtic, Germanic, Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, North African and Middle Eastern, as Britain was a land of many cultures, with an emerging national identity and enthusiastic new forms of learning, literature and art. The Lindisfarne Gospels was a stunning creation of this new 'insular' culture and is an amazing testament to the fact that, far from being a dead end, Lindisfarne was in touch with the rest of the world.  To stand there today, after the tide has washed away the trippers, is to experience something of the insular solitude that Eadfrith must have relished.  He would have risen early and, between prayer and sustenance, laboured in the scriptorium, the high stone windows filtering in the chilled light from the sea, the cries of gulls and the washing of the waves, the music in his ears.  According to the British Library, “this work is evidence of its time, showing a fusion of the beliefs, politics and challenges of the day. But it is also timeless. It offers us clues to the past and inspiration for the future….. Eadfrith employed an exceptionally wide range of colours, using animal, vegetable and mineral pigments. It was an enormous act of faith.”  It is most unusual that the whole work seems to have been all his own, as most illustrated manuscripts were the product of team work, but in some places this manuscript remains partly unfinished, suggesting that Eadfrith's cherished work was ended prematurely by his death. 

There might have been advantages even in the comparative isolation of Lindisfarne, but also perhaps advantages in not being quite as remote as Iona.  Perhaps it benefited from being on the north/south route (very close to the A1 indeed) and yet anyone stopping off there had to stay for more than a glass of mead!  Miscalculate the tides and you could be stuck for at least a night!  And so, possibly, scholars and thinkers, artists and traders, brought fertile interruptions to the tranquillity of this island.  Far from being a cul de sac, it might have been a lay-by of great interest. 

It certainly has a lure to it.  Whether it is religion or architecture that is your personal metier, or whether you are a bird-watcher or a walker, the island is rich in resources.  Roman Polanski returned only five years after shooting “Cul-de-Sac” there, using the castle (sixteenth century in its core, but remodelled by Edwin Lutyens in 1903) as a location this time for Glamis Castle (with some cardboard additions) in “Macbeth” (and nearby Bamburgh castle for both Cawdor and Dunsinane). 

The crabs that scuttle through “Cul-de-Sac,” a jokey symbol of the cancers in society, are no longer present.  The Beckett-like dialogue, representing the tragedy of pessimism, such as in the lines croaked by Jack MacGowran, “Well, here we are.”  Which prompts Lionel Stander to query: “Where?”  And Jack MacGowran to reply: “In the shit….” are replaced by Shakespeare’s tragedy of optimism, (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.….”)

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, to give it its full title, is a glorious place to visit.  In some respects, it is a cul-de-sac, as you have to retrace your steps to leave it, but that’s no defect.  In fact it is a positive, as you have to make the effort to go there, and your arrival, and departure, will be affected by the rhythm of nature in the tides.  And so is the presence of others, so that if you come to stay, you will find there is plenty of space and the stillness of early morning or the calm of evening can be savoured.  Natural England staff a 3,500 hectare Nature Reserve here, with a constantly shifting landscape of sands and a coastline of dunes, mudflats and saltmarsh – heaven in the autumn and winter for drifts of birds from the arctic -  though you are warned to beware quicksands and unexploded ordnance.

It is a wild, natural place.  I stay at the Ship Inn, wander the shore line, take in the views – across to the Cheviot Hills, to Bamburgh, and out to the Farne Islands.  The skyscapes and seascapes are breathtaking.  The air is invigorating, fresh and salty.  The wind pushes and pulls me, powerful and elemental.  I feel cleansed and inspired, without complications of having to be somewhere else, of having to meet any deadline or catch some appointment.  I think of the Celtic past, of the Anglo-Saxon world.  The stones of the ruined Priory stand firm, despite the destruction they signal.  The castle stands proud, like a crowned molar, defying the decay of nature. 

I think again of the term cul-de-sac, and am then reminded that when originally picked-up for American distribution by Filmways, the film “Cul-de-Sac” carried the advertising tagline, “Sometimes There’s Nothing Left To Do But Laugh!” and I wonder how much those elders of the early Church liked to laugh? For a moment I sit in the bar of the Ship Inn and imagine Saints Aidan and Cuthbert in the corner, sharing a conversation over a warm glass of mead.  The tide is up, the causeway flooded, and I believe I can hear them chuckle.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne’s name originates as the island of the people from Lindsey or Linnuis (OE Lindesege) which was the name of a small Anglo-Saxon kingdom, which lay between the Humber and the Wash, absorbed into Northumbria in the 7th century.  The name Lindsey itself means the 'island of Lincoln' which derives from the fact that it was surrounded by water and was very wet land and had Lincoln towards its south-west corner.  A fitting name all round. (The picture shows old friend Lindsay thinking about St Aidan, and the dangers of water.)

The Island of Giglio

The sun sets below you from the terrace of the “Ristorante Da Maria”, shimmering on the waters of Campese Bay, silhouetting the Faraglione, jagged stacks that owe their name to their resemblance to the fangs of a lion.  You dine in style within the ancient walls of Giglio Castello, served by piratical waiters, cooked for by family members who are passionate about food.  The combinations of flavours here reflect the proximity of the sea – barely more than a kilometre away as the Merlin stoops – and the wild heights of this rocky Tuscan island – almost five hundred metres above the sea.  Cuttlefish and funghi porcini, squid and basil, rabbit and wine vinegar, pine nuts, capers.



Il Castello is the Tuscan heart of this rocky island, 8.7 kilometres long and 4.5 wide at its broadest, though it is an exceptional, atypical place.  Giglio has been inhabited for millennia, but never overpopulated.  Even today its regular population is only about 1,600.  Objects from the Stone Ages have been discovered on the island, and in 1950 a cache of relics from the Bronze Age were also found.  The Etruscans certainly knew the place and from about the time of Christ Romans frequented the place, and a fish pool that belonged to a patrician villa near the port can still be seen.  There are also many wrecks, some of them Roman, in the clear waters around the coast, which attract divers from all over the world.

In the Middle Ages pirates scoured coastal parts of the Mediterranean, and repeated raids on Giglio drove the people from the shore up to Il Castello.  This was strongly fortified by the Medici family from Florence after the infamous Barbarossa completely depopulated the island in the 1540s, deporting about seven hundred people to slavery in Constantinople.  The intricate, honeycombed and honey-coloured citadel remains now much as it has been for centuries, with only minor adjustments, such as the conversion of donkey stables into holiday apartments.  Here you can still buy the remarkable local wine (Ansonaca, made from tiny, sun-filled grapes, which only thrive here and on Monte Argentario, the mainland only 14 kilometres away) in deep, cool cellars.   You can still pay your respects to the forearm of St Mamilius of Montecristo, which is kept in the parish church.  You can still acknowledge the memory of Rossini (who passed some time here) by joining in the jam sessions on the stepped central street in the evenings.  Meanwhile, as your exquisite meal in Da Maria draws towards a dolce and amaro conclusion the clouds begin to drift through from one window to another, almost as if they lived there.

In the mornings, if you’re up early, you’ll catch the sea at its limpid best.  Bright turquoise above the granite sand, a true aquamarine above the weeded reefs.  Plunging deep inside the waters you’ll share your space with wrasse and barbel, mullet, bream and schools of tiny fry.  Occasionally you’ll glimpse crafty and dangerous weaver fish, burying themselves in the sand, and subtly disguised cuttlefish or a brassily obvious conger eel.  Sea urchins (now a protected species) abound, as do tiny hermit crabs and other rock-scrabbling, green-shelled crustaceans.

It’s not a place of extensive beaches, and there’s not a sand dune or golf-link in sight.  It’s against the law (and more-or-less accepted practice) to use a motorboat within 200 metres of the shore – except of course in the port where regular ferries dock and manoeuvre to and from Porto Santo Stefano on the mainland.  Jet-skis just don’t appear, though ritzy great motor yachts may, gliding into quiet coves self-consciously to anchor in the still of dusk and then slipping guiltily away as the sun begins to warm the hungry gulls on the rocks.

Giglio, whose name derives from the Greek for goats (igilion) and not from the Latin for a lily, is pan-like, not regal.  Even today it is largely impenetrable, dense macchia (a heady mixture of broom, arbutus, lentisk, sistus, tree heather and myrtle) and steep, angular folds rather than graceful and grassy slopes.  On my first visit, some twenty years ago, I lost my way from the heights of Il Castello down disused mule-tracks to Campese, and eventually arrived scratched and scared after epiphanies of extinction on the wild mountainside.  The principal ways are clearer today, but you could easily find the space to get lost in some area where cultivation has given way to wilderness (usually the brambles are worse where land has previously been cleared).  This year, it was good to meet a donkey, being skilfully ridden up the track from Porto to Il Castello, a sign that some traditions are still alive.

After the last Turkish raid in 1799, sailors from Naples and the south began to colonise the coast, and Il Porto began to take its modern shape and importance.  Campese, the third nucleus on the island, only grew to anything like its current proportions in very recent times.  The pyrite mining at Cala delle Allume in the mid-twentieth century (which closed down in 1962) employed young men from Castello who would walk down the mountain before dawn, work the deep, hot and stuffy galleries naked, all day, before climbing back up again in the evening.  All but one of those men, by the way, the first to earn cash wages for anything on the island, have since died of respiratory diseases not unrelated to their working conditions.  {The one remaining miner recently (March 2013) was present in Grosseto at the launch of a book about the Pyrite mining - at the same time that the remaining pylons that had been used to load the ships were being removed from the bay.}

Giglio is a paradise, despite the obligatory existence of some serpents (there are actually no vipers).  The population might increase by a factor of ten or more every brief summer, but, by and large, those who seek the beauty and tranquillity of such an Isle do appreciate its beauty, and therefore help to preserve what they come to.  The creation of the Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago Toscano (National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago) in 1991 has limited the possibilities of development in the southern part of the island.  The presence of Greenpeace at Torre del Lazzaretto (or is that just a rumour?) cannot be unrelated to the politics of nature.  There is even one hotel (Pardini’s Hermitage) that prides itself on its inaccessibility – it can only be reached by boat or by a very difficult footpath – and which not only caters wholly for its guests but has a ceramic workshop, all you need for watercolour painting, musical instruments and a well-stocked library.  Really it is no ordinary island.

In the bars and restaurants you will see pictures of history and pictures of seasons.  Snow on the hillsides and rooftops, waterspouts (twin ones) just off Campese, freighters loading pyrite, fishermen landing swordfish.  It is a highly colourful and varied environment, with a wealth of natural and human resources.  If you haven’t been, you should.  But if you do go, leave it as you find it…!

As a parting gift, Carlino, a native of the island then in his seventies, brought me some of his homemade wine.  He still works a parcel of land, and regularly fishes from a small boat.  The flavour of his Ansonaca is strong, pungent, almost impossible to describe.  No wine connoisseur would use words like ‘citrus’, or ‘blackberry’, or ‘fruity’ to sell this potion.  It’s almost a mixture of salt and sunshine, almost sunburn, and it has an after-taste of prickly pear.  It’s not a wine for the faint-hearted, and when Carlino proudly tells me that he treads the must with his feet I am tempted to wonder whether he takes his boots off first.  It is an acquired taste, like the island.  However, once tasted, it is never forgotten! 

Of course this was years ago, before Francesco Schettino, the captain of the €450million, 114 thousand tonne Costa Concordia, felt he would like to show off by sweeping past the port with inches to spare on January 13th this year (2012) risking the lives of the 4,234 people on board (and losing those of 32).  Apart from the terrifying experience for all concerned and the deaths of those poor souls who were unable to make it to safety, it could also have had the most devastating effect on the local ecosystem and on tourism had they not been able to decant the fuel supplies. 

As it is the enormous (290.2 metre long) hulk still lies there, and may be there for a year or so, as a bizarre and terrifying tourist attraction, with chemicals leaching out of it into the water as all the batteries and furnishings break down with every lapping wave.

Captain Schettino said, "I have to take responsibility for the fact that I made a judgment error."  At least he says he takes responsibility, which marks him out from, for example, Silvio Berlusconi, but even so one of Italy's most beautiful places bears the scars of individual vanity and stupidity and will, perhaps, never be the same, even when the carcass of the Costa Concordia is finally removed.

Le Cinque Terre

away from it all?

Le Cinque Terre is a rugged stretch of coast on the Italian Riviera, in Liguria, slightly to the west of La Spezia. There are, not surprisingly, five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. The coastline, these five villages, and the surrounding hillsides are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park as well as being one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Each of these sites (and in 2011 there are 936 of them: 725 cultural, 183 natural, and 28 mixed properties, in 153 different states) is a place (such as a forest, mountain, lake, desert, monument, building, complex, or city) that is listed by UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance to the common heritage of humanity.

 

In some ways being designated a World Heritage Site could be seen as a mixed blessing.  The City of Bath, for instance, was designated one in 1987, and now the queues to see the Roman Baths wind round the block, and Jane Austen and Fanny Burney must be turning in their graves in reaction to the busloads of trippers who wouldn’t know which way up to put a lace doily….  And on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast (World Heritage Site since 2001) it is very very hard to get a drink in the “Square and Compass” (http://squareandcompasspub.co.uk/) at Worth Matravers without jostling with multiple families weighed down with casts of trilobites and bags of fossils.

 

In Italy there are 48 sites currently on the list (which is the highest concentration in the world); not surprisingly these include the Historic Centres of Rome (1980), Florence (1982) and Siena (1995), the city of Venice (1987), the Piazza del Duomo in Pisa (1987, 2007), the Trulli of Alberobello (1996) and the Archaeological Areas of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata (1997). And, since 1999, at the 21st session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, as well, Le Cinque Terre (together with Portovenere and the Islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto) have been blessed (or cursed) with the designation.

 

Now I might be something of a sceptic here, although I am not casting aspersions at the collective wisdom of the members of the world heritage committee.  Let’s be frank – Le Cinque Terre is a beautiful area and the five separate villages, perched crazily as they are above the jagged shores, tumbling colourfully down the slopes from terraced hillsides fragrant with wild flowers to kiss the sea in all weathers – are like bright jewels in a fantastic natural crown of striated rock.  Let’s be frank – other areas such as this have been subjected to being cast into concrete shrouds and private projects which have all but destroyed any sense of heritage.  Let’s be frank – without some efforts to preserve customs, practices, wild-life, vegetation, indigenous architecture, the world and all its billions of inhabitants would be the poorer.  But also, to be frank, perhaps there should be a more discreet way of doing it?

 

To quote Wikipedia: “Over centuries, people have carefully built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the sea. Part of its charm is the lack of visible corporate development. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages, and cars cannot reach them from the outside. The Cinque Terre is a very popular tourist destination…..” What is the key to this? Lack of visible corporate development? – I hardly think so! Much of Italy clearly displays a lack of corporate development, albeit mainly in the twentieth century, and this is hardly to be celebrated. Cars cannot reach them from outside? – now that may hold a clue. In fact there are roads and streets and vehicles do come and go, but these are either those who live there (who have to park on the periphery of their respective village) or delivery or service vehicles, without which the bars and restaurants in particular would rapidly cease to function. But the average visitor has to take the train, and this is perhaps where Le Cinque Terre do hit the spot.

 

On a recent visit to the area I couldn’t help but notice a good-humoured group of Americans, who were being teased by a trio of ever-so-slightly uncouth southern Italian youths.  We were all travelling north on a train from Pisa and this diverse group of travellers clearly had not been long in Italy but were infused with a sense of direction.  At La Spezia  (“Is this La Speeschia?” they enquired) we disembarked and made our way to the office dedicated solely to Le Cinque Terre, where train tickets or passes the trains and the walking routes for one or two days need to be purchased.  This office tends to be busy, but it is well stocked with information and the multi-lingual assistants are helpful and efficient.  My American friends duly acquired their passes and we all headed for the next train to Riomaggiore and beyond.  And these Americans, informed and prepared by World Heritage advertising, disappeared off to explore this world of “unspoiled” villages and nature.  And this is where it becomes an extraordinary success story, which presumably is an outstanding example of corporate development, for the trains from La Spezia tunnel their way through Le Cinque Terre on a frequent and precise timetable, stopping at each of the five villages on their way to Genova and back, thus connecting these remote and “inaccessible” villages with the cities and airports of Rome, Milan and everywhere else.  And they are not just dinky little tourist shuttle services either; you are looking at full scale, double-decker (again a mark of the corporate development of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiano – would that the British railway barons had thought to make their tunnels tall enough for double-decker trains!) full length electric trains. And they are full!

At the height of the season, for most of each day, these trains are embarking and disembarking literally thousands of tourists at every stop.  The Carabinieri are out in force to ensure a reasonable flow of pedestrians up and down each narrow main street and, although we are talking about decent, well-behaved World Heritage Tourists here and it’s not marked by street gangs or family beach parties, the throngs of international visitors can be oppressive.  Think the Palio in Siena.  Think a slow motion bull run in Pamplona.  Think of underground trains in the rush hour!

 

And why are they here?  Well again, to tinge this with cynicism, they are celebrating a world without cars.  Seriously, this is one of the defining features.  Yes, there are many other attractive aspects, such as the exquisite natural landscape, the beautiful light on the sea as it sparkles at the feet of the cliffs, the trails that wind steeply up and down terraced hillsides, through olive groves and vineyards; and the delicious foods and wines, much of which is somehow local, but one of the unconscious desires the holiday maker seems to yearn for is to get away from the tyranny of the car, and where better to do this than in tiny, old-fashioned villages by the sea?

There are other places in the world that kind of support this idea.  The cobbled, traffic-free, high street of the fishing village of Clovelly in North Devon, built into a cleft in a 130 metre high cliff, tumbles its way down past whitewashed and flower bedecked cottages to a tiny working port, and is the nearest thing we have to Le Cinque Terre in the UK (though perhaps PortMeirion might argue with this…)  The traffic free marvel that is Venice is a mecca for autophobes; we’ve already alluded to the Campo Santo of Pisa and the heart of Siena.  But imagine Trafalgar Square without the snarl and stampede of traffic.  Imagine your home town without cars.  We are so inured (and beholden) to our private means of transport that when UNESCO decrees that a place is beautiful because it is not accessible by car, we flock there in wonder and don’t even dream that it could happen elsewhere.

But, back to Le Cinque Terre.  On this occasion we stayed at the Locanda Ca Dei Duxi in Riomaggiore, nestled into the walls of an ancient house just like the sparrows I observed in the nearby church walls – precarious, but safe and snug, each in their individual space.  We had Cinque Terre Cards, which allowed us to walk on the Via dell’Amore (characteristically decorated with padlocks representing undying love) and, had it not been closed due to landslips, the Sentiero Azzurro ("Light Blue Trail") which connects all five villages (Riomaggiore, Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia and Manarola).  This is twelve kilometres long, and has a vertical shift of five hundred metres. And we treated ourselves to dinner at the Ristorante Ripa Del Sole, which is run with passion and care by Daniela Bertola, her brother Matteo and his wife Tatiana.  From their dining room the views of the sunset over the castle ruins are superb, and with almost everything, from the fish to the wine being locally produced, you could almost taste the lack of cars!  Among many delicacies we had anchovies in five different ways and trofie al pesto, and finished off with glasses of the legendary “Schiacchetra” – the vino passito of Le Cinque Terre (made from a combination of Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino grapes but those that have been allowed to sweeten on the vine).

Before we left, to return to the world of cars, our host recommended returning in the late autumn or even winter.  It is quieter then, and, with the sea to warm the air, the climate is mild when other parts of Italy may be snowbound or bitterly cold with mountain air.  The train duly picked us up at Riomaggiore, within sight of the blue sea, and then, a short tunnel or two later, it dropped us back in the hustle and bustle of La Spezia, with its pleasures of concrete and cars. 

We should be grateful that in 1998 the Italian Ministry for the Environment set up the Protected natural marine area and that in 1999 the Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre was set up to conserve the ecological balance, protect the landscape.  And we should be grateful for World Monuments Watch and the World Monuments Fund which study and support the management of the conservation of the area.  And finally we should be grateful to UNESCO for their designation as a world heritage site, for, despite the way this has led to the invasion of tourism, at the least this fuels the local economy and helps with the preservation.  And, perhaps, with the lessons learned from the attraction of this area, we may find the thrill of car-free villages and “a lack of visible corporate development” catch on and even become the norm, rather than the exception.

Camaldoli

The silence of the Wolves

congregazione camaldolese dell' Ordine di San Benedetto
comunità monastica di Camaldoli

sacro eremo di Camaldoli - Arezzo
monastero di Camaldoli – Arezzo

Spring comes late to Camaldoli.  At 1104 metres above sea level, immersed in thick forest and cloaked in deep silence this hermitage is chilly despite the sunshine.  We have travelled from the Ligurian coast, where hottentot figs flower and bougainvillea thrives; through Florence where the fresh green of the Boboli gardens sets off the massed violet racemes of the wisteria to perfection, and up the winding roads from Poppi, where vines and olives give way to chestnut trees, beeches, oaks and then pines.

There is much to explore in these forested hills, known as “Il Casentino.”  It is an area of some 800 square kilometres, with its highest point at Monte Falco which reaches 1658 metres above sea level.  The river Arno, which is the fourth largest river in Italy, rises at 1358 metres on Monte Falterona before coursing to the sea through Florence and Pisa.  There is a wealth of history here, too, including the celebrated battle of Campaldino (near Poppi) in which some 11,000 Florentines – including a youthful Dante Aligheri – trounced a similar number of Aretines on June 11^th 1289. In 1224, Saint Francis of Assisi received the stigmata at La Verna (1129 metres) and in 1051 Saint Giovanni Gualberto founded the monastery of Vallombrosa (958 metres). 

The National Park of Monte Falterona, Campigna and the Casentino Forest is approximately 70 kms east of Florence, which puts it pretty much at the heart of Italy, midway between the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic seas, and it was here, almost exactly 1000 years ago, that Count Maldolo d’Arezzo gave the ruined castle of Fontebuona and a parcel of land to a young monk by the name of Romualdo.  Saint Romuald, as he was to become, was born at Ravenna in about 950, and is said to have fled the world after witnessing his father killing a relative during a dispute about property.  After some time in Florence at San Miniato, he founded the Benedictine community of Camaldoli (taking the name from his benefactor), which, despite reconstructions over the centuries, survives with two impressive complexes of buildings here as well as having the monastery of San Gregorio al Celio in Rome. Camaldoli is also the mother house for several male communities in Italy as well as the United States, India and Brazil as well as being the inspiration and spiritual reference point for a number of female monastic communities in these countries and others.

The main monastery buildings are in a narrow gorge at 816 metres.  Originally this consisted of accommodation for a few monks and visitors, but it was enlarged to create capacity for one hundred, and this included a water mill, a pharmacy, and, at its peak in 1520, a printing press which produced the “Costituzione Camaldolesi” containing rules for, amongst other things, the planting and conservation of fir trees.  Nowadays the grand, but irregular, building contains a monastery, a baroque church with decorations by Vasari, the Foresteria (or guest rooms, now called the Hospitium Camalduli where groups of visitors may stay in retreat), an infirmary for the care of elderly monks, a refectory with a beautiful inlaid wooden ceiling, cloisters, courtyards, an important library, the ancient pharmacy complete with antique jars and a stuffed crocodile, and a modern gift shop, selling herbal remedies, honey and religious items.

Legend has it that Romuald quickly found his peace disturbed by followers and well-meaning but over-enthusiastic visitors and so moved, in 1012, 2.5 kilometers up the road (and nearly 300 metres higher) to settle into the deepest silence amongst the rocks and the firs and larches.  He built five cells and a little oratory.  The first church here, dedicated to Christ the Saviour, was consecrated in the year Romuald died, 1027, but this was enlarged and rebuilt several times before being destroyed by fire in 1693.  The present church is baroque, with an elegant façade and two bell towers.  The decorations inside include a marble bas-relief of the Madonna and child by Tommaso Fiamberti and a glazed terracotta of the Madonna and child with saints in the style of Andrea della Robbia.

Beyond the church, secure behind an iron fence, there are twenty cottages, in five rows.  These are the hermits’ cells, self-contained units complete with walled gardens for the cultivation of vegetables and herbs.  The only sign of occupation is the trickle of woodsmoke from a chimney – here silence is the rule.  Although there is a refectory adjoining the church, it is only used by the community for meals together twelve times a year, and even then the rule of silence is observed.

Although several of the cells have been occupied by notable visitors, including one constructed by Pope Leo X in 1523 in penitence for the fact that Princess Maria Medici had visited the hermitage dressed as a man, and they date from different periods, they are all similar in their austere plan.  Just opposite the church, and part of the larger buildings, is the cell of Saint Romuald himself, and this was visited by Pope John Paul II in 1993. The cell remains as if Saint Romuald had just slipped out to church – spare, functional, deep, dark and strangely comfortable.  Outside a small garden, supervised by a sprightly redstart (in complete disregard of the rule of silence) would have provided herbs and vegetables.  Inside, a corridor leads to the main room, with a fireplace, desk and box bed, off which there is a tiny oratory and an even tinier closet.  And that is it.  For a thousand years now a community of no more than twenty men has lived here, never speaking, dedicating themselves to the Benedictine principle of ora et labora (prayer and work).

The Hermitage routine starts at 6.00am with the Office of Readings, in the church, followed by private reading.  The Lauds is sung at 7.30am which is followed by breakfast.  From 9.00 to 11.15 the monks work or study.  Then there is the celebration of Eucharist at 11.30.  At 12.30 they have lunch, followed, as stated on the official website, by “free time”.  From 3.30pm to 6.30 they work or study again; at 7.00 Vespers is followed by “dinner or free time” and at 8.30pm they retire to their cells.    By comparison, the routine in the more relaxed monastery has a start time of 6.15am and after dinner at 7.40pm there is “personal time and rest” at 9.00pm.

The work activities will vary, but they include, certainly for those in the main monastery, the necessary routines of life in a community, such as laundry, cleaning, preparing food, gardening and gathering fuel.  These monks also help care for the hermits, and of course the younger brethren need to help care for the older.  The emblem of the Camaldoli community is of two doves drinking from the same chalice, which symbolises communion within diversity, nourished by a relationship with God.  The hermits spend time in mediation on the words of the bible, and in the study of other religions with a view to forming bridges between eastern and western monastic traditions, developing, despite their silence, ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.

The seasons come and go, but in the silence of the forest little has changed.  There are still wolves and eagles in these mountains, and in winter the hermitage can be completely cut off by snow.  In summer it may be besieged by Florentines and Aretines fighting for a share of the peace and freschezza at this altitude, but the rule of silence prevails and the hermits proceed with their dedication and self-discipline, whatever else may be happening in the world.  Tsunami, rebellion, Bunga-Bunga – it makes no difference.  Sealed in their silent cells, the inhabitants of the Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli live as examples of religious order, removed from the jealousies and competitions of the material world.  It is not (perhaps) important whether they are Camaldolese, Catholic, or Christian – it is important that it is possible to live such a life, and that it can be good to live without double-glazing or central heating, supermarkets or internet shopping, imported goods or ice-cream.  Fashions do not need to change; life alone does not need to be sad, or unprofitable.

Viewed from a different, more cynical, point of view, it could be argued that a number of reclusive men living in tiny cottages at the top of an Italian mountain offer little to malnourished millions around the world, but this was never the point.  As we leave the courtyard, we step into the little shop and bar that nestles in the wall of the compound.  Apart from the books and icons, honeys and tisanes on offer there are a number of CDs of sacred music and also DVDs on sale.  I browse through the titles: Liliana Calvani’s Francesco, a curious role for a troubled Mickey Rourke: Philip Groning’s fine visual examination of La Grande Chartreuse in Into Great Silence; Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, not exactly a study of religious seclusion though a marvellous film. Then, curiously, I find several copies of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.  What was this doing here?  Could the man with no name be a metaphor for the life of a hermit?  Eastwood’s taciturn characters are invariably widowed, divorced, separated or otherwise unattached – and he generally has a mission, or calling, but this film does not immediately seem to fit. However, as the eminent film critic Philip French pointed out in his review, what gives the film its formidable strength is the way Eastwood shows [the hero] struggling with his prejudices and coming to terms with a changing world and with his inner demons.  There is an enigma here, perhaps not dissimilar to the riddle about out of the strong came forth sweetness; perhaps the men who inhabit the silence in these forested mountains are not so silent after all.

See:   

http://vimeo.com/48766364  

for a brilliant short film about Camaldoli

Ossi di Seppia

Cuttlefish Bones

Amanda and me at a place we treasure - on the slopes of Monte Amiata in Tuscany.  The vetta (peak) is behind, the vegetation scrubby and perfect for wild bores like us.  

Dry as cuttlefish bones.

Sailing To Byzantium