Travel Southern Fever
By JOHN GIBBONS
- MANY of my cruises, of course, . for nothing. For what, after all, is the use of CocksPur 'Street if not to ...give away gratuitous pamphletS ? But at least one of :the treasures of my library cost me- half, a crown, and I am bound to say that it was _worth every...penny.
It's Page 200 and onwards that" you want, of course, the part about steamship sailings; and I had .4 most delightful evening with the pamphlet Working-out". every possible way of getting to Zara in Dalmatia, supposing that someone gave me a chance to go there at-onee-.' Why Zara is obvious ; because really I-have never been there, I have only watched the boat start from Ancoria4 it is an Adriatica ' boat, and from up by the mosque-like Cathedral high above Ancona Harbour you can pick out its wake-for an hour, like a white river across-leagues of black-blue sea. Then next night the post brought me an insulting letter about somebody's account, and by way of retaliation I switched off Zara and 'treated myself to a really expensive trip to Antofagasta in South America, partly because I liked the name and partly because it-sounded such a long way off.
But then from Cook's Continental Timetable -and Steamship • Guide you cannot' See- how -:many funnels your chosen boat has got, and so I generally fall hack later on my Cocksptir Street pamphlets. There is a good one of the ' Homeric,' with very fine funnels: and with a picture of a sailor advertising his Easter Cruise for £25. Only he looks ..so English, if You see what I mean, and I have a sort of hankering after shipS like the Arandora Star ' as sounding more foreign and less likely to be connected with the Londori postal system. Or again, I was rather attracted by; the ' Colombia,' ballroom and Pompeian Swimming Pool, £50 to the Spanish Main ; my figure nowadays is scarcely Pompeian, but since boyhood I have wanted the Spanish Main and I still want to. In fact I wanted almost all the places, and the voyages .ranged from hundreds of guineas for a Rot:Ind-the-World to about Four Pounds Ten for Rouen and back. And -I'd like that too.
Up on "a hill between Harfleur and'Le Havre I knoW a point where 'you stare down over. Mlles of Seine and see just how the Norse pirates must haVe crept in their dragon ships up the estuary and into the unknown. And if you have never been there- before, then for Four Pounds Ten you are a rover yourself, sailing an uncharted river for an Unmapped country.
In the end my own cruise actually resolved it• self into the three .hours across to Dieppe, the Cheapest way that I 'could find for getting to Portugal. It's about three times a year that I really- get abroad, and each time it's always the same and I amuse myself for weeks beforehand with timetables and delightful speculations -about-all the other places abroad. I know by book every route to Portugal, and actually class for class the sea is a good deal cheaper. • But then this time I had a sort of all-in commission, to write so much stuff in so many days and pay my own fares and find my own way ; and after ever so much trouble I worked it out that I saved on taking the train Mid the shorter journey. That-accounted for Dieppe.
Even three hours of cruise is better than no hours, and you can get a lot of fun out of watching the other people and sneering at the paltry bits of distance that they probably -call --travel.- For at -Dieppe- they all be shepherded into their miserable Paris express, and you will be left by yourself for the real adventiire. Yours is the next -train, a proper French train with' no English in it and, going all the way round France to Bordeaux and taking all- night on the way. But then on the Plat you can get a couchette. even for a third- class ticket, and as next to no locals (ever 'pay the trifle of supiplimenty, you'll probably have whole compart- ment to yourself with' six 'berth's to. chooSe" from and all the • other passengers Oomiding: indignantly round the door. There is a way of locking it from inside :and so saving yourself the pain of trying to explain in French. It's Bordeaux in the morning and warmer already, and by noon there is Irun and all the Roniance of Spain. Furthermore, the first public-house outside Irun Estaeion is kept by a Senor Simpson, late of the British Army, and though he failed badly to live up to the proper conversational opening as given in my phrase-book (really he should have Put His Poor House at my Disposal), it was something to find a man with under- standing views on my luncheon. Then by nine that night I was out of Irun again, and Sunny Spain was getting unexpectedly arctic as the train for hour after hour climbed those Cantabrian Mountains ; but somewhere there comes a change at Medina, and then by next morning you'll be in a perfect blaze of sunshine, with Vilar Formosa and the Portuguese frontier by noon and two hours for ahnoco and a wait for the Lisbon train. I am reckoning the thing in terms of quickest journey for cheapest fare, and that way of mine worked out at £10 13s. London to Lisbon return, third-class across France and Spain and second on the Portuguese bit (third all the way would have meant an extra night). That is two nights on the train, one lying down and one sitting up, and I am not saying that it wouldn't have been more comfortable in the sleeping-cars of one of the swagger trains. A second-return on a ship would only have cost just over £11, and with no meals to buy at that. I only mention my way as the cheapest for the least time. From the frontier it's a country of queer-shaped mountains, and as the train turns and twists round incredible corners every • rock and "tree will be throwing a shadow that under that Portuguese sun will somehow look so solid as to seem unreal. The station names sound impossibly gorgeous, and Santa Comba Dao and Pampilhosa and Alfarellos might be back in another wcr:d. Then when at last you steam into the Lisbon Roccio Station it is midnight, and the big Praca outside is all ablaze and the night cafes in the Rua I0 de Dezembro are settling down 'to begin the evening's fun. This is fifteen hundred miles from the Jubilee Clock Tower of my London suburb. • • I am not pretending to despise comfort, and 1- would have far preferred the Pompeian Pool sort of trip that a' little spare money might have' given' me. But at least: I've got here somehow. - I've' had roughly -sixty hours of it for roughly £6, and I' have come. This is the South, and tomorrow the sun will be shining.
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