Stupidly dogmatic

A few false starts and we're off – en route to a fresh challenge and another adventure and a steep learning curve. There's not been a puppy in the family for eight years or more now – and, strangely, I miss this.

On a journey home from Portugal this summer, I spend a helluva lot of hard-earned English £££s on data-roaming fees searching online for 'the ultimate dog'. I look at Bolognese and we drive through driving rain and storms to meet one in Norfolk (too prissy and way too high maintenance). I've never liked small dogs but consider having one. I never looked to adopt at the RSPCA but, suddenly, we are spending many weekends at the local dog rescue centre. Dogmatic in my search, I mentally assess every hound that passes by, every pooch encountered on my walks with our Lab, and clock up many hours surfing the net like a lovelorn singleton, seeking 'the one'. But, after hours that turn into days, I eventually give up my hapless search, reaching a cul-de-sac in my dog searching. I turn tail and then... And then...

The first week of October 2014: I am a devout follower of the 'things happen for a reason' school of thought, without doubt. A leaflet, pasted to many lamp-posts in the fishing village of Salema, catches my eye:

Now, ain't Google Translate just the best thing ever? I am ashamed to admit that my linguistic skills are sadly lacking. For someone hell bent on spending more and more time in this most beautiful, heavenly slice of south west Europe, my Portuguese is limited to only the necessary niceties.

Anyway, what I can do is research online and research is what I do to discover that Portuguese Water Dogs are the smarties that truly do have the answer.
For the uninitiated... these hounds were once the best friends of Portuguese fishermen, driving fish into nets, retrieving lost tackle and swimming messages from boat to boat. They have webbed feet and waterproof coats. They thrive with activity, especially if it's water based. And their heritage stretches way back to the 8th century when the Moors arrived in Portugal, bringing these water dogs with them.

We immediately find a Portuguese Water Dog that really isn't a Portuguese Water Dog or a Cão de Água Português as is their proper native handle. In our enthusiasm, we fail to see what is staring us squarely in the face – a con artist with a clever line in faux innocence and mock indignation when we challenge her with the rumours that she runs a puppy farm and is a fraudulent breeder. We remain a deposit down to this day, and there's a very different deposit we'd love to leave on the doorstep of said puppy farm, but some things are best left – well, left.

Meanwhile, at the water trials on our doorstep – Salema beach – we watch from afar one Rodrigo Pinto, a man so in tune with these hounds, it's poetic. He can bark instructions that send his charges scurrying all points of the compass across the sandy beach, focusing them directly into their crate – within seconds. The beautiful hounds shoe horn themselves into said crate and await his next command, ready to spring into action – and waiting on him. Solely.

To cut a long story short, we fall for this man and his hounds and his passion and his knowledge. We talk on the phone long-distance from the UK – lots – and eventually meet him at his kennels/hotel for dogs – Casa da Buba in Lagos. He does not disappoint. Needless to say, this man has a story to tell.

So, we suddenly have Única in our lives. Black, curly haired and feisty – and so, so exciting. And, just as exciting is the story Rodrigo and his son, Goncalo, have to share. They have a history – and a future and there's a whole world out there with whom they need to share it. President Obama, are you listening?...

Walking – I'm running with it

Exercise. It’s always been about the heart-pumping, sweat-pouring, oxygen-demanding kind. That pinnacle of endeavours; that aim to become ever faster; fitness activity with that feelgood-but-bad factor – in running shoes, in water or, of late, on a bike.

The more the body aches post-workout, the fitter the beast. I have taken Herbert Spencer’s Darwin-esque theory of the survival of the fittest and I’ve run with it, interpreting it as I see fit. If I’m not standing still, I cannot catch anything, right? I know that’s a contradiction, but allow me that. As I hurtle towards 50, I want to enjoy life in a half-decent physical state and enjoy it before it all goes horribly wrong, if you get my drift...

Feel the burn

I’m a typical 20something of the 1980s. Back then, younger readers, it was all about throwing our bodies around in high energy, high impact aerobic classes. It was an era of Jane Fonda ‘feeling the burn’ (in the first ever exercise video of our time) and that was many years before Davina’s tame efforts – and only a year before Miss McCall turned sweet 16. It was a time when your conscience barked silently at you that ‘no pain no gain’ adage over and over and over until, muscles wrecked, the body grew bored of the same old routine and the mind was dulled by the same old music tracks.

But now, even that iconic workout video of Jane’s has grown up – 32 earlier this year – and with it, I feel I have, too. For I have discovered walking. Not the baby steps discovery of some 48 years ago, but proper ‘Salomon walking boot’ walking. Hiking, if you will. And to those who scorn and scoff and are under the age of 30, take heed. Footwear doesn’t just have to be about pounding the streets of London’s West End in physically disabling high heels. I’m now just as happy hotfooting it around the west end of Europe in comfortable boots.

Walking is cool. You don't feel a burn, you merely grow a little warmer and you simply see more ‘stuff’ than you do when running or, even, cycling. I would go so far as to say, it’s the new cycling – once the preserve of a generation far beyond my own, I am now extolling the virtues of an exercise I was once only curious about, mostly prompted by the hoards of ramblers who traipsed the canal paths and tramped the fields near where I lived when I wasn’t dancing in fluorescent leggings and leotards to electro pop at the YMCA gym in a small underground studio off Tottenham Court Road.

Communities lay undiscovered

I suggest to those of you under the age of 30 to factor it in to your fitness portfolio now. It complements all that aerobic exercise and is a revelation, too. Whole communities lay undiscovered out there that may only be enjoyed at walking pace – flora and fauna, all creatures – great and small, and people, so many people. And, if you haven’t some beautiful countryside to explore, take an amble through the city and remember to look up, discover more about your neighbourhood, its buildings and get fit into the bargain.

Turning point

Spanish families have mastered the art of city walks. Visit any of the major cities and you will see large groups of them out enjoying themselves as they ‘walk the promenade’ in the early evening, just before sunset.

DOG FOR SALE – LOVES WALKING.

Charities raise funds utilising this most simple and most accessible of exercise. Signing up for a sponsored walk may prove the turning point you need in this pursuit for a slo-mo, steadier-paced exercise to complement the rest of it. And if you need further inspiration, you can always buy a dog.

Blog hijack!

Long goodbyes, 20 minutes' sleep and we’re off. My parents look incredulous at my ability to rise after such little rest,  yet I’m equally as questioning of their getting up at 1am when we aren’t supposed to leave the house for another two and a half hours. I've barely been back in England for five minutes and I’m already back on the road – holiday number three in just five weeks. Not that I’m complaining, as a (hopefully) relaxing trip to one of my favourite places is desperately needed after a fast-paced and exhausting week in the inexhaustible Magaluf.

Stay at home
This has also been the most anticipated holiday. For months. We’ve been fired at with enthusiasm from parents about an unmissable two-day drive down to Portugal that contrasts greatly with their insistence that our attendance is not compulsory if we feel we'd 'rather stay at home'. Regardless, who would choose to remain in England? Firstly, for fear of breaking the hearts of parents who, despite their insistence that 'we understand completely if you don’t want to come' actually really, really want you with them and secondly. the chance to see places so old and so beautiful it would be foolish to miss out.

At 18, the idea of travelling a distance of more than 1,500 miles with parents in a large, although still slightly cramped, car, is often one of horror yet it doesn’t particularly faze me. This may be unusual, yet I see our ability to stand each other (most of the time) as a happy bonus and I pity other families for not having something I hope will stay with us for a very long time. As we travel on the unattractive motorways of the north of France, with Dad pinching his nose, horribly imitating the muffled voice of a pilot and the car filled with the monotonous, yet slightly aggressive instructions of the SatNav as we head into Salamanca, I still can’t help thinking how lucky I am.

Curb your enthusiasm

And so we’re off again on this now much-loved oft-trod escape to the south west of Europe. As we grow more familiar with each schlep (even allowing for the sneaky curveball of some changes to the complicated diversion through Rouen), this trip, two have become six – with four teens aboard, we are outnumbered.

We are taking the slow road to our quick fix of happiness. Two weeks heading towards/staying in/returning from Salema in the western Algarve. We have packed looms and bands, countless magazines, and DVDs of their choosing are piled high in the boot. There’s a boxed up, newly purchased three-man dinghy (complete with oars and pump) atop their four bulging suitcases that hold 19 bikinis between them.

The next generation

We’ve lost the battle over music choice but, to be fair, we never even put up a fight. For this holiday belongs to our next generation, two of them having joined the ranks of adulthood since our last summer all together in the sun. But do they count among the numbers of adults on this holiday? I think not.

When did I last download a ‘Now’ album, I ponder, as I buy boosters to ensure its full delivery to my iPhone. I am appalled to discover this latest release is number 88. ‘What is she singing?’ husband asks, and I hear echoes of my parents. As we all do eventually, I suspect – as these girls will, I hope. In the confines of a Dodge Super Caravan (strangely, no longer feeling overlarge, wide and roomy), we will all dig deep to become tolerant of each other but not of any other travellers – those many strangers who swell in huge numbers in airports this time of year. We have neither the desire or need. We are in our own world of travel and it may not be as fast or cheap as flight but it will be fun.

‘ROAD TRIPS ARE MUCH MORE FUN AND FREE.’ I keep telling the girls this, in a variety of ways and at varying interludes – from when I booked the crossing to just before we leave, when heading out of the EuroTunnel at Calais and as we enter Bordeaux and so on, increasing the frequency and pitch as we nose ever nearer.

‘YOU JUST SEE SO MUCH MORE IN A CAR!’ I screech.
Holidays are often said to make or break a family. I am in danger of either nailing it or putting the final nail in the coffin of whole-family excursions with my high expectations and breathy enthusiasm. And it’s only day one.

War-torn mothering

I am torn. I cannot decide if I was more fretful when our two eldest daughters headed off to Magaluf last Sunday amid headlines of THE sex scandal (insert Daily Mail latest – 'British holidaymakers are avoiding the Mallorca resort of Magaluf following its sex act shame') or whether their return flight home is the more worrying. The latter following the shooting down and destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people on board. The two 18-year-old loves of my life flew the nest, alone but together, for the first time last Sunday. They survived a week in Magaluf (save the stories a teenager should never share with a parent) and they will arrive at Stansted in one piece, too. Safe, tanned and exhausted and with seven days of self-sufficiency under their belt to be built on in the many years to come. I hope. For their travels home do not include the option of a flight path over a war-torn area and security is at red alert for all airlines right now, I imagine. However, my irrational fear of flying can only be accentuated by such a catastrophic tragedy as befell the world this week. I read and reread about every passenger on board. Their DNA and dental records the only forensic evidence left to identify their bodies scattered across the fields of sunflowers.

Comfort blanket
Hours beforehand they were people just like you and me, loved by their families and tweeting comments and posting pictures on Facebook before embarking on the doomed flight. I torment myself with every minute detail, every morsel of information – the politics beyond my comprehension and control, but the true-life backgrounds easy to relate to my own small life. We can all make a connection to the personal stories behind harrowing headlines and heart-breaking images – and I so often err on the realistic ‘why not me?’ rather than the blindingly optimistic ‘this will never happen to me’. The additional storm clouds gathering – with much rain, thunder and lightning – add weight to my over-active imagination and so I turn to transferring thoughts to written words, creating that necessary distraction that is my 'comfort blanket' in times of internal, personal turmoil and panic. I call my mother, 80 last week but still a little fearful of storms as if she were still eight. We talk nonsense in a reassuringly conspiratorial fashion that is the very foundation of such a relationship. Unspoken words of reassurance pass between us, her knowing I am fretful about two daughters flying home from their wild days in Mallorca and my knowing she is uneasy about the storm brewing and the lightning that changes the colour of the skies. It is evident in our jolly tones and happy chatter that we are masking our real thoughts and unfounded fears.

Careful navigation
She need not cover mirrors and hide knives in a superstitious fashion and I have no need to make empty promises to be a better person to nobody in particular in order to have our daughters delivered home safely. Life follows a path, fate takes hold and that careful navigation is as much to do with strokes of luck as it is about wise choices, caution and sensible risk aversion. I am not 18. I am a 48-year-old mother. I adore the fact that I have become a little less 9 to 5 and more footloose, but I do have responsibilities. And forever will. Growing older offers many options. Shedding ridiculous fears and unwarranted worries are sadly not among them. My mother would tell you that.

A little potter - and the philosopher's home

Advent and a vent
'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' Rex Harrison asks in his role as Henry Higgins in the musical version of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady.
'Tis a fair point. If you're a man.
Conversely, I have often favoured a boy a tad more feminine than your average Joe, Josė or Joseph. And these days, I do like a man with whom I can share moisturiser en route, or appreciates the need to 'freshen up' on a particularly long drag across western Europe. I also far rather a co-pilot happy to indulge my passion for pontificating on all subjects under the sun - be it in France, Spain or Portugal - than a strong, silent fairweather friend who ducks for cover at the slightest hint of my thoughts raining down on him. Heavily. For example, I can say: 'Take cultural differences in Europe - I mean, why can't the British be more like the Spanish - or even the Portuguese?' And he will allow me to dilate.

Eyes wide open
Having rattled our morning through the Alfama district of Lisbon, on the much-lauded turn-of-the-century E18 tram, we head north east, once again, to Salamanca. With Advent celebrations in full swing in the Portuguese capital, we hit the Spanish city at around 7.30pm. We return as old friends to the tapas bars of this beautiful city, order our own rabo do toro - and drink our own glasses of Rioja. Strangely, it feels like home. The place buzzes with activity - even on a Sunday night - with families, students, travellers, locals, the young and the old, standing in pairs, trios, groups. The centre of the city, the Plaza Mayor, is a page out of a 'Where's Wally' book with a sea of faces bathed in a warm light that brings out the gold of the buildings' Villamayor stone, rich in iron oxide that, thanks to the skills of some stonemason long gone, can become pure filigree, delicate and intricate.
The tapas bars are, as they were on the Friday night we were here, packed tight with people sharing food, drink and conversation. Glasses of wine fill the tables alongside cups of coffee and small plates of tapas and cakes and, from the bar stools we've managed to bag, we watch, wide-eyed, the bustle of everyday Spanish night life. There are no football shirts, the shouting is simply part of the animated conversation and the atmosphere is one of easy living. In England, we lack meeting places such as these - for all ages, all appetites, all drinking options; places open to all and open all day. A shared experience across all ages is important - how else to best impart the importance of learned values and social mores to the next generation, and so on? 

Mealtime matters
In our house, food is what links the five of us, keeps us in touch. Sharing meals is vital time together, it encourages debate and allows for an exchange of the woes and high points of our disparate lives. In a fast-paced world, home-cooked meals taken around a table, teach us the art of conversation and a patience for - and an appreciation of - other people. Similarly, shared food cements memories of moments in foreign worlds that linger far longer that the taste. The Spanish and the Portuguese, along with the other Mediterraneans, are leaders in this way of life - family and friends matter as do those lengthy gatherings. The meals on this journey will act as those now-absent stamps in our passports - an almost extinct travel experience these days - each one leaving an indelible mark on our memory banks of places once enjoyed.

Driving home for Christmas 
Snow-capped mountains greet us as we head ever further north east. It has also dropped to six degrees, according to the compass in 'the beast' and, driving into a tunnel carved through Mont St Obarenes, it suddenly feels like Christmas, not an emotion experienced by me for some years. The hackneyed phrase of 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' applies here, too, to a state of mind and I immediately feel on the cusp of a festive season that promises so much; one that I have the time and energy to enjoy without the Ghost of Christmas 'work' Past throwing a stressful spectral shadow over the whole enjoyment of a long break with my family.

In the deep, pre-winter
This trip proves ever more a necessary hiatus in my life, a vital severance from the hectic and the busy, an eye-opening stock-take of that which is important and that which is less so. What I once thought makes me tick is now undergoing a major reassessment. 
Coincidentally, I discover, buried at the bottom of a pile of books in Portugal, Alain de Botton's masterpiece collection of essays observing our relationships with work - The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. In it, he observes it was only as late as the mid-18th century we began defining ourselves in terms of our job title and tasks. Before this, de Botton notes: 'Aristotle defined an attitude that was to last more than two millennia when he referred to a structured incompatibility between satisfaction and a paid position.' 
I know I may be lambasted for taking this time out from my job, for this need to quit work and seek some 'me' time. It all appears a little indulgent. I too would have subscribed to this school of thought only a few months back. But delaying this time to see a bit more of this world could possibly prove a mistake - fortunately or unfortunately, the power to see into the future is not yet with us. This experience could not be substituted with a 10-minute read of some beautiful prose by a Sunday Times travel writer. A 6% drop over seven miles through the mountains of the Pyrenees has to 'felt'; the shift in landscape with the flat, brown expanse of Northern Spain giving way to lush, green hills needs to be seen. It's not so much that happiness cannot be found in meeting a deadline or self-satisfaction experienced when a new issue of a magazine worked hard on lands on your desk; I have a professional pride and joy that surpasses any straightforward monetary gain. But, in life, as in diet and exercise - or even, for that matter, measuring flour on scales or playing on a see-saw - the balance needs to be kept in check for near perfection.


A hole in my French letters
A sorry absence of internet connection at our hotels in both Poitiers and Rouen puts paid to this flow of prose. We stay in a converted chapel in Poitiers and my schoolgirl French is put to the test in a city to which the question: 'Parlez-vous français?' is a rather blunt 'non'. The hotel's restaurant is inside a huge dining hall with a menu of French gastronomy around which - quelle surprise - I manage to navigate. Interestingly, I note that this picturesque place is twinned with Northampton and the nearby Parc du Futuroscope has revitalised tourism to this university city.
Next stop is in Rouen which ruined our journey south almost two weeks ago by cutting off the motorway route in its prime. As we follow the DEVIATION signs, they disappear from time to time just to confuse us a little further. This time, Rouen ruins the flow by throwing a thick fog in our way. Abandoning the motorway up to Calais, we book into a pretty, Hogwarts-esque building that proves a flashy cover for a pretty mediocre hotel. I am instantly thrown into a bit of a bad mood, realising hugs with the children are now delayed for another 12 hours. I am tired of living out of a weekend case but deep sleep escapes me in the excitement of seeing the girls I love deeply from whom I've not been severed this long since cords were cut.
I realise, as we embark on the last leg of our journey through the EuroTunnel, that this long road of discovery is not confined to the cities and landscapes that pepper our pathway. It's simply been an eye opener in many ways and, whilst It ain't deep nor complex, it is meaningful.

Tinkerbell, a jar of shells and pretty maids all in a row

Travel is as much about the anticipation as it is the journey and, ultimately, the arrival. Whether it be by foot, on bicycle or in 'the beast', this past week or so of mini journeys and bitesize trips has been half-planned and half-'follow my heart'-ed. Thinking ahead to the destination, I am a blank canvas, the latest issue of a favourite magazine, a pregnancy test still wrapped in its cellophane, a bottle of perfume as yet unopened. It is the excitement of the unknown, the not-yet-experienced, the still-to-come that gives me this buzz; of the good and the bad but, mostly, the pretty damn good this far. All that said, the experiences on this trip are not enjoyed as a naive teen, despite my references back to an earlier life. At 48, one travels with a little more caution and a little less loose-footed. The pull in me to freefall from that desk-bound hamster wheel and to no longer 'just keep swimming' - that's for you, Marianne - is balanced by a bigger need to be assured our three daughters are safe and happy. These carefree days in Western Europe are tempered by our roles as 'mum and dad' to the children who, I hope, will embark on adventures to foreign climes far more frequently than I ever did. Neither of us want them to play 'travel catch up' in their older decades. And, as we hang a print of the girls, taken some years back (leaping into the Atlantic from rocks in Praia da Luz) or add shells to a jar of those previously salvaged from beaches on holidays past, the very essence of what this trip is all about is captured in those everyday tasks. Everything we see, the food we taste, the conversations we have are always with those three in our thoughts - 'Gaby would love this, Ellie will want to go here, Nicole would love the name of that place'. It is not so much running away as setting an example and laying down plans for the girls' future travel - starting with a post-Christmas excursion to Amsterdam, all five of us - 'the beast' will be blessed with a triple measure of female spirit as well as that of the festive kind.

Towering and fado 
But for now, I am in Lisbon, a city of narrow one-way streets with a few too many maverick drivers competing with a seemingly ever-multiplying rabbit run of trams. The criss-cross system, dating back to 1873, sees the beautiful vehicles rattle through the steep streets, brushing past parked traffic and only missing them by inches. We walk the two miles downtown to Alfama, Lisbon's oldest district and home to fado, songs usually sung by women with a melancholy theme and accompanied by mandolins or guitars with origins in the bars of the area. Overlooking the district is the mediaeval Castle of São Jorge, towering over the city and offering views that capture the many eras of building in Lisbon. We find a bar on one of the many terraces (miradouros) and share a bottle of harsh, red wine that strangely improves with each glass. Looking across the Tejo River, we watch the lights dance on the water, the stars in the clear night sky and listen to the banter on a table of birthday celebrations. 'The girls would love this,' Tony says. Once in the cab back to our hotel, driven by a Lisbon maverick, of course, we ring the girls and make a vow to bring them here.