Like a night out west of Skibbereen
But even as we drove up the mountain to his home, 20 minutes of hairpin bends, cliff faces above and sheer drops below, we saw that the higher we went, the worse the weather became. We knew that in February, there were always a few days of unsettled weather before the full moon and even down at the beach it was cloudy.
Now, 10 minutes up the valley, mist was swirling over the road and wild showers of rain were flung at the windscreen. There were already rocks on the road that had fallen from above, lava scree, fist-sized or occasionally head-sized, for we’re on a volcanic island in the Canary Archipelago, although the volcano on La Gomera has been dead for 5,000 years.
Parking in the lane 50 yards from our friend’s house, we ran with coats over our heads in driving rain. The scene could have been more the side of a west Cork mountain on a wet February day except for the ghostly shapes of giant Canarian palms silhouetted in the sea of grey. We’d seen torrential rain on this island before but had never been on the rim of the plateau on such a night, 3,000 feet above the valley, catching the full blast of the Atlantic gales.
The wood stove was lit and the welcome was warm. Outside, the wind buffeted the windows and threw buckets of water at the panes. We hadn’t intended to stay the night but our hosts suggested that driving back down in the storm, our little rent-a-car might well be blown off the road — and besides, the cellar had been “visited copiously”.
Meanwhile, the food, grilled octopus and ternera steaks, spuds from the garden and coriander and chives, were cooked and sliced up and laid out on plates with a fork for each of us and picked at bit by bit as dish following dish came to the table.
The guitar was brought out and my friend and his wife sang sentimental songs of the islands, and I sang The Rose of Tralee in a faltering voice, but with great feeling, “And Mary, all silent, sat listening to me..”, the poor woman. On our second night back in La Gomera, we had a night, but for the Canarian melodies (and the octopus), we might have had on a night west of Skibbereen.
In the morning, when we woke, I looked out into the mist at the ghostly palms and at five or six wild canaries, like little siskins, brown streaked backs and yellow breasts, feeding on the wet earth of the terrace, below the window, on seed my friend had put out the day before, scattered but still edible and, no doubt, a bonanza for the storm-bedraggled birds.
After a breakfast of uncured goat cheese and thinly-sliced pata-negra ham, we drove off across a mist-shrouded plateau with no habitation but a cemetery of the dead, and started downhill through the zigzag bends. And then, suddenly, the mist opened on the huge, green, terraced valley in sunlight, vivid green all the way to the blue sea and a distant wall of white surf breaking 15 kilometres away and a 1,000 metres below.
At the beach, it was a different world, although our friends told us it cleared an hour later in the highlands and was an idyllic day for walking the forest paths, dappled with sunlight, into the groves of Canarian pines soaring like columns of a cathedral above the carpets of thick, red pine needles beneath.
The days since have dawned gloriously clear and I’m well advised to mind my head in the sun. We swim in the clean sea, a painless baptism, and walk miles on old paths among fruit trees and extravagant flowers.
All the way up the valley, the spuds are flowering and new drills are meticulously drawn in the rich, dark earth of the terraces, ready for planting and ! still damp from the rain.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
