Following the Sun: A Bicycle Pilgrimage from Andalusia to the Outer Hebrides
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Just to the north, as if in reaction to the sun’s mighty presence, the dragon-cloud began raising his head and twisting himself into unlikely shapes, transforming himself, as dragons will, into various configurations. Now he was a tower, then he became a hill, and then, as if in surrender, he began to break apart, and moved upward to join the golden, fretted sky, which by now was charged with greens and reds and rays of blue and orange in those places where the cloud had spread out.
And then, in a hushed silence, almost humbled, the great god sun, the source of all life on earth, dropped with his horses into the sea. First his light touched the sea rim, the ball of flame moved downward and distorted into an ellipse, and, as we watched, the ellipse spread out and became a glowing pool of molten gold.
A minute later it was gone.
Acknowledgments
The events described in this book took place in the early years of the Common Market, long before the creation of the European Union and the advent of the Euro and their effect on the customs, food, language, legends, and landscape of rural Europe. More recently, thanks to a generous grant from the Vogelstein Foundation, I was able to retrace the route of this journey (by car this time, not by bicycle). I had expected a great deal of change, and around the cities and in the shops and suburbs much has changed indeed. But I am happy to report that on the rural roads that I had originally followed, especially in the more remote areas of Spain and Scotland, there was hardly any change at all.
I managed to hook up with a few of the old friends I had made along the way, and to these happy few I am indeed grateful for their detailed remembrances of my sojourns with them. I am also grateful to certain individuals with long memories and information on isolated areas in the Hebrides, Andalusia, and western France. In particular I would like to thank Martin Reiter for his extensive field notes on these regions, as well as Margie Wheeler and Randon Rynd, fellow travelers. I want to thank Lawrence Millman for his notes on the Hebrides, Henry Brown for his Bordeaux digs, and Jill Brown for all her sweetness and light. I also want to acknowledge the generosity of Señor Rafael Alonso and the graciousness and long-suffering goodwill of Mr. Timothy Griggs, wherever he is. I extend my thanks to the collective wits of Lawrence Buell, Richard Forman, Wayne Franklin, and Kent Ryden for their comments and advice on the manuscript and the theme, and I thank Jim Kile for his help with the confusing science of astronomy. As always, I am grateful to my editor, Merloyd Lawrence, and her sharp eye, and also John Thomas and especially Trish Hoard and the energetic production staff at Counterpoint.
Were I of a mind to invest inanimate objects with personality, I suppose I should also give thanks to my loyal bicycle, who carried me across the windy machair of the Hebrides, the steep roads of the Highlands of Scotland, the bull-haunted pastures of Andalusia, and the gentle green landscape of the Loire Valley. I still own that old horse and still take it out for a spin periodically, in remembrance of things past.
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Copyright © 2002 by John Hanson Mitchell
Cover image by Gordon Morrison; design by Neil A. Heacox
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7537-7
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