18 August 2016
Crossing The Water
Of ferries and the like.
by Chin Chin
There has always been something special about crossing water. In Robert Burns’s poem Tam O’Shanter, it is the barrier of a river which holds back the demons who pursue the eponymous hero on his grey mare. In ancient Rome, the crossing of the Rubicon involved (if you will forgive the mixing of metaphors) a final burning of boats. In Georgian England, a toast to the King changed its meaning entirely if you passed your wine over a glass of water.
These days, things are more prosaic but it is a poor traveller who arrives at a ferry terminal without a frisson of excitement. For those of us who live in England, though, the pleasure is less common than it used to be. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a trip to France involved shipping the car from Dover and emerging at Calais into a different world, somewhere where you could have croissants for breakfast, a delicacy not available in England and which tasted all the more exotic for having to be earned by the rigours of a boat trip. In fact, if you lived in Essex, it was two boat trips because, long before you got down to Dover, you had to take the ferry from Tilbury to Gravesend to cross the River Thames. What a start to the day for a child! “We’ll get going early and have our breakfast in Kent” was immeasurably more exciting than “We’ll go round the M25 and through the Channel Tunnel”. Of course you can still go by ferry if you wish, but the fact that you do not have to do so takes away the glitter. In your heart of hearts you know you are just doing it for effect, like buying vintage clothes.
That is what is so wonderful about Ancona. It is still a proper ferry port with boats coming in from all sorts of exotic destinations bearing people for whom this is the most efficient method of travel. And its being on the Adriatic adds spice, too. Did that red ship really begin its voyage in Istanbul? Did the blue boat come through the Corinth Canal? What about the small one? Did it just slip down the coast from Trieste? Our arrival, on Monday, was from Zadar, a port on the Dalmatian coast, just a night’s crossing away from Italy. It was a luxury trip in that we had an outward facing cabin so that we could watch the Italian coastline approach at dawn and, like all the best crossings, it transported us between cultures which are entirely different
There is much that is good in Croatia, excellent horse-radish soup for a start and miles of unbroken forest punctuated by some attractive towns and welcoming people. But it is not Italy. Although its splendid ruins testify to the influence of Rome, and I would certainly recommend the Coliseum and temple at Pula if you are passing that way, the culture is Germanic rather than Latin. The cuisine centres on cake. The architecture is tidy and often alpine and, although it can certainly be attractive – the main street in Samobor looking not unlike that of an eighteenth century Norfolk town, it contains nothing of the sun-drenched colours of Italy which hit you between the eyes almost as soon as you drive off the boat.
So what then is next? How can you match that thrill which you felt when Italy first burst upon you? Will the rest of the holiday inevitably be an anti-climax? Well, one must do one’s best and with a little ingenuity it should be possible to conjure up something pretty good. Start by taking a table in a pretty square. It needs to be a little shaded from the sun and preferably surrounded by ancient statues worthy of a little study. A glass of Prosecco is required to lubricate the artistic sensibilities. Now it is time to look at the guidebook and begin to study the beauties of Italy.
Oh dear, this all beginning to sound a little pretentious. Will those who walk past my table realise that I’m not in fact a local and that I probably come from North London? I cannot have that. Islington is all very well in its way but it is the place which I go on holiday to escape from. It is not somewhere I wish to carry with me. I know! I will hide the guidebook in a false cover. What should I choose? To go for something with an Italian title would be too much. People could come up to me and start addressing me in Italian which would be embarrassing as I would not know what they were talking about. No, I don’t mind passing for an Englishman abroad. I just don’t want to go down as the affected sort of Englishman.
Perhaps, then, the answer is some more populist work. Something in English but yet international in its appeal. Yes, “Fifty Shades of Grey” should do it. It may mark me as an Englishman but I think one of a different sort. Reading that sort of book and ignoring the Italian sculptures? That would certainly be frowned on by the cognoscenti of Islington. It distances me from there completely. To meet people like that you have to cross water. They tell me there are lots of them living south of the River.
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