Bray – a Short History.

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Bray – History.

Bray is a direct translation from the Irish ‘Bré’, meaning a hill. For some time, however, the Irish version was given as Brí Chualainn whose meaning is disputed. In general it is taken to derive from Ui Bhriain Chualainn, the land of the O’Byrne’s of Cuala. The O’Byrnes, usually styled Byrne, are a significant Wicklow name, along with Cullen, O’Toole and Kavanagh. These clans disputed coastal Wicklow with the Danes and subsequently the Normans.

St Sarain's Cross at Fairyhill

St Sarain’s Cross at Fairyhill

There are some remnants from the early Christian era, dating from the fifth century onwards. The ruins of Raheen a Chluig, the Little Church of the Bell, are on the lower, northern slopes of Bray Head. Two well-weathered early Christian crosses survive, at Fassaroe to the north, and Fairyhill to the south. This latter cross, situated in a hilltop stand of fir trees at the entrance to a modern estate, is attributed to Saint Saran. The saint is further commemorated in the name of nearby Killarney Road, the southwestern approach road to the town.

Bray, as a definite location was established by the Normans under Richard de Clare (Strongbow), at the fording point of the River Dargle near where the town bridge now stands. The location was of importance since it marked the southern extent of the Pale, the area of Norman influence around Dublin. As such, Bray was a frontier fortress, sporadically attacked by native clans from the south. The castle was built just west of where St Peter’s church stands. Other castles, or tower houses, were established at Castle Street north of the Dargle, and Oldcourt further south. Only the ruins of Oldcourt Castle remain.

The lands south of Bray were granted to Walter de Riddlesford, one of Strongbow’s loyal adventurers in the invasion of 1169. This led to the establishment a large demesne centred on Kilruddery, the Church of the Knight. The route between this estate and Bray Castle established the line of Main Street. Thus, Bray grew as a typical manor town of the era. Agricultural produce, milling, brewing and a freshwater fisheries maintained the economy of the town over the next few centuries.

Kilruddery

Kilruddery House and Gardens

The Brabazon family had come into ownership of the estate in the early 16th century through William Brabazon, Lord Justice of Ireland. Brabazon gained favour through his zealous support for Henry VIII as King and head of the Irish church. The title Earl of Meath was granted to his great-grandson William in 1623. Kilruddery House had to be rebuilt following destruction in the Cromwellian wars of the mid century. The current building is largely an 1820s reconstruction in the gothic Tudor revival style. The original gardens remain, designed by the French gardener Bonet, they are a unique example in Ireland of eighteenth century design. An eerie, placid beauty attaches to them, the most notable vista is presented by the parallel canals running south of the house. Adjacent to this gothic realm, classically inspired additions were added in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Bray’s development as a resort had begun. The Romantic movement inspired people to regard the sea as beneficial to health, of body and of spirit. Contemplation of beautiful scenery and engagement with nature was also encouraged. Bray was ideally situated, close to these benefits and also convenient to Dublin. Novara House, an early beach lodge, lying at the southern end of Novara Avenue, dates from this time, though it has been extensively modernised. Originally known as Bay View, it is sited a half mile inland from the seafront itself. The early nineteenth century saw the building of three Martello Towers to guard against the Napoleonic threat. One of these survives on the crag overlooking the harbour at the north end of the seafront. In the 1980s this became, for a time, the residence of that other wee general, Bono of U2. The harbour itself would not be constructed until the second half of the century, such sea traffic as there was unloading at a small dock at the mouth of the Dargle opposite the Harbour Bar. This popular, atmospheric pub from the 1840s is one of the few buildings on the seafront to predate the coming of the railway.

The railway transformed Bray. The Dublin-Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) was opened in 1834, however, twenty years passed before it was extended to Bray. Railway engineer and developer William Dargan, was instrumental both in bringing the railway to Bray and in developing the town into a major attraction for visitors and new residents. The area between Main Street and the seafront was developed with straight, tree-lined avenues lined with elegant Victorian terraces. Dargan had an exotic Turkish Baths constructed in the Moorish style on Quinsboro Road. It was a startling addition to Bray’s streetscape for over a century before its sad demise in the 1970s. Another of Dargan’s initiatives was the National Gallery of Ireland facing Merrion Square in Dublin. A statue of the indefatigable entrepreneur and patron stands in its forecourt. In Bray, he is commemorated in the name of a terrace on Quinsborro Road, and in a mural at Bray Dart station.

Bray Town Hall, completed in 1881

Bray Town Hall, completed in 1881

Major hotels were established to cater for the influx of tourists and day-trippers. Quin’s Hotel, overlooking the Dargle at the north end of Main Street was transformed from a small town inn. It is now the Royal Hotel and Leisure Centre. Other hotels sprang up on the seafront and adjacent to the railway station. The International Hotel, facing the station’s west frontage, was the largest hotel in Ireland on its completion in the 1860s. The development of the Esplanade with its seawall Promenade, and the Harbour came soon after. Bray, once the small manorial village, was transformed into a thriving resort for the quality, and dubbed the Brighton of Ireland. By the end of the century, the town’s population approached the ten thousand mark, whereas most Irish towns, in the aftermath of the Famine, showed declining populations. During the Edwardian era, Bray continued to epitomise the stylish resort.

The Cross on Bray Head

The Cross on Bray Head

After Irish independence, it began to drift downmarket. Fashions change, and holiday resorts now catered for a more egalatarian population. Amusement arcades mushroomed, an increasingly raucous brand of fun was demanded. Big band music, cinema, donkey rides were all part of summer at the seaside. Blackpool of Ireland, might have been more appropriate as a nickname. After the hiatus of World War Two, British holidaymakers returned in the fifties. Bray Head acquired its crowning stone cross in the Holy Year of 1950. This has become an iconic image of the east coast. A chair lift brought people to the summit. It’s long gone, though the cross remains. Top Irish showbands such as the Royal and Miami played the Arcadia ballroom on Adelaide Road in the late fifties and throughout the sixties.

Ardmore Studios were opened in the early sixties, bringing a touch of silver screen glamour to Bray. The studios, on Herbert Road, hosted major American and British productions, the industry grew to provide television and advertising facilities. While Wicklow’s lovely scenery was a big draw for producers, Bray’s versatility also came into play. Over the years, the town has stood in for smalltown Vermont, a typical Irish western town or the heart of the English Home Counties on the large and small screens. Neil Jordan painted the seafront pink for The Miracle, he also used it for Dublin in the film Michael Collins, the Carlisle Grounds standing in for Croke Park during the War of Independence.

Changing fashions saw the postwar tourist boom fade too. Foreign destinations became a bigger attraction for summer holidays. Tourism was further eroded by the oil crisis and recession of the seventies. Bray experienced an unfortunate depredation of many of its attractions and landmarks. The Internatinal Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1974. The vacant lot festered for a decade or more, eventually taken by a bowling alley. The Arcadia became a cash and carry. In 1980, the Turkish Baths were demolished in the crass, shortsighted civic vandalism that prevailed.

There was light at the end of the tunnel, and it was an oncoming train. The electrification of the suburban rail system initiated the Dartline in 1982. Bray Daly station was once more a key focus of the town. In the 1990s, a project sponsored by Bray Community Arts Group, commissioned a painted mural on the eastern platform. The mural depicted the history of the town and the railway decade by decade from the 1950s to the present day. Brunel, Dargan, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce are all featured. Wilde’s father had property in Bray and the writer was to suffer an early, unfortunate trial at the Courthouse. James Joyce has a stronger association. He lived at Martello Terrace, hard by the waves pounding the Promenade. The house features in Portrait of the Artist, while the phrase, “snot-green, scrotum-tightening sea” may owe something to the location. The mural has been badly weathered by the briny air,  so original artists, Triskill Design, have undertaken a replacement project using tile mosaics.

The rejuvenation of the railway brought a population boom to Bray. By the end of the century the population had doubled to over thirty thousand people. The new residents were housed, for the most part, in suburban estates south of the town. New schools and industry followed. The protection of the sylvan setting has helped soften the impact of such an extensive building development. Still it grows, and new estates and roads now crowd to the edge of the lands of the Kilruddery estate.

Hail, rain or snow, crowds gather for the annual New Year Swim

Hail, rain or snow, crowds gather for the annual New Year Swim

If the amusement arcades have waned, the seafront remains a magnet for all those seeking rest and recreation. Bars and restaurants now cater to the fashion of al fresco drinking and dining throughout the summer. The annual festival has hugely expanded its carnival attractions, drawing thousands over the St Patrick’s day festival and the Summer Festival throughout July and August. The Fireworks display and the Air-show have seen crowds approaching a hundred thousand throng the length of the Esplanade. Returning Olympic hero, boxing gold medallist Katie Taylor, drew a massive crowd of wellwishers to the Esplanade in 2012. For fitness fiends and boulevardiers, the amenity of the seafront Promenade and Bray Head is popular year round. The National Sealife Centre, north of the Bandstand, is one of Ireland’s most popular visitor attractions. An unimpressive pile at its inception, it has developed into a sleek modernist building, with restaurant, ice-cream parlours and cafes, augmenting the wet zoo at its core.

The Civic Centre at St Cronin’s, off Main Street, was a major project of the late century. This included the Civic Offices and the Mermaid Arts Centre, incorporating a gallery, theatre and workshop space for several arts disciplines. The Mermaid brought to fruition a long campaign to establish a designated arts centre from artists and groups including Signal Arts and the Bray Arts Group. The Centre is an important focus for the arts in Bray, however the arts scene thrives at several venues around the town, with music, theatre and literature particularly strong. The Bray Jazz Festival in early May is in its fourteenth year, bringing top national and international musicians to a dozen or so stages from Main Street to the Seafront.

Storm clouds gather over the Prom

Storm clouds gather over the Prom

The financial collapse of 2008 stymied commercial growth in the town centre. Proposed shopping centres, north and south of the bridge, failed to materialise. Town centre businesses in Bray, as elsewhere throughout Ireland, are on the retreat as out of town retail parks and on-line shopping erode their customer base. Bray also lost its town council, it being subsumed into Wicklow County Council. Whether this will prove unsympathetic to Bray’s future needs remains to be seen.

Rostock

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Rostock and Wehrnemunde

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Tall Ships on the Warnow River

 

Sailing from Copenhagen, our first port of call is Wehrnemunde in Germany. Part seaside resort, part port, its situation at the mouth of the Warnow river makes it convenient for the main municipal centre of Rostock seven miles to the south. The more ambitious take the train to Berlin, just two hours further on. The quayside is bustling with the Tall Ships race. Thousands have come to experience the poetry of sailing ships, to see blue skies punctuated by towering masts. Ferries scurry across the estuary, trains trundle in and out, pedestrians swarm amongst the stalls and rigged ships. There is a regular parade of white sails along the channnel to and from Rostock. The estuary is a startling panorama of towering skies, modern industry and ancient maritime elegance. Somehow serenity pervades over chaos, the German devotion to form emerges ultimate victor. Yet charm is nurtured by bright sunshine, smiles break out everywhere.

We take a morning train into Rostock, while the region’s population, I reckon, is taking the opposite direction out towards the Tall Ships. Some soccer game is also drawing rowdy supporters through the transport system, their bark worse than their bight, I daresay. Rostock itself is quiet in the noonday sun. It is a small medieval jewel, large portions of the original city walls and turreted gatehouses surviving time and war, while the gothic cathedral of Saint Marian casts its extravagant shape over all. From the airy expanse of the New Market Square with its ancient Town Hall we flow along winding pedestrianised streets, the maritime theme echoed in galleon fronted houses and the occasional glimpses of blue water dotted with an endless variety of craft. Shopping and tourism are beginning to bustle and we find some respite in the thirteenth century Convent of St. Catherine, its contemplative gardens melting green in the shadow of the crumbling city walls.

Zest for Life fountain

Zest for Life fountain

Rostock University is one of the oldest in the world. Founded in 1419, the main buildings now quietly survey the town centre, where Kropeliner Strasse widens into a casual plaza. Here an amusing focal point is provided by a fountain called Zest for Life. Amongst the university’s alumni is Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer who studied and lost his nose there. It was replaced, apparently, by a prosthetic made of gold. The astronomer’s observational powers were harnessed by Kepler, helping him to the ultimate model of the solar system.

Something of this endeavour is echoed on the seafront back in Warnemunde. A scale model of the sun and planets is spread out along the seafront promenade. Not that we can find it on our return. With all the madding crowds, I can only find the sun, which is easy enough, parked obviously as it is at the Teapot centre. This modernist commercial unit is somewhat at odds with the older, more picturesque urban architecture of the town. It is thought to resemble a teapot. I doubt the Germans drink much tea. A celtic rock band plays nearby, a peculiarly appropriate blend of the Gaelic and Germanic. We feel we’re blending right in.

There’s plenty of craft and souvenir shopping along chintzy streets lined with timber cottages. There’s all the fun of the seaside, sticky confections, fizzy drinks and wasps. You can rent out curious beach furniture, giant wicker hybrids of an easy chair and a beach hut. These are scattered on the sands like some surreal visitation. Wehrnemunde is still throbbing in sunshine and festivities. Parallel with the quayside there is a picturesque canal which serves much of the pleasure cruise trade. It is lined with bars and restaurants, filling now as we slip into the Baltic evening. We take a pew, our very own cushion clad, wicker two-seater. Here we sip our frothy beer, sit and watch the world go by, for ever and ever.

San Francisco

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We head out of Santa Monica along the coast and I feel I’m struggling beneath forces more pervasive than the damp Pacific air. The highway is hectic past Malibu where we become snared in our first major traffic jam as we cut in from the coast. It takes a long time snaking past Pasadena and eventually we stop on the outskirts of Santa Barbara at an empty, rustic restaurant.

Leaving LA

Leaving LA

There’s pleasant rolling countryside all the way to San Luis Obispo. The atmosphere of Steinbeck Country is suggested in sun-drenched farmland strung between the coastal hills. We leave the main road for Morro Bay to find the dingy Motel 6 just south of the town.The view is a strange combination of industrial and scenic – El Capitan, the giant rock dome in the bay is visible and we’re also in the lea of an impressive power station with its phalanx of chimneys. The route to town bisects an unpromising wilderness where we surprise a courting couple (oops), before finding ourselves at Morro Bay’s Embarcadero. This really is Californian coastal quaint, the wooden buildings on the wharf housing plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars with live music. I’m not feeling too well and I go back to collect the car while the others go for food. The walk back along the coast is not so straightforward as I had imagined but the falling sun lifts the spirits before sinking into darkness.

The night is bad and herself handles the driving chores for the run up to Monterrey. We wind along the bulky coast with the temperature skimming the low sixties. There are few cars on the road and very little by way of houses or pitstops off it. By midday we reach Monterrey and the motel looks good with a curvy Hockneyesque swimming pool. The Missus goes in search of a chemist while I bed down. She is met with sympathy as the chemist girl wonders if the holiday has been spoiled. It’s not really like that. It is unfair to be struck down on a journey I had been looking forward to but that’s the way it goes – better near the end than at the start.

After medication time (don’t ask) it’s down to Fisherman’s Wharf for a slice of Monterrey. There’s loads happening here and, if a bit touristic, it’s bright and cheerful. We spend some time with a man displaying his colourful menagerie of parrots and macaws. Most places offer the local delicacy of seafood chowder served in a bread bowl. Later we wander on towards Cannery Row although we don’t have time to investigate the Steinbeck connection further. There are pelicans aplenty in the cove, very much the pet bird of the town. At the harbour too is the site where the Americans first came ashore to claim California in the 1840s. Monterrey was the regional capital then but by 1849 all eyes turned to San Francisco.

I attempt driving but can’t get back into it so herself takes us into San Francisco. There’s a rollercoaster entry into the city from off the freeway as the centre lane goes airbound before hooking up to the grid. The grid itself never took account of the hills of the peninsula so the rollercoaster continues through the streets heading downtown. Leaving the boys and the baggage off at the Hilton, I take the Cadillac the last few blocks to the drop off. Fun, in a mildly terrifying way, as streets disappear into the sky and the skyline plunges up and down over the bonnet like a wave. I follow a cable car – a no-no, apparently – before getting blasted for sawing across two lanes in my last on-street manoeuvre. The garage hands are impressed with the car but as nonplused as we by the plastic thingies which have taken up space in the boot since Denver. We say our fond goodbyes to 300 OXT.

The cable car terminus on Market street is only a couple of blocks away and after life on the road it’s a pleasure to take public transport. The boys are on the runner board as we take the trip over to Fisherman’s Wharf. This proves to be our main centre of exploration for the duration, with boat trips and bikes for hire while shops, restaurants and panhandlers abound. Regarding the latter, it’s best to keep eyes averted or purposefully focussed to avoid parting with your cash to the many needy, and probably not-so-needy, beggars that infest the city. At the cable car terminus the couple ahead of us in the queue asked directions from a passerby and found themselves charged for the privilege. At the Wharf a beggar basks in the honesty of his pitch with a sign asking for money but admitting that he’ll probably blow it all on booze.

Oran is briefly snared by a panhandler with the line – ten bucks says I can tell you where you got your shoes. Oran knows he’s got them on his feet – “You’re the guy who got money off my Uncle Brendan last year,” he says. Your man still wants payment but we think he should invest in a new line.

We eat at a Rainforest where the waitress is keen to regale us with details of her workbreaks. “Hi, I’m Debbie, I’ll be your waitress this evening;” but then again – “Hi, this is Brenda, she’ll be standing in for me while I take my break;” and then – “Hi, I’m back from my break….” This is all very well, but any chance we might get a break, some food, even?

The lads discover a sudden yen to see Alcatraz, the mothership is, I suppose, calling them home. We get tickets for three from a laconic Hispanic in a sidewalk stall who enthuses about Frisco’s chill and fog. It’s part of the city’s charm, he says. In fact the only time we see the notorious fog is picturesquely from the comfort of our hotel room. It is spectacular, rolling in and rolling away, taking bits of the city with it, illuminating other parts against its soft backdrop. I am happy not to be caught in it – I have improved but still feel a bit foggy myself.

Next morning we hike up through Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach and on down to Fisherman’s Wharf for the boat. Chinatown is everything you would expect, bustling and bright and entirely Chinese. The financial district forms a jagged, incongruously modern backdrop to the area which was the original settlement of Yerba Buena, holding its old world soul within the ethnic brashness. As is often the way, Chinatown segues into little Italy (viz New York, Bray etc.). North Beach takes the top of the rise before falling away to the coast by way of Columbus Avenue. There’s a pleasant collection of Italian restaurants near Washington Square where we eat later.

Bad boys at Alcatraz

Bad boys at Alcatraz

Meanwhile it’s time for the trip to the island. Alcatraz is the city’s big tourist attraction and tickets are at a premium in high season. It’s worth it. The bay is blustery and the fortress forebodingly dramatic, its haunting familiarity due to Hollywood’s pervasive heritage. Oran and Davin get into some serious posing here as we follow in the footsteps of the Bird Man and other badguy heroes refracted from reality through the silver screen. But this was a real place with real stories stained into its walls and fittings. It’s eerie and moving. Strange that, on this of all islands, a sense of freedom prevails.

We return to North Beech and a sleekly traditional Italian restaurant, Volare, where we eat excellent pasta by an open window. That’s not necessarily the best idea in San Francisco as Davin is manhandled by a passing tramp, albeit in a reasonably goodspirited way. The event breaks the social ice with our dining neighbours and we fall into conversation with them for the evening. Joe Donohue and his wife were here before back in the halcyon sixties and they’ve returned from their home in Farmington, New Mexico, to touch base with those good old times. They’ve been coast to coast in the US throughout their lives and he travels extensively worldwide too. He tells me he does business with David Hay of Celtic and Chelsea fame. He is ‘Irish’, you can tell, and I had seen them giving us the eye before we fell into conversation.

On the last day of our summer vacation we rent bikes and cycle across the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito. The cycle route is well delineated and mostly flat. It passes through the Praesidio, an extensive parkland along the north of the peninsula. The place is packed as this is the 4th of July and all of Frisco, his wife and kids are out lounging, playing ball and barbecuing. There’s a sweaty climb up to the bridge and the cycle track is too hectic with that serious breed of cyclist who make car drivers seem comparatively relaxed.

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

The signage disappears on the far side of the bridge causing a bit of speculative exploration through a village in the cove before a policeman points us on the rocky road to Sausalito. This is a pretty but packed seaside town and we just manage to get a table on the cramped veranda of a snack bar overlooking the water. We take the ferry back which is a welcome relief from pumping pedals. It’s pleasantly cool and blustery on the bay after the exertions of a hot afternoon. You can’t get a trolley bus back from the wharf with all the holiday crowds so we hail a cab and get another switchback tour of the streets of San Francisco. The driver senses our tourist desires and takes us to the base of Lombard Street before the breathtaking plunge back to O’Farrell Street and the Hilton.

Tonight we have decided to go out in style, dining at the Hilton’s rooftop restaurant on the fortieth floor. We’re dizzy up here in the spires of the city and the fourth of July fireworks are all set to go off by dessert. A group of Americans nearby is getting emotional. As the sun goes down and fireballs burst out over the skyline they launch into a ragged version of God Bless America.

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Los Angeles

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We’re up early and heading into the Californian desert. The scenery falls to the coast, the heat stirring from its slumber over unremarkable, parched terrain. Casino camps float by until the Californian border where the traffic picks up with the heat as the altitude drops. Barstow is a halfway house which we’ve earmarked for brunch. Off Route 66 we stop in Peggy Sue’s Diner. It’s like we’ve stepped sideways in space and time. A weary, hirsute traveller dozes by the door, as impervious as an old dog to the passing customers. This place is more than just a diner, it’s a museum to the road, the black river of rock and roll. There are leathery oldtimers at the bar, a pink pizzeria at the back and lifesize Blues Brothers petrified inside a gyration. The traveller still dozes as we step back out into real time and head for LA.

Blues Brothers, with Da

Blues Brothers, with Da

Streaming into the LA freeway system is like falling into a video game, a Grand Theft Auto or the like. But these are real people, in real life, real fast, cars and trucks. Our navigators are wired up and we hop and weave with the best. The freeways are a vast intestinal system for the city, while my own are getting a bit knotted with the stress of it all. Downtown LA passes away to our right, its towers a pinpoint on the map of the sprawling city. I sense the boys’ anticipation of what must be, to anyone born late in the century, part of the modern world’s cultural axis. Movies, the motor car, television and rock and roll are all written in two giant neon letters, but we’re never going to see an awful lot of this place.

Santa Monica is at the end of the trail and the tangy, moist sense of the Pacific hangs heavy in the air. The Doubletree Apartments are the far side of the freeway, a pleasant though anonymous modern block around an atrium. There’s a rooftop pool to unwind and already there’s a slight ocean chill in the air.

Santa Monica’s main axis is the 4th street mall, paved, pedestrianised and lined with musicians and street performers. Route 66 still has a couple of blocks to go from here along Santa Monica Boulevard, on down to Santa Monica pier where at last it finds the ocean. The promenade above the beach is a nonstop swirl of joggers, skateboarders, cyclists and rollerbladers. The relentless cheerfulness of Californians may be the subject of some jeering but it certainly seems to work for them. A smiling skater (hey, everybody’s smiling) pushes her baby in a buggy and volunteers to stop and take our photograph. ‘Handsome family’ she says and, I suppose, means it.

Further south we merge with Venice Beach where there’s a subtle shift in ambience. This is more savoury than sweet, with even a hint of the unsavoury here and there. It’s a Dandelion Green on the seafront, where the stallholders haggle, smokers skin up and slackers and panhandlers mark out their turf. Somebody shouts ‘hey, David Bowie’ after me, so even the slagging is positive. The boys are off studying graffiti and fending off offers of soft drugs. We eat at a crowded beachside cafe and Davin gets his temporary tattoo. We get ice cream from a former Austrian international footballer who’s minding the stall for a friend. We chat about the dingy basement days of sixties football. He seems happy now in this heady mix of health fiends and hedonists. On the pier the big wheel is turning and the light is dying. There’s a nighttime gig with The Ventures, all gnarled oldguy fame and rock n’ roll memories. This is an appropriate end for Route 66.

Although the hotel staff wants to point us onto the freeway, I ain’t going there again if I can help it. A more stately, more interesting, route sees us shimmy up Santa Monica Boulevard, through Bel Air and intersecting with Hollywood Boulevard. There’s a short slalom uphill before we reach the Universal lot with a long walk to the park entrance. The queues are quick though it takes some time to get our bearings in the throng. The bottom level is for the fun rides, upstairs is food and special effects. A friendly steward recommends we get good and wet to begin with and I will take the Jurassic park ride with Davin not once, but twice – with baleful results. First we take the tour of the film lot which is probably the highlight of the day. A witty and entertaining trawl through some great movies with King Kong, Jaws and a Jumbo jet crash.

The Jurassic Park ride is good but the second soaking is followed by a chilling visit to an effects lot and I don’t think I’m the best for it afterwards. Perhaps the metamorphosis is showing early as one host greets me as the Wolfman, and Oran as Son of Wolfman. Just wait for the full moon, pal.

The Wolfman and Sons

The Wolfman and Sons

Last stop is Waterworld, a spectacular stunt routine which includes more soakings, inevitably, but which is a lot more enjoyable than the film. It’s a fitting finale although there’s a nice little coda before we leave Universal with a Blues Brothers show and a foursome of showbiz dames in a pink Pontiac. Ah, but can they hold a candle to our crew in the cream Cadillac?

Leaving the studios we avoid the freeway, just about, and also get ourselves lost for the first time. I favour the explorer’s approach, to head for the hills and see what happens but Marian insists on a more ordered retreat. We manage to pick up Santa Monica Boulevard after a brief digression through a supermarket carpark and a modest traffic jam by the Hollywood Bowl. I should have detoured down Hollywood Boulevard but the sun is setting now so it’s best to harmonise with Sherryl Crow.

The 4th Street mall is fairly hopping at night as men with guitars trade riffs and bars, there’s flamenco, latino and blues while the boys are caught up in a street performance. They have actually volunteered as participants by the time we’re called to our table at a restaurant up the street and I have to do the dad thing and pull them in.

At the restaurant I notice that the menu cautions tourists against tipping too little. Fifteen per cent, my standard tip, is dismissed disdainfully as the lowest possible. Twenty is suggested as reasonable but we’re encouraged to go higher. Hell, why not ask the waitress to join us for the night? Those days are gone, I suppose, and present company is good. I give Davin ten dollars to buy a cd from the flamenco guitarist who has regaled us during our meal. Vadim’s music becomes a regular soundtrack for the rest of our stay, it remains a favourite.

The next morning I dip my toe in the Pacific Ocean and feel at last that I’ve made it half way around the globe. The pier is people watcher paradise, good for sketching and fishing too. I watch a couple of games of volleyball but the better they get at it, the more uptight they are. Friendships are fragile in one tetchy doubles match, but there’s an uplifting rally of great mirth amongst a sextet of amateurs. Between the coast and 4th Street there’s a lively market. Back again on the mall there’s plenty of earnest men, young and old, trading guitar riffs and tall tales on benches and sidewalk cafes. I have a coffee outside a fast food then, shortly after rejoining the swarm of people, bump into herself and Oran crossing Route 66. Small world.

Las Vegas

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It’s a long drive from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, from the wilderness world to the land of fabrication. We’re up early and heading south to pick up Route 66 again, then turn to head west through Seligman and Kingman. At Seligman, birthplace of the Mother Road, there’s a long and lonely train strung along the horizon, and a cowboy in a pickup turning on to the range by a gateway. We stick to the freeway while the old route bumps off to our right. There’s a camper van parked in isolation with two waifs, Thelma and Louise, in halter tops and shorts posed on the roof staring off into the shimmering distance.

Kingman is off the highway but doesn’t originally reveal the tacky charm I had anticipated. We’re lost in the fast food outskirts before finding a Burger King off what could be the Naas Road Industrial estate where we pore over the maps again. This is always a good way to attract an American. A man folds up his mobile phone mid sentence to come, unbidden, to our assistance. With his help we’re back on Route 66, cruising by the amazing pink motels of ‘historic’ Kingman before picking up the highway again towards Las Vegas.

We head north on 93 with dust devils dancing off the road to the sounds of Sheryl Crow and Michelle Shocked on the stereo. Isolated trailers and shacks pin down handkerchief plots of minor cultivation in the arid landscape. We rise and rise until we come to the cooling variety of a maze of black rock hills. The troopers welcome us to Nevada and when we come to the edge of the plateau, there’s Lake Mead in its impossible cool blue, a fake lake held in the heat by the miracle of the Hoover Dam. Constructed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is surely one of the engineering marvels of the world, transforming the desert beyond into an Eden, of sorts.

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The car is now recording one hundred and ten degrees and outside the souvenir store the heat blasts at us as from an open oven. A wiry old-timer plays lock-hard in the narrow car park. British or Australian, he loves the heat but for us it’s life in the oven with the thermostat flipped. A meaty black family from New York must be shedding pounds passing over the dam from Arizona into Nevada, but they’re permanently happy with it all. Golden rest rooms offer brief respite from the heat before we head off into the desert.

There are glimpses of Lake Mead against the desiccated landscape, then there’s a sudden pulse in the traffic and we’re flying into the Las Vegas freeways. Oran navigates us well through some tense moments and dizzy junctions but pretty soon we’re heading in city traffic towards the strip. We do an impressive swerve in the empty forecourt of Caesar’s Palace before finding the right route to the multi story. Then we’re bound for the gilded lobby of the hotel. Our room is very impressive with jacuzzi in the bathroom and telephone in the toilet. We can see the Eiffel Tower from our window and more of the unreliable skyline of Las Vegas.

Time for a swim to take off the desert heat. I could get to like the pool at Caesar’s Palace. You lounge there and call a barely clad waitress to bring you an overpriced, but well chilled and welcome, beer. Mind you, the prat at the next lounger has decided to try out his chat-up lines on her which she attempts to fend off with chillingly white, but all too polite smiles. My beer is warming.

Out on the street it’s hotter than you expect out-on-the-street to be. The heat brings a peculiar stillness to the air and with the banks of neon it feels like walking through a vast arcade. There are fine water sprays on the street to give some humidity to the desert air, but already my Mick Jagger lips are in need of a remould. Further on up and we’re on the Rialto bridge, with gondolas waiting expectantly. We stroll up the strip in the evening to see the pirate pantomime at the Treasure Island. I thought the desert heat dissipated at night but if anything it’s hotter and heavier in the milling crowds.

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Las Vegas is not a place you either love or loathe – you can do both. It is terribly fake. The sights of the world, the Eiffel Tower, Venice, New York, ring hollow as hardboard and will be gone again in a few seasons; but it’s fun. There is beauty in imitation and glitz has its own romance. The Belaggio and Cesar’s Palace provide their own version of grandeur and perfection at a reasonable price and, for a night or two, you can maybe feel like a high-roller or an elegant courtier.

We take the monorail on the second day and sit beside a Colorado couple who are regulars here. They are from Grand Junction – before I die, I gotta see that town- and they recommend the original strip but it’s a bit far for us. Historical Las Vegas! We walk back through baking sunshine with occasional detours into the various casinos. Circus is tacky and weird, and it echoes some childhood feeling of Fossett’s, or Bray in the fifties. And besides, herself can attempt to catapult rubber chickens into a pot. Another casino with a western theme, vaguely nineteen seventy-ish is getting ready to shut down. We eat at a chrome diner and try to cool down a little.

The pool beckons again, a better place to while away the hours than in the relentless ching ching of the interior. We splash out on the Caesar’s Palace buffet tonight and this really is a meal you can shake hands with in the dark. I dream of it still but to describe it is probably too close to food porn – eat your heart out Homer Simpson!

The Boss and Davin continue on down to Luxor tonight, but Oran and I double back at New York. I’ve seen as much of the world as I can possibly take in forty eight hours. Hispanic men flick cards with sexual services all along the strip, while families and couples gawp at the Belagio fountains and the neon show goes on and on into the night.

Later, I make my own way through Caesar’s Palace casino into the wee small hours. The arcade shops are all closed, more like a mall now than the surreal, almost Italian city it has been impersonating. Some still gather at the Trevi fountain but more are pulled towards the blackjack and roulette tables. If I wanted to be distracted I could take my place at a table where lingerie clad croupiers would take my chips and maybe spin a wheel or two, or I could just play it quietly from the bar, where it’s quiet and almost empty.

Grand Canyon

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We head through the Painted Desert towards Flagstaff. The doom laden chords of The Doors seep out into the emptiness, leading on into Riders on the Storm. Ponderosa pines sprout from the arid hills and the city limits loom out of a mirage. The Cadillac heads downtown and touches tyres on Route 66. We’re on America’s main street, we’re on the Mother Road.

The town centre ranges along the railway where impossibly long trains regularly thunder through. There’s a bar and restaurant across the tracks which does a special free cocktail when the train is passing, if the waiters can hear you, I suppose. Our motel is a half mile out of town, just the right side of seedy but with a good pool and Route 66 visible from the window. There’s a Barnes and Noble next door where we spend some time reading and drinking buckets of coffee. Walking back into town the neighbourhood is a homely patchwork of residential, bohemian bars and diners, with a colourful smattering of churches, from Protestant sects to a determinedly Catholic Our Lady of Guadaloupe.

Davin spends a lot of the afternoon in a music shop with Oran and buys an effects box for his guitar. The car is filling up with stuff, but what better place than Route 66 to buy your wah-wah pedal? We relax over a beer at a shaded sidewalk bar. This is the only time I have ever seen a waitress accompanied by an intern – they’re very thorough here.

Flagstaff is a lively spot, its redbrick streets typical of the American west but with a more sophisticated, bigtown feel than Durango. At the town centre square there’s hot southern rock with a country twang playing throughout the day and into the evening. A large screen shows Happy Feet and there is indeed a happy feeling pervading the town.

After sundown, the nearby Lowell Observatory has set up a few telescopes for public amusement and edification in the square. We take our turn and talk to the astronomer who, as it turns out, is from Dublin. Small world, big universe, same sky all over. After an evening meal at the railway track, we take the windy road to the hills where the Lowell Observatory perches above the town. It’s a picture book observatory, a serene and surreal dotting of buildings set in the forest. There’s a great display of stars above us while beneath the diamond lights of Flagstaff spread out along Route 66. Again, astronomers have set out their stalls and we queue for a peek at the planets.

Percival Lowell obsessed over the sky, and there’s plenty of sky over Flagstaff. It was Lowell who put canals on Mars but also put a planet out beyond Neptune. Not long after he died this last planet was finally discovered, appropriately at Flagstaff. Pluto’s first two letters a tribute to the astronomer.

The Grand Canyon is due north of Flagstaff. We set off early through the San Francisco Peaks. The Ponderosa forest passes changelessly by. These trees are peculiarly regular. Neither dense nor inspiringly huge, they conspire to a misleading ordinariness, though the overall effect is unsettlingly vast. The Canyon is easy to find. Keep going till you hit the hole in the ground. It takes some time to locate our accommodation, the Maswik Lodge, inside the park. We’re too early to check in and a bit hot and bothered by it all. I’m anxious to see the canyon as though it will somehow close or diminish if allowed to stay unobserved for another hour or two.

Eventually we trudge down to the rim. The initial view is perplexing. Like much of America it triggers a sensation of deja vu, but such deja vu is based on the image and the reality itself is so enormous that it becomes difficult to recognise. At the canyon’s most popular viewing point the whole thing is flattened to hues of blue and magenta, presenting a tableau that is impossible to assimilate at once. It’s when we move around in the landscape an appreciation of its immensity and beauty begins to seep in. We venture just below the rim on the first day and teeter over the abyss on unprotected trails. A friendly squirrel pulls Davin’s hair and poses for the camera.

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The park at the south rim is spread over several miles. A free shuttle service links the various vantage points. This is just as well. At one point we decide to walk between two stops but away from the shade of the pines it is very hot. The walk along the rim is a joy. There are a number of lodges teetering on the brink dealing in arts, crafts and souvenirs. Park rangers wait politely to help tourists with enquiries and to share their knowledge of the park’s wildlife and history. Californian condors wheel far below, tiny even through the binoculars, and they are big birds. We take our first dip below the rim and the heat gathers ever closer. The boys are particularly taken with capturing all this on camera and pose appropriately above yawning chasms, all this without a safety net, or even a railings.

Sunset at the canyon is worth the price of admission. This spectacle has been specially adopted by the God crew. Our original perch was pleasantly quiet, I thought, but herself moves us two hundred yards further on to where a battalion of Jesus fans are praising the Lord with the encouragement of their pep-talking leader. Well, they do have a point. If this is God’s light show it’s the best goddamned lightshow on the planet. A resident of the park also gives strangers turns at his telescope and answers any questions. This is a thing that Americans like to do. Courtesy is by way of duty but not in any weary sense, they’re proud of this place and like showing it off.

The next morning we brave the chill of dawn to catch the sun coming up. We head westward to get a good vantage point, practically sprinting up the path so that we’re winded by the time we get to a good spot. Already we can spot hikers making for the bottom of the canyon. It is reckoned as next to impossible to get up and down in a day, and even to get down requires an early start. It looks a great adventure, setting off with a small pack, the odd lonely light shining from lodges on the rim.

Later, we take a shuttle east for a brief adventure below the rim. Myself and the boys plunge towards the towering desert. At seven thousand feet there is no sense of coolness, falling a few hundred feet in the next half hour is parching. Herself, meanwhile, relaxes by reading horror stories helpfully posted by the park authorities, telling how hikers have managed to do themselves to death by underestimating the power of the landscape. Things aren’t helped by a family foursome, whom we passed as they ascended, clearly noting our casual footwear and the boys’ black teeshirts. They ponder loudly at the top on whether they should call the rescue services given that such an ill-equipped a party as us couldn’t hope to make it out alive. We do, of course, the boys bounding up to the rim while I manage to plod home by myself.

We stop for drinks at El Tovar – the hotel for the top brass which successfully mingles elegance with rustic wilderness charm. The waiter from West Virginia cheerfully tells me I’m like Mick Jagger, but without the wrinkles. I laugh, causing more wrinkles, and get myself upgraded to Pierce Brosnan. “Why Pierce was here just last month, sitting right over there at the bar.” Small world. We return for our evening meal, although there’s a long queue. But it’s worth it to upgrade from the Maswik canteen to a proper restaurant within sight of the rim. A restaurant on the edge of the universe – in a way.

Monument Valley

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The Rocky Mountains of Colorado rise to the south and we’re bound for the Million Dollar Highway towards Durango. The scenery is sheer alpine, snow-capped peaks rising out of a painted foreground of farmland and forest. Ouray, named after a chief of the Utes, is a beautiful wooden town clinging to a rugged gorge, hemmed in on three sides by spectacular mountains. This is ski resort country in winter and already the road is mimicking the giddy slalom of the skier.

We skirt some scary cliffs and there is no barrier between us and the precipice. We stop at the thirteen thousand foot Red Mountain Pass. This underlines how Colorado was named, the snow streaked peaks have changed from blue to red, most strikingly in the mountain that dominates the pass. There are two more high mountain passes before Silverton, a nineteenth century mining town. Silverton is connected to Durango by rail which offers a round trip on a traditional steam train.

We get a motel beside the quaint station in downtown Durango, a bustling place that retains its old wild west charm, punctuated by the train whistle. There are fine red brick hotels and bars, plenty of restaurants and shopping. We eat Mexican tonight, which seems appropriate on the fringes of the desert. I’m thinking of Dylan and Emmylou taking the horse across the desert, and Dylan’s Mexican taking an avenging bullet. ‘Hot chilli peppers in the blistering sun…’ The waiter is surprisingly abrupt, but the food – fajitas for me – is excellent, and plenty of it.

It’s one hundred and sixty miles to Monument Valley with plenty of interest on the way. We stop for gas outside Mesa Verde. The woman at the office has to come out to show me how to use the pump. She has a more sophisticated, citified look than I would have anticipated out here. We fill up and head into the reservation.

Mesa Verde reminds me a bit of Benbulben, but russet and arid. It’s a twenty mile trip in from the gate, winding up steeply to a thousand feet above the plain, then across the parched and rugged plateau. This was home to Pueblo Indians a thousand years ago who developed an advanced civilisation on the harsh but secure mesa. The Navajo, who arrived in these parts five hundred years ago called them the Anasazi, the enemy-ancestor. Even then the ancient civilisation had faded with mythology hinting it contributed to the southward push of the Aztecs. The scattered remnant forms a necklace across the desert, always a vulnerable target for passing warriors, be they Apache, Navajo, Hispanic or American. The Anasazi built stone villages in the rock fissures, fantastic sculpted dwellings suggesting a magical and mythological people. We visit one village clinging to shallow caves below the flat rock capping of the plateau. The place has suffered from fire recently and weird charred forests stretch for miles, like jagged tableau acting out a Rousseau painting. The desert heat is heavy, even up here, giving us a foretaste of what to expect further south, sweltering on the horizon.

Turning towards the Four Corners we pass Sleeping Ute Mountain and the landscape begins to limber up for the buttes and pinnacles of Monument Valley. The Four Corners is the one place in the US where four states meet – Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. We pull into a circular, dusty park ringed by souvenir stalls. The stalls are operated by Native Americans. This is Navajo country, one young stallholder tells me. North, south and west, although, with a faintly bemused gesture of his chin towards the mountains to the east, he acknowledges the Utes. We get flavoured ice in a conical cup to ward off the heat.

We talk to a couple from San Diego who are heading north east on some mixture of family business and pleasure. He’s depositing the care somewhere in Montana before heading back home alone. “I look forward to it,” he says to my commiserations. You see that a lot over the mid-west; those basic motels where the guy puts in with his car, sits on the stoop nursing an amber drink, squinting into the sunset. In the morning there’ll be nothing there but tyremarks. Heading north towards Utah the car registers the outside temperature at ninety six degrees, and climbing. Now the magical monuments are glimpsed pushing out of the desert floor.

The Navajo reservation is the most populous in America. Navajoland is just over the bridge from Mexican Hat. This gets its name from a giddy stone formation nearby, for all the world resembling a sombrero held aloft on a stony pole. It’s a jagged string of rough-hewn joints, not entirely charmless, hugging the last straight stretch of road before a wide, shallow gorge. A place to go for a few jars I’d say, especially since the reservation is dry. ImageThere is a peculiarly ancient feeling to the landscape, the sensation that it was home to dinosaurs as jagged and strange as the rock formations. Everpresent is the mythology of the wild west. Our Cadillac could be a stagecoach, the windscreen the frame of a Hollywood film and, in the lengthening shadows, hostile indians follow our progress.

Goulding’s Lodge, 1000 Monument Valley, is set above a straggling settlement of low dwellings. It is built into sandstone cliffs and looks out on one of the world’s most enthralling and resonant views. Harry Goulding and his wife ‘Mike’ had established the lodge in 1923 as a trading post with the Navajo but in the Depression years the tribe had fallen on hard times. Attempting to improve their plight, the Gouldings set off for Los Angeles in 1938 to convince directors of the advantages of Monument Valley as a film location. John Ford obliged and within months had located Stagecoach starring John Wayne in this strange landscape. The Western, as we know it, was born.

There’s a museum to Goulding’s illustrious past, a red stagecoach outside and a timelessly redolent corral fence with wagonwheels. All sorts of romance come together at once: the boyhood thrill of the western, the teenage anticipation of love in the image of the silver screen, and the mature realisation of the timeless aesthetic of the western with its bold reduction of history to a mythology of good overcoming adversity. There’s an excellent shop with beautifully crafted jewelry, a predominance of silver and turquoise, and the rightly famous, and expensive, Navajo weaving. There are colourful stones and crystals too amongst interesting souvenirs of which the most poetically named are the dream catchers, and the most useful are the peace pipes, perhaps.

The restaurant is tiered and arranged arena style towards picture windows looking out on the valley. I order a Navajo Taco which might be quantitively described as minced Brontosaurus on a football pitch of pitta bread, with two choices from the salad tray. The reservation is, like I said, dry; but Davin gets one over on his Da with a pint of alcohol-free beer. We have insurance, though, having bought a bottle of Colorado wine from Durango. We retire to our room where, from the balcony, we gaze on the dreaming spires and vermilion slabs strung out before us. We watch the sun go down and, six hours or so later, watch it rise again.

Colorado

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Colorado The light is fading over the freeway as we approach Denver. Way out west the sky is painted with improbable exuberance, attempting to distract from the serene, serrated silhouette of the Rockies. Denver rises from the undulating mid western prairie – the mile-high city. With our luggage still somewhere between Dublin and Dubai we are travelling light and running on empty.

On the second floor of Earl’s Place (that’s one above ground over here) there’s a sports bar and a restaurant which is practically al fresco, the outer wall is somehow removed and we are of a height with the city trees, swaying balmily in the breeze. American waitresses are programmed to attack. Relentlessly cheerful and equipped with the anorak’s grip of every nuance of the cuisine. Each order is answered with a question – how do you like your steak? your eggs? American or Italian cheese? Oh, surprise me, Oran entreats. Yet their enthusiasm is infectuous. Maybe it’s the altitude but we mirror their smiles and echo their repartee, and then find that it comes naturally.

The 16th street mall is Denver’s main drag, a pedestrianised street a mile long, lined with trees, restaurants, cafes and bars. A free electric shuttle bus operates along the street or you can take a horse drawn carriage if you fancy something more grande. The atmosphere is laid back, quiet and friendly. At one end of sixteenth street is the State Capitol, typically neo-classical, with a high burnished dome of twenty four carat gold. The high rise financial district is relatively recent, gleaming like an extrusion of giant crystals through the red brick fabric of the nineteenth century cow town. Even more unlikely is the teetering sharp edifice of Libeskind’s Art Museum. A sudden jolt from the classical lines of the Civic Centre, the multi faceted structure seems to have made an unplanned landing at the plaza from some distant and bizarre planet.

We return to the airport for our car and to leave instructions for our wandering luggage. We’re pencilled in for a Buick but at Davin’s insistence we upgrade to a Cadillac. This is still shrink wrapped, a white panther for our west coast prowl. Out on the freeway I am engulfed in a stampede of pick ups piloted by laconic maniacs in stetsons. Home on the range rover, if you like. We make for the maw of the Rockies. It’s a relief to get off the freeway and snake up silent curved roads to the mountains.

Leadville is a gem cunningly concealed in its base metal name. Here on the continental divide Colorado’s highest peaks rise snow topped over the purple sage and the scent of columbine spices the scarce air. At two miles above sea level Leadville is America’s highest incorporated city. The discovery of silver brought the boom times here. There are fifty buildings from the 1870s when Leadville was a boomtown of 30,000 people. The Tabor Opera House and Grand Hotel remain even if the population did not. The ghosts of gunslingers are caught reflected on the fine frontage of the grandly named Harrison Street where Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack once strutted, and no doubt caused plenty of lead to fly.

I enter Leadville’s legendary Silver Dollar Saloon which dates from 1879 and is the perfect synthesis of the Irish pub and the wild west saloon. It’s all aged woods and bottled beers, a louche ambience enlivened with the crackle of conversation. All roads lead here. The woman tending bar tells me she’s of Indian, German and Scottish stock and that the McMahon family has run this place for nearly seventy years. I fall in with two Canadian truckers and with the mixture of alcohol and altitude everything suddenly seams hilarious. Later I float up the sidewalk as the night sky bursts above me, just two miles nearer heaven and the view is perfect. Mind, on those echoing raised sidewalks I keep an eye out for a phanthom gunslinger, for Doc Holiday or Texas Jack; not that I’m sure I can shoot too straight right now.

After Leadville the Collegiate Range – Princeton, Yale and Harvard – guard the horizon to the west. We pass through Granite and Poncha Springs towards Gunnison. The premonition of an impending showdown is emphasised by Gunnison, still resplendent in its western clothes. There’s a fleeting Irish connection at the Gunnysack Bar which serves Harp lager on draught – but you won’t hear the cry of the curlew out here.

Davin determines that I risk life and limb to ride through a raging torrent in a tub. They don’t call it brown trouser rafting, but they might. We book with Scenic Tours for a two hour raft down the Taylor River. Their advertising doesn’t deceive and shows people plunging headfirst into boiling waters and clinging desperately to rocks. The starting point is an hour’s drive up a wooded gorge which could once have teemed with hostile Indians. Instead, thirty or so enthusiasts full of foolish and youthful optimism await the flotilla of six rafts.

Greg is our guide and tells us the hidden dangers of rafting, as if the obvious ones weren’t enough. The paddle is the source of most grief. The leading hand should keep the top of the handle covered so it doesn’t get waved about in rough water. Otherwise, according to Greg, “Franklin here could have a case of summer teeth: Some are in the boat, some are in the river and some are in Franklin’s head.”

In fact Franklin and his wife Liz are well experienced with the great outdoors and cede pole position to us on the helter skelter of the Taylor. They have a hike planned later. They want to live. After a short practice run of about ten seconds, we drop over a mini Niagara and enter a world more suitable to fish, bears and what’s left of the Mohicans. Greg has a deep knowledge of the river and of the helpful names of its most frightening features. There is the Tombstone and the Toilet (don’t ask) and more besides that I was too busy to commit to memory – why memorise something that might kill you? The Tombstone is the only one to claim victims as a rookie guide and four teenage girls get upended. There is a brief frantic scramble amongst the flotilla but all are dragged quickly to safety.

To add spice to the quieter lower reaches, as I begin to enjoy the scenery despite shivering from the soaking, Davin is allowed to ‘ride the bull‘. Greg positions him on the prow and there are a few good plunges on the last stretch to give him the soaking he so richly deserves. He enjoys it immensely. What the heck, so do I. Image

Anchorage

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Volcanos spread south from Seattle, cones frosted white against the blue sky. Flying north, civilisation is trumped by the crumpled wilderness of mountain and sea. This gathers its own dusting of snow while the clear sky turns grey and mottled with cloud. We fall into conversation with Donna in the aisle seat. She is tanned from a fortnight with her daughter down in the Southern 49. We compare notes on the joys of parenthood. She hails from San Diego originally but is well naturalised now. Her dad was a pilot, as many Alaskans are. I think of the famous Fly Boys, those bush pilots that opened up the outback in the ‘20s and 30‘s. Pioneers like Carl Eilson, Russel Merrill and Bob Reeve wrote sagas and epic poetry with their vapour trails across endless daylight skies, above an empty wilderness.

Approaching Anchorage the plane twists and turns through mountain passes, crosses stormy inlets, descends through veil after veil of heavy clouds. The full spectrum of grey and black is sundered by shocking white slashes. It is ominous, yet exhilarating. There is one last banking manoeuvre, I imagine the wings tilting near enough to the perpendicular, some passengers moan while we grip our seats before sliding in to touchdown at last, with some relief.

Our luggage doesn’t show but it somehow seems unimportant. Anyway, our lift hasn’t shown up either. Both arrive simultaneously, an hour late. George, our driver, is another to hail from California. He came up here at age eight, hated it at first but loves it now. This certainly ain’t the sunshine state. Rainclouds are punctured by the serrated mountains and the long straight streets of Anchorage are shiny with rain.

Weather clears by morning and it’s warm and sunny when we hit the streets. Head out of town on 5th Avenue, out to where the streets have names. Anchorage is a railway town and follows the typical template in its street naming. Avenues are numbered consecutively north to south, Streets in alphabetical order east to west. We walk past a knife shop and other places you might not linger. Loop back on 4th which becomes downtown after A st. It’s alphabet city after that.

There are craft shops and souvenir joints aplenty. In one, rich with beautifully wrought clutter, we get talking to Richard Ziegler. Ziggy, as he is known, is a cobbler, odd job man, craftsman and muralist. He loves wolves and dogs, which form a recurrent motif in his art. He explains the First Nation and Inuit cultures of shape shifting. Consider a group of Eskimos – an allowable term in Alaska, apparently – out hunting. If one falls through ice and next animal to emerge is a seal, it is not unreasonable to explain that as a shape-shifting hunter. It is consoling, too.

Across the road, a giant mural by Ziggy adorns the intersection of D Street and 4th Avenue. It celebrates the Iditarod dog-sled race which starts from here every first Saturday in March. The world’s best Mushers set off with their sixteen strong dog teams in a race lasting nine days or more across the desolate terrain of Western Alaska, all the way to Nome, up by the Bering Strait. This was once the only way to travel, before roads, before railways and aeroplanes. One famed race against time, in 1925, saw mushers deliver diphtheria serum to Nome. The lead dog on the last run, Balto, is commemorated with a statue in Central Park, New York.

Murals and other visual tricks loom out of the city architecture elsewhere. A lifesize whale pod traverses a wall along one side of the Town Square Park nearby. Painted freehand by Robert Wyland, it brings the surrounding wilderness within the city limits. The wilderness is a very tangible thing in Anchorage.

One hundred years ago there was nothing here. Captain Cook had sailed up the inlet that bears his name, back in 1776, in a vain search for the Northwest Passage. He didn’t hang around, though the city’s finest hotel is named for him, and a memorial stands at the foot of 4th Avenue. The Russians were the first old world people to settle Alaska. Russian Orthodox churches still peep out of the Americana and remains the religion of Native population.

Typically, the Americans struck gold shortly after buying Alaska from the Russians in 1867. The Yukon goldrush is much starred in the western psyche, even still. Many legends were spun from the untamed territory. Jack London’s ripping yarns, the lucid poetry of Robert Service. Alaska, for all its vast and numbing physicality, is very much a metaphysical construct. By the early twentieth century the Americans began to sew together their patchwork territory with the railway. Thus was Anchorage born, a halfway house between the port of Seward to the south and Alaska’s Golden Heart, Fairbanks, much further north.

The oldest building to survive is the Oscar Anderson house. He was the 18th man to hit town a hundred years ago. He witnessed the growth of a roughhouse town, the engagement with the last frontier. The tussle still goes on. Oscar Anderson lived in this house until 1974, it is now converted into a museum; apparently he haunts it still. Nearby, the Tony Knowles trail heads out along the inlet, along by the railway tracks.

The parkland meanders off into the suburbs. Along the main track is a scale model of the solar system. Devised by a local college student, it is designed on the principle that walking speed equates with the speed of light, testablishing the distances between the planets which are scaled down proportionately in size. At N street, Mars is a grape, while heading back along 5th Avenue, Venus a ping pong ball, Earth something similar while Mercury is a Malteser. The sun is a hemisphere sinking behind the city theatre.

Rain is falling heavily as we pick up our rental the next morning. Heading north towards Denali on the Glenn Highway the landscape is ridiculously big. Mt McKinley, or Denali – the big one in the Native tongue – is an outsize tower dwarfing already impressive mountains surrounding. It is rarely visible. So, when it does peek palely through the mist, it is more suggestive of art or magic, a trailer from heaven’s movie. Some miles from Anchorage we are swallowed by the forests, human habitation dwindles and dies. It’s five hours to Denali where we find our wilderness lodge set on a dizzying crag overlooking the valley. The town stretches along the highway like a hastily fashioned necklace. The ad hoc boardwalk gives a feeling of frontier times. Ramshackle huts and houses are given to souvenir shops, craft shops, restaurants and snackeries. It feels both impermanent yet old.

We eat at Prospector’s Pizza, the place is hopping. We fall easily into conversation with the locals, as is becoming customary. Kelly and her husband join us at the bar. He’s on crutches and has an accident prone life from which to draw his stories. He’s worked around here variously on construction and as a pilot. His hair-raising accidents only make him more cheerful. Before leaving he hops over to our table and presses a $20 bill on me. It would rankle with an Alaskan to let us leave without showing us hospitality.

We emerge into the full glare of dusk. Grey veils float to the summits, catching fire as they drift north towards the uncertain sun. We walk onto a near deserted patio where four dudes are strumming guitars and sipping bottled beer. As the guitar music waxes I feel connected to evenings like this around the globe, experienced by me and so many others too. Glancing south I see a rainbow spin its arc through the retreating rain. It’s drawing a bridge from Denali across the sky, dropping its gold off god knows where. Behind me the music stops, and the light of evening sharply wanes.

Our return to Anchorage is brief and passing. Above us, mountain, cloud and rain conspire to show the pathway into heaven. The city slips around us like a mirage. The ground below is slick with water, and it feels as if the city could at any time fade into droplets and air. I must come back some day, back to Anchorage and walk the streets of glory. Step again onto 4th Avenue, flip a Mustang lighter to fire up one last cigarette. With darkness drawing in, the feeling persists that I am sheltering under the rainbow. Cold creeps up, coating everything in its silvered glass. Anchorage recedes into infinite space, stars spread along the avenues and streets.