Rare Lynx kept me ‘smelling of roses’
FOLLOWING on from my recent reflections on 42 years of writing, here is another of my favourite memories from ten years ago, when I was working as an adviser in Derbyshire. It involves yet one more jaunt into the wilds.
The life of Riley some people say, and as my mother once said to me, “If you fell in a muck cart, you would come out smelling of roses!”
And so it proved when I embarked upon a self-financed visit to a Secondary School in Nerja in Southern Andalucia.
It was a ruse of course, and although I did indeed do the business as an ambassador for Derbyshire, I drank like a fish, ate like a Lord and met up with the Mighty Oaf - my much-loved comrade in travel.
The Spanish educators, were keen to hear about some of the initiatives I used in Derbyshire and beyond, and locally at Glossopdale Community College, and I was happy to oblige, being just as enthusiastic to see how they tackled disaffection in that part of the world.
The rose-scent first arrived on Thursday morning as I walked to the school, sun cracking the pebble mosaics of the public walkways and burning up the mist which hung like a necklace around the mountain backdrop. A walk I could handle on a daily basis, with a stop for coffee.
My contact, Jose Manuel, was not only a great teacher - and this is the bit that I could not make up - he also happened to be a local wildlife expert, and the last band he had seen in Malaga was the Dubliners.
We hit it off, to say the least, and the students were just as welcoming.
Fortunately, school is out early in Spain, which allowed Oaf and I to jump into a hire car and head upwards to the Alpujarras, an area of outstanding natural beauty which starts out as a series of deep cut verdant valleys of roughly hewn rock, and ends up as a snowy lunar landscape.
The road is not for sufferers of vertigo, and onwards and upwards we drove, hairpin after hairpin, passing through villages which got smaller and smaller until finally nestling below the snowline. The habitation was left behind and the road became nothing more than a dirt track. Around one bend, 100 or more wild goats stopped to weigh us up.
Parking up at over 3,000 metres, we headed into the woods, disturbing two lizards the size of anorexic rats which skittered in an ungainly fashion beneath the nearest boulders, and a goshawk which flashed through the conifers. A multitude of tits flitted tantalisingly close, appearing to come to us for a once over.
Emerging from the trees, the air was tangibly thinner and we were able to bask in glorious sunshine looking directly onto the snow, a ridge or two away.
I thought I was a cert’ for eagles and vultures, but neither appeared, but there were no worries, it was Paradise anyway.
Now, this might be difficult to explain, but on the way down I discovered droppings which set the hairs on the back of my neck into overdrive; I was fairly confident the stool belonged to an Iberian lynx, a rare and beautiful feline, and it was fresh. How could I be so sure? Simple, among my field guides has always been a copy of ‘Animal Tracks and Signs’ published by Collins, and affectionately known as ‘Sean’s bumper book of poo!’
The Iberian Lynx, possibly the most endangered of the world’s 36 cats, stands on the edge of extinction. I explained their problems to Oaf, and he said, “I don’t know about extinction Woody, but they certainly stink!” Whilst I was tempted to throw the lynx stool in his direction, I resisted, and then we caught sight of a lynx which was obviously surprised to see us, and although it was just a flashing glimpse of the cat’s rear end as he made off (like the shot above from the RSPB), what a glorious sight indeed.
An Iberian lynx is just over twice the size of a domestic cat, but with longer legs, giving it a more lanky appearance. It sports a stubby bob tail, characteristic pointed ears topped by strands of hair. Strange as it may seem, my mother was only half-right when it came to smelling of roses, because on this occasion, after my faecal examination I came out smelling of ‘muck cart.’