Hastings Signpost © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

Although Hastings gave its name to the Battle of Hastings — when William II of Normandy defeated King Harold II of England in 1066 — it’s over 6 miles southeast of the battle site, which itself became the town of Battle, forming around the Abbey that was built in 1095 to commemorate the Norman Conquest.

Daisies © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

Moving on, moving around, a few days here and a week or so there. Packing and unpacking. Settling in to a new situation for long enough to feel settled before picking up sticks again and moving on.

In the flow of constant change there are inevitable casualties. Some days you wake up to no clean socks, others to the realisation that the book you want to read is halfway across town with the small collection of belongings unloaded temporarily from the car. But these sort of things are minor in comparison to the casualty of concentration, a necessity for writing.

The irony, though, is that life itself tends to be full of inspiration when everything’s in flux.

Many experiences from these past few weeks are fading or being conflated as my sense of time becomes warped. It’s just over a month since we left Burgos and spent a week travelling through France. Only four weeks since arriving back in the UK. Hardly any time at all, yet so much of it seems so far away. Even those things that happened only a couple of days ago.

But this stretched sense of time exists only in recollecting events. Individual days rush by, taking the detail with them, and I keep telling myself I must carve out time to capture those details. Even if only in bare-bone form. Some day further down the line I might thank myself for doing so.

The reality, thus far, has paled in comparison to the intention.

I could admonish myself for my failure as a writer. But aside from knowing it won’t do any good, I also realise greater wisdom lies in letting go of those things that are becoming fuzzy and to trust that whatever is worth recalling at a later stage will rise up with relative clarity.

In the meantime the most important thing I can do is focus on what’s in front of me and fully immerse myself in the present. By doing so experiences are likely to embed all the stronger within me and, as such, become a source of inspiration, whether I make use of them while they’re playing out or in aggregate after the fact.

Writing in flux is challenging. There’s no way around it. Unless, of course, I sit down with a notebook in front of me.

Mufidah & Sean—Happy Folk

If you’ve always liked the idea of dropping into the conversation that you’ve got a couple of writers-in-residence staying with you for a short time, then why not take a look at this possibility?

Alternatively, if you’d like to bring a Write from the Heart writing workshop to your town, then do get in touch — we’d love to hear from you!

#writing #cooking #sharing #happyfolk

Bergerac on the Dordogne © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

In mid-April Sean and I drove 560 kilometres (350 miles) north east of Burgos to Bergerac in the Dordogne region of France. Although we’d enjoyed our time in Spain, making friends and immersing ourselves in northern Spanish life, it was time to move on, to return to the UK for the spring and summer, and to run our Write from the Heart writing workshops.

Burgos Camino Sign © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

Having spent over seven months in Burgos we were used to seeing a variety of Camino signs to help guide the many pilgrims, or peregrinos, on their way through the city towards León and eventually Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in north-western Spain. They were often a joy to see as they varied from one to the next, although the basic elements were always the same — either a scallop shell or a yellow arrow, or a combination of the two. To the initiated, the sign on the Burgos pavement gives contradictory advice since the arrow is pointing ahead but the scallop shell, metaphoric of all roads converging at Santiago de Compostela, the final destination on the Way of  St. James, is pointing to the left.

The scallop shell has been the symbol of the Camino de Santiago for so long that it has both myth and metaphor attached to its once practical use as drinking cup.

Fiat Dino on the Camino © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

Whilst in the Dordogne we revisited the small bastide town of Eymet and were surprised to come upon a Camino sign outside On the Road Again, a garage owned and run by vintage car specialist Michel Ossard. Seeing the signpost gave us both unexpected warm and fuzzy feelings. Something so familiar yet far removed from the place where we had first learned of its significance.

Later that day we talked with our lovely CoushSurfing hosts, telling them we were surprised to see the familiar scallop shell outside the Eymet garage. It turns out that both Bergerac and Eymet are on the Way of Vézelay, one of the four traditional routes into Spain which joins with the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago) just beyond Pamplona.

And so Eymet and Bergerac are just two stops along one of the many ways leading to the way that 200,000 people walk every year en route to Santiago de Compostela.

“Some of this book — perhaps too much — has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it — and perhaps the best of it — is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

— Stephen King
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Buy on Amazon.co.uk  ●  Buy on Amazon.com

Brighton Fishing Quarter © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

The golden hour outside the Fishing Museum in the Brighton Fishing Quarter, with a boat from the Newhaven fishing fleet, registration NN153.

Catedral de Burgos © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

Toll roads are to be avoided. They’re costly and dull, and definitely not the route of choice for a couple of slow travellers. Or so we thought before embarking on our drive north through Spain and France on our way back to England.

The day we left Burgos we spent hours sorting, packing and figuring out the Chinese puzzle that is our roof box and car boot combined, but by midday we were on the road to Bergerac. A few hours later than we had hoped, but according to Google Maps we were looking at a journey time of seven hours if we took the non-toll roads.

The tricky thing about avoiding toll roads is that many more signs point to them than to alternate routes. Which is how we found ourselves heading north on the A1. Oh well, we shrugged, it looks like a good road. About an hour later we were eleven euros lighter but quite happy as the numerous tunnels took us more smoothly through the mountains than the non-toll road would have done.

It all began to go awry on the Basque coastline between France and Spain.

Initially we felt quite pleased with ourselves as we managed to avoid being sucked in to the toll road. But very quickly we hit stop-and-go traffic and crawled along for more than two hours, covering a stretch that, distance-wise, might only have taken half an hour. As a result, we didn’t pull into Bergerac until 9.30 that evening. Ordinarily this would have been okay but our CouchSurfing hosts had gone out to dinner and all we could do was wait for them to return.

We walked into town and back a couple of times. Hung around in the street for a while. Began to feel the creep of tiredness after a long day. Walked around the neighbourhood. Felt the tiredness deepen. Considered going back into town. Spent time saying hello to a cat in the next door garden. Felt the tiredness turn into exhaustion. Paced up and down. Walked back to the car and pulled out the sleeping bag to keep ourselves warm as it approached 1.00 a.m.

Just as we were hunkering down to keep warm, a car turned into the street and pulled up alongside. Our hosts had returned home. And they were puzzled to see us hanging out in the car.

It transpired that we’d missed an email saying the door was unlocked and we could let ourselves in, make ourselves at home and tuck ourselves up in bed. We could barely believe that we’d spent more than three hours passing the time when we could’ve simply opened the door and walked in, but since we had no remaining credit on our Spanish SIM cards we hadn’t checked in since stopping by a McDonald’s earlier in the afternoon. Not, I stress, for the food, but because they’re a good source of free WiFi. All you need to do is accept the terms and conditions.

Alternatively, we could have taken the toll road.

“The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.”

― Paul Theroux, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Bags of Colour © Mufidah Kassalias

Uzès in Languedoc-Roussillon has one of the best markets I’ve come upon in France. It has all you would expect, such as gorgeous, fresh produce, cheese and wine, plus an array of of beautiful, desirable things like these brightly coloured bags. It’s almost five years since I was in Uzès, but am reminded of it now we’re back in France — this time in Bergerac, staying in a house on the banks of the Dordogne, while we run our 2-day writing workshop in the nearby village of Eymet.

Albergue de Peregrinos © 2013 Mufidah Kassalias

This should be easy, right? If we writers write what we know — and who and what do we know more intimately than ourselves and our own lives? — then writing one’s own truth ought to be the easiest subject matter one could choose. No research required.

In practise it can be quite challenging. We have to beware the slippery slope of navel gazing.

But it can also be incredibly rewarding. Considering our innermost thoughts and feelings on subjects close to our heart has the potential not only to clarify our perspective, but also to breathe life into our writing.

Moving forward I intend to do more of this kind of writing. Here. On this blog. A decision prompted by an inner drive to frankness — one that I’ve thus far largely contained — combined with the very real nature of that which Sean and I are about to embark upon.

Next week we’re leaving Burgos, heading back to the UK via the Dordogne in France, where Sean is leading a 2-day writing workshop at a lovely gîte just outside of Eymet, a small bastide town that boasts a one-third English-speaking population. As soon as we arrive in England we launch straight into our Spring/Summer 2013 British Isles Writing Workshop Tour, with workshops in various locations throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. And all the while we’ll be CouchSurfing. Something which entails unpacking and repacking self-inflating mats and sleeping bags every few days or so, as we, tirelessly or exhaustively, move from one location to another.

The upside, of course, will be visiting new places and getting to know a host of new people, both workshop participants and the many generous CouchSurfing hosts we’ve yet to meet.

The workshop title — Write from the Heart: Writing the Truth of One’s Own Experience — has been a reminder and a catalyst. I know the truth of writing my truth, and the candid impulse within has risen sufficiently high such that it takes less effort to exercise. Which, of course, leaves it perfectly situated to respond to the catalytic spark that radiates from the aforementioned title.

The next few months will be a whirlwind of busy-ness, leaving less time for the business of writing. Which means my fiction writing is likely to be put on hold for the duration of our tour. As a writer who feels she’s recently found her writing groove this was initially quite disconcerting. On the other hand, this very busy-ness — a time filled with new experiences and unique challenges — is bound to be good fodder for writing.

No research required.

I took the above photograph in Burgos, an important stop on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (the Way of St. James), due to its many historic Christian sites, including notable churches and monasteries, such as Las Huelgas and Cartuja de Miraflores, as well as the Gothic Cathedral. During their pilgrimage, most peregrinos choose to stay at albergues, pilgrim shelters or refuges.

Given our imminent whistle-stop writing workshop tour, I figured this photograph of the Albergue de Peregrinos signpost was a fitting image for this post, as Sean and I about to embark upon an even more nomadic existence than that which the past twelve months of slow travel has entailed.