ON A gloriously sunny day when the birds are – nicely on cue – warbling their little hearts out, Northern Ireland-born travel writer Helen Moat puts away her "wonderful" new birdsong app to reflect on a very special Time of Birds.
During lockdown, the Co Armagh-born erstwhile teacher and now published author has been learning new birdsong skills – a latent passion which really took hold while cycling under “the music of the skies” during an epic 3,000-mile journey across Europe with her teenage son.
Now, five years later, that life-affirming three-month adventure on a bike (while aged in her 50s), tracking the Rhine and Danube on the way from the Netherlands to Istanbul, has been published in travel memoir, A Time of Birds (Saraband) – ironically, just as many would-be travellers have had their own wandering wings temporarily clipped, thanks to Covid-19.
[ READ MORE: Badger cubs and otters reclaim Mount Stewart estate during lockdownOpens in new window ]
Moat, a regular contributor to BBC Countryfile magazine and Wanderlust (travel guides), now lives in Matlock in England's Peak District, but the 2015 summer she spent cycling with her 18-year-old son Jamie brought her right back to Lurgan where she grew up surrounded by rural countryside, and her bird-loving father who often stopped his grocery van just to tune into birdsong in the skies above him.
“I found my father seemed increasingly at my side during that trip which stirred up a lot of childhood memories,” she says. “The birdsong along the Rhine and Danube was just incredible; it became the daily soundtrack to our cycle, so I thought about my father a lot, about my strict Plymouth Brethren upbringing, about the Troubles, about love and life and the people we meet along the way. It was a great period of reflection and healing for me.
“Coming from a Brethren family, we didn’t get involved in politics, but the cycle gave me the chance to revisit my childhood and come to terms with all of that. I remember going to Belfast and feeling the tension, seeing soldiers with their guns and the nervousness that one might go off accidentally... the police checks that would spring up…
“I came back to Northern Ireland years later and almost wept when I saw modern Belfast and how it was thriving. For someone who had escaped the Troubles by going to university in England, it was quite an emotional impact.”
Although no expert on birds – and not even a “proper” cyclist, either – Moat took the notion to jump on a bike and cycle to Turkey during a family holiday in Northumberland. “Jamie was 15 at the time and he said, ‘Sure’ and probably thought it would never happen,” the writer recalls.
“Then, when he reached 18, he was having a gap year and I reminded him – never thinking for a moment that an 18-year-old would want to travel with his mother – and he said yes, but never told his friends. He’s so laid-back and was the perfect companion – he’s also a very good map reader, unlike me.”
When Moat pedalled off, leaving husband Tom and younger son Patrick at home, she was, in a way, escaping from part of her life that she didn’t much like at the time, specifically her teaching job, with which she was becoming increasingly disenchanted.
“My dad suffered quite severely from depression for the last two decades of his life and was quite withdrawn and I have suffered from anxiety and low-level depression too – nothing like his; I manage it quite well,” she says, chattily, "but, at the time, when I left my job and started this journey, I wasn’t at a great place in my life.
"It wasn’t just a fear of depression than came from my father, it was his restlessness too and I was inspired by Nick Hunt’s evocative memoir [Walking in the Woods], in which he follows the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book, A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople.
“I thought that would be a wonderful trip to do, but I was about 53 at the time and my walking pace meant it would take a very long time, so I came up with this cunning plan of slow cycling instead, on the flat near rivers. We did have to cross the Balkans but – fortunately and unfortunately – Jamie broke three spokes on his wheel just as we were starting the climb up the mountains and we ended up being driven across.”
It was a source of some amusement that Moat’s own sturdy bicycle – so old fashioned, her son nicknamed it The Tank – held up to the challenges of the journey which threw up several revelations, not least the kindness and quirkiness of strangers encountered en route. She also surprised herself by indulging in some light couchsurfing – a service that connects members of a global community of travellers by giving them a bed, or couch, for the night.
“You just go online and message someone who offers to host you,” she explains. “Right across Europe, we would stay with total strangers who put us up in their homes, feed us and take us out into their towns to show us the local sights, the pubs and the cafes.
“It was absolutely fantastic because we got a real, authentic slice of life in various different countries that we travelled through. I was a bit nervous about it to begin with, but it turned out to be a real highlight of the journey. People were incredibly kind and generous and it struck a chord with me again and again. It restored my faith in humanity, in a way.
“In the Netherlands, for instance, we stopped in a little village looking for coffee and this man came over and said nowhere was open as it was a national holiday, but then his wife appeared with not just two steaming cups of coffee, but also brownies. Then, in Romania, a man in his garden handed us a big bunch of tomatoes – these were small but humbling, meaningful moments of the overall experience.”
On the downside, the Tank proved too heavy for hills and particularly in Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia, the undulating landscape, combined with 38-39-degree heat, was a struggle at times. But spirits were lifted by a surprise visit from husband Tom, who flew out to meet the pair in Budapest on his birthday and again, near the end of the trip, to cheer mother and son across the finishing line in Istanbul.
“I promised my husband I wouldn’t leave him for three and-a-half months again,” she reveals, laughing, “so we have now found a solution – a campervan with the bicycles attached on the back. I don’t know when we’ll be able to do a trip like that again, though, with all that is happening in the world. But, until then, I have learned to be content with the birdsong on my doorstep.”
A Time of Birds is published by Saraband and available via bookshops and Amazon.
