A very special breed

Setting off on my bike under a heavily clouded sky with rain forecast to a probability of 97%, I discounted Janine’s warnings with a manly ‘Well if I get wet, I get wet! Not the end of the world’.

Ah, but it can be, very nearly. In the past I’ve had some really miserable times in the rain, not least on cycle-camping holidays in Norfolk. We don’t get much chance to experience rain in La Gomera and one tends to view the risk lightly. This morning’s trip was important, I was heading into town to deliver to a new outlet a few copies of my book ¿Todavía silban?, the Spanish version of Do they still whistle? - which, incidentally, includes a story about the joyful benefits of rain. I hadn’t even delivered the books before the first drops began to patter on my cycle helmet. Within minutes I was engulfed by the first real downpour of the season.

I sheltered under the narrow awning of a bakery along with several other people, all of whom were pretending to be happy. The very worst thing about Gomeran rain, which is just as unpleasant as anyone else’s when it happens, is that you’re not allowed to complain about it. I scuttled into the bakery to buy a couple of loaves just as Jorge was about to emerge. ‘Mucha agua!’ I warned him, lots of water, wiping mini-cascades from my forehead.

‘Es buena!’ he roared, throwing his arms apart and gazing towards the ceiling like one giving thanks for a heavenly bounty. Jorge is unfailingly cheerful and often hands out boiled sweets from his pocket. Of course he was absolutely right, rain is only good, rain is a bounty anywhere (except in Norfolk when you’re camping) and intellectually I joined everyone else in celebrating this early gift of water for the reservoirs. But it could have waited until I got home.

I was also beginning to worry about sixty trail runners currently up in the rain-soaked hills. This is an amazing event. I’ve mentioned trail running before (The boy who wouldn’t eat), a sport for which this island is tailor-made with around 600 kilometres of footpaths, all of them through wonderful scenery in huge variety from gentle plains and ancient forest to expert-only climbs through wild crags. It has taken off in a big way in recent years with marathons and ultra-marathons that attract keen trail runners from all over the world.

But those who were up there today must be a very special breed of human being. They set off from San Sebastián at nine o’clock on Wednesday morning and were required to run a serpentine course around the entire island, a distance of 212 kilometres, to arrive back within 85 hours. On a Gomeran footpath you’re never far from an uphill climb and the ascents in this race totalled 13 kilometres, along with the downhills which can be even more challenging. Challenge was the whole point of course, the event was called the WAA 360º and subtitled The Challenge. WAA is a specialist company selling high-tech clothing and equipment for people who enjoy challenges. WAA stands for What An Adventure.

Not only did participants need to be up to this adventure physically, they also had to find their way along the route unaided, without marshals to guide them at critical decision points. The only help they got was a map on their mobile phone. There were four base camps at intervals around the route for optional food, shelter and rest but it was up to each competitor to devise their own race strategy.

My specific worry was that rain makes those rocky paths much more slippery, especially on the downhill stretches, and is also chilling. In northwest China a few months ago 21 trail runners - one of them a legendary champion - died when rain and high winds overcame them. One was rescued by a shepherd who carried him unconscious into a cave and lit a bonfire to warm him. So I was relieved to learn that an emergency meeting of the Gomeran race organisers had modified the route to avoid the highest, coldest and wettest stretches.

I also learned that, astonishingly, some of the participants had already arrived back in San Sebastián by the time I was sheltering from the drizzle on Friday morning. The first was an Italian whom everyone expected to win, a world champion, and he was photographed as he passed through the triumphal inflatable archway just after one o’clock in the morning, holding his arms aloft with a big smile on his face. One of those slight, wiry people who seem indestructible, he had run around the entire island in 40 hours and 8 minutes, commenting that it had been without doubt the most difficult race of his life. As a Gomeran by adoption I shall interpret that as a compliment.

After the deluge

As we arrived at the beach Blasina was rising from the waves like Botticelli's Venus, although decently clad in a big black bathing suit.

She looked unhappy. Walking towards us across the sand she waved grumpily towards the water. 'Look at it!'

A founder member of the Floating Heads discussion group (story dated 8 September 2015), Blasina likes her ocean to be as it should be, and today it just wasn't.

So what was the problem? Well, to explain that we need to go back a couple of days. To an evening when, sitting quietly reading at home, J suddenly looked towards the window. 'Hear that?'

I'm not good at faint noises these days, but yes, with a little imagination...

We flung open a window. Rain! And not just a fairy sprinkling, this was the real thing. Within a few minutes it had turned into the kind of downpour that fills the air like a demented fog, plummeting and pummelling, rattling on the rooftops and bouncing from the streets.

Other windows were lit in other houses, glimpsed through the waterfall, each with a shadowy figure peering out into the night.

Why anybody would want to stand at the window and watch rain falling may be hard to understand if you live in Birmingham, Düsseldorf or Omsk. Here on this island, however, rain is rare, and there have been occasional years with none at all, which is disastrous.

But now we were having our first downpour, reassuringly early in the winter. And after the initial frantic demonstration of intent it settled into a steady thrumming on our flat roof like a crowd of baby gnomes trying to stamp on each others' toes. They continued for most of the night but by daylight they had grown tired and trickled off home to bed, leaving only an expectant silence suffusing the air.

The big question now was whether... opening the doors to our terrace... yes, there it was! In the distance, the unmistakeable clatter of stones upon stones. This was significant.

We ventured out into the street and down the hill. So did everyone else. Down to the dry riverbed, which was now gloriously alive with hurtling water and tumbling rocks.

Kids dared each other to put a foot into the raging torrent and were summoned back under threat of being thrown in. Somebody with a new 4x4 whooshed through at speed, sending spectacular wings of water flying sideways and demonstrating the wisdom of his 30,000 euros investment.

Watching this rare novelty of running water, our neighbour Lali wore the ecstatic I-can-hardly-believe-it expression of someone who's just won a year's supply of groceries. 'Estamos muy contentos, muy contentos!' she laughed, 'We're really happy...'

The gift of rain on this island, if you wish to be poetic, brings life to the land and food to the children. It greens the hills and sprinkles bright colours across the springtime meadows.

More prosaically, rain means the difference between irrigating your potatoes for free or having to pay for water from the tap. If the reservoirs are full, anyone with a farm or smallholding, a finca, can use the water to irrigate their crops.

There used to be a clever system of little canals snaking along the hillsides, distributing water from the inland lakes throughout the countryside. To irrigate your banana plantation you would simply remove the stone that blocked a gap in the canal wall, allowing the water to cascade through into your field. Then, using a spade, you would guide the water along channels in the soil to reach the far corners.

It's mostly done by pipes and valves nowadays, which is a lot less fun.

But to get back to the story - a night of rain like this can go a long way towards filling the reservoirs, but as Lali and many others cautioned, 'We still need more...!' What we needed now was a few days or preferably nights of gentle drizzle in order to replenish the aquifers - the vast stores of water that underlie the island and keep its wells topped up and fresh. La Gomera is rich in water, unusually for the Canaries, and for that we have to thank the winter rain that soaks deep into its foundations. Much of it is captured in the island's central forest, the Parque de Garajonay.

In San Sebastián that morning the streets were shining wet in the early sunlight. A few shops had suffered minor flooding, but nobody minded too much and there was a party atmosphere of celebration. There's a well-recognised signal for 'rain' - you position your hand with all five digits pointing downwards and shake it up and down while shouting mucha agua! - lots of water! - followed by a broad smile to show you're not complaining.

Tourists were wandering around with that happily dazed after-the-storm look of the holidaymaker rescued from calamity. In short, all was contentment and good cheer, except down at the beach where Blasina was still grousing as she rinsed off under the shower. 'Filthy,' she snorted. She was talking about the sea. 'Thick as rancho canario.'

Mmm, sort of. Rancho canario belongs to that class of soups known as 'hearty' that you can throw anything into. You wouldn't want to eat what was churning around in the sea this morning, though. All that water surging along the dry riverbed had dislodged a year's worth of dust, dead foliage, bamboo canes, plastic bottles, aluminium cans and supermarket bags, transporting them all to the sea where they swirled around the bay for a while before being dumped on the beach. The sparkling water had turned pink and the normally pristine sands looked like the set of a post-apocalypse movie.

That's life for you, there's a black cloud beneath every silver lining. This one was soon dispersed, though. The town council sent in a couple of beach clean-up teams with rakes, while the sea performed its own twice-daily cleansing with fresh water from the Atlantic. Within a few days everything was again as bright as a baby's bathtub, and Blasina was her usual sunny self.

We could still do with a drop more rain, though.