Yesterday’s World Today
In the Footsteps of Laurie Lee
by Tony Lane.

An Introduction to the pictures in my gallery.

It was just two days after the terrible events of March 11th 2004, in Madrid, when 200 innocent people perished and 1400 people were dreadfully injured, that I finally made the decision to begin writing this book. I had always been very fond of Spain. Having travelled there many times, I came to love its people, landscape and, seemingly, effortless way of life that I envied so much. Then on that awful day, when television stations across the world broadcast painfully sickening images of the atrocious multiple bomb explosions, executed on busy rush-hour commuter trains, I was reminded of another terrible time in Spain’s history, the Spanish Civil War. For it was around the same year of 1936, that one of my heroes Laurie Lee made his lyrical journey across Spain. Armed only with a violin and an inquisitive eye, it was a journey that would take him from Vigo in the north west, through central Spain and Madrid and on to the southern coast near Malaga. There he remained until the fighting of the civil war beckoned and persuaded him to take another life changing direction.

In the 1930’s, Spain was a very different country. There were none of the high-rise hotel developments or sprawling airports receiving the tourist hoards. In fact, it was not until the 1970’s after Franco, that Spain really started booming, once again becoming a key player in the now modern Europe. However, what puzzled me was the notion of what Spain must have been like back then and how much it differed now. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, written by Laurie Lee, beautifully described his journey as a young man, through a country merely touched by the scent of things yet to come. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and compare what he saw then to what I would see almost seventy years on.

But for my part, this book actually started in 1972. At that time, I was studying in a Cardiff high school. It was the first time I had met anyone from another country, as rather bemusedly, the school absorbed some of the refugee children from Idi Amin’s Uganda. An Asian Ugandan boy who became a very close friend of mine, would often emotionally describe his country to me. We would sit down side by side, and I would attentively listen for what seemed like hours and probably were. He would mesmerise me with tales of another place and another life, and the way he would commonly see animals in living colour that I had only seen in black and white pictures in books that my parents could barely afford.

Boyhood plans were made to journey across land by Landrover to see his relatives in another far off country, Kenya. We would sit for hours, having researched van de Post and many others' journeys, work out a route and plan the journey down to the nearest pound. I was inspired to become a zoologist in the Serengeti National Park. None of this actually materialised, but what it did do was spark my imagination. Regular visits were made to the library. I must have read a hundred adventure travel books and more. Then I discovered Laurie Lee’s books. Cider With Rosie was already on the school curriculum. However, the other, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning was the book that really sent my mind a wandering. The picture on the front cover of a young man with a knap-sac over his shoulder and a violin case under his arm, walking towards a whitewashed town, was me, or so I thought it could be in a few years time. I was twelve; he was nineteen. I would not have to wait too long.

As with many young boys’ dreams, they change. Yes, I did go to Spain when I was nineteen. I hitch-hiked my way to the Costa Brava with a friend. Spain was all I had dreamed of and more. However, after a couple of weeks, I had to return home. Torn between leaving my lacklustre engineering apprenticeship behind and stepping my way into the great unknown with another friend who, after bravely resigning from his job in the same factory over the phone, subsequently travelled the world, I chose the former. I often wonder why we make the choices we do. Perhaps I made the wrong choice. I will never know. But now the time had come to take the first of many steps. This would be a journey to change my life forever.

Tony Lane (A.R.P.S.; RN)