The Hound of the Baskervilles and Racial Stereotyping are alive and well in Spain.

 

Disclaimer: None of the national stereotypical views expressed in the following paragraph, or elsewhere are mine. I happen to disagree with each and every one, but more anon…

Here’s a brief summary of some of the views expressed by patrons of a café this morning. The English abroad, at their worst, rating the inhabitants of our European neighbours.

Welsh – shag sheep and imagine they can sing.

Scottish – Tight fisted, ginger piss heads

Irish – Argumentative drunkards, but also stupid, liars and lazy.

French – Arrogant, effete, unhygienic, and rude, always think they know best.

Italians – Cowards, all mammas’ boys, vain, excessively emotional,    disorganized, and elect a new government twice a week.

We made an early start this morning, climbing up a mountain road and wending our way down the other side to what we call Javea and the local signposts call Xabia. The looming bulk of a stonking great lump of granite protects the town from most of the wind and the World Health Organisation named the area around Javea as one of the healthiest in the world. There are more recorded hours of sunshine per year in Javea/Xàbia than in any other place in Spain, making it a popular destination for Northern Europeans during the cold winter months. Sounds good to me.

Arenal beach was sandy, raked to perfection and blissfully empty. We parked up and wandered for a while, our footsteps marring the virgin sand, working up an appetite.

There was a large group of customers sitting outside the best of the beachfront cafes, all tucking into the Full English and reading the Daily Mail. We ignored them, as we normally do when meeting Brits en masse abroad.

It was hard to ignore the conversation, carried out a level somewhere between a screech and a bellow, depending on the sexuality of the speaker. Middle-aged and middle class, the very epitome of the Daily Mail’s target readership. The words they used revealed a fair degree of intelligence; the nature of the topic demonstrated the polar opposite.

A calm discussion on the prospects for ‘Ingerland’ in the forthcoming six nations rugby tournament – which I’d listened to with some interest – soon denigrated into racial stereotyping with each speaker attempting to upstage the other.

When they moved on to the Dutch – who wear only wooden clogs and no fashion sense, presumably a reference to their love of anything orange, the national colour – and the Germans – hoggers of poolside loungers, robotic, anal retentive and live solely on knockwurst & beer – we decided it was time to leave.

Of all the nationalities we come across in our travels, only the English make me want to move far away from their company.

We don’t even bother to look for GB plates on a van when looking for a likely spot to park up these days. We usually ‘rough camp’ in areas of outstanding natural beauty and book into a camp site every three or four days when we need to charge batteries, have a decent shower, empty tanks, etc.

I like rough camping. It sounds more adventurous than it is. We’re adventurous, but not stupid. No pulling off the road in the middle of nowhere and settling down for a night’s kip. We did plenty of that in New Zealand, but Europe has just a tad more crime risk. We look for a collection of vans and ask if we can join them. The motor-home community being what it is, nobody ever tells us to bugger off and find our own place. These last three sunny days and mild nights spent on a vast deserted beach within easy walking distance of shops; that’s about as good as it gets.

There are four other vans here today. Yesterday there were seven, but the Germans packed up their massive A-classes, each costing more than a terraced house and moved on. Those that remain are big old vans, Dutch owned and all dwarfing our feeble domicile. We’d all chatted away, amicably enough, but still keeping ourselves to ourselves where necessary. Three different nationalities and not a hint of a problem.

When we returned from Javea, the Dutch vans were still there. No camp sites for them! Dutch motor-homers have a bad reputation. Their propensity for carrying everything they could conceivably need for a ten-year absence, even for a weekend break, means they don’t patronise shops and restaurants which offends the locals.

I like them. The Dutch may be unfeasibly large – and I’m not exactly cut out to be a companion for Snow White – but they’re cheerful, helpful and, in common with the equally large Scandinavians, they all speak excellent English and are happy to talk about football all night long.

Yes, I know I should have greater linguistic skills. I speak reasonable French, without ever being likely to pass as a Frenchman, can cope with spoken Spanish fairly well, but am only truly fluent in English and Scouse. My wife’s ability to express herself by gestures is remarkable and works equally well in deepest Romania and Chez Barton.

In my experience, the worst time to be in the company of any vehicle bearing the letters NL is a border crossing. Drug smugglers, the Dutch, every single one. Apparently. See, there’s that national stereotyping again, this time it’s customs officials who hold these bizarre opinions.

We once crossed from Italy to Germany in the company of two vans registered in the Netherlands. We’d spent the best part of a week with them and got on splendidly. When the customs men, apparently asleep until then, clocked the NL badges they sprung into action and waved imperious arms towards a windowless shed. We were swept up in the herding process. A presumption of guilt by association.

It took all my powers of persuasion and most beguiling air of outraged innocence to avoid being frogmarched into a cubicle and strip-searched. Customs officers are a humourless bunch. The most humourless of all was assigned to me. His visage haunts me still. One look was enough to convince me he’d like nothing more than to carry out a rectal search of a handsome Englishman. Okay, I’m pushing it with ‘handsome,’ but I’m viewing myself through the eyes of the minimally discerning here. I even speculated on the fortunate ‘perks of the job’ for a man who I imagine would be happy to pay good money to thrust a stubby finger up a posterior orifice or two. The speculation being silent, obviously.

Back to the events of the day and a remarkable discovery that would have excited Sir David Attenborough himself. Having parked up, senior management sent me on a trip across the sands to fetch the supplies I’d managed to forget. I left behind an all-female camp, the men having been absent all afternoon, watching football in a bar. I grumbled on my designated shopper status while other men were off following manly pursuits in dingy bars, but then did the sensible thing and set off across the sands.

An hour later, I returned to find three Amazonian Dutch ladies and my wife, like a prettier version of Toulouse-Lautrec in this company, cowering inside our van. It’s not a big van.

‘Watch out, they may come back.’

I looked around. Not a soul for miles.

‘Who?’

‘The dogs. A pack of wild dogs. One as big as a horse.’

Dogs? I looked all around. Not even a toy Poodle to be seen.

‘No dogs here,’ I called out.

As I was about to sound the all clear and regain my van, out of the sand dunes bounded four dogs. The one in the lead was nowhere near as big as a horse. No bigger than a donkey. Not a small donkey. His three companions, smaller but still massive, held back a pace, presumably waiting for their leader to sound the order to charge.

The great beast came to a juddering halt, licking his lips and looking as if he’d just returned from terrorising Sir Henry, the last of the Baskerville clan in the wilds of Dartmoor. I like dogs and I’ve yet to be bitten by one. It would be wretched luck if the animal facing me was to be the first. The old circus trick of a man with his head in the lion’s mouth sprang to mind.

I whistled and he cocked his head. A head as big as an engine block. He didn’t appear to be threatening me. I took two steps closer and he blinked but made no move. Just a freakishly large canine who’d snaffled a little too much growth hormone somewhere along the line, I reckoned. Beneath his size, a dog like any other and I get on well with dogs.

Thirty seconds later the terrifying beast from the sand dunes was licking my hand and his cohorts were bounding around begging to be noticed. I walked my new tribe back to the van and called forth the besieged inhabitants. Biscuits were produced and consumed with great relish accompanied by much tail wagging. The lead dog was found to be chipped and presumably had a doting owner somewhere nearby while the others defied the notion of wildness by displaying a readiness to ‘sit’ in preparation for receiving a biscuit.

‘So, that was the wild dog pack of Denia,’ I said when we were on our own and the dogs had bounded back into the dunes from whence they came.

‘They looked rabid to me.’

‘Hmm!’

‘They did. Especially Jake.’

‘Eh?’

My wife laughed. ‘Helga called the big one Jake. All mouth and will do anything for a biscuit.’

No answer to that.