Hemingway, Fried Eggs and Forests

Hola!

9 a.m. on a Wednesday and we’re racing along the A6, away from Madrid, and up into the Sierra...

We’ve got to get away from this heat!

It’s promising to hit 34ºC (93ºF) today and, like all good Madrileños, given half the chance we’re heading to a mountain pueblo to escape the feeling of being slow-cooked.

And to search for Hemingway, because it may just be all his fault that I (Ben) am here in the first place…

On the way we’re listening to a great podcast about For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway’s classic Spanish civil war novel, set in these very mountains, the Sierra de Guadarrama, and 45 minutes later we’re sitting under a flowering lime tree in the Plaza Mayor in the small town of Cercedilla.

Happier, cooler, we order dos huevos fritos y café for breakfast - two fried eggs and coffee.

Aside: The astute Spanish learners amongst you will know that in Spain, if you do something con dos huevos, with two eggs, you do it with balls!

So all in all, it’s a very Hemingway breakfast.

Huevos fritos, pueblo-style - Buenísimo

We love this place. Town life up here is significantly slower than Madrid. Deep-Spain slow. There’s a lot of sitting around on benches going on, and some seemingly aimless wandering. People stop to chat to the policeman on the corner. How life used to be before we all got phones.

Transfixed by the scene, the peace, the cool air, we can’t move…

“Ay”, says Marina, “esto es un respiro del calor, un respiro para el alma” - This is a break from the heat, a break for the soul.

After coffee number 1, we’re still half-asleep from a series of hot, sleepless Madrid nights, so we order number 2 and discuss what we learned in the podcast.

The title for For Whom The Bell Tolls comes from a poem by John Donne, the 16th Century British poet-preacher. Wanting to go deeper, we Google it, and discover it’s all about our undeniable human interconnectedness - also, as the podcast told us earlier, a central theme in Hemingways’s novel, which explores the innate humanity of those fighting on both sides of the Civil War, whether fascist or republican.

We’re delighted to discover the poem begins with another familiar line:

No man is an island…

and ends…

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Back in January 1998 I spent an unhealthy amount of time in a hot bath in a cold house in Brixton, London, reading For Whom The Bell Tolls… and feeling exceedingly disconnected from humanity.

I’d just got back from 5 days in San Sebastian, celebrating New Year’s Eve there, a full-on Hemingway-worthy fiesta in the old town that doesn’t even start until everyone pours onto the streets an hour after midnight, and ends somewhere around 8am.

It was the first time I’d been in Spain, and I was hooked.

On my return to London however, I felt completely lost. All I could think about was getting back to San Sebastian as fast as I could.

Yet something in this amazing novel was secretly drawing me further south, to Madrid, and one way or another (a story for you to read another day) that’s where I ended up, 9 months later, in September ‘98, over half my lifetime ago.

Now, full of coffee and eggs and wonder from John Donne’s poetry, we drove 10 minutes up the hill to the pine forests and peaks in the Valle de Fuenfría, the lushest part of Madrid’s Sierra, close to where much of the novel’s action takes place.

Crisscrossed by ancient Roman and Borbonic roads, the Calzada Romana, seen below, took Roman supply lines over the Sierra on their main route from Segovia to Toledo. You can still find Roman cart tracks carved into the large flagstones.

Great pines, dense carpets of ferns, a mesmerising play of light and shadow, Marina spent her childhood here, following her tío cantarín - her endlessly singing uncle - on family walks through the forest.

Somewhere in these densely wooded peaks, the novel’s protagonist, Robert Jordan, holed up with a rough republican brigade, endlessly obsessing over his mission to blow up a bridge… “Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old comrade. You’re a bridgeblower now. Not a thinker.”

Can you feel the civil war here now?

No, nothing but a gentle breeze and deep peace, un respiro del calor, un respiro para el alma…

We’re filled with a deep desire to re-read the book, to read all the great books about Spain, in English and Spanish (more coming in the months ahead), even to read more John Donne.

In fact, this is what we’d call a perfect day. A car journey where you learn something totally new from a great podcast. Breakfast in a perfect pueblo plaza. Unexpected discoveries that can leave you deeply moved (“No man is an island…”) and exploring deep historical forests.

But right now, lunch calls.

So after a good walk up the Roman road, we do what we feel Hemingway would have done on a day like today, and head back down the hill to Cercedilla, for a good menu del día set lunch in a beautiful open-courtyard restaurant.

Below, in this week’s bonus guide, we’re sharing the amazing restaurant where we ate, what we had for lunch (what a meal!), transport and hiking options for Cercedilla and the lush green Valle de Fuenfría, plus the great podcast we heard on the way up…