Day 4: Terraces and tiny hamlets
We wake to the aroma from grogue stills and sound of children’s laughter as they pass on the way to school. Hetty picks us up in a mini bus with a driver who supports Liverpool FC. We like him despite this. Our route starts on the coast beside a pig farm. A large stone bench seems ideal for sorting ourselves out before setting off, until Hetty tells us it’s where coffins are laid before being carried to a church on the mountain top above us.

Climbing through narrow terraces and along narrow rocky paths, Hetty regales us with tales of her granny, a wonderfully determined woman. Our routes aren’t particularly long, but the Cape Verde heat means we take things slowly. We cross ravine after ravine, passing stone huts, coffee beans drying in the sunshine and dragon trees. A small boy joins us for a section, eyeing us with curiosity but speaking not one word. Lunch is another of Hetty’s delicious homemade affairs, served in a shaded copse where a girl from a nearby hamlet brings a flask of strong, black coffee.

Our day ends with a visit to Hetty’s house where we’re introduced to her husband and an army of cats and kittens. We sit, chatting, on tree trunk seats beside a chunky table in an outdoor covered terrace where Hetty dishes up stews cooked in a huge pot resting on two rectangular stones.

Day 5: A new guide and smart donkeys
Another day brings a new guide, Nicolai, the first male guide we’ve had. It’s a 15 minute trek to the road where we get picked up. Female porters carry our cases on their heads, a throwback to another era. Nicolai is late, giving me the chance to have a nosy around a grogue still beside the road. One man works the still, he smiles as I enter, unconcerned by my presence, and pours a caramel-coloured liquid into a plastic barrel atop a stone oven. This, and a dozen other like it, is where the aroma of the valley comes from.

An apologetic Nicolai finally arrives and we travel by minibus along cobbled main roads to climb to the top of Santo Antao where we begin our descent to the Pedracin Village, our next hotel. The path starts beside a watering hole where men fill up containers harnessed to teams of mules. Some don’t have any humans leading them. They head up to the watering hole, have their containers filled and toddle back home all on their own.

We head along sandy paths skirting gentle mounds where the red earth is broken by pine trees and lone stone huts with thatched roofs. Some women invite us to stop and watch them pound grain. I ask Nicolai if I should give people a few coins in situations like this. The suggestion shocks him. When people invite you into their homes on Santo Antao it is out of friendliness, nothing more.

Nicolai laughs a lot. He has a more frivolous manner than our female guides but is equally informative in his own way. He points out agave at the entrance to houses, placed to ward off evil spirits. We stop to help an old man who’s trying to load a mountain of branches on to his back whilst his mule remains just out of range. The man insists it’s not a heavy load, but when Nicolai tries to lift it himself his knees buckle, causing him to collapse in heaps of laughter.

Eventually our path descends to a scattered collection of huts where we have lunch and drink mint tea at a house belonging to a relative of Nicolai. A little boy wears a CD Tenerife shirt. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise given the two archipelagos aren’t that far from each other, but it is.

By late afternoon we reach Pedracin Village, which occupies another super spot. We like it immediately, it oozes Cape Verdean hospitality. We’re welcomed with fresh orange juice and a couple of grogues before we order a couple of Super Bocks and settle into seats on a terrace overlooking the luscious valley. Unfortunately the sun has just left the small swimming pool beside the terrace otherwise we’d celebrate our arrival with a cooling dip.

Rooms are in small cottages and are quite basic but comfortable. Dinner is in an attractive wooden cabin styled dining room and consists of bowls of fish, meat and vegetables. It’s all very casual; a relaxing place to chill out after exploring the surrounding countryside.

Day 6: Coastal walking and a banquet lunch
We’re sorry to leave Pedracin Village after only one night. A couple of residents peacocks seem to enjoy flashing their rather sparse tail feathers at us whilst we wait for Nicolai to pick us up for a coastal route which skirts the base of cliffs and passes villages perched on the edge of ravines. It’s a very different route from our inland trails, as is lunch which is a veritable feast of a medley of fish, fruit and vegetable dishes in a nameless restaurant overlooking the sea. Without a guide, we’d never have found it.

We say goodbye to Nicolai at our final Santo Antao destination, Kolina d’Sol in Ponta do Sol. Ponta do Sol is unlike the other places we’ve stayed, there’s a feel it’s been developed for an audience that hasn’t quite materialised. The hotel is clean and comfortable with a nice rooftop dining area. It’s 300m from the older part of the town, which is typically colonial and a good place to grab a beer as the sun sets… which is exactly what we do. Ponta do Sol’s personality grows on us, there’s a good vibe to the place and dinner of fish and piri piri chicken listening to a lively group of local musicians serenading local girls is a deliciously fun way to end our time on Santo Antao.

Day 7: Three islands in a day
A savoury omelette whilst watching goats climb palm trees sets us up for the trip back to Sal via San Vicente. Travel timings mean we get to spend time in Mindelo again which is no hardship. We have coffee and cake in an eclectic little cafe which seems to worship Barack Obama and someone called Tchiss Lopes equally. We track down a music shop to buy a couple of CDs, including Cesária Évora, and I take a picture of a woman smoking a pipe, another feature of Mindelo. It’s easy to lose time in Mindelo, a place we’d like to get to know better.

Our flight back to Sal touches down after dark. We’re booked into the Hotel Morabeza, an attractive and stylish low-rise hotel behind the beach in the centre of Santa Maria. Even though it’s a small hotel it feels quite big compared to the homely places we’ve stayed elsewhere, but it’s actually nice to stay somewhere there’s space to be anonymous. Plus it’s got a decent restaurant and good bars. After hopping across three islands in the course of a day it’s exactly what we need to chill out before popping on the plane back home.

We didn’t know what to expect from Cape Verde. What we found had us hooked on the archipelago’s charms and made us hungry to explore other Cape Verde islands.

What we definitely didn’t find was the Cape Verde that dominates the online pages of Tripadvisor’s travel forum.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

Google the Tripadvisor forum for the islands and you’d be forgiven for thinking the archipelago consisted of only two islands, Sal and Boa Vista. Before we found out the reality for ourselves, the picture painted by most of the people we knew who’d visited was the islands were arid and there wasn’t much to see.

Seven nights spent exploring three islands with guides and accommodation arranged by Archipelago Choice revealed that many people who visit Cape Verde only ever get to see the purpose-built version.

Day 1: From Sal to Sao Vicente
An early flight from Gran Canaria with Binter Canarias gets us to Sal in time for a decent explore before we catch a late night hop of a flight to neighbouring Sao Vicente. After a taxi ride through a flat, uninspiring landscape, the town of Santa Maria is a pleasant surprise – colourful colonial architecture and oleander lined streets with interesting looking restaurants. The town’s beaches live up to their promise of being long golden beauties. There is a surprising lack of lobster-coloured tourists on the streets. It soon becomes apparent that many of the inmates of the huge complexes don’t stray too far from their hotels. For a resort town Santa Maria feels unusually authentic. We change cash at a bank where service comes with huge smiles and cool down with a beer at an upmarket version of a beach bar shack on the more touristy end of town.

After a dinner which reflected the influences which have shaped Cape Verde – a Portuguese francesinha and a tropical chicken curry – we’re picked up and taken to the airport for our flight to Sao Vicente. By the time we arrive at our boutique-type hotel in Mindelo it’s near midnight and only time for a quick beer before bedtime.

Day 2: Exploring Mindelo and walking on cobbles
Daylight reveals Kira’s is one of those little treasures of a small hotel – attractive boutique decór and family friendly staff, especially the lovely Isabel who runs it. Breakfast in a bijou courtyard involves our first meeting with the Cape Verde staple, cachupa, as well as bowls of fruit, chunky breads and local cheese.

After breakfast we meet our first guide, the smart and amiable Claudia whose grasp of politics and love of her homeland will surely see her involved in running her country at some point in her future. We chatter endlessly all the way from Sao Vicente’s highest peak to the coast, passing the occasional donkey and men bent double, hammering away at the square rocks that make up the cobbled path we walk on and which form most of the roads on the islands. The ruddy, rolling terrain is reminiscent of a blend of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. By the time we reach white dunes and rows of multi-coloured fishing boats at the coast we’ve gained an insight into the Cape Verdean psyche thanks to Claudia’s anecdotes and honest depiction of life on the islands. Claudia’s boots, a present from a previous visitor, died en route and she ends the journey walking barefoot.

We spend the afternoon getting to know Mindelo, whose colonial past is ever present in the bright pastel facades and pretty balconies of many of the low buildings lining the streets. There’s a vibrancy in both appearance and personality which gives it a quasi Caribbean vibe. The Portuguese influence is unmissable; apart from Super Bock signs outside of bars, a mock Torre de Belém on the seafront screams out who once governed these islands.

Mindelo has a reputation for live music and sure enough we’re treated to hauntingly melancholic suadades courtesy of a talented young duo as we work our way through a seafood platter at Casa Mindelo. We were first enchanted by local legend Cesária Évora’s soulful voice in a hotel in Salzburg; it’s a treat to hear her most famous song ‘Sodade’ performed live in a Cape Verdean setting. The meal and music ends with an introduction to another Cape Verde classic, grogue, the local firewater.

Day 3: Island hopping and lost valleys
A short taxi ride drops us at the port where an army of rust buckets contrast attractively with luminescent turquoise water. The ferry to our next port of call, Santo Antao is comfortingly familiar as it’s exactly the same as some of the ferries which sail between the Canary Islands. In a way it feels no different from travelling between Tenerife and Gran Canaria. I think I was expecting free-roaming cattle and goats.

We’re met at Porto Novo by a new guide, the ebullient Hetty, another strong Cape Verdean woman with a huge personality. Initially Santo Antao looks only slightly less arid than Sao Vicente but as we climb higher to the spine of the island, more greenery appears and the mouth-opening moments start to pile up, beginning with an eclectic man-made forest of trees which don’t belong together.

After being deposited in the base of a volcanic crater whose fertile basin has been claimed by farmers, we climb to it’s rim where we’re gut-punched by views of an unexpected world, the Paul Valley. Between us and our hotel, Casa das Ilhas, lies stunning scenery, thatched huts, men hacking at cane, women selling fruit and a German hippy who runs an oasis of a restaurant which sells all manner of home-produced goodies ranging from cheese and pastries to grogue. We don’t eat there, instead we lunch on Hetty’s fabulous homemade cachupa and mini sweet doughnuts in a friend’s living room.

Hetty leaves us at Casa das Ilhas which, although the rooms are basic, boasts heart-soaring views down the valley, especially good when served with a beer. Dinner is dished up in a communal dining room where the evening’s entertainment is a praying mantis V gecko fight; far more interesting than many resort hotel fare.

Continued in 7 nights island hopping and walking in Cape Verde Part 2

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

Now we’re standing in the flat basin of a volcanic crater providing a couple of cows with their day’s entertainment. And it’s still quite early in the morning.

Hetty, our guide, indicates it’s time to set off. She speaks English with a distinctive Dutch twang. Although Cape Verdean, she spent much of her youth in the Netherlands, something that’s not that unusual amongst Cape Verdeans it seems.

As we climb a neat path leading us from the Cova de Paul crater floor to the ragged rim which forms an almost perfect circle around neat little fields I notice green peppers apparently growing wild beside the path. I mention them to Hetty.

“Oh, they were planted by the Portuguese,” she replies. “We don’t use them.”

It’s as though their Portuguese heritage has somehow tainted them.

Even though it’s early-ish morning the heat combined with the ascent brings on a sweat. It’s not a long ascent, but it gets the heart pumping… but nowhere near as much as the sight which unfolds as we reach the ridge.

Below us, way below us, is a deep, wide scar in the earth. Running through its centre is a lime green, fertile strip; a veritable oasis of agricultural activity which separates walls of hard, jagged peaks. The line of the Ribeira do Paul.

It feels like we’re overlooking a lost world. A fanciful notion of course, but there’s no shifting the sense of adventure from my imagination.

Linking our position with the green band is a snake of a path. It’s well maintained but a lot steeper than it looks from above. Any appreciation of the scenery requires lots of brief stops.

As we get closer to the valley floor, the green band takes on more definition. Spiky agave plants give way to stepped terraces of sugar cane and pockets of banana plants surrounding thatched huts.

Human life enters the fray as we draw level with a gang of men hacking away at fields of cane. Hetty shouts a greeting and they smile and wave as we pass.

Shortly afterwards we reach the welcome shade of some trees, the first shade we’ve enjoyed since our route began. A woman and a young girl sit on a stone wall, between them is a basket filled with juicy tomatoes and bags of beans, possibly coffee beans. Hetty talks to her for a moment before buying a couple of bags of something in solid, creamy chunks. She passes us one.
I pop an unidentified chunk into my mouth where it melts, sending its flavours on a wild dance across my tongue. I barely suppress a gasp of surprised pleasure. Its flavour is familiar, the heroin of the sweet world. I’ve no idea what its Cape Verdean name is, but I know it as tablet.

We continue descending on the neat path, passing trees and terraces which yield papaya,oranges, yams, avocado, peas and aubergine. Nature seems to be in a bountiful mood in this Garden of Eden of a valley.

Lunchtime coincides with our arrival at a small hamlet. A few men with dreads and Bob Marley tee-shirts lounge by the roadside, taking time out from work during the hottest part of the day. A woman shows us into a small, simply decorated living room where the three of us are left to enjoy a lip-smacking lunch of cachupa (the staple dish of Cape Verde) and mini doughnuts with coconut flakes. It beats the hell out of the ham and cheese baguettes you normally end up with in walking picnics.

From here our onward journey is by road, passing through small villages. At one point Nelson Mandela looks down sagely from his prominent position on the side of a house.

A blue sign with a crossed knife and fork looks quite incongruous as it’s attached to a telegraph pole which pierces the thatched roof of a large stone building. There’s no mistaking its message.

Bar O Curral belongs to German couple Alfred and Christine Mandl who have completely embraced the Cape Verdean way of life in the Paul Valley. Inside, long tables are laid out for a walking group. Hanging from a tree are bags of herbs and spices. Bottles of grogue (the local brandy made from sugar cane) fill wooden trays whilst wicker bowls brim with cheeses. All are home produced. Even though we’ve eaten, the aroma from the kitchen has us yearning to sit at one of the benches to enjoy the feast that awaits the walking group.

It’s a simple place and all the more alluring for it. Part of me wishes our journey would end here. I can imagine us settling down at one of the tables with a bottle of grogue to while away the afternoon gazing over the wonderful world Alfred and Christine have nurtured.

But it doesn’t, we have to move on. Almost immediately Hetty announces she’s bored with road walking and asks if we’d like a little adventure. We follow her off road where our path becomes a levada (irrigation channel) which cuts through the cane, taking us along one side of the valley. Hetty checks if we’re okay traversing a narrow water channel above the valley floor. We’re fine, we’re old hands at walking on goat trails in the Canary Islands. And anyway, it does feel more like an adventure again.

The levada drops us at the start of a cobbled path, the final leg of our journey to Casa das Ilhas where we’ll spend the next couple of nights. It’s a fifteen minute walk. No cars can travel this path, luggage arrives and departs on the heads of local porters.

We leave Hetty at the entrance to Casa das Ilhas, check in, grab a couple of beers from an honesty bar and plonk ourselves down on a couple of chairs on a small terrace outside our room. The accommodation is on the basic side, but the rural hotel does have one outstanding feature. Laid out in front of us is the rest of the Paul Valley, the aromatic smoke from tiny grogue distilleries hanging in the air above the lush landscape. It’s a glorious view.

This has been a good walk, one of the very best in fact.

Our walking routes, guides and accommodation in Cape Verde were arranged by Archipelago Choice.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

How does that sound?

That was us experiencing one destination, known for its ‘get away from it all’ charm, like locals.

One of the travel trends predicted for this year is an increase in people wanting to experience the destinations they visit like a local.

The sentiment is admirable; it’s about getting under the skin of a destination. Seeing something different, having local experiences that are personal rather than mass produced ones. It’s not a new idea by any means, but social media has made the concept of ‘going local’ more accessible than ever.

However, just as I would if I was browsing online for any holiday, I treat some ‘local’ experiences/advice on offer with caution. I don’t see travel advice on any social media platform as being any more valid than travel advice given on Tripadvisor. Some of it’s good, a lot of it’s not. It all depends on who’s doing the advising.

Similarly, any local experience depends very much on which ‘local’ you experience a place with. Hook up with a local vegan, teetotal, pilates teacher and you can bet the experience won’t be the same as if you’d hooked up with a local poker playing, whisky guzzling, indie rock musician.

When we travel we like to enjoy authentic local experiences, but I’m a pragmatist. I’m never going to have quite the same experience as a local for the simple reason I’m not one. I’m not really a local in the destination I’ve been living for the last decade, even though I specialise in writing about it. If I were to rough it with a Berber family in a mud house in the Atlas Mountains, the only person likely to be under the misguided impression I was anything other than a tourist would be me.

Like any other working people, we have limits as to how long we can be away. There’s no luxury of open ended rambling. Deadlines have to be met, projects completed.

However, we do want juicy authentic travel experiences when we touch down somewhere new. We crave experiences that are different from the norm, that delve beneath the surface to show us the true personality of a destination. To make sure we have them we use, or work with, reputable professionals just as we would with any business transaction we undertake.

In Cape Verde we travelled with specialist tour operator Archipelago Choice who use local guides and agents. The guides, all young Cape Verdean women and men, opened up a world we wouldn’t have otherwise seen. It was my idea of really experiencing aspects of local culture without being naïve enough to think I was in any way part of it.

We work a lot with Slow Travel specialists Inntravel. We love working with them because of their philosophy, we also like them on a personal level. What they produce is exactly the sort of holiday we’d have booked before our career change. One of the collaborations we have with Inntravel involves helping put together walking/cycling/discovery packages, so we regularly meet the people they work with in various destinations; small family run businesses which usually involve individuals who are immensely knowledgeable about the place they live and passionate about what they do. These people are keys to unlocking authentic experiences. It might be work, but it is wonderfully rewarding in terms of uniquely personal travel experiences.

If it’s a city we’re visiting, we often use Airbnb and book an apartment in the heart of wherever we want to be. Again we don’t kid ourselves we’re becoming locals by doing so, but it does feel like a way to experience the real city and not just the popular tourist side of it, which we will take in as well.

When we want a tip for a good local restaurant, we don’t ask any random local on social media for the same reason I treat travel sites like Tripadvisor with caution – I don’t know personal likes or whether the person giving advice is a fussy eater who thinks MacDonald’s is the place to go for local eats (I’ve actually seen that suggested on a travel blog). We ask someone who is interested in or involved with gastronomy. For this reason we are big fans of specialist food tours such as Eat the World whose guides, as well as introducing people to great local nosh, put the fascinating meat on the bones of whole neighbourhoods.

Basically, when it comes to ensuring an authentic local experience, we want it to be arranged by someone who has an all round knowledge of their destination; the culture, traditions, history and the food etc. There are plenty of individuals and ethical businesses of various sizes who offer this and who have done so for quite some time. Like I said before, it’s nothing new. The only thing that might be new is how some local experiences are being packaged, presented and sold to to a new audience hungry for authentic local experiences.

Going local in one way or another is an illuminating and rewarding way to experience destinations.

But research carefully before deciding who to ‘go local’ with, otherwise you might end up in a bar with some drunken brickie swinging a motorcycle chain around his head.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

We’re standing on the lip of the Cova crater looking down to the village of Paúl which lies in its floor. A cobbled path drops steeply from our feet and snakes its way down 1000 metres. It’s like looking out from an aircraft in flight and deciding to walk back down to earth.

This is not going to be a quick descent.

Winding gradually down, my feet often at right angles to the path to ease the pressure on my knees and hopefully stop me from slipping into oblivion, Hetty tells us the names of the flowers whose perfumed and colourful faces peek out from the rocky crevices in the wall as we drop further and further towards earth. Finally arriving, flush faced, sweaty and achy kneed into Paúl, Hetty leads the way to a rambling series of buildings on the side of a sloping terrace. On the road outside, a Rastafarian sits smoking a pipe in the shade.

“Nice dreads,” I say.
Hetty translates my greeting and I’m rewarded with a wide, gappy smile, an involuntary stroke of a dreadlock and a nod of the head.

We climb the stairs to the kitchen door where the Rastafarian’s wife appears, all smiles, hugs and kisses for Hetty and a welcome smile and shy ‘bom Dia‘ for us. She leads us to her living room and tells us to make ourselves comfortable while she goes to make the coffee. Reserved for special guests, the living room has a sofa and two armchairs, a coffee table, and an air of neglect. The family spend all their time in the kitchen, on the roof, or in the road outside.

Suddenly realising I’m ravenously hungry, I remove the lid of my Tupperware container and release the scent of its amazing contents, a savoury rice and beans dish containing fried manioc, peas, carrots and sausages, topped by a fried egg. I express concern that I may not be able to eat this amount of food and that’s when Hetty throws the empty bag analogy at me. Whether I was spurred on by her words or because I was so hungry or just because the dish was unbelievably good, who knows. Suffice to say, not a single grain of rice was left.

Hetty’s friend brought us fresh coffee and little cakes to round off our feast and we kicked back for another ten minutes or so in the cool and comfort of the ‘best room’ before getting back onto the trail.

The following day Hetty once again handed me two heavy Tupperwares filled to the brim with still hot food. Our journey took us from the coastal settlement of Sinagoga, climbing hard up to Clovoada and deep into the interior, toiling up steep ravines, threading our way carefully down vertiginous slopes and traversing a rocky ridge path that joined tiny settlements like dusty dot to dots. All the way, through the heat and the energy sapping terrain, I was sustained by the thought of that rice and beans lunch that was currently adding to the weight and heat of my rucksack.

Arriving in a verdant valley opposite a remote hamlet, we settled on some rocks in a small wooded area that gave us respite from the sun. Like a child opening her Christmas present, I opened the lid of my Tupperware only to find today’s dish was different. Instead of rice and beans, it was a colourful pasta salad. Initial disappointment soon turned to gastronomic joy as the first few forkfuls confirmed that this was indeed the tastiest pasta salad known to man, or woman. Onions, chillies, sweetcorn, sweet tomatoes, sliced savoury sausage and lip tingling seasoning gave the dish a taste and texture that defied the word ‘salad’. It was so good, I’d eaten it before I thought to photograph it – d’oh!

I asked Hetty if her cousin would be willing to share her recipes but she just laughed and assured me there was no recipe, the dishes were simply made up of whatever was in the house that day and her cousin rose before dawn to prepare it for us. As once again, the sound of fork scraping the last remnants of food from plastic container emanated from my knee, two children, the offspring of another of Hetty’s friends, appeared out of nowhere with a flask of freshly brewed, aromatic coffee.

When Hetty’s in charge, there are no empty bags on the trails of Santo Antao.

All our transfers, accommodation, guided walks and travel while in Cape Verde were arranged for us by Archipelago Choice, tailor made holidays to the Azores and Cape Verde.

Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is a freelance travel writer and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites. Published in The Telegraph, The Independent, Wexas Traveller, Thomas Cook Travel Magazine, EasyJet Traveller Magazine, Wizz, you can read her latest content on Google+

It has taken me months to read The Old Ways, mainly because I’m too tired to get beyond a page or two by the time I move away from screen to page, but also because I have relished every beautifully crafted sentence, every simile, every reference, and every sentiment encapsulated by Macfarlane’s travels at home and abroad.

The Old Ways resonates with me in more ways than I have any intention of addressing here but two of its main themes are firstly, how walking opens your mind and gives you the space and time to think, and secondly, the connections that paths provide, not just physically, but temporally and metaphysically too. I’ve finally, and reluctantly, closed the back cover on the book and have had time to reflect on some of the ways the paths we travelled in 2015 helped to free up my mind from the constraints I have subconsciously placed upon it, and some of the connections we made along the way.

When Jack and I published our book of self-guided walking on Tenerife at the end of last year, we included a dedication to the Guanche, the indigenous people whose feet first created the matrix of paths that now form Tenerife’s walking trails. It isn’t just a pretentious forward to the book, it’s a genuine acknowledgement of the connection we feel every time we walk along a camino real (lit. Royal path) knowing that five centuries ago, bare feet created this path to take grain to market, a body to its burial or goats to higher grazing ground.

It’s while walking those paths that we’re able to free our minds from the constant pressures of the next deadline, keeping websites up to date and dealing with multiple demands on our time, and to formulate ideas for moving us forward. Those walking hours have been responsible for many of the best ideas we’ve ever had and ultimately, for directing us to where we are now. They’ve come up with feature pitches, marketing plans and BIG ideas. When we’re not walking regularly because we’re so busy writing, creativity can stagnate. It’s a delicate cause and effect balance that needs to be maintained.

Last year, Germany featured large in our 2015 wanderings, Bavaria in June and the Black Forest in October. Both trips were eye openers in many ways, as all travel is if you give it the time and space to be so. But it was while traversing meadows and dense forests around Feldberg and Kirchzarten over a 10 day period in October that I began to make connections between the paths we were walking and the lives of the people who live in the Black Forest. From that initial link it was a short step to a deeper connection with a nation to whom our society has unjustly tagged responsibility for an event that happened almost a century ago, blinding us to their true nature. It was a Damascene moment and one that I would never have reached had I not spent so many hours walking those paths.

In May, Jack and I finally visited somewhere that’s been on our travel wish list for many years, Cape Verde. On Sao Vicente we talked to a man whose life consists of spending his days breaking rocks beneath the relentless hot sun to make the calcados, or cobbles, upon which we were walking, a job he’s done since he was 12 years old. The same cobbles weave their paths across all the Cape Verde Islands but unlike Tenerife where the paths are now maintained only by the feet of those who walk them for pleasure, here they still form the lifelines between communities, taking people to work, to school, to ports and transport hubs and ultimately, to their burial.

Hiking Santo Antão’s cobbled paths, every footfall brings a new connection to the living and the dead. Walking with the delightful Hetty whose endless chatter lightened the miles, we passed a cemetery high on a hill prompting Hetty to talk of her grandmother whose remains lie there; telling us how she strived all her days to support her family, walking miles along these paths to find work when her husband abandoned her to seek a better future abroad. When you’re walking long distances, your feet find their own rhythm and go into cruise control, allowing your mind and ears to fall in step so that the act of putting one foot in front of another becomes a vehicle for your thoughts. As I listened to Hetty, the invisible walls between present and past began to fade and I felt an almost physical tie to that strong woman who became for me, a symbol of Cape Verde itself, fighting against all odds to survive and thrive.

While Jack and I walk across the Canary Islands and Europe, stopping to breathe in the beauty that surrounds us, we are also walking our own path, making our way towards a future as yet unknown. With each footfall, we hope our chosen path will lead us somewhere wonderful, connecting us to people and places that will influence our lives in some way. We may not yet know the destination but we strive to enjoy every step of the journey.

The Old Ways is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and no, we are not on any kind of commission.
Walk This Way Tenerife is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and yes, we are on commission, we wrote it.

Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is a freelance travel writer and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites. Published in The Telegraph, The Independent, Wexas Traveller, Thomas Cook Travel Magazine, EasyJet Traveller Magazine. Co-author of Walk This Way Tenerife and The Real Tenerife. You can read her latest content on Google+

I didn’t know a lot about Sal, one of the Cape Verde islands, before we touched down. I knew plenty of people who’d been and the description had generally been ‘good weather, great beaches, not a lot else.’

The barren landscape beyond the dusty taxi window backed up just about everything we’d been told.

And yet judgement was reserved. We know from experience the reputation of popular holiday destinations is often created by the masses who don’t stray too far from their hotel. For example, the Tripadvisor forum for Cape Verde seemed to be full of people who thought Cape Verde was only made up of Sal and Boa Vista. Hardly credible sources.

Santa Maria on Sal
Our first stint in Sal was for a period of around eight hours; the time between landing and catching an internal flight to our true destination, Sao Vicente. It was just enough to get a taster flavour of Sal. The Hotel Morabeza kindly looked after our luggage, leaving us free to explore Santa Maria, the island’s famous tourist resort and a place that Cape Verdeans on other islands would tell us had sold its soul to the devils of tourism. They’d clearly not been to some of the mass tourism fuelled places we know.

We expected a characterless resort. What we found was a little town that wasn’t without charm and which had a vibe that felt part African, part Caribbean. Santa Maria’s main street is a cobbled affair lined by bubblegum pink oleanders, palm trees and modest, low-rise colourful colonial buildings, many of which are home to bars, cafés and restaurants.

Nothing I had read suggested it was a rather pretty little town.

Our first stop was to change money at a bank which was mostly filled with locals, waiting quietly and patiently; a reflection of the laid-back atmosphere on the streets outside. The cashier was delightful, her huge smile infectious.

As we explored the town a few people tried to coax us into souvenir shops, but not in a heavy way. It quickly became apparent that Santa Maria wasn’t one of those places where you get hassled to the point it’s puts you off leaving your hotel. And yet the streets were hardly brimming with tourists. Re-reading travel sites after we returned, I got the impression many people didn’t experience much of Sal outside of their all inclusive hotels.

Eventually one street led us to Santa Maria’s seafront and clichéd scenes of sparkling turquoise water, vibrantly coloured fishing boats and endless golden sands – the ingredients of beach bum heaven. Again, mostly empty. And also again, hassle free wandering.

The African sun had brought on a raging thirst, so we decamped to a randomly chosen wooden beach shack bar. Angulo with its wooden benches, surf board ceiling and billowing muslin curtains was the sort of beach bar I could easily spend time in, a lot of time. It had a compelling feel-good factor to it, especially with a pint of Strela beer in hand. The other customers around us included what seemed to be a mix of locals and escapees from the big hotels. The food placed in front of the people at the next table looked decent and not typically bog standard tourist fare, it got my juices flowing anyway.

There was a temptation to just stay put to eat dinner, but a few places in the centre of town had looked interesting. With the sun rapidly dropping, we left the sandy scene and strolled the cobbled streets back towards rua de Junho, checking menus as we went. One place had been recommended for its cachupas but the prices on the menu seemed excessive. Not expensive in real terms, but elevated to take advantage of the tourist market.

After dark the Santa Maria streets felt no less safe to wander than they did during the day. The difference between bars and restaurants aimed at an audience who wanted ‘back home’ transported to an African island became more marked. Some bars advertised Sky Sports and British pies whilst from others the sound of bad and dated karaoke acted as an effective forcefield that made us give them a wide berth. We actually sat down at an attractive looking beach-front restaurant, but one look at a menu, which had not the slightest flavour of being in Africa, had as on our feet and out of the door.

In the end we moved in a street to where the Afro-Caribbean influence was strongest and took a chance on OCaranguejo, a restaurant whose interior was hidden as it lay at the end of a small corridor/alley. The reason? It had francesinha on the menu.

It was the perfect place; an unassuming little courtyard with a cane roof and bright blue and white walls softened by creative lighting. It felt cosy, welcoming and local; the menu included a mix of Portuguese and Cape Verdean dishes. Whereas I’d decided on the francesinha before entering, Andy went for a Cape Verde version of chicken curry. Both were a cracking introduction to food in Cape Verde and set us up nicely for our onward journey.

Our Cape Verde trip had been planned to end with a night in Sal as our flight home was an early one. Before visiting we hadn’t been looking forward to ending the trip in a resort we expected to be a soulless, purpose-built mass tourism hell. After a few hours in Santa Maria we’d learned yet again that you simply can’t trust the opinions of people who rarely stray from their hotels.

Sal might not have much more to it than beautiful beaches and a sunseeker-friendly climate, but as resort towns go, Santa Maria is okay. It has far more of an attractive personality than many, many purpose built resorts I know and as a place to chill out after a week’s walking in Sao Vicente and Santo Antao, it was absolutely hunky dory.

Much of our travels involve being given the equivalent of a black and white sketch which we then colour in and add detail to by walking across a specific area for days and days, learning all about it as we go. Like any developing relationship there can be ups and downs and occasional tantrums, but ultimately the end result is usually the same – a stranger becomes a friend.

The process always, always results in a bulging rucksack full of memories and special moments. They’re not momentous in travel terms; they can often be small, personal moments and are all the more precious for it.

In a year packed with trails leading into forests, volcanic plains, gorges, valleys and along mountain paths these are five routes which stood out from the rest.

Gaisterklamm in Leutasch, Austria
The ghostly gorge at one end of the Leutasch Valley was a bit of a change for us as part of the route involved swinging into the saddle (bike not horse). I admit to feeling like a traitor as I rang my bell to warn hikers on the dappled forest riverside trail to shift out of the road so I could pass. I knew exactly what they were muttering under their breaths. But defecting to two wheels for part of the journey meant we were able to clock up a much greater route than if we’d been on foot. Plus, I actually quite enjoyed it. The place of legends and benign goblins didn’t disappoint. Metal walkways fixed to the walls of the gorge took us through the vertiginous heart of Gaisterklamm to a darker and more boisterous lower gorge. Exhilarating and great fun.
We stayed at the Hotel Kristal in Leutasch but Mittenwald is also within walking distance.

From Forest to Volcanic Crater on Tenerife
We’ve walked in the pine forests around the town of Vilaflor many times and we’ve explored the surreal trails of Teide National on numerous occasions. Putting together a new south Tenerife walking holiday for slow travel specialists Inntravel had as looking at combining both whilst coming up with a route which was quite different from one which has been tread by travellers for centuries. It turned out to be one of the most challenging routes we’ve walked in a while, and one with a pay off which truly deserved an amazed gasp… slipped in with the gasps caused by the altitude (around 2400m) and the effort of getting there. It’s a route where Mount Teide and the sprawling volcanic formations of Teide National Park remain hidden until the last moment, making the impact of the view all the more powerful.
We stayed at the Hotel Spa Villalba in Vilaflor and also the Parador de Cañadas del Teide. It’s not a marked or well known route so is quite exclusive to Inntravel’s To the Top of Tenerife holiday.

Lush and Lovely Ribeira do Paul, Santa Antao
Cape Verde was a revelation mainly because just about everything we’d heard about the African archipelago amounted to much the same thing – good beaches, not much else. Standing, overlooking one of the most glorious visions to please my eyes, the Ribeiro do Paul Valley, made us realise that Cape Verde was blighted by the same perceptions that colour views of some of the Canary Islands. Our route from the basin of a volcanic crater to our rural hotel deep in the valley took us through a tropical paradise where the beauty of scenery was matched by the smiles of the people we passed and paused to speak to along the way. It leapfrogged into one of my favourite walking routes anywhere.
We stayed at Casa das Ilhas and accommodation and guide (essential for the full Cape Verde experience) were arranged by Archipelago Choice.

Tunte to Tejeda on Gran Canaria
Walking from Tunte to Tejeda on Gran Canaria was like meeting up with an old friend, but this time one who was in a better mood. Last time we walked the route it was mostly grey and quite miserable; any views were lost in the low cloud whose chilly fingers poked at our bones. It was a great walk then. In the warm sunshine we enjoyed this time it was a sensational walk, from the initial exhilarating climb out of Tunte with huge views over the south of the island to a trail which led through the pines and across the rooftop of the island, revealing the famous Roque Nublo, before it descended into the picturesque town of Tejeda where we were welcomed by a croaky frog chorus. Simply, a hugely satisfying route.
To complete this route we stayed at both the Hotel Las Tirajanas in Tunte and the Hotel Fonda de la Tea in Tejeda.

A Surprise in the Forest at Seebuck, Germany
The weather wasn’t kind to us for the first part of our epic trip walking through Germany’s Black Forest. It was cooler than we’d anticipated so the short train journey from Altglashütten to Barental was a brief but welcome chance to warm up before we ascended through the forest to Seebuck with its panoramic 360 degree views. In our case, 360 degrees views of a washed out landscape and dreary cloud. In summer, it must be quite something, but on an unseasonably cool late October afternoon it was a case of ‘right, seen it, let’s catch the cable car down and move on’. Within the hour we emerged at a sight which exploded into view, making a mockery of the low cloud and depressed lighting. Feldsee, hidden in and surrounded by the forest, was an unexpected delight – a section of the forest parading its autumnal colours with flamboyant flourish; doubling up the colour assault by reflecting the vibrant tree line in the glassy waters of the forest lake.
We stayed at the Hotel Peterle in Falkau, our base for a few nights whilst we researched the area for routes to be included in a new Black Forest walking holiday.

It’s part of what walking is all about for us. It’s not about route marches, how far we can walk in a day or  how quickly we can complete a route. It’s about the ingredients that make up the journey and what we discover along the way, like turning a bend on a mountain path, or emerging into a forest clearing, to be faced with something quite special.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+