Gull travels
Taking the (slow) boat
Freda the seagull was back. She had previously popped up here on Substack in musings about community, but time had moved on since then. The winter had seen her take a long, hard look at herself and where she was compared to where she wanted to be. She’d spoken, in depth, with her gullfriends and realised that it was time for a change.
Lots of gulls spoke about the wonders of Spain, a far-off land where the ports were heaving with fish and where it was never too cold (in gull terms) in winter. But Freda had a problem – as she whirled around in the skies near her home, she sometimes saw swallows and swifts who, so it was said, crossed entire continents without ever touching land. Freda, like most gulls, didn’t like the sound of that – for them flying was just a way to get a better view of where the next meal was likely to come from, and quite frequently standing around on the top of posts or buildings was just as productive, in food terms.
So if she was going to travel to Iberia, she was going to have to find a boat to take her there. After consulting her fellow gulls once more, she headed off along the coast from the place she’d called home for the last few years, looking back just once at the old familiar places as they disappeared behind her, seemingly forever.
Her journey to a place with lots of boats took a couple of days, but there were plenty of places along the way where she could stop and chat to the local gulls who, on the whole, were quite surprised by her plans, although also supportive.
She’d been told that she needed to find a boat with a lot of people on it. Not too large (those ones tend to sail so far they disappear off the edge of the world, apparently) and not too small, since small ones rarely get that far from the coast.
She settled down on an old boat called Francine and looked around. She was in luck, she thought. Nearby was something that looked about right, with plenty of places for her to perch and watch for food. She flapped over and settled on one of the highest points and waited. She waited for a long time and nothing much happened. There had been a few people on the boat when she’d arrived, but rather than getting busier, everybody had now disappeared, and she had the impression she was now the only living creature left on board.
As she looked around, she saw another boat. This one looked exactly like the ones she’d been told about and, as it pulled away from the shore and moved closer to her, she flapped over for a closer look. She wasn’t the only gull nearby, but as she talked to the others, she discovered that they were merely following the boat for a little while, hoping for rich pickings as it set off.
Freda smiled. She could see people standing on the decks eating ice cream and chips, two of her favourite meals and, as the sun started to settle towards the west, she looked at England, one last time.
Even though she didn’t know the area she was in now, she recognised landmarks that were very familiar to her. Church steeples and industrial complexes of various sorts, the buildings that had marked her way since she the first time she took to the skies, disappearing now forever. She wondered whether the humans had built similar structures in Spain and, as the light transformed to darkness over the sea, she fell asleep, dreaming of what she would see in the morning.
While she slept, any remaining gulls who had tagged along for the ride had disappeared. She’d opened her eyes from time to time, but there had been nothing to see, except, inevitably, for the sea itself
The next morning, when she awoke, there still wasn’t much out there. She looked out onto endless water, all the way into the distance where it met the sky, and wondered if she’d made the right choice.
But then she heard a commotion behind her and looked around. The noise came from loads of seagulls, flapping around noisily and shouting in what she took for Spanish, as the boat passed close to land that she hadn’t spotted before.
She was immediately reassured about one thing. The Spanish built lighthouses just like the ones she was used to seeing. They also had familiar-looking ruins which, immediately made her feel right at home.
One of the gulls came close, and Freda shouted out the only Spanish word she’d managed to pick up before starting her journey.
“¡Hola!”, she bellowed!
The gull looked at her quizzically. “¡Hola!”, Freda cried again The gull came closer and stared. “Bonjour !” it said in reply. Freda was confused, that didn’t sound like Spanish. She tried once more. “¡Hola!”. The other gull shook its head and took off. She watched it disappearing into the distance and wondered why it hadn’t replied intelligibly.
The land was starting to get further away again now. Freda watched as the lighthouse faded into the distance, until it was nothing more than a dot on the horizon. Another lighthouse appeared close to the boat, this one seemingly all alone on a rock in the middle of the sea.
Another gull settled down near her and she tried her greeting again. “¡Hola!”. This time the other gull laughed. Then he looked her up and down and said “Hello!”.
What was going on?
The other gull smiled. “You’re not from around here are you?”, it asked in English. Freda nodded, and explained that she had decided to move to Spain to expand her horizons. The other gull, whose name, apparently, was Alan, laughed. He explained that while she was on the right boat and would, eventually, reach her chosen destination if she stayed on board, thus far she had only reached France.
Freda blinked. In all the time she’d been on board, all through the night, the boat had only managed to cross the Channel.
Alan laughed again. It had managed to do more than just cross the Channel, but the French Atlantic coastline was very long, and they were now sailing close to a place called Brittany, which they would soon leave behind and again end up far out at sea, crossing something called the Bay of Biscay. It would take another full day and another full night before the boat reached Spain.
As he spoke, Freda had a funny tingling sensation running through her. At first, she thought it was because she hadn’t eaten any chips since yesterday, but she started to wonder if it was more than that.
Alan looked at her and explained that he had set off from England a long time before her, to make the same journey to exotic foreign lands, but had changed his mind after meeting French gulls en route. He now used the ferry as a means of transport between Brittany and the place he now called home, a French jewel jutting out of the Atlantic, the Île de Sein, which the boat would be passing close to very soon.
As he spoke, she became more and more certain that she was starting to have feelings for Alan. Yes, they’d only met a few minutes ago, but that’s just what gulls are like. Before she even really had time to think, she decided that the Île de Sein sounded like just the place for her, at least as somewhere to stop for a while. If things didn’t work out, she could always hop back on another ferry as it sailed past (making sure, of course, that it was going in the right direction, she’d hate to end up back where she’d started).
Alan nodded. He understood. Then he slipped off his perch and skimmed the surface of the waves on his way to the island. Freda watched for a moment and followed him.
Would she ever reach Spain? At the moment, she didn’t really know, and she didn’t really care. Life was good, wherever she was, and that was all that mattered.
Farewell (for now) Freda.
Thank you for spending time perusing this. If, quite understandably, the thought of subscribing is too much to contemplate, but you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written, then you also have the option to simply buy me a bag of chips to replace ones gulls have stolen over the years (contributions may in fact be used to buy an ice cream, but I won’t tell if you don’t ask).
Bon voyage, Freda!
(I have taken this ferry before - it was a very, very long journey for 12-year-old me!)