Follow the swallows: Roger Deakin's days hitchhiking to the sun

The esteemed nature writer was addicted to heading south for the summer. In an unpublished essay, he describes the joys of thumbing lifts on France’s Route Nationale Vingt

I wonder if the swallows that nest in the chimney of my Suffolk farmhouse have the faintest idea how profoundly they affect my emotions. When they first arrive from the south in spring, and I hear the thrumming of their wingbeats amplified to a boom by the hollow brickwork, my heart leaps. They seem to bless the house with the spirit of the south; the promise of summer. Swallows have such a strong homing instinct that it is quite possible this same family of birds, by now an ancient dynasty, has been returning here to nest for the 450 summers since the chimney was built.

Everything about swallows says “South”. They are a shiny, metallic, gregarious, nomadic tribe, decked in magenta and ravishing deep blues like the Tuareg and Bedouin, whose deserts they must cross as they set out in September to fly due south all the way to Cape Town on their winter migration. As they gather talkatively on the telegraph wires, they seem no more afraid of the great distances they must travel and the hardships they will encounter on the way, than you or I making a long-distance phone call. They speak a glittering desert tongue, calling to each other incessantly across the chimney tops.

Continue reading...