Walking the Dog
But, occasionally I have to speculation out for all-manner of reasons and this is where life becomes a slight more interesting. One of my last major trips a few weeks ago was to Portugal. I was there for a few reasons. Firstly to help out an animal charity (Lagos Animal security Society), who myself and my wife had come to be embroiled in on a previous trip. Secondly I wanted to visit some sites I had pinpointed for a book I was working on. The book will include some unbelievable facts about the Knights Templar and specifically the Knights of Christ from Portugal. And so, I hired a small car and set off.
Walking the Dog
My first port of call was to Silves, a castle dominated town that has one of the only remaining medieval cathedrals in the Algarve region. It is a beautiful and picturesque place, with orange trees growing in the warm sun waiting to be plucked as you take your time and gad colse to the often dilapidated streets. To me, the crumbling colourful plasterwork and the peeling paint of the window shutters adds an air of ancient mystery. It is as if the place had been deserted by its previous inhabitants and re-occupied by these contemporary people, who cared not for the buildings they did not create.
Inside the sturdy cathedral and out of the heat I found the clues I craved with the tombs of two Knights from the 14th century and a pentacle in the window above. I snapped pictures of the Veil of Veronica and the Holy Grail, that were decaying by the hour as they sat serenely safe in the knowledge that they were unknown by the hundreds of tourists that passed them by.
My next destination took me off to a place called Monchique, a quite spa town in the burnt hills that becomes less quite with every year and every new café. Whilst the tourists huddled colse to the two or three shops and lazily sat face the road bars, we climbed out of the town and up through the dark and dominating woods above town. The trees in this place seem to come alive and mock you. The colours are vibrant and surreal, the road a medieval hotch potch of stones, laid hundreds of years ago by the austere brethren of the Monastery, which was my goal.
As I gasped for what I believed to be my last breath I reached what I also believed to be the last corner, only to find another. ultimately I could go no higher and what stood before me was a dark, damp and derelict medieval monastery guarded by a young boy playing ball and a hunchback chopping at something disgusting with his axe. I looked around, searching for an entrance, only to be yelled at by the lurching outline of this aged man who has made the edifice his home and citadel. I strained to understand this peculiar dialect of Portuguese and ultimately comprehended by his hand movements that he was showing me the way in. I followed his grotesque hand signals and paid him a Euro for his troubles. As the hunchback of Monchique danced for joy like a mad golem I entered the overgrown dangerzone that once stood proudly as the areas chief religious icon.
Inside, past chickens, ducks, geese and all-manner of weird and phenomenal animals that were either free or tied to posts, I stumbled across debris that would fill a museum in the Uk. Alas, here, medieval crosses are used for fire wood and beautiful 16th century hand-painted tiles depicting the Last dinner are used to prop up bird cages or keep the few remaining doors open. It would make the members of Time Team cry.
I scoured the whole place and took some snaps, but to be honest, it had a bad feeling. Nothing I could put my finger on, but just strange, as if something bad had happened there. Maybe Most Haunted would rejoice.
I visited many other places in Portugal on that trip and came away hungry for more. But within two days I was on another plane, this time to the beautiful islands of Malta and Gozo. I had been booked to speak over a four day period and what a trip! These are the benefits of being a writer, that millionaires will pay brainless money to have you speak to them in private.
There were thirteen of us in all, which made our Last dinner very enlightening. The setting was the Grand Masters ancient residences on Gozo and I spoke to the group in a candle lit stone arched building that used to be the stables. As I said to the group, what better place to feel the power of the Knights than in their very own stables - a pertinent location for chevaliers. I lectured, walked the 300 acre grounds and visited finished archaeological digs with this interesting group and we all enjoyed our time. Upon my return one of the group had set me up in an phenomenal publicity deal in New York and another had sent me some primary artwork. As I write this, another of the group has sent me some books by Jung. In just this short time so much was achieved. I can't help but think how those few words spoken have altered my life completely. If I hadn't got out of bed, it would never have happened. We must plant the seeds before we can harvest.
No sooner was I back in the Uk than I had a message from what I call my incommunicable Sufi. He had some information and so I shot off to London. My visits with the Sufi are always enlightening and always enjoyable. There is never a word spoken from this man's lips that are not pearls of great wisdom. If he has nothing to say, he is silent. This time he took me on a journey into the world of incommunicable societies and the Ark of the Covenant, from which I am still reeling. For this led me on a trail so deep and so frightening even Robert Langdon of the Da Vinci Code would have been scared. I have been in incommunicable meetings with Brotherhoods, chased through the streets of Jerusalem and suffered at the hands of a concoction of drugs, but I have survived to tell the tale.
Now, I am sat in my office, after taking Arthur and Draco for a walk through the woods of an old Cistercian Monastery nearby. Whilst writing this short piece I have had over 100 emails, been asked on The History Channel and been offered a job in Australia.
It's all a day in the life of an author.
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