Many strange tales and legends abound on the rugged north Tenerife coast of Icod de los Vinos. Perhaps that’s why locals barely flinched at the arrival of the Bard of Ely, a Welsh druid with wild hair and a green beard.
Playa San Marcos nestles in the serene shadow of the cliffs, just down from the iconic Dragon tree and along the coast from a huge outcrop of rock, spat into the sea by the last big volcanic eruption. The surrounding hills and fields are a treasure trove of nature’s hidden secrets, a grown up garden for a boy who found kinship with bugs and creepy crawlies. Steve Andrews was that boy and even at 54 his bond with nature is as strong as ever.
The city of Cardiff, South Wales is not particularly known for its abundant wildlife but Steve found plenty in the family garden. “I loved all the insects I saw; my first pet was a newt and at 10 I had a collection of tropical fish.”
Steve also developed a passion for music: Tamla Motown, The Beatles and in particular The Rolling Stones. Armed with a Bert Weedon guitar manual, Steve taught himself to play and perfected his skills watching live performances.
Life after school proved an obstacle course for Steve as jobs came and went. As a sales officer at Telephone House in Cardiff, his honesty wasn’t appreciated. “I told the customers they could wait for years to get a phone line and they complained to my bosses. All I ever got in a year there were complaining customers, illnesses and ulcers.”
After brief spells working as a road sweeper and in a waste paper factory, Steve landed on his feet as a gardener in a council park. “This was more in my line, I knew the names of all the plants and was able to study horticulture.” Alas, Steve proved too good for the job; “I got promoted to another park and my deputy there resented my arrival and it went downhill pretty fast.” Steve fell back on what he trusted: music and nature. He began playing a few gigs and continued writing. One of his more bizarre compositions was a little number called Extracting the latex from a rubber ducky which he admits was written after he and a friend had smoked some Durban poison (those ‘cigarettes‘ also known as “rock and roll Woodbines.” The world really started spinning when a girlfriend he had been living with had a mental breakdown and literally left him holding the baby. The council came through with a house and there he found himself as a one parent family with all the inherent restrictions and limitations.
Although the intervening years were hard, there were plenty of personal milestones. He performed at many concerts, including several stints compering at the Glastonbury Festival. Steve even managed to enrol in Media Studies at Cardiff University, opening himself a few more doors for later years.
“I did a week’s work experience with The Big Issue Wales and have written regular columns for them ever since.”
The nickname ’The Bard of Ely‘ was a throwaway comment from a friend but it stuck: “The exotic title of ’bard‘ fitted well with the poetry I was writing but it was linked to my mundane daily surroundings. Ely is the council estate I was living on, one of the biggest in Europe.
"The green beard was a later addition born of his participation in the annual Green Man festival in Wales and was inspired by a mythical, god-like spirit of nature. “I was compere at the event and it seemed a fitting idea to dye my beard.”
The call to Tenerife came via La Laguna based singer, Priscilla Hernández, a regular internet contact for Steve. He visited for La Laguna for a week in 2002 and followed up with a longer trip just over a year later. Steve’s senses were left reeling from the sights and sounds of the island.
“It was amazing, I saw lizards, butterflies and all manner of insects everywhere and trees, plants and flowers that I could only have imagined before.”
On the second visit, Steve was so inspired he wrote five poems in one day. He then discovered a local English language newspaper and realised he could even earn some sort of living on the island. He contacted the paper from back home and started supplying a nature column as he prepared to make the big move to Tenerife permanently. Settling first in the south at Costa del Silencio and then venturing north to Playa San Marcos, Steve began to carve out a niche writing and performing at various venues. The new environment offered many surprises including an exciting discovery in a field in the hills. “I’d heard about the pyramids of Guimar, discovered by explorer Dr Thor Heyerdahl and developed into a tourist attraction and research site. However, I came across two pyramids just off an old track which seemed to have been virtually ignored.” The Guimar pyramids are a source of much discussion and are thought to date back to the days of the early Guanche inhabitants of the island.
Delving into the mystery of the pyramids is high on Steve’s list of things to do, but his list grows longer with daily personal discoveries of plant and animal varieties as he criss-crosses the island by foot and public transport. For the boy at odds with the establishment it has been a long journey from Cardiff, but Steve has held true to his beliefs and is now a rebel with many causes and a curiosity matched by the hidden treasures of Tenerife’s natural bounty.
