wild

As I stand and look at a six-metre skeleton of a domestic cat named Felix, the words of Alice in Wonderland spring to mind: “Curiouser and curiouser.” The sculpture is part of a thought-provoking and enchanting exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and this isn’t the first time I’ve felt a sense of wonder during my weekend in this lesser-known city in north-eastern France. While most of us know what to expect from a city break in, say, Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux, Metz throws up surprises at every turn.

The giant feline sculpture is the work of Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan (of banana-duct-taped-to-a-wall fame), whose works form part of Dimanche Sans Fin (Endless Sunday), an exhibition he has curated that brings together more than 400 works from Paris’s Centre Pompidou, which closed for a five-year renovation last October. Each piece depicts a different way the “day of rest” could be interpreted, whether it’s the innocent play of Picasso’s sculpture Little Girl Jumping Rope (1950-1954) or Max Ernst’s figure playing chess in the King Playing with the Queen (1944).

After an explosive episode with tears and a sweary rant, a relationship expert has weighed in on whether Lucinda and Sean’s connection is real

Love Island: All Stars is heating up after a furious Belle Hassan branded Lucinda Strafford a “snake” following Sean’s brutal betrayal, but what is their real game-plan behind the scenes?

Sunday night’s episode saw contestants Belle, Sean Stone and Lucinda clash after the return of Casa USA to the main villa. Belle, 27, told her love-interest Sean, 26, that we was “fuming” and acted with “nothing but respect” for him while she was away meeting the US contestants. But when she returned, it quickly became clear that he had been getting cosy with Lucinda, 26.

Clearly distraught by the move, Belle exploded in a sweary rant while sat in the dressing room, where she told other women on the show: “I leave for three days. I uphold my dignity and respect for him. I’ve been nothing respectful. I’m sick of it… He doesn’t deserve it. I f*****g knew it. Three f*****g days.”

Others tried to deescalate the situation, but things boiled over further when Lucinda told Belle to stop looking at her ‘like I’m a piece of dirt on your shoe’. Sean quickly tried to defend himself and explain his feelings for Lucinda, but Belle pointed out what she deemed to be a savage double standard – that US star Carrington Rodriguez, 28, had been all over her like a rash’ but she didn’t bite, staying fiercely loyal to Sean.

The tense moment saw Sean tell Belle: ‘I’ve been straight up and honest with you, we’ve had a few flirty chats. I’ve got something there with Lucinda. I’m sorry”. The whole villa overheard as the argument unfolded, with Belle telling Sean she hopes his decision to go for Lucinda backfires. It all ended in tears with Belle later being comforted by other female contestants.

We asked sex and relationship expert Gemma Nice to decode Lucinda and Sean’s brutal move, and to weigh in on whether it’s a genuine connection or all just a game-plan. Earlier in the episode, viewers see Sean take Lucinda to the terrace where she said: “We’re naughty Sean!”.

He continued his schmooze, saying: “I feel amazing, I can’t lie whenever I look at you, I just smile….” and Lucinda then said brazenly: “I feel like when I’m with you, we’re similar vibes…it makes sense..” But their spark was quickly interrupted by Villa USA making a big entrance through the door, with Belle quickly asking where Sean was.

Fans watching the dramatice episode shared thoughts online, as one wrote, according to the Daily Mail: “I’m all for hurricane Belle delivering the drama. But Carrington awkwardly sat watching…. the guy she got to flirt with and Sean didn’t exactly snog Lucinda? Is it really this deep? Am I missing something?” Another said: “For those of you saying Belle is overreacting, this is not the first or second time Sean is ‘pieing’ her off .. he left her for Samie when samie came in only to come back when samie pied him off.. he deserves everything she said tonight and more!!!!’

Weighing in with her thoughts and speaking on behalf of Buzz Bingo, dating guru Gemma said: “To begin with, Lucinda was certainly playing the game and had a strategy, but from early on, she and Sean have had a strong connection with the way they look and act around each other”.

She continued: “They are very flirty when talking, and now there is a genuine connection with Lucinda following her heart with Sean. Yes, she has certainly upset Belle, and maybe she didn’t mean to, but she knew what she and Sean had so maybe she should have waited until Belle came back from the US villa and spoke to Belle herself regarding her own feelings towards Sean”.

Firmly believeing that their connection is actually real and not just a brutal snub, she added: “From the way they interact, Sean and Lucinda have more of a slow burner [dynamic] because they have been involved with other couples, and so they haven’t been able to really tell each other how they feel”.

She added that “Lucinda seemed upset that Belle had been upset by all this, especially when Belle didn’t want to talk to her about it because she was fuming. Lucinda kept trying to tell her from her side what had been happening but Belle wasn’t happy about it. Lucinda does have a game plan, but this connection with Sean is definitely real”.

Going further, Gemma spoke on Scott van-der-Sluis’ ‘hate him or love him’ reception online, and why the audience is claiming they knew ‘Scott was right about Sean all along’. Gemma said: “Viewers are backing Scott because Scott could see, from past experiences within the villa, how Sean had reacted. Scott can see that Sean hasn’t changed, even though Sean had said he was more genuine this time around”.

She went on: “Scott has never let his guard down when it comes to Sean, and he can see that Sean has a hidden agenda because of how he has handled the situation with Belle and Lucinda. Scott never liked him from the start and still doesn’t now; they just agree to disagree with each other to keep things civil within the villa”.

The expert concluded: “Scott can maybe see that this will get the fans talking and will divide the Sean and Scott camps, so this may be another of his game plans. Some people won’t like each other, and that’s true in the outside world too. Not everyone gets on with everyone, and that’s okay. It was good that Scott asked Sean to talk, and yes, they didn’t sort anything out other than to say they both don’t get on and to be civil for the rest of the time in the villa. Sean was trying to apologise to the other boys and saying that he has grown up and now can see exactly what Scott is doing, but it’s still upsetting him”.

Our induction into tree-planting comes from Pietro, an Italian hydromorphologist charged with overseeing our group of 20 or so volunteers for the week. We’re standing in a makeshift nursery full of spindly willow and poplar saplings just above the Vjosa River, a graceful, meandering waterway that cuts east to west across southern Albania from its source 169 miles away upstream in Greece.

Expertly extricating an infant willow from the clay-rich soil, Pietro holds up the plant for us all to see. Its earthy tendrils look oddly exposed and vulnerable. “The trick is not to accidentally snick the stem or break the roots,” he says. Message registered, we take up our hoes and head off in pairs to follow his instructions.

The volunteering week is the brainchild of EcoAlbania and the Austria-based Riverwatch. Back in 2023, these two conservation charities succeeded in persuading the Albanian government to designate the River Vjosa as Europe’s first “wild river national park”. It was a timely intervention. According to new research co-funded by Riverwatch, Albania has lost 711 miles (1,144km) of “nearly natural” river stretches since 2018 – more, proportionally, than any country in the Balkans. Now, the question facing both organisations is: what next?

On our first evening, Riverwatch’s chief executive, Ulrich (“Uli”) Eichelmann, gives a presentation setting out his answer. But before he does, we have a dinner of lamb and homegrown vegetables to work through. The traditional spread is a speciality of the Lord Byron guesthouse in Tepelenë, a small town in the heart of the Vjosa valley and home to EcoAlbania’s field office – our base for the week.

Today, Tepelenë houses a slightly dilapidated castle and little else, but two centuries ago it formed the political centre of Ali Pasha, a local potentate in the early 19th century. Under the then Ottoman empire, Pasha administered a large swathe of what is modern-day southern Albania and mainland Greece – hence, the visit (in 1809) of the guesthouse’s eponymous namesake.

Uli makes for a fitting heir to the famously belligerent Ali Pasha. Armed with slides and statistics, he offers a hard-hitting overview of the threats facing Europe’s embattled river network. His opprobrium is particularly reserved for the thousands of dams now stymying the continent’s once free-flowing rivers, which he blames for causing irreversible damage to fish stocks and freshwater ecosystems.

As one of the last wild rivers in the Balkans, the Vjosa in Albania has been spared a similar fate, he asserts. But that’s not the end of it. “Although the river looks beautiful,” he says, “there are critical things missing.” High on his list are trees, a large proportion of which have been lost to fires, logging, road building and aggressive grazing. The result: high levels of erosion and, as a consequence, greater risk of flooding.

Buoyed up by Uli’s presentation, we approach our replanting the next day with redoubled efforts. Our number includes a London-based book illustrator inspired by David Attenborough’s Ocean documentary, a US geospatial analyst with the noble hope of creating an “Albania where Albanians might want to stay” (a reference to the country’s 1.2 million emigres now overseas), and an Italian university student interested in eco-tourism, to name a few.

Over lunch on the second day, I get chatting to Aida, a tour guide from Tirana who wants to better acquaint herself with the Vjosa region. Visitors rarely come to this part of Albania, she says. “Perhaps they might pay a quick visit to Gjirokastër,” referring to a historic honeypot town on the neighbouring Drino River, “but, otherwise, they drive straight through.”

Looking out over the river, with its braided islets and rugged mountain backdrop, we both agree that such oversight is a shame. The region has a rich cultural and religious history (Albania became officially atheist in 1967), an interesting gastronomic tradition (“perhaps not that sophisticated, but somehow tasty”), and a genuine surfeit of natural attractions, she tells me.

That night, it starts raining. Proper rain. Torrents of water pour down from angry, thunderous skies. The next morning, word comes from Pietro that the planting zone is now several feet underwater. With our planting temporarily suspended, I join some of the volunteers on an impromptu sightseeing expedition. Equipped with a list from Aida, we head upstream, stopping first at the slow-food town of Përmet (“Except for the Sea,” the town’s cocksure slogan reads, “We have Everything”). Next up is the delightful Orthodox church of St Mary, a gem of a place hidden up in the hills, where the local shepherd doubles as the doorkeeper. Last, we go for a hike up the Langarica canyon, which, despite the dreadful weather, we achieve without troubling the widely advertised emergency services (“ambulance”, “police”, “fireworks”).

The next day, it’s still raining hard. Briefly, I consider going rafting or kayaking, two popular options on the Vjosa, but the river has now grown into a swollen torrent. Instead, I take a soggy hike up the nearby Peshtura gorge to see a noted waterfall, which, drunk on so much rainfall, is positively bursting from the hillside. In the afternoon, I decide to see if Gjirokastër is all it’s cracked up to be. A visit to its illuminating ethnographic museum and imperious clifftop castle persuade me it very much is.

Later that night, I share my joys at discovering what the Vjosa region has to offer with Olsi Nika, executive director of EcoAlbania. Happy as he is at my enthusiasm, I can see he’s also concerned. He is not against tourism, he wants me to know, but, as a conservationist (he recently won the prestigious Goldman Environmental prize), the prospects for the park worry him. Albania’s coastline is already busy with package holidaymakers and an airport is being built in the river’s delta despite it being a designated protected area. And so, while he is happy that a spangly new visitor centre is being built in Tepelenë, he is anxious to see the government fulfil its own management plan for the park – something it has so far been slow to do. “Tourism is like fire,” he says. “You can prepare your soup with it, but it can also burn your house down.”

Olsi’s words are still ringing in my ears the next day as I drive back towards Tirana. I stop just to the north of the river’s mouth at the archaeological site of Apollonia, an ancient Greek trading community later colonised by the Romans. The hilltop spot is entirely devoid of other tourists, allowing me a magical couple of hours to wander alone among the extraordinary ruins.

If Herodotus is to be believed, Apollonia used to sit on the Adriatic coast, but centuries of silt from the Vjosa have seen it retreat miles inland. Over the same time, the river’s route has also altered. But nothing stays still, especially hydrology. Change is once more coming to the Vjosa. What it will bring remains uncertain, but, as a national park, she will hopefully continue to flow, untamed and unbroken.

The trip was funded by Patagonia, which supports EcoAlbania. EcoAlbania will arrange hotel, food and transport from Tirana to Tepelenë for about £700 for the week. Volunteers need to arrange their own transport to Tirana. The next volunteering week is 16-21 February