If this is a later blog post than usual, it’s because I’ve bought into the spirit of the Camino a bit more today and allowed myself to socialise with some of the other pilgrims – which often takes some doing for an introvert like me. Tonight’s digs are fantastic, though, and I’m writing from the genuine comfort of my dorm bed in Santo Domingo de La Calzada’s cofradía, one of the longest-serving albergues on the whole Camino.
So first, a confession. After arriving in Nájera yesterday, I got itchy feet. The cliffs above the town were calling to me, and the voice telling me I’d already walked 30km that morning was drowned out by the other saying go on, do it, you’ll regret it if you don’t. The summit – a lonely bluff called Malpica – even had a cross at the top, which is essentially putting a hat on a hat. I had to climb it.
Oddly enough, nobody else was up there at half past four in the afternoon with temperatures pushing into the twenties. Which is just as well, because it turned out to be a hands-and-feet climb to the summit. Fortunately I’ve been doing that kind of thing since I was a kid, so I’m pretty handy with my feet. The view from the top of Malpica was breathtaking – moreso because I didn’t have an awful lot of breath left to take – but the real reward was the butterfly show. For whatever reason, a swarm had descended upon the clifftop, among them some of the most beautiful butterflies you can find in Europe: swallowtails. One or two of them – zebra swallowtails – were so large you could hear their wingbeats. The ‘blood dripping from their fangs’ kind, as my mother would put it. I was just happy to sit up at the top and watch them frolic for a while. It delayed the inevitable descent – again on hands and feet – for at least a short while.
I fully intended to wait for some of the other peregrinos this morning, but when 7 o’clock had come and gone, I came and went with it. I’m rather fussy about catching the sunrise on the Camino, and will happily sacrifice a sit-down breakfast for it. This morning, I’ll admit, I really should have dawdled, as it was biting cold out. It had been well below zero during the night and, with the sun still below the horizon, it was still -1°C when I set out. You notice these things quickly when you’ve only packed with heat in mind.
That being said, the Camino was busy. The Koreans had all set out well before sunrise. They’re turning out to be most of if not the only real pilgrims (in the religious sense) on the Camino, with the possible exception of the odd Brazilian. I’d hoped to explore some of the churches along the way, but they were all closed – a possible drawback to setting out so early – so I powered through the first fifteen kilometres alone, soaking up the silence of the green fields of La Rioja.
And what a silence! At the start of the day the birdsong was explosive, and I got quite used to listening out for certain motifs in certain places: the rasping call of a black redstart on tiled roofs, the drawn out wheeze of corn buntings on fence posts and the singsong warble of woodlarks in the vineyards. But at one point it suddenly all went quiet. No birdsong, no cars, not even the sound of distant chatter from other pilgrims on the road. I had to stop walking to listen, taking out the monotonous beat of my own two feet that’d I’d long since tuned out. It wasn’t eternal, but it was powerful while it lasted. I’d even say it will be a treasured Camino memory.
Just before Cirueña I fell into step alongside the only other English peregrino I’ve met thus far. It was good to share the road at last, and we swapped stories to the backdrop of the patchwork fields of La Rioja passing by.
Just shy of Santo Domingo itself, we caught up with a genuine arriero, making the Camino in riding boots and a high vis jacket, taking his mule Jena and a Connemara horse along with him. It was a fleeting encounter, cut off all too soon by our imminent arrival in Santa Domingo, and I hope I can catch up to him again – I must have a hundred questions or more from years of research on arrieros that only a real muleteer could answer. Wait for me, Enrique! BB x
The Book of Barnabas 