Albergue de Peregrinos, Ribadiso da Baixo. 15.10.
Today marks the longest walk I have ever done in my life. As of eleven o’clock this morning, I have walked 1,013km since setting out from Bordeaux nearly six weeks back on the last day of June. My feet are mildly blistered but not painful, and one of my sandals is starting to fall apart, but my head and heart are clear and Pinta and Niña are none the worse for their thousand-kilometre journey across the country.
I haven’t used my journal much, but I wouldn’t have set out upon this road without it. It’s now by far the longest-serving and most well-travelled (and most battered) of the three journals I have kept since I bought the Red Book in a librería in Villafranca de los Barros back in 2015. Now a veteran of four Caminos, it’s earned an early retirement, I think, but I’m still a good fifty pages or so from finishing it, so it may well have further to travel, I suspect.
Maybe I should just hurry up and get that bloody book written already. Lord knows I have crammed enough research into those journals.
Today ought to have been a short one, but I ended up adding an extra three kilometres to my walk after realising halfway through the dark woods out of As Seixas that I’d left my credencial behind. I have three, including a spare and the completed one in my journal, so I wouldn’t have been turned away at the next albergue, but it’s the principal, damn it – and I was only ten minutes into the walk, so I legged it back without the aid of a torch to the albergue, hoping the other pilgrims had not shut the door behind them.
Luckily, they hadn’t, and my credencial was sitting on the bunk above mine along with a sachet of Cola Cao, just where I’d left it the night before. Sometimes I’m in such a hurry to be the first out the door and on the road that I leave things behind. So far on this trip, that has cost me a pair of sunglasses and a vest – and very nearly my credencial. Muppet.
I restored my reserves with a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine and took a shortcut back to the Camino via an improvised route to the north. The roads were deserted, so I didn’t have any issues. The three pilgrims who I had sprinted past seemed surprised to be overtaken, after they’d last seen me going back down the Camino about half an hour ago.
It was a very dark and misty morning. As Seixas is at the foot of a great big hill lined with wind turbines, which kept a lot of the morning mist hanging over the village and its eucalyptus stands. It was a little eerie, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when a nightjar almost clipped my head, announcing its presence merely inches from me with its frog-like grooik flight call. It may well be one of the last ones I see this summer, so I did not begrudge him the fright.
Twice today I very nearly took a wrong turn, saved by my intuition. I have followed the yellow arrows of the Camino all the way from the heights of Somport and they have not yet put me wrong. Curiously, however, a number of red arrows have sprung up, usually in large groups and always pointing off the road. They may indicate an alternative route but they are a little unreliable: in one case they put me back on track after I took the wrong road, but in another spot they pointed in completely the wrong directions and only a brief chat with a friendly labourer solved the conundrum.
If in doubt, don’t trust the red arrows. The yellow arrows always lead to Santiago. The red arrows might not. When you put it like that, it’s almost like a child’s game.
I reached Melide just before nine (ahead of schedule, despite the loss of 20 minutes) and bought a few supplies in one of the corner shops before moving on. The volunteer in the Concello de Melide warned me about the “fiesta” from here on out, and he wasn’t wrong: for the rest of the morning, the Camino was absolutely packed. Extended families and university groups, parishes and pensioners and pre-teens with their parents, and quite a lot of dog walkers, most of them carrying small backpacks and sticks they’d found at the side of the road (as opposed to the titanium pole wielding pilgrims of the Camino Francés). On average, it’s estimated around a thousand people a day walk the final 100km in August.
Hence the rush for a room.
I wonder what became of my shaman stick that was stolen in El Acebo? Who knows – perhaps it’s already done another Camino of its own.
I had a choice to make this morning: finish early and stake out the albergue municipal in Ribadiso, or roll the dice and shoot for Arzúa, only three kilometres further on. Arzúa’s municipal has fifty-seven beds to Ribadiso’s sixty, and it would lop three kilometres off tomorrow’s trek… but Arzúa is the end stage in all the guidebooks. How could I be certain that there’d be a bed left, even if I made it before half eleven? I passed at least a hundred pilgrims on the road before reaching Ribadiso, and I had set out from Melide after nine o’clock – a full four hours after the early birds.
No – wisdom overcame risk today. I found a spot by the bridge in Ribadiso and sat down. It looked at first like around twenty to thirty other pilgrims had the same idea, but gradually they came and went, stopping only for a quick paddle in the river. With temperatures rising up into the mid thirties this afternoon, and so much paved road below, who can blame them?
I might go and paddle myself, once the hordes have moved on. For now, I might catch up on some sleep. I have one last challenge tomorrow and it’s a long one: over forty kilometres remain. Let’s…. Must focus and proof-read, but… Zzz… BB x
The Book of Barnabas 