Two weeks from now – right now – I will be sitting somewhere in the transit lounge in Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport, awaiting my connecting flight to Peru. That’s about 5,300 miles (or 8,500 kilometres) from home, which will be the furthest I have ever been from home by a long shot, beating both Kampala and a brief layover in Dallas last year – and, if things go to plan, I may well find myself even further afield before the year is out. I will also be a full five hours out of sync before I even reach my final destination, so I will need to be careful and try to acclimatise with an altered sleep schedule a few days in advance.
We are very much into the preparation phase now. I have arranged the last of my accommodations for the journey in Ollantaytambo, where I hope to end my Peruvian adventure in the peace and quiet of the Sacred Valley. I have ordered a new pair of sturdy Merrell hiking books to see me around the altiplano and beyond. I should do a preparatory pack this weekend to see if I can fit everything into my rucksack. I’m a light traveller, but the zoom lens is likely to be the largest and heaviest of the equipment I will be lugging around. The jury’s still out as to whether I should take a book with me or simply use up the last of my Audible subscription credits and download more audiobooks than I could possibly hope to finish in that time. I’m leaning toward the latter, if only because I’m not particularly good at leaving a good book behind.
I’ve been meaning to get out and about and keep practising with the lens, but my time is very limited. Last week I managed to escape for just over an hour on Friday afternoon while the sun was out, but between report-writing, lesson planning, taking my team to Oxford Schools on Saturday and being on duty almost all of Sunday, I haven’t had much luck. The Netherclay Community Wood isn’t too far from home, but it had rained a lot on Friday so I didn’t explore the woods too much, as the ground beneath my feet had become little better than a squelching quagmire. Little wonder, then, that there were so few walkers out and about.
I went looking for the water rail that I heard last week, but I didn’t see or hear it. I did disturb a kingfisher on the other side of the pond, though, and while the halcyon bird was much too fast for me, I did have more luck with a young cormorant in the momentary interlude when the winter sun deigned to show its face.
Having something incredible to look forward to always makes the Lent term – by far the hardest of all the school terms – a lot easier to bear. Last year, the knowledge that I would be spending all of three weeks in and around Spain was enough. This time, I have pushed the boat out so far that there is a very real danger that the tide will carry it away. And once it does, where will it take me? I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve caught myself exploring other destinations, other wildlife adventures, other places where I can run while I still have the light of life. This year it’s South America’s turn, but in the years to come, I would dearly like to see the rest of the world, now that the wanderlust has returned. I still harbour dreams of seeing the eerie saguaro stands of Sonora, but a number of other old ideas have started to rise to the surface, like bubbles beneath a frozen lake: KwaZulu-Natal, Kanha National Park, Svalbard and Borneo.
It may well be that in abandoning my search for Her, wherever she may be, and indulging in the thing that has always brought me the most joy, I am putting off the thing I want the most in life. It may also be that I find Her along the road. Either way, I am done waiting. The apps are drier than the Atacama these days and the conversations drier still. There is a world of light and life and joy out there and I can no longer ignore it. It is time for a change of scenery. BB x
With Chile now a very real possibility this summer, it’s time to bury the heartbreak hatchet with the Americas and accept the fact that I’m ridiculously excited about crossing the Atlantic again. Somehow, between the red hair and the po’ boys, I missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime to linger in the New World and enjoy all the sights and sounds of a place I’d never seen before. Instead, I beat a hasty retreat home to nurse my wounded pride. This time I have my priorities straight: I’m going out there for me.
There is so much to look forward to this year: from a brief pitstop in Madrid and Colombia’s El Dorado Airport to my first ever encounter with the Pacific Ocean on the grey shores of tearless Lima; the guano colonies of Paracas and the altiplano around Arequipe; the cloud forests of the Sacred Valley and the pristine jungles of the Amazon; and then, after a brief return to reality, the snow-capped mountains of Santiago de Chile, the starlit expanse of the Atacama Desert and the desolate shores of Tierra del Fuego; and at the end of it all, a wedding in Athens and the quiet of Lake Kerkini. If the world is going to hell in a handcart, I’m going to see it all before it’s gone.
My only real wild encounters during my last trip to the Americas – if you don’t count a brief glimpse of a bald eagle from the train – were in the Louisiana bayou, where I chartered a boat and captain to take me up the Pearl River of Slidell’s Honey Island Swamp (which you can read about here). During my six days in the States, I saw only a handful of American birds, and most of them were on my Bayou side-quest: cardinals, chickadees and blue jays around the visitor centre (commonplace to most Americans but brand new to me), wood ducks and whistling ducks in the forest and spoonbills and anhingas along the river. The alligators, on the other hand, were everywhere. You could hardly miss them. I also saw a family of scruffy-looking racoons, rounding out the American classic collection. Short of a white-tailed deer or two, I think I ticked off most of the North American beginner’s collection.
But South America… now, that will be a different ball game entirely.
I included Patagonia on my wish list years ago, but I never thought I’d actually end up going there someday. Now that it’s real, I can’t shake it from my head. There are so many things I want to see and do, and I haven’t even begun to learn them all properly.
So I thought I’d write a list – nothing obsessive, mind, just something to look back on when I return. My itinerary for Peru is nearly finished, and my plans for Chile will have to wait until I have a clearer idea of what lies ahead (and what I will actually be doing out there). For now, at least, I can indulge in a little harmless wish-listing – starting with the essentials…
Andean Condor– the only one that I’m really pinning my hopes on (my itinerary will accommodate multiple attempts)
Black, Turkey or King Vultures – in case it wasn’t obvious, I’ve got a real soft spot for vultures!
Hummingbirds – I’m not fussed about the species, I just fancy seeing the sunbirds’ transatlantic cousins!
Pumas – it’ll have to wait for my Patagonian adventure, but it would beat even the wolves of Poland
Jaguars – I’m not expecting to see them in Manu, but it would be incredible if I did
Pelicans – in my head, a line of pelicans flying over the water is the image of the Pacific I’m after
Guanacos – llamas are great and all, but nothing beats seeing their wild cousins
Howler monkeys – something tells me I may regret putting these muditos on the list
Giant otters – regular otters are rare enough, so maybe the Amazon will provide!
Capybaras – because my Year 7 & 8 students are counting on me to bring them photos
Rheas – another gem I don’t expect to see, but one that I will have to come back for!
Sloths – something that won’t disappear into the jungle in the blink of an eye, maybe?
Anacondas – to see just how large they truly are
Hoatzin – surely the most bizarre bird of the Americas!
Penguins – Humboldt, Magellanic or King, depending on the country
Tinamous – because their names are simply wonderful on the ear
Tapirs – the closest I’ll get to megafauna on this adventure
Boobies – not going all the way to the Americas just for the boobies this time, but they’d be a nice reward!
Macaws – the symbol of the Amazon, right?
Cacti – fine, this one’s no animal, but it’s definitely American enough to warrant a spot on this list
There’s a blackbird singing outside. They’re getting earlier and earlier as the year turns. I, too, should turn in. BB x
I’m slowly starting to rebuild the life I left behind me. It’ll take a little while, but it’s starting to feel very familiar: the long walks, the eyes on swivel-stalks, the weight-training involved in swapping the zoom lens from one arm to the other. In a way, it’s like I never stopped – though it has been about fifteen years since I last did this sort of thing on the regular.
One of the first things to establish is a “patch” – that is, somewhere nearby that I can visit easily and regularly for a quick nature fix throughout the year. I’m still in the market, but I think I’ve decided upon the stretch of the River Tone that runs along Longrun Meadow and into the Netherclay Community Wood. It’s within easy walking distance and there’s plenty to see, including otters – though I dare say I’d be exceptionally lucky to find them out on a weekend wander.
The egrets around here are pretty fearless, though. The flooded banks of the Tone must be harbouring a number of small fish, because I was able to watch this one hunting for quite some time, catching a couple of tiddlers and a small eel. I wonder why great egrets are more skittish than the little and cattle egrets that have colonised so many towns and cities? Is it genetic, perhaps – or is it the memory of that obsessive slaughter for their feathers that keeps them at bay?
I added a few new locals to my “patch list” – namely, teal and buzzard – but spent most of the walk learning how best to cradle the heavy lens over a long distance. I think I’ll need a strap for the lens itself, because I don’t want to chance the weight of it putting undue strain on the camera itself.
I was looking at a tied-down weekend this week, but thanks to a couple of necessary swaps and the support of my wonderful Debating team, I worked Friday night instead and got the weekend off. Suddenly, I had a free Sunday. Coupled with the knowledge that my Railcard expired at midnight, putting a definitive end to many years of affordable train fares, I decided to put the lens through its paces in a new environment: Dawlish Warren.
I came out here at the end of October, when the sun was still shining and the beach was still packed with holidaymakers. In my memory it felt like the end of summer, but it must have been autumn, because the brants had already arrived in great numbers. They were very much in evidence today, numbering well over a hundred, and more than likely the same birds I saw back then.
Brant geese are a seafaring species of goose that spend the winter around the coasts of the British Isles, returning to their breeding grounds in the Arctic circle at the beginning of spring. Most of our geese – the dark-bellied kind – come from northern Russia and Siberia, though the odd light-bellied individual is often to be found among them, straggling over from its North American range.
In ancient times, before their migration routes were known, the people of the British Isles had no answer to explain what happened to the thousands of “burnt geese” that flocked to the coasts, saltmarshes and estuaries, only to disappear without a trace with the spring. Together with the closely-related barnacle geese – who once pulled a similar disappearing trick – they were believed to hatch from goose barnacles, which shared their colour palette. As such, being “not of flesh”, they were permitted on Christian fast-days – a practical solution in desperate times, it must be said.
It’s hard to see how anyone could have believed that old yarn about birds born from barnacles, but then again, the same people believed that swallows slept at the bottom of ponds during the winter. Sometimes we make up the most fanciful nonsense to avoid having to face the obvious reality, even when it is staring us in the face.
Out in the bay, I saw a silhouette I recognised immediately, diving and resurfacing in a small channel between the shore and a shrinking sandbank. The most common diving seabird around here is the cormorant, but in winter, there are quite a few birds that might dive beneath the surface: shags, sawbill ducks, scoters, grebes and divers. Only one of those comes close in size to the cormorant, and that particular bird holds its head level, unlike the cormorant, who swims with his bill upturned.
I didn’t need binoculars to know I had found a great northern diver – the first I’ve seen since my schooldays – and I went tearing across the beach to get a closer look.
The last time I saw one of these impressive creatures, it was far out to sea and flying east along the British Channel. I haven’t had the luxury of seeing one so close before – close enough to appreciate its terrifying red eyes, an evolutionary trait shared with grebes that filters light and helps them to see underwater.
I watched it hunting in the bay for a few minutes, before it decided to run the gauntlet of the shrinking sandbar and scour the southern shore. I counted the seconds between each dive. This one averaged out at 40 seconds, but the diver has been known to stay submerged for up to five minutes. Pretty impressive for such a small and fast-moving creature.
I made it back to Dawlish Warren’s station in plenty of time for the hourly train, but the sun was still shining and I hadn’t yet had enough, so I set out along the Warren Road to the north. The railway hugs the coastline, so the roads meanders a bit on its way north from the Warren. Eventually, after about an hour’s jaunt through the countryside, I came to the ferry town of Starcross. I decided against pushing on to the Exminster Marshes and set up shop at the station, which looks out over the estuary. I was rewarded for my patience with a family of punk-rock red-breasted mergansers, as well as a number of familiar waders probing the mudflats below: turnstones, redshanks, greenshanks and a couple of curlews.
There will always be a special place in my heart for curlews. Their mournful bubbling call was the backdrop to many a childhood adventure around Romney Marsh and the mudflats of Sandwich Bay, and followed me up into the highlands of Scotland on a couple of hiking adventures in my twenties.
Apart from that, they’re remarkably beautiful creatures, with their cryptic feathering and dark, thoughtful eyes. I’ve been very lucky with the egrets around Taunton, but I hope I can continue to observe these magnificent creatures and do justice to them with my new gizmo.
I might not get so flexible a weekend for a while now, so I’ve cashed in my chips early. But I’ll be back with more nature news in the near future, so stay tuned! BB x
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) – River Tone. 22/2/26
On my afternoon wander along the Tone yesterday I came across an egret fishing on the concrete steps of a flow measuring station. I’m so used to the snowy white shapes of these beautiful birds in and around the rivers and fields of the English countryside that it’s sometimes hard to remember a time when these were a very rare sight indeed.
When I was not yet ten, the presence of an egret in the area was something my family or friends found newsworthy. That’s not exactly surprising. Compared to our native (and undeniably stately) grey herons, they do have an exotic look about them. Maybe it’s the silky plumes (or aigrettes) of their breeding plumage, or maybe it’s the smart yellow galoshes they seem to wear on their feet. The speed of their colonisation of the British Isles gave the Roman Empire a run for its money: by the time I was fifteen, they were already such a feature of the Kentish wetlands and saltmarshes that they had somewhat lost their star appeal, if not their lustre. They no longer triggered a rare bird alert on twitchers’ pagers up and down the country, and their names no longer appeared in bold capital letters on the “Recent Sightings” blackboards at nature reserves.
But first, some myth-busting. It’s not as though the egret is an exotic immigrant to our shores. Far from it. Various species of egrets could be found in the British Isles throughout history, before a combination of over-hunting and the insatiable demand for egret feathers wiped them out. Such was the obsession for aigrettes – which once bedecked the headwear of noble lords and ladies alike – that the little egret and its cousin, the great white egret, were driven out of much of Western Europe as well, seeking sanctuary along the sheltered shores of the Mediterranean. It wasn’t until a pioneering group of Englishwomen came together in 1889 to form the Society for the Protection of Birds (the forerunner to the cherished RSPB) that the egret’s fortunes began to change, first by petitioning powerful high-society types to eschew feathers from their wardrobe, then lobbying the government to ban them outright. It clearly caught on, because the Americans set up a similar initiative of their own over in Oregon, where the native great and snowy egrets were suffering a similar fate. Gradually, with aigrette feathers off the market, the birds began to reappear in the fields and fenlands they had once called home. It would be another hundred years before they attempted to recolonise the British Isles, but once they did, they came back in droves.
I bought a magazine once in the late 2000s that predicted the arrival of the rest of Europe’s heron and egret species in the UK as global warming made these cold islands more favourable to birds more at home in southern Europe. It wasn’t wrong. Since then, both the cattle and great white egret have secured a foothold in Britain, with all three species present in the Avalon Marshes over in the Somerset Levels. If it weren’t for the fact that I work six days out of seven – and Sunday trains and buses are awful in this part of the world – I’d be over there like a shot. Somehow, I fear the open wilds of the Avalon Marshes will have to wait until I have wheels, because after a few sums, it would actually work out cheaper for me to fly to Europe and back than to spend a night or two in Glastonbury in order to visit the Levels. Mad how that works.
Not that I’d say not to being back in Europe, of course – though I am still waiting for my temporary ban to lift, as I hit the ninety day limit last year and would very much like to go back to my grandfather’s country without having to pay a fine. I always try to keep an open mind, but sometimes, Brexit, I really do wish you hadn’t screwed up my life quite so much.
Anyway. These papers won’t mark themselves. Just thought I’d muse a little on something uplifting before getting back to the grind. BB x
Cattle Egret (Ardea ibis) – Dehesa de Abajo, Spain. 26/4/10
I’ve just come back from a wonderful five days in Scotland with some very dear friends. Apart from being a much-needed social fix, it was as good an excuse as any for a change of scenery. Unlike the rest of the UK, where it has so far managed to rain every single day since the new year began, Scotland and its particular brand of Celtic magic has contrived to turn some of that endless precipitation into flurries of snow, which still frosted the distant highlands beyond the Firth of Forth as my southbound train whisked me around the coast at Berwick. I ended up going north one day sooner than planned to tag along to a family hike in the Lomond Hills around Falkland, for which I was woefully overdressed. We popped in to Andy and Babette’s church first, so I had my Sunday best on, which wasn’t exactly the right fare for carrying a pushchair through ankle-deep mud and melted snow. Still – there’s got to be a first time for everything, right?
God – but Edinburgh is such a beautiful city. I don’t say that all that often about cities, but Edinburgh is special. If Spain doesn’t work out – and I am still holding out that it will – Edinburgh wouldn’t be a bad fallback. What a place to raise a child!
With my Peruvian adventure now just over a month away, I have started to get serious in my preparations. I have booked my first accommodation option in Cuzco, using the only dates of which I can be sure, and started to map out the various bus routes I will be taking. I have nineteen days, which isn’t nearly enough to see all that Peru has to offer, but I’ll give it a damned good try.
As I can’t be sure if I’ll return to Peru anytime soon, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that now might be the right time to invest in an upgrade to my trusty 75-300mm telephoto lens. The reliable little Nikkor lens has done a fine job for the last ten years – almost to the day – but in a country teeming with sights I have never seen before, a little more reach would be a very handy thing to have.
When I was starting out as a wildlife photographer, I used a second-hand Nikon D70 and 75-300mm lens and so I grew very accustomed to shooting with that focal length, but when I was around fourteen, my mother bought me a Sigma 150-500mm. I don’t want to think about how much it must have cost her back then (when we weren’t exactly in clover after our ruinous attempt to move to Spain), but it was one hell of an investment. Once I got the hang of the behemoth and its various quirks (notably its optimal range of 400mm, as it tended to blur beyond that range), it became nothing short of my right arm.
Goodness knows I had enough practice. Weekly sorties became routine. My homework diaries from Year 10 and 11 have a clearer record of my weekend plans than they do of any homework I might have been set. My usual haunts were scattered across East Kent: Stodmarsh, Sandwich Bay, Margate and my local patch at the Undercliff where the White Cliffs of Dover began; and sometimes further afield, to the lonely wetlands of Dungeness and the Elmley Marshes. I still find it ironic that I didn’t really get bit by the birdwatching bug until my last week living in Spain, by which point it was almost too late to appreciate what I had out there. Still, Kent was a wonderful place to learn that trade, and I even made something of a name for myself as the Young Kent Birder for the Kent Ornithological Society. That was also my first foray into blogging, as it happens – this particular endeavour is merely the successor to a record-keeping exercise that I have been working on since I was fourteen years old.
The Sigma lens came with me on many adventures, but it was absolutely invaluable when I went to work in Uganda during the first three months of my gap year. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without it. I certainly wouldn’t have had nearly as much luck with the fish eagles, crowned cranes, tree-climbing lions and mountain gorillas as I did with the Sigma lens at my side.
Sadly, we leave some of our most cherished things behind when we grow up. When I became a man, I put away childish things, and for some reason, the Sigma lens – and the birdwatching world it had opened to me – was one of those “childish things” I put away when I left for university. Maybe I was only trying to fit in. Maybe all the time I would have spent out and about in nature was reassigned to making time for friends and rehearsals. One way or another, I sort of let go of something that had been a fundamental part of my childhood – and, if I’m being honest, my soul. I regret that, I guess.
The naturalist in me never went away. I distinctly recall keeping a quiet list of the birds I saw in a notebook while traveling around Morocco with some friends from my Arabic course. I remember also taking an unfettered delight in the sight of a sparrowhawk when it struck down a pigeon in my garden and proceeded to disembowel it in front of the kitchen window. And there was always an enormous grin on my face if and when I encountered the pair of goosanders that lived on the River Wear en route to a seminar in the morning. I think I even altered my route most days to try to see them.
After a few months in Spain during my year abroad, I used some of my Erasmus grant to buy myself a new camera. The new model – the D3200 that I have used ever since – was a budget model and thus did not come with an in-built focus motor. When I remembered the faithful Sigma and tried it out with my new kit, I realised that its days as a wildlife zoom lens were over. Let’s just say that tracking a 15cm kingfisher flying at 40kmph across the surface of a rushing river is hard enough with an autofocus-ready lens, and damned near impossible when you’re trying to catch it manually. Several years of neglect had also left it in a rusty state. While still perfectly functional, web-like fungus had grown across its inner rings, doubtless the result of its final foray in the cloud forests of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
Since then, I have done a decent job with my 75-300mm, but the glory days of wielding a mighty telephoto like a flanged mace felt like a distant memory. Until yesterday, when I bit the bullet and ordered a proper upgrade: introducing the Nikon 200-500mm AF-S. It’s not exactly the latest model – the lens went on the market in 2015, shortly before I bought the D3200 – but it is a huge step forward in terms of what I can do with my wildlife photography. I’m not really at the stage in my career where I feel I can justify splashing out on one of those titanic cannon-esque superzooms that the other Kentish birdwatchers used to lug around, but I am at the stage in my life when I want something to live for. Lady Luck is proving hard to find, so until she turns up, I’ve decided to step back in time and blow the dust off a hobby that used to have me grinning from ear to ear from week to week.
Some people find their joy in the gym or in park run. But for me, the answer is and has always been nature. Now that I am fully-armed once again – for the first time in nearly fourteen years – it’s time to get back out there and enjoy a hobby again.
Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus), River Tone.
I still don’t have wheels of my own, so my forays will be limited until such a time as I get my hands on a driver’s license, but for now, I intend to explore my immediate area. There’s plenty to see in the corner of Somerset where I live, and the local bus and train network is pretty handy. With the forecast looking none too promising (the rain continues), I thought I’d start with a wander up and down the River Tone, so that I could dash home in case the heavens opened. Fortunately, the worst I got was a gentle mist for the first five minutes, after which I had a very dry (if muddy) two hours’ walk.
The Nikon 200-500mm is about the same length as the old Sigma, but it is both chunkier and heavier, so I found myself using the tripod grip as a handle. It also requires two spins of the barrel to extend to its full focal length (back in the day, I could wind out the Sigma to its precise maximum of 400mm in a single move), but in a major improvement on the Sigma, it loses none of its visual acuity at its full extension, so in a very real sense, I am working with a longer telephoto than I have ever operated before. I had plenty of opportunities to put it through its paces this morning with the roving flocks of passerines that were feeding along the river, and it did not disappoint, tracking the nimble movements of treecreepers, siskins, goldcrests and long-tailed tits as they hopped about between the leafless branches.
I’m a firm believer that it takes more than just an expensive camera or lens to make a decent wildlife photographer. What it really requires is a solid understanding of your subject and their fickle nature. Fortunately, I have spent most of my thirty-two years on this planet observing the world around me, so while I still can’t keep pace with the rest of my generation in many respects, I do know what I’m doing in the field of wildlife photography. I’m no professional, nor would I ever consider making this hobby into a side-hustle, but it does bring me immense joy.
Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus), River Tone.
It’s so good to be back. My arm is complete again. Let’s make this a year to remember! BB x
Andén 13, Estación de Autobuses de Cáceres. 13.29.
That last post was a bit lacklustre. I can’t be at the top of my game all the time, but I’ll admit it is hard to write convincingly about my favourite topic – nature – when the rain kept me indoors for most of the day. I got out for a bit during the evening to have dinner at Mesón Troya, one of the restaurants in the square (usually a place to avoid in larger towns, but not so here), but beyond my short sortie beyond the castle walls, I didn’t get very far yesterday. Instead, I contented myself with watching the stars from the hilltop and counting the towns and villages twinkling in the darkness of the great plains beyond: Monroy, Santa Marta de Magasca, Madroñera, and the brilliant glow of faraway Cáceres.
Morning summoned a slow sunrise into a cloudless sky. If I had brought walking clothes, I would have set out across the llanos on foot – but Chelsea boots, a smart winter coat and bootcut Levi’s jeans don’t exactly make for the most comfortable long-distance fare, so I erred on the side of caution and took a stroll into the berrocal – the rocky hill country south of Trujillo.
Idly, I set my sights on a restored 17th century bridge some five kilometres or so from town, but I was quite happy to wander aimlessly if the path presented any interesting forks.
My working life is so full of tasks that require forethought and planning that it’s nothing short of liberation itself to have that kind of absolute freedom that I crave: the freedom to do or not do, to turn back or to push on, to take this road or that, without any thought as to the consequences (beyond the need to get back in time for the bus). A freedom that becomes maddening when it’s taken away from me, like it was in Jordan, all those years ago. It’s a hardwired philosophy that I’ve become increasingly aware of as I’ve grown older, bleeding into my views on speech, movement and identity – and massively at odds with most of my generation.
Perhaps it’s an inherited desire for freedom from my Spanish side: I do have family ties to Andalucía, a region that once made a surprisingly successful bid for anarchy, and my great-grandparents quite literally put their lives on the line to make a stand for freedom of thought under Franco’s fascist regime.
Or perhaps that’s just wishful thinking. Either way, it’s hard to deny just how important that sense of total freedom is to me. Maybe I’m more like the Americans than I thought.
I didn’t make it as far as the bridge. The full day of rain from the day before had done more than dampen the sandy soil and form puddles and pools in the road. It had also swollen the Arroyo Bajohondo to the size of a small river. It didn’t look particularly bajo or hondo, but I didn’t trust the stability of the soil underfoot and didn’t fancy making way to Mérida with soaking jeans up to my knees for the sake of a tiny bridge, so I turned about and returned the way I had come.
Without a car at my disposal, I couldn’t make it out onto the plains, home to Trujillo’s more emblematic species (bustards, sandgrouse and stone curlews), but the berrocal was teeming with wonders of its own. Hoopoes, shrikes and stonechats watched my coming and going from the rungs of rusting farming stations, while woodlarks and skylarks ran this way and that along the stone walls that marked the boundaries of cattle stalls along the way. A flock of Iberian magpies kept me company on the way back, their jaunty black caps almost shining in the sunlight, and I nearly missed a lonely lapwing sitting in one of the fields – a curiously English sight in far-flung Extremadura – before it took off on powerful, bouncing wingbeats.
Speaking of powerful wingbeats, I was practically clipped on my way down to the arroyo by three hulking shapes that flew overhead. I clocked one as a griffon – there are few silhouettes I know better – but I had a feeling the other two might have been black vultures – something about their colossal size and the heaviness of their beaks. They seemed to have disappeared by the time I turned the corner in pursuit, which is hard to imagine for creatures with a wingspan of around 270cm.
A change in perspective always helps, however. I found all three on my way back, sunning themselves on a granite boulder not too far from where I’d first seen them. I suppose I’d have had my back to them on the way down. And what an impressive sight they are! Hulking great things, even if they were some way off.
Even with the full day of rain, I’ve scarcely had a moment out here where I’ve felt lost or alone. Spain works an incredibly potent magic upon me, whether it comes in the form of the music of its native language, pan con aceite y tomate, the immense blue skies of Castilla or the spectacular sight of its vultures, forever and always my favourite sight in the whole world.
I conveyed this jokingly to an old lady from Villafranca on the bus. She gripped my arm with a talon that the vultures might have envied and told me in no uncertain terms to “búscate un trabajo aquí”. It does feel like the universe is trying to help me to set things right and come back. But I have to get it right. I need this to work this time. So – fingers crossed.
If I could spend the rest of my life in the passing shadow of the vultures, I’d die a happy man. BB x
It turns out the rain in Spain does indeed fall mainly on the plain. And when it does, it does so with a Biblical vengeance. I made it to my hotel in Trujillo with just seconds to spare when the heavens opened. Any hopes I might have harboured of exploring the city’s surrounding countryside were swiftly washed away, as the rain came down all afternoon, all through the night and long into the following morning.
This would be a real downer if I’d had plans. But my itinerary is an open book and I’m always happy to improvise – it is my preferred method of travel. So I enjoyed a late morning, a proper breakfast and the blissful quiet of one of Spain’s most beautiful (if isolated) towns.
Trujillo sits atop a small granite ridge in a boulder-strewn corner of the Llanos de Cáceres, a vast and featureless steppe that stretches between the Sierra de San Pedro in the west and the Ibor Mountains to the east. There’s nothing like it in Western Europe. You’d have to go as far as the Puzsta in eastern Hungary to find anything close to its vastness. Lichen-covered granite boulders rise out of the earth like giant’s teeth and the odd tree stands alone in the fields, but beyond that, it’s like staring into the infinite.
Little wonder, then, that Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro – both native sons of this part of the world – set their sights on nothing less than the horizon – they’d had no choice but to do so since the day they were born.
Extremadura can be a desolate place in winter. It can be pretty desolate in summer, too, but there is a virgin beauty in its isolation. By avoiding the grasping arms of the hordes of tourists who have strangled much that remained of Old Spain into submission, Extremadura has managed to hold on to the embers of an ancient fire which exists only in the memory of those living among the tower blocks of the southern coast.
Perhaps that’s why it’s often considered one of the main contenders for the Birdwatching Capital of Europe, since so many rare and otherwise elusive species still flock here in droves, taking advantage of our absence to go about their lives as their ancestors have done since before we came to this land.
You can see some of that without even leaving the motorway. Every winter, more than 75,000 common cranes travel from their breeding grounds in Northern Europe to this remote corner of the Iberian peninsula. They spend the colder months in the shade of the dehesas, feeding on acorns. They’re a rather common sight if you look beneath the trees, and at over a metre in height, they’re hard to miss.
When I first came to Trujillo in the spring of 2016, I promptly fell in love with the place. It wouldn’t be the first remote corner of Spain that’s stolen my heart – El Rocío and Hornachos are up there – and it won’t be the last. It’s found its way into my saga as the elected home of my hero, partly out of practicality and partly out of a sense of wish fulfilment on my part. Half of me wishes I’d been brave enough to flat out ask to be sent here for my second British Council placement back in 2017. It would have been a lottery, of course, but what would it have been like to live here, I wonder? Trujillo is a lot smaller than Villafranca de los Barros – and a lot more out of the way – but infinitely more scenic.
I managed a short reccie to the north of town, before the skies turned dark once again and I had to admit defeat and return to the hotel. The cobbled streets running down from the hilltop had become rivers in their own right. It wasn’t yet siesta time, but nobody else was out and about. And with good reason!
From my vantage point on the second floor of the hotel, I can see out across the plaza and the rest of town. There isn’t all that much to see, with the rain clouds obscuring most of the world from view, but when the sun is shining, you can see straight across to the pyramidal Sierra de Santa Cruz – and the town at its feet, curiously named Santa Cruz de la Sierra (I’m not altogether sure which came first).
If the weather had been kinder I’d have set out at first light and tried to reach the old Moorish settlement at its summit… but then, I haven’t exactly come dressed for a hike. Perhaps it’s for the best that I have had a day to take it easy in Trujillo.
Tomorrow is a new day. 0% chance of rain. I don’t need to rush off anywhere, so I might go for a stroll after breakfast and try to soak up the countryside while I’m here. BB x
Three days shy of Santiago and my feet are starting to get the better of me. It’s been a minor miracle that I’ve made it this far unscathed, but I suspect that murderous climb up and over the Hospitales route – coupled with several forty kilometre days back to back – have conspired to give me one final challenge in the form of two mirrored blisters, one on each of my little toes. I brought a veritable school kitbag of Compede plasters with me on this Camino, but I gave most of them away to my younger companions during the Meseta stage (as they really were suffering a great deal more than I am now), so I have had to resupply tonight.
Fortunately, the end is in sight. Three rather challenging days remain, as I still have a hundred kilometres to clear (Lugo conveniently marks precisely 100km from Santiago), but I remain steadfast in my desire to see this thing through to the end. I’ve come this far.
I don’t have an awful lot to report from this morning’s walk. I took it slowly to give my feet a break, but I still didn’t see any more than the three pilgrims from the albergue in Castrojeriz who left ahead of me, and that within the first hour and a half.
I didn’t sleep very well because the rakes from the night before decided it would be a great idea to go the bathroom and laugh their heads off at some private joke sometime around midnight. I’d normally be wide awake at that time of night anyway, but on the Camino, sleep is precious, so before I knew what I was doing my teacher mode activated and I found myself opening the door to the bathroom to give them a piece of my mind. They looked dreadfully disheveled with bloodshot, unfocused eyes, and had clearly been both drinking and smoking. I tried to get back to sleep afterwards, but it must have been another hour or so before I could do so.
It’s not always easy to deactivate from teacher mode, even on holiday. I remember doing something similar on a stag do once when some of the fellows I was with decided it would be fun to kick a football into the road. This kind of thing used to come very hard to me, but I guess practice makes perfect. Or a perfect party pooper, take your pick.
I was up again at half four, but delayed leaving until around six, as Lugo was only twenty kilometres’ distance and I didn’t want to get there too early, even at a slower pace than usual. Even so, I was early enough to see a fair number of roe deer in the woods, one of them so close I could see the light in its eyes before it bolted.
I reached Lugo shortly after eleven without any great difficulty. It was a poor morning for stamp collecting. I passed what I am sure is a famous Primitivo stop, the Oasis Primitivo, where both stamp and watermelon can be had at the right time of day, but it was not yet nine o’clock and a Monday morning and there was nobody around. So I pressed on.
Mondays can be frustrating on the Camino. On Sundays, all the shops and supermarkets close for the whole day and Monday can be little better. Twice now I’ve made landfall in a large town or city on a Monday, only to find that all its sites and museums are closed on Mondays. So it was with Lugo. At least the 100km sign was free and easy to see.
Lugo’s cathedral pays no heed to Spain’s Garfieldesque aversion to Mondays, so I had a look around. Contrary to what several folks online were saying, it’s not free, but it is a cheaper fare for pilgrims at 5€, which isn’t so bad. It’s not as spectacular as León or Burgos, though the chapel to the Lady of Lugo, la Virgen de los Ojos Grandes – the Lady of the Large Eyes – was rather impressive. Her eyes didn’t seem especially large, but maybe it’s because hers were painted brown rather than blue, as is often the way, so they seem like great pools of dark light.
The albergue was pretty busy, as I expect will be the case for the next two nights as the Primitivo rejoins the Francés in Melide, but they’ve almost all of them gone out for dinner, so I’m alone to write. The pseudo-Compede on one of my heels isn’t sticking so well, so I’m keeping one leg balanced on top of the other. In a week from now, I’ll be back in the comfort of my own bed (provided I can get my hands on my key!) and my tired feet will finally be able to rest at last. But let’s not dwell on that just yet.
Instead, I thought I’d take you through my beautiful collection of feathers that I’ve found along the pilgrim road this year. None of them are quite as rare or as beautiful as the fossil scallop – well, perhaps one of them – but I know them and I know their origin. Each one tells a story.
Stashed away in my journal, the smaller ones: a tiny goldfinch feather (rescued from a spider’s web by Audrey, one of my American companions), a feather from the wing of a great-spotted woodpecker and the plume of a large white bird, either a stork or a great bustard, found beneath the flight path of the six birds I saw on my way to Frómista.
Also within the back pocketof my journal are four more finds, all from different stages of the Camino: a quail feather from the Aragonés, a kestrel’s wing from the Francés, a tawny owl’s downy flight feather from the dark forests of the Camino de San Salvador and a chest feather from the breast of a peregrine falcon, found in the cloisters of Lugo’s Cathedral on the Primitivo. It is surely this last that is the most emblematic in the collection, since the name Peregrine Falcon might literally be translated as “pilgrim” or “wanderer”. It’s a direct translation in Spanish (halcón peregrino), so to find such a thing as my journey draws to a close seems apt.
And then there’s the larger finds, the feathers that are too big to fit inside my journal, and so remain slotted into my rucksack during the day’s walk. The long and tapering black finger of a crow seems right, as this has been a familiar companion along the Primitivo, as is the small buzzard plume, and the black and white feathers of a white stork serve as a reminder of the Meseta and the town of Boadilla, where we lost our fearless German companion Theo to major foot complications. The other two have been with me since the very start of the Camino, discarded by a red kite and a griffon vulture on the rugby pitch at Bedous.
The largest of them all, the vulture, has been my totem on this trek. I found a similar one when I was a lad in the mountains of Andalusia, which I still possess to this day, but it has not been on the adventure that this one has.
I am rather attached to it. I find myself checking over my shoulder at least four or five times a day to make sure it’s still there. I sometimes feel I’d be more alarmed if it went missing rather than my watch or wallet – as though it’s been a lucky talisman of some kind.
Whatever it is, it once belonged to a proud and magnificent creature, and I have carried it with me for nearly a thousand kilometres. Through sun and rain and under the moon and stars. In the blinding light of the meseta and the towering shadows of the great cathedrals of Castile. Across sand and stone, hill and dale, moor and mountain – and, hopefully, to the end of my journey.
I don’t really believe in lucky talismans – I prefer to subscribe to the notion that the Creator has a master plan – but, like my faithful Niña and Pinta, they do provide some comfort along the road. The final hundred may yet be my greatest challenge of all, so I will need all the comfort I can get! BB x
Albergue Pensión Casa Cuartel, A Fonsagrada. 17.15.
My feet are seriously tired, but I’ve done it – the longest stint yet on this year’s Camino. Forty-five kilometres of hills, sierras and reservoirs, of steep descents and sunlit climbs, which puts me one day closer to Santiago and gives me the peace of mind to spend a day exploring the city the day after I get there. I sacrificed seeing a local festival in Grandas de Salime for this, but after speaking to some of the pilgrims in this hostel, I think I made the right choice. It sounds just like the set-up at Castrojeriz, which – if memory serves – left me with a little less than two hours’ sleep after the local verbena went on into the small hours.
There are two English lads in this hostel who must be fresh out of private school, talking about “going for brekkie” in that easily identifiable southern drawl and using the same slang terms like “cooked” and “rizz” that my students do. They’re sitting on the steps outside playing one of those mobile phone games that their generation seems to be absolutely hooked on. They’ve been doing so for the best part of the last two hours, talking loudly about their tactics as they do. The two men from Valencia who went the wrong way today are both fast asleep in the next bunk, which is the quietest the shorter of the two has been all afternoon – he’s a particularly merry sort.
I left Berducedo a full two hours before dawn, long before any of the other pilgrims were up. There wasn’t even the faintest glow on the horizon, so I did have to use my phone torch for some of the trek, especially the hundred metres or so that cut through a forest (where a number of large bats seemed to enjoy the light and the moths it attracted). The constellations were a sight to behold, as was the arm of the Milky Way stretching away to the west, towards Santiago. It’s not quite Perseid season – that’s still a little over a week away – but I did see one shooting star away to the south and made a wish.
The first cold glow of dawn descended as I began my own descent into the valley before Grandas de Salime. It’s a very steep path that zigzags down the hillside, descending by 800m in a very short space of time. I was quite happily enjoying the Battle of Helm’s Deep when a nightjar almost clipped my face with its wings and one of the rocks in the path ahead suddenly grew wings of its own and took off into the morning air. There were at least three of them hawking about the track, looking for all the world like enormous feathered moths with their strange alternating flight, sometimes flappy, sometimes gliding with their wings held high.
One landed in a tree nearby and set up its eerie churring call, which is almost as iconic to the Camino as the endless tread of my own feet.
Another – the one I had mistaken for a rock – alighted on the track a little way ahead. I approached very slowly and, at least for a little while, it didn’t look like it was in any hurry to take off again. I got so close that I could see it yawn with my own eyes: their vast, gaping mouths are one of the features that gave them their Spanish name of “chotacabras”, or goatsuckers. I almost missed the hare that came bounding out of the grass behind it, appearing more clearly in the photos I took than it did in reality.
Of course, it took off before I could get too close, making its strange grooik flight call as it did so. It landed a little way back up the path but I left it alone and pressed on.
Nightjars are just one of the rewards of setting out early on the Camino. You might hear them, but you’d never see them if you set out after breakfast. I’ve been lucky enough to see quite a few on this year’s Camino, but never so close and never on camera. I haven’t wanted my SLR often on this Camino – I’m carrying enough as it is – but today I would have given a small part of my library to have had it in my hands!
I reached Grandas de Salime shortly after nine, making it a four hour walk from Berducedo (compared to the guidebooks’ suggestion of six or seven). This is usually the stage end, but as it was not even the halfway point, I allowed myself a decent breakfast of a tostada con aceite y tomate, a slice of tortilla and some fresh orange juice so that I might have the energy to push on. There were a few pilgrims having breakfast at the bar, but not that many. The townsfolk were setting up for the second night of their local festival, and I imagine a number of pilgrims had decided to stick around and have fun. I, however, had another twenty-five kilometres still to go and couldn’t stay for long.
I trailed a couple of Brazilian pilgrims for a little while before Peñafuente, dressed in sporty Lycra, marching cactus-print parasols, a giant Brazilian flag and immaculate hair (something the Brazilian pilgrims seem to prioritise above all other things). I’ve become a lot less cagey about drinking from unmarked fountains along the Camino and the one at Peñafuente was absolutely incredible. The guidebooks recommended the one at Fonfría, but that wasn’t as good or as cold as the one at Peñafuente, so I drank deep and bottled deeper, as it was still a long way to A Fonsagrada. I had hardly begun the second leg, which the guidebooks suggested should take eight to nine hours, and what clouds there were in the sky did very little to block the sun. I was going to need all the water I could get. I can be a real camel on the Camino, but it’s always best to be prepared.
There are quite a few hills to climb between Grandas and A Fonsagrada, none of which were particularly easy under the midday sun. The Camino cuts right through one of Asturias’ many wind farms, though these ones are nowhere near as enormous as the turbines found up in the mountains on the San Salvador route. The heavy whoosh of their arms as they spin in the wind is quite something to hear up close, punctuated with the odd mechanical whirr when the head tilts one way or the other. The way the Spaniards were complaining about the wind up in the mountains yesterday, you’d think that wind was a rare occurrence in Spain – but the turbines that crown many of Spain’s hills and sierras say otherwise.
The Spanish are nothing if not practical with their high places. If there isn’t a watchtower, a sanctuary, a hermitage or a radio mast on top of this or that hill, there’s usually a row of wind turbines.
I passed the first row of turbines before sunrise this morning. You can just about see them to the right of the nearer turbines in the photo below, on the last range of hills before the wall of cloud held back by the mountains of Asturias. It’s a good indicator of just how far I walked today.
Shortly after passing the last row of turbines, I crossed the border into Galicia, the last of Spain’s regions on the Camino de Santiago. The marker wasn’t as grand as the one at O Cebreiro – just a crude line of flints and a small cement block featuring a Facebook link to a motorcycle page owned by a guy called Nando, which also happened to indicate that Asturias was on one side and Galicia on the other.
The scenery is already different. The hills are no longer quite as rugged. Instead, they’re carpeted in golden grass and purple heather. I was sorely tempted to get an ice cream at O Acebo, but decided to postpone that desire until I had reached my destination. It took another two and a half hours from the border to reach A Fonsagrada, and the last steep climb up to the hilltop town didn’t help, but I was relieved to learn that the albergue I had found was a bit of a step up from the usual, with real linen bedsheets, soap in the showers and an in-house washer-dryer complex (though I still prefer to wash my clothes by hand whenever I can).
So… forty-five kilometre days can be done, even on the Primitivo! That’s the longest I’ve done so far, and probably the longest I’ll do this year. There’s no sense in rushing to Santiago, which is a lot more expensive to stay in than the towns and villages along the way, so from here on out I intend to enjoy the Camino at a relatively leisurely pace.
Which is, of course, a white lie – because after 45km, 30km is relatively casual. Or 35. Or even 37… BB x
Confession. I was genuinely considering skipping Grado to gain a day this morning. I think I still hadn’t shaken the idea that, if I could only walk a little faster, I might catch up to my companions on the Camino Francés before they left for home. But the Camino, like an old god, is fickle. I’m not sure whose idea it was – Santiago, the Lady of El Rocío or the capricious spirit of the Camino itself – but I was waylaid at the albergue this morning by a retired Swedish woman who wanted company on the road out of town. The Camino leads straight to the train station, and I might have made it in time… but the Swedish woman pointed left and I followed without thinking.
I lost her about half an hour later when I picked up speed at the city’s outer limits, but I see now that it was a signal: no tricks this time. This Camino must be walked from beginning to end. There is something along this road that I am meant to do or see. The fatalist in me takes over on the Camino, and right now he is utterly convinced of that fact. So here we are.
Welcome to the Camino Primitivo. If you were expecting something similar to the Camino Francés, think again. It’s almost like stepping out of a bus and onto a boat: the same feeling of companionship, but an altogether different vehicle in an altogether different environment.
Asturias is, in a way, the grandfather of Spain. This green and clouded region, together with Cantabria and the Basque Country, was the final holdout of Iberia’s Christians during the Moorish invasion of 711, and it was from here – so the legends tell – that Don Pelayo established the Asturian monarchy, the earliest forerunner of the Spanish crown, and began the Christian reconquest of Spain – the Reconquista – which would take nearly eight hundred years to complete.
You might think such a place would be as Spanish as it gets. You would be mistaken. This is not a land of paella, flamenco and bull-fighting, or dark-skinned maidens flanked by guitar-wielding lotharios (a stereotype far more common among Italian pilgrims this year). This is a green and hilly country where the clouds descend as far as the tree-tops and sometimes beyond; where the rain rolls in off the sea in visible eddies and falls like mist on your face. Where the men are short but powerfully built, and the women breathtakingly pale. Where great clouds of smoke rise from the quarries and factories, and the air is thick with the constant ringing of cowbells. This is Asturias. It could hardly be more different to neighbouring León. It is a reminder – as though one were needed – that Spain is, in reality, a multinational state, where even the kingdom that started it all has its own distinct language and identity.
For the greater part of the morning, my road was cushioned by the clouds. Sometimes they moved with me, sometimes they moved against me. It rained for a half-hour or so, but it was not so much rain as a rain cloud that was so low to the ground that one could walk right through it. The Camino from Oviedo ducks and weaves through the hill country, sometimes following the asphalt roads, sometimes leading down dark trails into the tangled forests of oak and eucalyptus.
It’s very easy to see how this corner of Spain – behind the frontier of the Cordillera Cantábrica – shelters most of Spain’s lingering mythology. The forests are dark and watchful and the mist rolling through them plays tricks with your eyes. I heard something large kick up the leaves and dart into the deep at one point, but I never did see what it was. A deer, perhaps. There are plenty of them about.
In one of the forested stretches, the Camino crosses a small clearing scarred with limestone teeth, like the bones of some ancient monster. A splash of colour on one of the rocks nearest to the road caught my eye and, on closer inspection, it was the head of one of the spirits the Lady of El Rocío sent to guide me yesterday: an Egyptian vulture.
Egyptian vultures are one of the oldest species of vulture still in existence. They are also the last of their kind, with their nearest relatives believed to have died out during the Miocene. They are incredibly intelligent creatures, being one of the few species to use not just one but two tools: using stones as hammers to break into eggs, and sticks as spools to gather wool or other nest-building materials.
They’re also amazing to look at, with their glam-rocker hairstyles and their black and white wings. I found myself wondering whether this bird was one of the inspirations for the Chozo, an ancient race of superintelligent avianoid aliens from the Metroid series. Their faces certainly match up to the earlier designs.
Well, while I had them on the brain, suddenly, there they were: a pair of them, circling low over a hamlet on the outskirts of Premoño. A local and his son were heaping refuse onto a small bonfire, which may be what drew them in, but before long they were riding the thermals high into the sky. It was enough to make me skip one breakfast stop just to chase after them and watch them ride higher and higher until I could no longer make out the diamond shape of their tailfeathers.
I tried to make amends on a breakfast stop in Valduno, but one of the waiters made frantic signs to be quiet as I opened the door: half the bar space had been given over to microphones and speakers, and they were in the middle of recording a podcast. I could get some water, they said, or wait in a corner. I felt I was intruding on something. I moved on.
I found a better spot in Paladín, where I had a nice long chat with the barman. He had some sort of alarm setup which sounded awfully close to Colours of the Wind from Disney’s Pocahontas, which went off whenever somebody walked through the gate – I guess that’s how he knew to appear the moment I arrived. He was keen to know how many pilgrims I had seen on the road. I told him only a handful, as I had been one of the first to leave Oviedo – which was true – but that there had been plenty at the albergue. He was quick to point out that not all of them would come this way, as the Camino Norte also runs through Oviedo, but seemed very appreciative to have a conversation with a peregrino. Spanish tourists bring money during the summer, he said, but they don’t bring much more than that: a place to eat and sleep and then they’re gone. He missed conversations with pilgrims and swapping tales from the road.
After Paladín, the Camino returns to the banks of the Nalón for a little while. I was so fixated on the beauty of the river that I almost stepped on a stag beetle. I have yet to see one of the impressive males, but the females seem to get about quite a bit during the day, as this is the sixth or seventh one I’ve seen along the Camino.
Like its sister, the Tajo, and a great number of other Spanish rivers and creeks, the Nalón cuts right through the craggy cliffs and sierras on its winding journey to the sea. The train from Oviedo seems to follow it, which must make for a spectacular journey. There’s a small bar at the foot of the Peñón de Peñaflor where you can stop for a drink, but I was much too busy drinking in the view. The old masters painted paradise as a garden with many mirrored lakes and fruit trees, but I think mine would be scarred with karstic crags just like these.
After crossing the river and the tiny settlement of Peñaflor – a small cluster of houses that seem to exist purely to justify the train station – the Camino cuts across the countryside toward the hill town of Grado. A local girl in white cut-off jeans stepped out into the road as I left town and sauntered on ahead with a jaunty, confident stride, toying with her hair over one shoulder and then the other, and then held up in one hand, as though she couldn’t quite make up her mind how she wanted it. It was about half an hour’s walk to Grado, where she finally disappeared into one of the apartment buildings. Spaniards aren’t known for being natural long-distance walkers, so I wonder what she was doing out here?
I reached the albergue a full two hours ahead of opening time, so I took off my sandals and zoned out for a bit. I’ve found a comfortable method in wearing my liner socks underneath the woolen socks (which may well be their original purpose). It’s not too hot and it meant no discomfort whatsoever from my blisters. Let’s see if it lasts.
Andrés, the cheery hospitalero from Badajoz (I’d recognise that accent anywhere) arrived just before 2pm and handled check-in, after which I had a good nap for two hours (that’s how I can justify still writing at this late hour, when all the other pilgrims have long since turned in). I considered going out to eat, but instead sorted out my flight home and popped out to a supermarket to get some supplies – namely, sun-tan lotion, as I’m all out and there are some long days ahead.
Back at the albergue, Andrés suggested making some wax stamps. This slowly brought all the pilgrims downstairs and got conversations flowing all around the room. Hospitaleros only typically work for around 15 days before moving on, but here was a master at work: friendly, accommodating, knowledgeable and unimposing. Just present.
He also had the spirit to call out a fellow Spaniard for a slightly tactless remark about how “easily” Moroccan migrants get Spanish citizenship. As a former civil servant, Andrés certainly knew his stuff – enough to put the man in his place with some hard facts about the reality of immigration policy in Spain.
I feel I learned a lot today. I also got a shiny new wax stamp for the passport, which I painted gold in a nod to the Asturian flag. Now when I look at it, I’ll remember this place.
I don’t know if I’ll find a “Camino family” again like I did on the Francés – that road does facilitate the group dynamic like no other. But this feels right. I’m learning so much and seeing so much more.
Somebody stopped me from catching that train, and they had the right of it. Here’s to another week and a half of wonder. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 