nature

Camino XXVII: Journey’s End

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Finisterre. The End of the World. It’s a fitting place to end the Camino, which can sometimes feel like it really does go ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Well, here we are at the end of the road. Kilometre 0. My great quest for the summer is over.

With a good thirty-two kilometres between O Logoso and the seaside town of Fisterra, Simas and I set off early this morning. One last six o’clock start, an hour or so before the dawn, to end the Camino as it began: in the dark. The churring of nightjars echoed in the forest around us as far as Hospital, after which the road climbed up over a treeless moor before slowly beginning to descend toward the clouded horizon beyond.

We passed a few alarming signs declaring ‘territorio vákner’, which didn’t make a lot of sense until we stumbled upon an enormous sculpture in the woods of a wolf-man. The ‘vákner’ was, according to 15th century pilgrim lore, a Galician forerunner of the werewolf legend, and one of a number of terrible beasts that beset pilgrims in the forests after Santiago. The more you know!

Less fantastical, though by no means less legendary, we found a Tupperware box on one of the stone walls deeper in the woods containing a number of breakfast options: yoghurts, bananas and pastries, complete with plastic spoons in case of need. The invisible benefactor, an eleven-year old local boy, was trying to raise money for a trip to Madrid. I tipped him generously via his piggy bank and enjoyed the breakfast I otherwise might not have had this morning. What a little angel!

Shortly after leaving the forest, as though out of a dream, the sea came into view. I have been so excited to see the sea after three weeks on the road and saving it as a reward for the final day was definitely the right thing to do. We came down into the busy former whaling town of Cee and had a proper breakfast of churros con chocolate, for the princely sum of 3.75€. And that’s including Simas’ café con leche. I’m going to miss how cheap this country is.

Having killed an hour, we pressed on north and west through Corcubión, which was being kitted out for a medieval fair. We detoured a little to see the coast, and were guided back to the Camino by a friendly local afflicted by throat cancer, who pointed us back to the road using a robotic device at his throat. We had not gone much further than Estorde when the sun came out, causing the white sands of the beaches to shine out like a beacon. Given the gloomy forecast for the rest of the day, we took a chance and detoured once again to one of the coves, finding it deserted. And boy am I glad we did!

This was what I walked five hundred and sixty kilometres for: truly, the treasure at the end of the rainbow. There were no pots of gold, but there might as well have been diamonds in the water: each gentle wave kicked up clouds of white sand that glittered in the sunlight like a thousand twinkling stars. Sand eels and mullets darted in silver shoals nearby and a sandpiper scurried up and down the shoreline at a safe distance from us. The way the forests practically tumble right into the ocean, ringed with beaches that shine a purer white than anything the Mediterranean can muster… I’m amazed the Galician coast isn’t as heavy a hitter on the tourist trail as the Costa Brava. Amazed – and grateful. Because from some of the graffiti on the town walls – no a la Marbellización – it’s pretty clear the gallegos don’t want it to have that level of fame either.

A special mention should be made for saint number two of the journey: Nacho, a Valencian who had set himself up on the hill overlooking the Langosteira beach with two paella dishes full of home cooking that he was handing out to passers-by, free of charge. He was quite insistent on this last point, maintaining that though he was between jobs he had enough money by the grace of God to live on, and wanted to share his luck with the world. We had a good natter about what constitutes a real paella, but above all it was really uplifting to meet such a good-hearted man from my grandfather’s region – because while I’m proud to have Manchego heritage, my grandfather was actually born in Torrevieja, which means my immediate ancestry is actually Valencian. Go figure!

We reached Fisterra just after one and checked into the albergue municipal, which was already quickly filling up. It is as well that we did, too, as it landed us the final stamp in the credencial and an additional compostela for completing the final 100km of the Camino. After a quick nap we grabbed a table at O Pirata, a very characterful port-side seafood restaurant whose staff (and hangers-on) really did give off the right vibes as a motley crew rather than a team of restauranteurs. Between our waiter, who might well be the fastest-talking man in Spain, the chef with his black bandana and earring, and the three musicians sat outside, strumming guitars and clapping along – not to mention the seafood itself, which was delicious – it was easily the best meal of the whole Camino. Best of all, they threw in a free ego massage, telling me it wasn’t just the La Mancha shirt that gave away my Spanish heritage but also my ‘actitud’. I’ve actually managed to convince quite a few Spaniards that I’m a native on this Camino, which is a huge thing for me. I’m one step closer every day to reclaiming my heritage!

After lunch, Simas went back to the albergue for a siesta but I fancied a wander around town before the forecasted rain came down. What I thought might be a museum/aquarium in the harbour turned out to be an open-air working fishery, where a raised walkway lets you look down on the fishermen at work, processing and sorting the morning’s catch. It’s a brilliant idea and a fascinating way to have a look-in behind the scenes – especially after enjoying the fruits of their hard work for lunch! One chap was sat measuring the many thousands of razor clams and sorting them by weight, which looked to be a truly Sisyphean task: it must take hours to finish before the next haul arrives and the task begins again.

Stamps and celebratory seafood platters aside, you can’t say you’ve completed the Camino unless you really do go all the way to the end of the road, which is another three kilometres down the coast to the windswept cliffs of Cape Finisterre. The pictures imply a lonely lighthouse watches the cape, but it’s also home to a hotel, a bar, a car park and a couple of souvenir shops, so it’s not as remote a spot as you might think. The steep banks of the cliffs were pretty busy when we got there, with both pilgrims and tourists from various parts of Spain, and it was a good place to bid farewell to several pilgrims I have crossed paths with on the road: Alan, the wannabe hostalero, and the French team of three, Jean-Paul, Adine and Philippe; as well as Liza the Belgian (whose wish was granted by beating me to the Cape) and Catherine the German (who wins the award for the most random encounters along the whole Camino).

I found a quieter spot lower down and sat there for a while, watching the waters of the Atlantic below. It was a good place to reflect. I let go of a lot of things at last, letting them drift from my heart through my fingers and out across the ocean. Down below, gulls wheeled and cried around the cliff edge while a sparrow and a redstart made a few dizzying sallies across the precipice. My eyes were trained on the waves, searching for one thing in particular, and after half an hour – in the wake of a fishing boat – I saw what I was seeking. Not the lonely gannet or flight of shags that rounded the cape, but a fleet of shearwaters, an endearing and highly acrobatic seabird that truly lives up to its name, flying low over the water with the tips of their wings slicing the tips of the waves like blades. I was far too high up to tell what kind they might be, but I imagine they were Balearics, given their size and number.

If the ghostly harrier and quail were the spirits of the early Camino, it’s the handsome shearwater that marks its end. While I’ve walked most of the Camino alone, I’ve had companions every step of the way, from the merry stonechats that have been with me every day to the nightjars that have kept me company in the twilight hours. If you can put a name to the sights and sounds all around you, you’re never truly alone on the road.

If you kept going in a straight line from here, you’d reach Long Island and perhaps even New York City. But unless you have the stamina of a god and the strength to match, that’s simply not possible, so here the road ends at last. I penned the words ‘Llévame contigo’ (Take me with you) into my faithful stick and planted it in the earth just behind where I had been sitting. I hope somebody does take it with them, and that it brings them as much joy and support as it has brought me.

I thought of its predecessor, and the feathers that had made it so memorable to other travellers on the road, and as I did, a couple of ravens suddenly appeared on the wind, soaring in circles around the cliffs below. One of those feathers I carried before belonged to a raven – so perhaps they were with me all along in spirit. I’d like to think that. According to legends of old, it was a raven that first brought the light of hope into the world.

Well, that’s a wrap. It’s now twenty to eight on Friday 28th August. The rain is falling outside and I’m booked on the 11:45 bus back to Santiago. I’m going to find myself a café near the harbour and do some writing while I wait, in this seaside town with which I have fallen in love. Galicia has been beautiful since O Cebreiro but its coast has utterly enchanted me. It feels like home, and yet like Spain at the same time. It feels like Edinburgh, Hythe and Olvera all rolled into one.

I will come back. There is more to the Costa da Morte than I have seen. I must come back. BB x

Camino XXV: Underhill, Over Hill

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After all that build-up to the grand firework display on the night of the 24th, the pilgrim party in Santiago was a little underwhelming. I suppose, like most things, it simply couldn’t live up to the hype. In some years, the entire facade of the cathedral is lit up with a phenomenal son-et-lumiere show while pyrotechnics close the fifteen minute performance. This year, however, the fireworks were set off from six different points around the city – but not the Praza do Obradoiro. I’m glad I gave up my three-hour vigil and went back to the albergue for something to eat at ten thirty or else I would have been pretty cranky! Fortunately, though almost all the fireworks were obscured behind the huge Concello building (meaning the crowd which had previously filled the square wound up massed into a thin wedge overlooking the park) I managed to find a good angle to remedy the situation.

I’m glad I got to see the cabezudos in action, though. I’ve often heard of this farcical summer festival but I’d never seen them in action until yesterday. It beats me how the dancers were able to move so easily with such huge objects on their heads, but they did. At one point they even invited the children in the audience to dance with them. My mother said she had always been a little scared of them, and it’s not hard to see why – they really are grotesque. I could see some of my contemporaries back home immediately assuming the festival to be racist, due to the over-exaggerated features on the two black cabezudos, but if you compare them to the others, they’re no more or less ghastly. I think it’s just the Spaniards laughing at the world and everyone in it as they always have done – and after their most recent car crash of a general election, who can blame them? Context is everything.

I set off relatively late this morning, leaving the albergue just before seven. If I was expecting a quiet escape from Santiago, though, I was mistaken: all of Galicia’s youth had descended upon the city last night (the 24th/25th being a national holiday, after all) and, in true Spanish fashion, they had made a full night of it. So when I descended into the city proper, the streets were packed with hundreds of twenty-somethings having breakfast in every available bar, café and pastelería. Unlike England, there were no scenes of drunken behaviour at all. The Spanish drink about as much as we do on a night out, but as their nights out last a full four hours longer than ours, it tends to work its way out of their system. And don’t get me wrong, but a Spanish breakfast of Cola Cao and a tostada is a much better end to the night than a dodgy kebab!

Leaving my long-buried memories of clubbing in my university days behind, I set off under a clouded sky toward the west. The cement Camino waymarkers helpfully reappeared, together with the yellow arrows, guiding me on to Finisterre, the end of my journey.

After the tedious stretch between Arzúa and Santiago, it was a welcome relief to rediscover some of the magic of the old Camino on the westward road, devoid of the post-Sarria stampede. Oak forests, Roman bridges and stepping stones replaced eucalyptus plantations and ironworks, and the merry stonechats who have been with me every day of the Camino reappeared, as though the same family had accompanied me all the way from Burgos.

Finally, as I reached the riverside haven of Ponte Marceira, I saw something I have been looking for since León: an otter. It was only a brief glimpse, and from a fair distance, but it was enough to be sure. For me it was exactly the reassurance that I needed after two days in a city that I was back where I was supposed to be: in the countryside again, doing what I do best – that is, walking and watching the world go by.

Having left my iPhone/earphone connector on the bus at the very beginning of the Camino (one of a number of accidentally jettisoned items including my sunglasses, shampoo, gloves and scallop shell) I have done most of the Camino without any kind of soundtrack whatsoever beyond the silence (or birdsong) of the world around me. There have been a lot of pilgrims on the road with AirPods in, which is a little sad to see, and more still talking of the podcasts they’ve been listening to. I really wanted to take in the meseta, silence and all, so I have deliberately saved an audible treasure for the final stages of the Camino: the BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Brian Sibley’s take on Tolkien’s masterpiece has a longstanding association with travel in my head, as my dad used to put it on when we went to the Lake District when I was a child. Consequently, though I must have listened to it in its entirety some twenty times since, there are still fragments that give me visions of the Lakes as crystal clear as the waters that lap upon their pebbled shores (the last march of the Ents in particular always conjures up the thundering falls of Aira Force).

I’m deeply attached to the films, but the BBC Radio version is something all Tolkien fans should know. Peter Woodthorpe’s Gollum is so good it puts Andy Serkis’ interpretation in a firm second place (and that takes some doing) and the Shakespearean majesty of Michael Hordern’s voice makes for a phenomenal Gandalf.

But it’s the firmer focus on the road and the journey that makes the radio adaptation so special when you’re travelling. The films glaze over it with stunning New Zealand visuals, but the radio drama gives Tolkien’s poetry and song the airtime it so richly deserves, and several of his walking songs have been staples of mine this summer.

I got as far as the attack at the Ford of Bruinen before arriving at my destination of Vilaserío today, where I had lunch with Liza, a chirpy Belgian pilgrim I keep bumping into, and three Ukrainian pilgrims from Lviv who had run out of money in Santiago but continued their Camino to Finisterre anyway, foraging and sleeping rough for the last forty eight hours. We bought them lunch to keep them going, and I hope others extend the same helping hands wherever they end up!

Tomorrow is another day. If I do as well as I did today, I will shoot for the coast and the old whaling town of Cee, but if I only make it as far as Buxantes, then that is no bad thing either. Before then, however, I have my second communal dinner of the Camino (I have managed to miss most of the places that do these somehow) with my old friend Simas. It’s good to have company once again. BB x

Camino XXIII: Music in the Forest

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After over two weeks on the road, I’m finally within striking distance of Santiago. The kilometre countdown on the much-abused concrete markers has dropped to below twenty, which is less than a morning’s work (I managed more than thirty kilometres before midday today). The end is in sight!

The final two days from Arzúa to Santiago are, quite possibly, the least appealing of the Camino. And that includes the much-maligned Meseta, which I actually really treasured! Whether it’s the busier pilgrim road, the lack of connection between the hundreds of last-minute pilgrims or the endless stands of alien eucalyptus, the magic slips away through your fingers a little as the finish line draws near.

Fortunately, I had my fill of magic moments to power me through the morning.

I was up at 5am as usual with the first of the pilgrims. The turigrino girls were up and about surprisingly early, though it turned out the reason behind their haste was their pre-Camino makeup routine. Thinking I could get the jump on them by striking out early, I set out as soon as I was ready, some fifteen minutes or so before six.

I’m not one for torches, preferring to accustom myself to the darkness, so my own headtorch remained stubbornly in my rucksack throughout the first hour of darkness, even as the Camino wound its way through the dense Galician forests and I lost all the aid of starlight on the road. What I gained, however, was a full immersion in the dawn that is lost when you charge ahead with a bright light. In an ancient forest west of O Carballal, after crossing a stepping stone bridge, I was suddenly surrounded by the otherworldly churr of nightjars. I recorded the sound and played it right back, and was rewarded with a sight of two hawk-like shadows performing their wing-clap display flight against a dawn sky through the trees. They must have clocked my ruse because when I heard them again they were deeper in the forest, but the martian churring followed me right to the edge of the trees, unlike finally the light of daybreak brought it to a sudden halt.

My replacement stick had finally assumed its full inheritance, adorned as it is now with a buzzard feather, two magpie feathers and a sprig of brilliant mountain heather. Somewhere out there, near or far, my old stick may well be traveling the same road. But its successor has done a fine job and I am grateful for its aid in carrying me this far. Lacking a traveling companion, I find a decent stick to be as good a friend as a warm fire in the darkness. And I’m getting a lot better at not leaving it propped up against things when I’m readjusting my clothes!

In the woods after Arzúa, I heard the distinctive reedy sound of a gaitá. Thinking it might be somebody practicing ahead of the regional (and national) festival on the 25th, I filmed a sound bite and moved on – only to almost walk headlong into the source further along the trail. A couple of youngsters, the elder probably no older than twenty, had chosen a spot beside one of the Camino markers, set a hand upside-down and were busking for passing pilgrims: one playing the gaitá (Galician bagpipes) and the other a drum. It more than made my morning, so I tipped them handsomely and stayed to listen for a while.

I stopped for brunch rather than breakfast at a witchcraft-themed café in Boavista (no tortilla, they ran out as soon as I got to the bar) and then slogged right on. The original target, Santa Irene, would have been fine, but it was still ten past twelve and the additional forty minutes on to O Pedrouzo – shaving forty minutes off tomorrow’s final push – were just too tempting to pass up.

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one with that in mind. A sixty-strong group of turigrinos beat us all to the Xunta albergue, evidently by quite some time: they’d lined their rucksacks in a queue leading from the door right up to the road, and some of them had even rolled out their roll-mats and got into their sleeping bags to wait…! Why they thought they might need roll mats on the Camino (as I didn’t see a single tent or any other camping gear on them at all) is beyond me, but perhaps this is their method: arrive early, camp out en masse and seize the first few beds.

On the plus side, while waiting in line with the handful not attached to the group, I was mistaken for an Andalusian by one of the Spaniards. Sure, she was swiftly corrected by a real Andalusian, but the intonation that clings on since the Olvera days still seems to be enough to create a temporary disguise. At the very least, it’s a good way to delay the inevitable ‘soy guiri’.

Well, I’ve done a final run for supplies at the local Día market. I’ve had an empanada for dinner and I have what I need for breakfast, so I can cut and run tomorrow morning. If I’m quick – and the last couple of weeks are good evidence that I am – I’ll be in Santiago for 9am, so I’ll try to get my Compostela before I check in. That would be ideal! But, as I keep telling myself, there’s no rush. I have sorted my lodgings for the next couple of nights, and it’s a room of my own, so for the first time in weeks, I will be able to really kick back and rest… before the real final stretch to Finisterre and home. ¡Hasta la próxima!

P.S. It occurred to me in Día that Spaniards don’t go in for personal catering like the English do. Grab bags, meal deals, milkshake bottles and salty snacks… they’re all designed to be shared. Is that more of a reflection on our culture or theirs? Are we so isolated a nation that our own supermarkets know we would prefer to eat quickly and alone, or are the Spanish so gregarious that a vendor wouldn’t even think of stocking something that would vanish in seconds if passed around? Just one to think about.

Camino XXII: Suckers

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I was woken from my afternoon nap by the melody to Greensleeves, of all the pieces in the world – the guitarist from Villafranca must have caught up to me. Now that my pace has slowed a tad, it’s likely I’ll be running into a few familiar faces over the next couple of days.

I set off late from Airexe this morning, being its sole inhabitant for a couple of hours after the Belgian pilgrim set off at five thirty for Ribadiso. I was in much less of a hurry, still mulling over whether to dawdle in Vilar de Donas and wait to see the peerless medieval murals of its famous church. Even at the disgracefully late departure time of 7.30am, the whole world was steeped in a sea of mist, from which only the tops of the trees and the hilltops of the valleys beyond emerged like the ruins of a sunken world, much like Portomarín yesterday.

I decided to make for Vilar de Donas in the end, seeing as it would be a relatively short one today (23km) and I had time to kill. It’s a small detour of 2km to the north from the hamlet of Portos, but you’ve got to time it right. I arrived shortly after 8am, and while the internet and guidebooks give various times, for the record, the church is open from 12.00, and no earlier. A local electrician told me I could seek out the ageing sacristan who lives in a house nearby and ask, but as it was still so early, I decided it would be best to leave him be – not least of all as he is in his mid-nineties! I did, however, get a reasonably good view of the church through a crack in the door, and I can only conclude that the 12.00 opening time is a crying shame: the church is at its most magical in the morning light, when the rising sun throws down a golden beam across the floor through the opaque marble window. I’ll have to come back and see this marvel again sometime.

The road to Melide cuts through a number of forests, from carefully planted rows of pine and silver birch to the once-so-alien stands of eucalyptus, which are such a feature of the Galician landscape. Most magical of all, however, were the truly ancient forests that the Camino traverses, with wildly twisting branches and an undergrowth so dense it would need a machete to pass through.

Sometimes the arching trees seem to create tunnels, as though intentionally sheltering the pilgrim road as they must have done for over a thousand years and more. The colourful turigrinos passing through had their heads down on their phones, unfortunately, but the marvel wasn’t lost on those few true peregrinos left on the road.

I reached Melide shortly after one in the afternoon, but it was twenty past by the time I found the albergue – by which time a horde of turigrinos (a pejorative term used by pilgrims to describe the sudden mass appearance of tourists sharing the pilgrim road for non-spiritual reasons) had descended, which meant my first queue for an albergue municipal of the whole Camino. Given that this is often a Camino staple in high season, I should really consider myself lucky!

More than lucky, however, I was certainly hungry, having eaten little more than the last of the homemade biscuits for breakfast this morning. Melide is famous for its pulpeiras – restaurants specialising in the Galician speciality, octopus – and the name thrown around for the last few days has been Pulpería Ezequiel, an award-winning family business on the high street. A ración of the famous pulpo costs 11€ and is more than enough to sate the appetite – and it really is sensationally good. Do drop by if you’re passing through. There are plenty of other options, but Ezequiel himself must have been cutting and chopping octopus all morning, since that was what almost everybody seemed to be ordering! One wonders just how many octopuses (octopi?) the Galicians get through each day, never mind the Spanish at large…

I’ll try to catch a pilgrim mass this evening, as there was none to be found last night. I’m still deliberating whether to shoot for Santiago a day early on Sunday, but we’ll just have to play that one by ear. Until the next time! BB x

Camino XXI: Peace and Quiet

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Trying to justify this slower pace is hard, man. After two weeks of five a.m. starts, it’s a real culture shock to convince yourself that leaving the albergue after seven is an acceptable thing to do. However, if I’m to arrive in Santiago for the fireworks, as planned, I have to go at a much slower pace. The easy solution, I guess, would be stopping for breakfast for often and people watching. I suppose that’s not so unappealing an idea.

Rather than try to dogleg and catch up on yesterday’s account ahead of today’s, I’ll merge the two into one.

We’re into Galicia proper now. The mornings are bright but overcast and the endless horizons of Castilla y León are a distant memory in this green, wooded country. After saying farewell to Samos, the Camino led a meandering route back north to Aguiada along the Río Sarria, through forests alive with the songs of cirl buntings, wood warblers and golden orioles. I even found a stag beetle on the path at one point, but while I kept a trained eye on the river, still no otters. I guess you have to go more remote than the Camino to find them!

I made slow progress, feeling genuinely tired for the first time on the Camino, probably on account of the five hours of sleep I managed thanks to dealing with Mamasita and his drinking problem the night before. As a result I kept catching up to and being overtaken by the bell-ringing pilgrim from yesterday, whose jingling presence was practically unavoidable. An hour of it was almost maddening, so rather than keeping pace with my companions, I got back into my usual pace – and, what do you know, suddenly I wasn’t so tired anymore. Paolo was right: you really do have to go at your own speed on the Camino and nobody else’s. It’s amazing how moving slower tires you out faster.

Just before Sarria, I found a single buzzard feather caught on a hedge near a farmstead. Naturally, it’s now fastened to my bastón. To quote Sweeney Todd, my arm is complete again!

Sarria itself was a much less daunting town than it has been made out to be, though that may be because the pilgrim horde had long since moved out. I picked up a few stamps and some friendly advice from the Amigos del Camino and cut right through to the countryside again.

Now, at last, I began to see the tail end of what is probably the great rush to Santiago. The dominant language of the pilgrims on the road is, finally, the same of the country itself, as Spaniards young and old (but mostly under twenty) attempt the final 100km of the Camino, easily identifiable by their fluorescent sports wear, portable speakers and undersized Quechua backpacks. I’ve had a lot of fun screwing with their expectations by responding to their cheery ‘hello, buen camino’ with a decidedly un-British ‘igualmente, chavales, ánimo’.

I had my second unpleasant encounter of the Camino in my original destination for the day, Barbadelo, where an overzealous salesmen lurking spider-like outside his store tried to convince me to buy all the pilgrim tat he thought I was lacking. After pointing out that my ‘missing’ shell was packed away as it kept rattling against my bottle (truth), and that I had already obtained two handmade rosaries from the monks at Samos (also truth), he insisted I needed a pulserita, as mine was not of the same quality as his mass-produced ‘El Camino es la meta’ bands (what does Gandhi have to do with the Camino anyway?). Since the one on my left arm was a locally crafted item from that phenomenal café in El Ganso, and the one on my right was a gift from my aunt featuring Nuestra Señora de Cortes, one of La Mancha’s most venerated icons, I begged to differ. When he tried to forcefully pin a Union Jack pin badge on my rucksack strap, he crossed a line (I *will not* be identified so stridently as a Brit, thank you) and I told him politely where to take his business and left.

The price was a ten kilometre hike to Ferreiros, but it was worth it. I had the wonderfully tidy Xunta albergue pretty much to myself, and though the sixty-strong Scout group I passed on the road chose to camp in the woods opposite, they were from Jérez de la Frontera, which made for a nostalgic soundtrack to the evening. Dinner came with a show, too, when a local cowherd led his cattle right through the heart of their encampment, which provided some amusement!

I moved on shortly after sunrise the following morning, making the sunken village of Portomarín shortly before nine o’clock. Today I finally got a real sense of the Sarria stampede, as there was rarely a stretch of the Camino without a good number of pilgrims on the road. I shared the road with Dean, a Californian who matched my pace perfectly, at least as far as Gonzar, where I stopped to catch up with a Belgian pilgrim I’d met the day before and have a drink. The Guardia made an appearance on horseback this morning, trading their usual two-hundred horsepower Alfa Romeos for… well, one horsepower horses. But they did look a damn sight more impressive.

The Camino treks right through the ancient Iron Age hill fort of Castromaior, which is meant to be one of the most popular sights on the Camino, but the memo must have been lost on today’s pilgrims, who trekked right past it as though it wasn’t even there. Sure, it’s not as impressive as Stonehenge, but the earthworks are quite something, and as it only requires a thirty metre detour from the path, it’s definitely worth a look.

Well now, I’ve come to a stop in the hamlet of Areixe. It doesn’t have much more than a church, a restaurant and a Xunta albergue, but it’s blissfully quiet. With Palas de Rei just another hour down the road, the Sarria stampede have marched right on by, meaning I have the entire albergue to myself tonight. For company tonight, I have a small but vocal flock of chickens, a handful of locals and a toddler zooming around on a motor-operated mini tractor, surely in preparation for a life driving the real thing up and down these country roads.

The various Camino guidebooks really do dictate the fortunes of the towns you pass through on the way, pouring thousands of pilgrim pennies into the hands of those fortunate enough to live in the ‘chosen’ start and endpoints. How the villages that thread the line between them survive is anyone’s guess – especially those nearest the nuclei – so it feels good to know I’m doing my bit by staying in the quieter spots. The Sarria to Santiago stage is often touted as the busiest stretch, and while that’s certainly true when you’re on the road, if you’re brave enough to avoid the cities and stay in the villages, you’ll find the peace and quiet of the earlier stages of the Camino isn’t really as elusive as it’s claimed to be.

Though the rival roosters on either side of this albergue are a factor that cannot be easily ignored! BB x

Camino XX: Angels and Demons

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s 6.18am on Wednesday morning. I didn’t get any time to write last night, as it was nearly midnight by the time I was in bed, for reasons which I shall endeavour to explain.

Before leaving O Cebreiro this morning, I decided to climb Cebreiro’s peak, where a lonely lichen-covered cross looks out over the layered hills and valleys to the east. It was scored up its sides with a thousand little grooves, into which a thousand small coins had been slotted. Time and the elements had worn down their edges, and some grooves were empty – perhaps the work of quick-fingered pilgrims over the years. From the summit, you can see all the way to Foncebadón, offering one final glimpse of the faraway meseta before the descent into the rolling hills of eastern Galicia.

I walked and talked a fair amount this morning, sharing the road first with Simas, then with a Catholic mother and daughter from Ohio, then with three more Ohio boys, then finally Simas again until Triacastela. Along the way we hit another Galician roadblock (read: cows), met the first of what will presumably be many school trips (this one a sixty-strong outing from Mengíbar, Jaén), and talked about American history, which is always really eye-opening when it comes from Americans themselves.

At Triacastela, after a hearty breakfast of empanada, zumo and Cola Cao, the road forked north and south. Simas and I parted ways here: he headed north and west over San Xil to the hamlet of Calvor, and I took the south road to Samos, on the recommendation of Bridgette, the Australian pilgrim I met just over a week ago.

The road to Samos is beautifully remote. The Americans from lunch yesterday zoomed by on rental bikes – some calling out with a cheery buen camino, some not – but other than that I walked the road alone. Seeing as I had plenty of time, with the Samos albergue opening late, I dawdled a lot, leaving the Camino at one point to explore the woods that sloped down to the river Oribio. I had to be careful where I set down my backpack, after almost stepping on a slow worm that lay perfectly still near the riverbank. I have fond memories of finding this false-lizard on the grass-heap at home as a child, so it was nostalgic to find one here, deep in the Galician valleys.

Galicia has avoided most of the ferocious heat that is ravaging the rest of the peninsula – unlucky pilgrims at the Pamplona stage would have endured 46°C heat after midday – but the UV rays must have been just as fierce, because I definitely caught the sun before reaching Samos. However, all the prickling in my arms could not detract from the beauty of the countryside I was passing through: the tiny hamlets like San Cristovo do Real with their dragon-spine slate roofs and empty streets were like something out of a picture book of a Spain that has long since disappeared.

With the last hill before Samos in sight, the tinkling of a bell broke the silence. I overtook a Spanish pilgrim a minute or so later, carrying a stick to which a small bell was fastened, releasing a merry jingle with every step. If he’s walked all the way from St. Jean with that, he must have the patience of a saint. Or perhaps it’s a deliberate act of penance on his part.

The Monastery of Samos, my destination (and digs for the night), is a stunning jewel of the Camino and seriously worth the detour if you reach Triacastela too soon. The hospitalero, a talkative chappie from Madrid in a black triskel tee, was very friendly, apologising in his own way for the lack of traffic. ‘In July I should be turning people away,’ he explained, ‘but this year there are almost no Spaniards on the Camino, only foreign tourists. Nobody has the money anymore to spend four or perhaps even two weeks on the road.’

There’s a general election on the 23rd – you can hardly miss the posters along the Camino, as though pilgrims were a vital demographic – and I expect a change of government. In which direction, though, I cannot say. It’s an exciting time to be in Spain.

After a short siesta, I tagged along with two jolly pilgrims from Albacete and a couple of stragglers from O Cebreiro to a guided tour of the monastery, while the Chinese pilgrim and her curiously dressed German companion who arrived after me went looking for somewhere to drink. Our guide was very knowledgable and the complex was mind-blowingly beautiful in places, despite having been gutted by a fire in the early years of the last century. Like the walls of the albergue, giant paintings stretched along the corridors, depicting scenes from the life of Saint Benedict. As is often the way, the artist used the faces of contemporaries as his models. Some were local figures, some notable monks of the order, and some were members of Franco’s cabinet. Surprisingly, silver screen stars Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren even made a cameo appearance at one point!

But by far the most intriguing paintings were of the occult: devils, demons and dark spirits grinning and leering amidst the serene countenances of over a thousand years of Benedictine worshippers. There’s nothing like it in the Abbey back home, but even if there were, I’d have been just as transfixed. Isn’t there something deeply intriguing about the fascination with the dark held by those who cling to the light?

I bought a few souvenirs in the gift shop, staffed by two of the eleven monks who reside at Samos. They were pleased to hear I worked at a Benedictine school in England and we had a lovely little exchange while I obtained some homemade biscuits for the road ahead, and a new rosary for the road beyond.

Dinner at the Hotel A Veiga was sensational, and far and away the best menu peregrino I’ve had on the whole Camino, including the previous two stints this spring and back in 2018. The arroz con leche was heavenly and the churrasco (and all the sauces they brought with it) was divine. I ate better than I have in days – which is just as well, because I would need all the energy in the world an hour or so later.

When I got back to the albergue, it was already five to ten, so I packed for tomorrow and got my things ready for bed. I thought I’d pop outside and use the erratic signal (nonexistent inside the albergue) to book my flight home next week and write up my blog, and catch up with the two pilgrims from Albacete I met earlier on, but fate had other ideas.

Not five minutes after the hostalero grabbed his bag and left without a goodbye, the waiter from the bar across the road came and asked for our help: the German pilgrim was causing a scene and trying to pick a fight with the other punters. Miguel, the larger of the two Manchegos, followed her back to the bar and was back in five minutes, half aiding, half dragging the German across the road to the albergue. He was in a dreadful state, reeling and tottering in every direction, and evidently suffering the adverse affects of too much drink and too many drugs. It was all we could do to get him to sit down without falling over backwards, and he turned hostile every time he heard Spanish, making childish imitations of what he heard and bookending every line with a violently delivered ‘motherf*ckers’ or, more charmingly still, spitting at whoever spoke last. The only practical solution seemed to be to talk to him slowly in English, which he seemed to command well enough to tell us all the things he wanted to do to the waitress in the bar.

The waitress returned shortly and asked for her phone, which she had lent to the pilgrim so he could call home. He got aggressive and insisted it was his, so Miguel had to wrestle it off him. He then fell back and cursed the night sky and the three of us for about half an hour, stoping only to say the word ‘mamasita’ every minute or so, chanting it in a suddenly calm and lobotomised voice as though in a trance.

Eventually, Miguel and I decided the safest place for him was his bed. I prepared a bed for him at the other end of the room, right next to the bathrooms, while Miguel and Diego hauled him to his feet and carried him inside. Between the three of us we got him to the bathroom and stood by for ten minutes to make sure he didn’t hurt himself, and then managed to get him into bed, from which – mercifully – he did not get back up.

Ten minutes later, the unexpected arrival of two locals from the petrol station that is curiously twinned with the monastery almost undid our hard work, when they tried to fix the adjoining door to the garage by slamming it to several times, unaware or uncaring for the sleeping pilgrims just a few feet away. The German swore loudly after every bump in the night, until sleep finally found him – and turned him into a human onboard motor, snoring loud enough to wake the whole monastery, if not just the room in which he lay.

But now I must put down my phone and set out. It’s going to be busy from Sarria onwards, and the sun is already high in the sky. Until next time! BB x

Camino XIX: Over the Border

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Well, here I am in Galicia, just about the only part of Spain that isn’t suffering the ferocious heatwave that is sweeping across Europe right now. With temperatures soaring into the 40s in a red wave from Madrid to the south, I’m more grateful than ever for the merciful Atlantic winds that keep Galicia fresh and green. Santiago certainly picked his spot with Spanish summers in mind…

I didn’t sleep much last night, though I must have dreamed a fair amount. I’m pretty good at waking myself up on command, because I knew I needed to be up in time to charge my phone (the sockets were all in use when I got back last night) and lo and behold I was up without provocation at two in the morning.

I’m already used to functioning on less sleep than is healthy from my work in a boarding school, so when five thirty came around I was already on the road. The vending machine gobbled up my euro and gave me a self-satisfied LISTO! when all it gave me was a plastic cup and a deceptive whirr that most definitely did not produce any hot chocolate… but, serves me right for using a vending machine.

I was sorely tempted to join the less than 1% of pilgrims who take the Dragonte route up through the mountains this morning, but as yesterday was a Sunday, I hadn’t been able to buy supplies, so I chose caution over valour and took the basic route. If I’d had my faithful stick I might have chanced it, but… it is what it is.

I did, at least, have the sense to stop for breakfast at a bar in Trabadelo, where the tortilla was decent, the napolitana was delicious and the Cola Cao was divine.

I’ll say this much, it might be the basic option, but it’s a lot better a route than it looks. On a map it seems to follow a road almost all day, which it does, but with the construction of the A-6 Noreste motorway, pretty much all the traffic took the high road, leaving the Camino almost devoid of cars. And since even the sight of a car at the moment makes me think of the intensive course that may or may not be coming my way when I get back (it’s proving hard to find an instructor who’s free), that was some relief!

The Valcarce river flows alongside the Camino for most of the route, providing a gurgling backdrop to the walk. I kept my eyes open for otters, which are sometimes seen in the river, but I didn’t see any. I did see the other thing I was looking for though: a dipper, just as I left the road at Las Herrerías. The characterful little things are a feature of most highland rivers in Spain, if you keep an eye out for them.

It wasn’t easy to catch on camera, but I found considerably more willing subjects in a gang of long-legged Spanish chickens further up the road. The way they were going, they looked as though they might have been making the pilgrimage themselves! Though I was briskly disillusioned when the rooster started sizing himself up to me, squaring off like a boxer in a title fight. Feeling a hard pass on letting him test his spurs on me was a good move, I left them be.

After the picturesque village of Las Herrerías, the real challenge begins. A 600m climb and then some stands between you and O Cebreiro, the first town beyond the border, and boy are the first few hundred metres a challenge. Thank God I played it safe this morning and took the easy route! It’s a beautifully forested climb, but a climb all the same…

After La Faba (where the fountain water is so deliciously cold that my bottled water needed jettisoning immediately) the Camino climbs ever higher through one last stretch of forest and then up into the sunlit highlands of Castilla y León’s final outpost. I must have gone on ahead of the others, because I only passed a few intrepid pilgrims up here. It might not have been heatwave material, but the sun was high up by this point and the lizards were out, including the giant green occelated kind that used to fascinate me as a kid. Most of them were well under cover before I saw them go, but one lingered long enough for me to see where it was hiding. Can you see it?

La Laguna was little more than a cluster of farm buildings, and after that it’s only a few more hundred metres up to the border. I did have one unexpected roadblock in the form of a wayward herd of cows, whose youthful cowherd was desperately trying to coax away from the path. The cows had other ideas, and it took a few minutes to get by.

A colourful stone statue marks the border. Now I’ve set foot here in Galicia, there are only two comunidades autónomas left in Spain which I haven’t explored: Murcia and the Canary Islands (assuming one doesn’t count the Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla). I almost stepped on a stoat that shot out of the verge on the final climb up to O Cebreiro, and while it was much too fast for a photo, the views from the top of the mountain absolutely screamed for one – or several.

I managed to beat Google’s initial suggestion by forty-five minutes, but since the albergue didn’t open until one, I had a sitting nap and waited – my feet were just dead.

I had lunch with a random assortment of new pilgrims, mostly Americans, in a hotel-restaurant-giftshop affair. How to put it politely… I’ve had more tolerant company for lunch. Most of the Americans I’ve met abroad have been the most refreshingly open-minded and charismatic characters I can recall. This bunch were memorable only for their moans. Two of them were off on one for the full hour about how rude the Spanish are, slating the food, the service and the hostaleras, all while unironically claiming their status as Americans entitled them to fair treatment.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I paid my fare and apologised to the chef. I did not go back.

Fortunately, my faith in America was restored by the welcome return of a meseta pilgrim, Simas. A chat over a half pint with another open-minded pilgrim was just what the doctor ordered. Bumping into two more Catholic Americans while paying the bill was an added bonus.

Mass in O Cebreiro’s 6th century church was really special. The priest spoke from the heart, juggling several languages throughout, and blessed us all with holy water and words of power. At the pilgrim’s benediction at the end, I volunteered to read the closing prayer when an English speaker was required. Perhaps I just wanted to read a prayer for my fellow pilgrims, or perhaps it was a subconscious dig at the fact that, Americans aside, there was only one inglés in the room. (If that was it, God, please forgive me that little victory!)

As a parting gift, the priest gave us each a little stone with the yellow arrow of the Camino. I’m holding mine now, its tiny yellow arrowhead forking through my fingers to the northwest.

Now I’m watching the sun set over the rolling hills of Galicia. It’s been a long day, but a good day. Simas and I will make for Triacastela tomorrow, while others shoot for Sarria in a mad rush to Santiago. Here’s to eveybody’s journey – may they find what they’re looking for! BB x

P.S. I have a new stick!!! (It was only 10€ and after today I’m not chancing the last 140km without one!)

Camino XV: Shaman

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

León is already a distant memory. I’m sitting in the shade of an awning in the garden of the albergue parroquial, having just spent a blissful twenty minutes with my feet in the foot-bath. The meseta stage is almost over and the foothills of the Montes de León are but a day’s walk away. Change is coming!

I slept very well last night, though perhaps because I wasn’t one of the Italians who tried to have dinner at the hostel ten minutes after lights out, incurring the wrath of the hostalera. All the nearby sockets were in use, so I had to leave my phone to charge down the hallway, which deprived me of an alarm for the morning… but, if the last few days are anything to go by, you hardly need an alarm on the Camino. You might just as well use the fifteen others that go off around the same time.

I was out the door by 6am and racing back to Plaza Santo Domingo – and with good reason. After yesterday’s mindless urban trudge into the city, I found a way to circumvent León’s even more extensive westward sprawl: the A1 city bus to La Virgen del Camino, on the very edge of the city outskirts. Thirty years ago I might not have bothered, but I couldn’t quite face an hour and a half’s march through characterless modern development, so I was more than happy to stump up the 1.60€ fare and rub shoulders with the orange-tee brigade of SOLTRA workers headed for their 7am shift in La Virgen. Two other pilgrims were in on the secret, but I lost them a short distance out of town when they stopped to check their bags. From then on out, I barely saw another pilgrim for the rest of the trek.

After yesterday’s easy 19km wander, I opted for the alternative scenic route via Villar de Mazarife. The original Camino follows the N-120 in an unbroken line for 32km, while the Mazarife road winds its way through the countryside to the south for 36km. I was up for a challenge, and I didn’t fancy another roadside walk, and for once, I know I made the right call.

Southwest of León, the Camino carves a path through the scrubbier hinterlands of the Meseta. Fields of wheat and sunflowers give way to open dehesas, with sparse yellow grassland interspersed with stands of ancient oak trees. In a way, it felt like being back in Extremadura.

Better yet, the first hour after sunrise yielded some of the best birdwatching yet on the Camino. The usual backdrop of quail, turtle dove and stonechat provided some musical continuity to the meseta movement, with a colourful inclusion of golden oriole, blackcap and nightingale. There were quite a few kites about, whistling in that very plaintive way they do, and the calls of bee-eaters will never fail to make me smile. While I can also add great grey shrike, honey buzzard and whitethroat to my list this morning, I think it was the fleeting encounter with a greater spotted cuckoo that was the standout from today’s walk, tearing ahead through the scrub in front of me as I neared the first town on the trail, Chozas del Camino. As usual, a phone camera is next to useless for this kind of thing, but I did manage a snap before it was gone (look to the right of the second tree from the left).

After narrowly avoiding a major desvío at Chozas, I followed the road to Mazarife for the next hour or so. Along the way, sensing rather than smelling death, I guess, I came upon a mass of feathers at the side of the road. On closer inspection, it was a long-eared owl, and a relatively young one at that. Given its condition, it must have been hit by a car less than a day ago, or else it would have been devoured long since. Acting on an intuition beyond simple curiosity, I picked up two of its wing feathers and fastened them alongside the raven feather to my staff. Besides the fact that owl feathers are one of nature’s most intriguing artefacts – they are engineered to move silently through the air – I think my desire was to give the unfortunate creature (a migratory species in most parts of Europe) one last journey, as it were. I will carry them to Santiago and Finisterre… and beyond, if I can.

With a feathered staff and a satchel full of pens, pencils and sharpenings, I’m rather conscious that I’m starting to take on the appearance of a tin-pot shaman. My silent reasoning that ravens represent life, light and hope (they brought the knowledge of fire to man in Scandinavian mythology) and owls death, darkness and wisdom (via the Greek tradition) probably doesn’t help, either. I’m still searching for a stork feather, though despite their abundance, these are proving hard to find.

All I can say is I had this coming. In my first teaching post in Uganda, I was given the moniker ‘Ojok’, meaning ‘healer’ or ‘witch doctor’. It wasn’t anything more than an attempt at humour by my hosts, but hey, I guess such titles should be earned, right?

From Villar de Mazarife, one of the straightest roads of the entire Camino leads for some ten kilometres to the hamlet of Villavante. With the exception of the occasional buen camino from a field worker clad in orange hi-vis overalls, and the need to duck and weave to avoid the mechanical water jets every now and then, it was a fairly uneventful walk, but a beautifully quiet one at that.

At Villavante, the Camino forks to the north to cross the León-Astorga railway line. It’s practically worth the trek for the view of the Casa Rural Los Molinos, nestled behind what appears to be a private tree-lined sunflower grove.

After that, it’s only a short distance to Hospital de Órbigo. It’s a good-sized town and, at 12pm on the dot and after nearly five hours’ walking (with a sum total of fifteen minutes’ break), I was more than ready to throw down my pack for the day. The entrance to the town over the medieval Puente Honroso (which I’m 90% sure featured in my dissertation) simply sealed the deal. This place is incredibly beautiful.

It’s said that a certain Don Suero, a local knight, challenged all comers to the bridge to win the heart of a lady, breaking 300 spears in as many jousts before an ever-growing crowd. The lords, the ladies and the medieval gaiety may be long gone, but the endlessly chattering sand martins lined up along the wires by the bridge make a good substitute.

Well, there goes my siesta. Tomorrow is a much shorter walk – three and a half hours at most – but I hear there’s a thousand-year-old oak tree near Santibáñez de Valdeiglesias, so I will extend my walk to take a look. Now I have the trappings of a new age shaman, I might as well play the part. BB x

Camino XIII: Birds of a Feather

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ll say this much for Calzadilla de los Hermanillos: it’s a beautifully reflective way to end the meseta experience, before you say farewell to the plains and reach the Órbigo floodplains at Mansilla de las Mulas. Sure, I ditched the other pilgrims to strike out upon that road, but it was totally worth it.

The hostalera in the donativo laid out a real spread for breakfast, so I helped myself to a better start than I’ve had in days: boiled eggs, yoghurt, pastries, flat peaches, cherries and a sandwich and a half for the road. Fuelled on such a feast, I was more than ready to tackle the Roman Camino.

After outstripping the other pilgrims, I had the rest of the Calzada Romana – the ancient Roman raid to the mines – all to myself. And what a morning for it! From the rise, you can see all the way to the distant peaks of the Picos de Europa, ringed with fire by the rising sun. The intermittent canals that cut across the causeway worked like mirrors, carving mercurial strips out of the earth, so that each one seemed to be a continuation of the sky above, and the fields around it a floating world. One of the best sunrises I’ve had on the Camino yet, and I’ve had a good one every day.

You get a good sense of the infinite on the Camino, walking in the footsteps of a thousand years of pilgrims who came before you (the earliest recorded pilgrimage to Santiago was in 930 A.D.), but walking on an old Roman road added another level of grandeur to the experience. The rough stone path made a change from a week of dirt tracks and concrete, and while it may well be wishful thinking in my part, it’s possible, however unlikely, that my feet touched the same stone that some long-forgotten legionary trod two thousand years ago. Nuts!

Sadly I didn’t bump into any ghostly centurions in the early hours of the morning, but the irrigation system provided a jump scare of it’s own: one of the mechanisms was so close to the path that I only had a five second window to clear the distance if I didn’t want to get soaked! That sure woke me up.

One huge plus of not taking the Bercianos route was the wildness of the calzada romana. I had my usual encounters with stonechats and wheatears (both northern and Iberian), but this unfrequented section of the Camino was a real gem for wildlife-watching. I saw my first quail whirring across the fields on tiny wings, and a couple of partridges, rabbits and a lone red deer rounded out this morning’s game. Every arroyo was alive with singing frogs – which is possibly how the nearby village of Burgo Ranero got its name – but a lonely nightingale had them beat toward the end of the road. A couple of ravens loitering around the ruined Villamarcos station chased off a buzzard that perched too close, then eyed me suspiciously as I walked on by. I found one of their feathers a little way on. It’s currently fastened to my walking pole for luck.

After several encounters with the grey males over the last few days, I finally saw a female Montagu’s harrier in the distance, and I must have clocked about nine or ten hoopoes by journey’s end. But best of all was a cuckoo that came out of nowhere during the morning’s only river crossing. Normally you hear these birds rather than see them, but this one was sitting in the middle of the road when a hoopoe gave it a merry chase for several minutes while I removed the grit from my sandals.

I got to Mansilla de las Mulas well ahead of schedule. I knew staying in Calzadilla would shorten today’s walk, but I still got to the albergue for 10.30am, meaning I had a good two and a half hours to kill before anything was open for business. All the same, this time it was as well that I did so: of the three albergues in Mansilla, one was fully booked and another, the municipal, was closed for renovations (and has been since April, at least), leaving me with no options but the pricier Jardín del Camino. I can’t complain after a very affordable night in a donativo, but when you’re used to paying 10€ as a standard, 16€ for a bed and a further 16€ for a menu peregrino is a bit steep… still! It’s all relative. Just think what that would cost back home….!

After a mid-afternoon snooze, I made a beeline for the Museo de los Pueblos Leoneses. Do check it out if you pass through – it’s a veritable gold mine of knowledge about the region and immaculately presented across three floors. I was especially interested in the local festivals and Maragatos, but the collection of dolls was equally memorable… though perhaps for all the wrong reasons!

I quizzed the lady at the desk about the signs and she laughed before I’d even finished the sentence. Apparently everybody asks the same question! Yes, she said, it’s not a random act of vandalism but rather the action of a movement which has deep roots in the region, thanks to the fiercely strong regional identity of the Leonese people. Given the chance, many would rather not be conflated with their neighbours. That much is clear from their local customs, costumes and festivals, which differ considerably from the Castilians. I’ve seen vaguely similar outfits in northern Extremadura (which was part of the kingdom of León at the zenith of its power) but the colourful guirrio is almost Latin American in its manic display. I was reminded of an Apache festival I saw in a book once. It’s funny how some people come up with the same concept despite a distance of many thousands of miles.

Tomorrow, I shoot for León. It’s not an overly long walk, or a particularly interesting one as it reaches the outlying industrial suburbs of the great city of the north, so I’ll tarry a little tomorrow and find some company on the road. I should probably also think about booking ahead for Santiago, since at the rate I’m going I really will be there in time for the festivities, and I hear they’re a spectacle that really oughtn’t to be missed if you can help it.

But until then, goodnight – everybody else has been in bed for a half hour already. Time to hit the hay! BB x

Camino X: Carry On, Carrión

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’m here in Carrión de los Condes, a full day ahead of schedule. So much for not rushing this time. It was definitely not my intention to walk nearly fifty kilometres today, but here we are. At the very least, I think it’s safe to say I have put one of the more tedious stretches of the meseta behind me. My feet might be killing me, but silver linings and all that.

I got my comeuppance for being an early riser in Burgos this morning. By five o’clock half the dorm was already up and about, so at 5.15am I gave up trying to doze away the hour and got my things together. I’d had the foresight to buy breakfast the day prior, before a wander up to Castrojeríz’s ruined castle (as if I hadn’t walked enough already), so I chowed down on a Bolycao (childhood classic) and set off into the darkness.

One definite plus to setting out before dawn was the climb up the side of Mostelares, a steep banked plateau guarding the road to Itero. In the late morning sun I’m sure it would have been a sweaty, unforgiving affair, but with the sun still below the horizon (and the help of my trusty stick) it was relatively easy. I overtook the only other pilgrims on the road, bade farewell to the army of wind turbines blinking like distant artillery fire in the distance, and put Castrojeríz behind me.

A large riverside grove before Itero de la Vega broke the monotony of the wheat-fields for a bit (Theresa May could get seriously naughty in this part of the world), and I caught a glimpse of a deer between the Lorien-esque rows of birch trees. A talkative group of five Spanish women were on my tail by this point, so I let them overtake and take the clickity-clack of their guiri sticks with them. I’m not sure what their real name is in English, but my kids in Extremadura used to call them palos guiri and the name has stuck.

After Itero, the usual stop is Boadilla del Camino, but it was not even 10am so I decided to press on (this is becoming a running theme). The Camino follows the Canal de Castilla until Frómista, which was a welcome change of scenery, if a little bizarre in the middle of the meseta. I’m not sure the local wildlife knows quite what to make of it: I heard the odd reed warbler and saw a flock of lapwings land in a nearby field, but other than that it was an eerily quiet waterway, as man-made imitations of natural things often are. God is not mocked.

Frómista was… a strange place. It felt decidedly more like an urbanización than a town per se. I arrived around 11.15, two hours too early for most of the albergues which habitually re-open around 13.00-14.00 after a lightning quick clean. A couple of merry storks did their beak-clicking ceremony as I reached the town centre, but I got a strange vibe from the place and decided not to linger. Perhaps it was the fact that all the albergues would be shut for another two hours, or maybe it was the fact that the one recommended by all the guidebooks had so many vitriolic one-star reviews on Google complaining about the rudeness of the hostalero.

Whatever it was, a madness took me, and I decided to try my luck in the next town along.

Big mistake. Población de Campos is only a few kilometres on from Frómista, but by now it was noon and the midday sun was up. After an uninspiring slog along the side of a main road – the first of many – I dropped in on the first option, Albergue La Finca.

Well, there wasn’t any dust on the tables, and there were some papers on the front desk that looked recent, but that was about it. The garden looked as though it had seen better days, the gate was slightly ajar and there were no cars in the drive – or peregrinos, for that matter. I rang the doorbell a few times, waited, and then moved on to try my luck with the albergue municipal.

I didn’t fare much better there. The sign was missing, and after a brief search I found it stashed behind a bush. I decided to ask at the nearby hotel, where the kindly dueña informed me that, sadly, both albergues were closed for renovations. I could try at Villamentero, another 5km up the road. Her own Hotel would have set me back 40€, which isn’t ludicrously steep, but on the Camino that sum equates to five nights in an albergue, so I had to pass it up politely.

At this point, I got it into my head to push on all the way to Carrión. A stupid idea, but with prospects along the road ahead looking bleak, and zero desire on my part to backtrack to Frómista, the idea slowly began to seem more and more logical. and, I’ll admit, the whimsical desire to say I’d carried on to Carrión ultimately tipped the scales.

Cue the most tedious stretch of the Camino so far. Fifteen kilometres and three hours of featureless roadside walking. I guess this is what everyone was referring to when they said the meseta could drive a man mad. I clocked a couple of occelated lizards somewhere near Villalcázar – the enormous green buggers are unmistakeable – and claimed a bustard feather, but beyond that, and the chafing pain of my seriously overworked feet, I was genuinely counting the mileage signs all the way to Carrión.

When it finally appeared on the horizon, with the mountains of León in the background, I could have done a somersault out of relief – only, I don’t think I’ve ever been athletic enough for such a feat, and it would have been the death of my feet anyway. So I contented myself with a hallelujah and used the last of my reserves to power on past the silos and into the promised land.

Somebody up there was looking out for me today. A merciful blanket of cloud covered me all the way from Población de Campos, and when I reached Carrión, the Albergue Santa María still had beds going spare. The shower that followed was never more welcome, nor felt so good.

It seems very busy all of a sudden up here. I guess I was one day behind the crowd. Perhaps I’ll meet some of the younger peregrinos tonight. It would make a change from three days of walking the Camino alone. But let’s just see how things pan out! BB x