relationship

I’ve made it to the mountain village of El Acebo, the first town of El Bierzo, León’s westernmost outpost before the green hills of Galicia. I didn’t mean to shoot this far, but after arriving at Foncebadón before 11am I decided to press on with a couple of other pilgrims. It’s been a long hike today, and one of the most beautiful of the whole Camino.

I was up before 5am, which is just as well, as one of the pilgrims in my dormitory was impervious to his 5 o’clock alarm, which continued to ring for well over ten minutes, waking everybody up but him. I’d had the foresight to dress for the road ahead of time, so I simply slipped away from the phoney alarm clock (ha ha) and retreated to the downstairs kitchen to pack.

The doors of the albergue were closed until 6am, but some of the pilgrims must have been impatient, because after I’d had my breakfast and went upstairs to wait, I found it already ajar. So, not too long after half past five, I was out in the windy streets of Astorga and on my way.

I did my first bit of serious journaling for a while last night, so I had the company of all the characters of my novel in my head for the first few hours of the morning. Spain is working its usual magic: just being here gives me ideas, threading new storylines into the patchwork where life in England simply leaves me in a creative block. I must have run through some of the same dialogues over and over to keep them fresh in my mind before reaching the picturesque village of Santa Catalina de Somoza, where I stopped in front of a giant stone die to watch the sunrise. The clouds tumbling over the mountains ahead glowed a fierce salmon pink for just a few seconds, which I missed by a whisker with my phone, but it was worth the early start to catch even a glimpse of that morning wonder.

The meseta is well and truly behind me now. It was never low – most of the meseta from Belorado is over 800m above sea level – but from the lofty heights of the Montes de León, surrounded by a changing landscape of heather, broom and drystone walls, it feels a great deal more than two hundred metres down.

Even the wildlife has changed. Rock buntings replace corn buntings, and woodlarks sing in lieu of skylarks. The kites and kestrels of the plains are nowhere to be seen: instead, I clocked a peregrine and an eagle of some kind from a great distance, though I couldn’t tell what kind against the clouds. I practically stumbled upon a couple of red-backed shrikes near the decidedly out-of-place pueblo indio outside El Ganso, which is a first for me! You don’t find them further south than this.

The shrikes, I mean. I don’t know how far you’d have to go to find another faux-Indian setup like this one…

I made an uncharacteristic stop for breakfast in El Ganso, and what a fantastic idea that was. I had probably the best tostada con tomate y aceite of the whole Camino with a tall glass of fresh orange juice, and snagged a leather bracelet for the road as a keepsake. I missed the famous Cowboy pilgrim stop as it was too early, but at 5€ for the below, I think I found what I was really looking for.

Walking songs carried me on and up the mountainside toward Rabanal del Camino. I took advantage of my solitude in this forested part of the Camino and burned through my repertoire from Tolkein to all my favourite sevillanas, only shutting up when the town was in sight.

I shared the road thereafter with an Australian backpacker, Alex, for a little while, before reuniting with Belgian pilgrim Louis for the last push to Foncebadón. I even doubled down on my food pitstops and dropped into a bar for a cider. I even came away with a free tapa of tostada con jamón serrano. Win win!

And based on that boost, I threw caution to the wind and decided to press on with Louis to El Acebo. I’ll admit it was another linguistic flight of fancy on my part, based on his interpretation of the town’s name in French: là, c’est beau (it’s beautiful there).

The clouds descended to punish me for my hubris just a few minutes out of town. I haven’t needed my poncho thus far, so it was buried at the very bottom of my rucksack, and I needed to do a lightning-quick pack and unpack to retrieve it as the rain came down. As luck would have it, the shower was over only a minute later, but I kept the coat on, and the showers came and went intermittently throughout the climb. The only thing that got really bedraggled were my owl feathers, but then, owls aren’t exactly famous for being waterproof.

At 1498m above sea level, Cruz de Ferro marks the highest point of the Camino Francés. It’s perhaps more famous for the mountain of stone offerings at its base, which is a pilgrim tradition. I added my own to the stack and went on my way. I met Louis once again, who had gone on ahead but retreated because of a couple of stray dogs on the road. I’ll admit I hoped he’d stumbled upon some wolves, which are known to live in this part of the world, and I would dearly like to see one someday… but no, they were just a couple of strays. Louis’ wariness was understandable, and he wanted to go back and wait for them to pass, but there’s safety in numbers, so I led him past the dogs and back to the Camino. They followed us for a bit, but soon lost interest and returned to the road.

The rest of the hike winds its way through the spellbinding mountain countryside of the Bierzo borderlands, where the trees are covered in hanging moss and slate-roofed villages appear and disappear in clefts in the valley below. The bloody Welshman continues to make his presence known, daubing Cymru am byth in luminous white paint on roads, benches and even the odd boulder, but other than that, it’s a truly wild trek.

Finally, after what seemed like hours (and probably was), the ground underfoot began to descend and the city of Ponferrada came into view in the valley below. It was still some time before I was back below cloud level, but my feet were grateful for the sight of the finish line.

El Acebo is a stunning mountain village, and I’d probably have better memories of the place in future but for a minor disaster after my arrival.

I walked with Louis to the Casa del Peregrino, a new hostel touted as ‘the best albergue on the Camino’ with a shop, bar and swimming pool… Only, upon arrival, it turned out there was an additional charge for the pool, dinner came to the tune of 25€ and needed advance booking, and the whole place looked decidedly out of place – a chic hotel with a dorm option, rather than an albergue. I decided to double back in search of the albergue parroquial instead.

I realised I must have looked a sight in my bright red poncho and rainproofed rucksack, so I put my things down by a ruined barn to remedy the situation. I was a good 200m up the road when I realised I had my raincoat in one hand and my satchel in the other.

But no stick.

I kid you not, I legged it back to the barn where I’d propped it up against a door, but it was gone. I raced back to the other albergue to see if I’d left it there, but it wasn’t there either. I even went charging after the pilgrims I’d passed on the way up in case they’d picked it up, but they only had metal guiri sticks. I swore a lot – and badly at that – and had another look in town, but it was nowhere to be found. In the space of a single minute it had simply disappeared.

Oh, stick my stick! I was always going to have to leave it behind at some point – ideally near Finisterre – but the loss of it still bothered me more than it should have done. I can only hope that whoever took it away – pilgrim or child – finds some better use for it. And I suppose I did at least keep my word and give that owl one last journey, even if it wasn’t as long as I’d have hoped.

The Camino is all about letting go, when you think about it. From leaving the busy world behind and the ritual of placing stones on the cairns you find, to the very real possibility of losing weight along the way, it’s very easy to end the Camino with a great deal less than what you had when you started out. All the emotional baggage you carry out with you somehow finds its way through your fingers and out into the ether as you walk. There’s an ancient magic in that.

I’m not ashamed to admit my primary reason for throwing myself back onto the Camino this summer was to help with the healing process after a recent break-up. I know I made the right decision for both of us, but that doesn’t mean it hurt any the less to go through with it. Losing a partner often feels like losing a part of yourself. The Camino always provides, just as easily as it takes away, and I hoped it would help me to let go of the last of the hurt and find myself again.

Perhaps losing my faithful stick today was a reminder that, when it comes down to it, the only thing you need to be you is you.

What is life but loss upon loss, til life itself be lost? But in death, we may find all that we have lost.
Henry Rider Haggard, Allan’s Wife

Well, my brief sojourn as a shaman is over, and there’s no use grumbling about it. I’ll take a leaf out of another Haggard book and seek out a new stick for a new journey tomorrow. But for now, I’ll give my feet the rest they deserve. It’s been a hard day’s hike and then some. BB x

Sunday 26th June, 12:47pm.
The Flat.

We’ve made it. Blimey, but I thought that year would never end. School years come and go in cycles, and I consider myself an extremely patient man, but this one has been particularly trying. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve come close to questioning my career on more than one occasion, and every time I’ve been pulled back up to the light by the trinity: the kids, the music and the torchlight of my ancestors. I’ve never been overly fond of the yawning hole in the year that is the summer holidays – I have a desperate need to be busy that two months puts a serious strain upon – but I did breathe an almighty sigh of relief when the clock struck twelve on Friday night. It’s just been one of those years.

When I look back, I can’t help but label my third year as a teacher as the year when everything went wrong. The year when all my endeavours came to ruin. Consequently, it’s also the year when hope has been even more important than ever – and hope, shapeless and mysterious, has ever been my polestar.

This year my Gospel Choir was disbanded, cancelled on the grounds that I, as a white man, was not the appropriate choice to run such a group. I conceded without a fight. It hurt, it hurt right down to the core of my soul to be told so openly that my efforts – and even my taste in music – were so wholly inappropriate. It wasn’t an attack on me by any standards, but my word, did I take the issue home! My head was spinning for weeks and I took some time out in Spain with my cousins to heal. What had happened flew in the face of everything I’d been taught by my various Gospel mentors over the years, and everybody I spoke to seemed baffled. For my career’s sake I briefly considered abandoning my attempts to dabble in music absolutely, and would have gone ahead were it not for the discovery that my great-grandparents were both musicians. I cannot let them down. It wouldn’t be right. I also owe it to the kids under my aegis to find a way, so that the last three years of hard work will not be in vain.

Rising from the ashes, my new a cappella group has been fun, and I hope the kids have enjoyed it, even if we’ve never been concert ready when the time came. The simple truth is that Gospel music, as well as being eye-opening and soul-enriching, is easy to learn. It’s meant to be, because it was never written with trained musicians in mind. By contrast, a cappella arrangements are impressive when done right, but hard to pull off, even when you have a group of semi-professionals. It pains me that my efforts to instil a genuine love of performing have yet to bear fruit with my current cohort, but the kids rock up each week with big smiles and they enjoy the music, and I guess that’s good enough for now.

December hit me with a one-two punch that nearly knocked me out cold. I wandered out of a five-year relationship and within twenty-four hours I had a head-cold that left me half-deaf – and later, more excruciatingly, under the maddening influence of diplacusis dysharmonica. The timing could hardly have been worse: first the Gospel fiasco left me questioning almost all my choices in music, and then the mother of all earaches made it physically impossible to listen to any kind of music whatsoever for all of two months. It felt like the world was conspiring to bring me down.

I wasn’t especially keen to admit it, but I’ve been in orbit ever since. I tried a couple of times to kindle the sparks of a relationship with somebody new, but my attempts sputtered and died like the fireworks in the rain, and I confess I’ve probably been too proud to bend the knee in full to the world of online dating purely on principle. So I’ve been a family man to my kids more than ever this year, giving them as much of my time as I can muster of an evening and finding opportunities to praise and guide wherever I can. They give me hope and I try to do the same for them. I’m convinced teaching is the best job in the world.

I’ve tried to be more supportive of my brother this year. He hasn’t chosen the easiest path, and there are few people in the world I look up to more. I’ve also kept up with my youngest cousin through our English classes every week, or at least the weeks where he doesn’t have an exam to revise for. Family means a lot to me, squaring well with my dreams of being the best dad ever someday, which is partly why being out of a relationship has been so disorienting. At least if there’s been one success this year, it’s been a closer connection to my kin. Maybe rediscovering the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness earlier in the year helped.

Finally, I know I can be a better teacher. I’ve done well by my kids this year, but I can improve. I know I can. I think all the knocks I took this year left me on one knee, still standing though not as strong as before. I reckon it’s about time I got up on two feet again.

So it’s time to plan ahead and set things in order. Two months of summer stretch ahead, and I’ve got plenty of things to do, starting today.

I’m going to get fit.
Fitness has never really interested me, but a healthier body can only prop up a healthier state of mind.

I’m going to cook for myself again.
I’ve taken advantage of being fed at school for too long. I used to love cooking when I lived for myself. It’s time to rediscover that joy.

I’m going to learn to drive. Finally.
It’s a milestone that I can’t ignore anymore, and I’m finally at the stage in my life where absolute freedom of mobility is starting to interest me. Even if I don’t pass my test this year, I need to make a start. Starting is always the hardest part.

I’m going to read more. And I mean read, not just say it and buy more books.
I’ve set myself a target of a chapter a day, whatever the book, in addition to at least one article.

I’m going to plan ahead.
I want my teaching to get better and better, so I’m going to dedicate some serious time to planning some fantastic teaching methods this summer.

I’m going to write again. Not just on here, but the book.
My journals have been with me to almost every lesson and on every school outing, but I’ve made little progress on the novel since the real teaching life began. And that’s criminal.

Last but not least, I’m going to get out and see the world.
Not traveling – I can’t justify having more than one holiday per year anymore, and I had my holiday at Easter. But I need to widen my circle of trust. I need to allow myself to meet others, and if I’m guarded about making that connection online, the only way to do it is to get out and about.

I’m no fan of coming up with action plans at work, but my future is counting on me to make this choice now. Melodrama aside, I could do with some change in my life. And that change starts today! BB x