San Salvador

Camino XVIII: Down and Out

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue de Peregrinos El Salvador, Oviedo. 19.27.

Ignore what I said yesterday. I’ve reached Oviedo a day ahead of schedule. There are a few reasons for this:

  1. The Albergue in Pola de Lena was due to open at 15.30, some three hours after I arrived. The website was pretty vague about the need to book ahead.
  2. The next town, Mieres del Camino, was about three hours’ walk on, but had no albergue – pilgrims are housed in the Residencia Universitaria for the princely sum of 25€.
  3. The flights home from Santiago go up by about 50€ after the 10th August, giving me an incentive to pick up the pace, but…
  4. …my feet could use a break after all that climbing, and speeding up is the last thing that I need.
  5. Oh, and I’ve had three days without WiFi, so my data has been cascading faster than my Camino buddy Alonso could finish a watermelon.

Hopefully you’ll forgive me for catching a train for the last 30km or so from Pola de Lena. I have been walking about 25-30km a day every day for four weeks, and I used one cheeky bus ride on my last Camino to circumvent the tedious industrial estate west of León. This time it’s my own health I’m looking out for!

It’s a good thing I jumped the gun and climbed up and over Puerto de Pajares yesterday, as when I awoke this morning, it was to a fogbound world. The rain that was forecast never came, but in its place a thick blanket of mist had descended upon the mountains, obscuring everything from sight. It didn’t clear until around half past ten, by which point I would have long since reached the Asturian border if I’d stuck to my original plan.

Two of the sportygrinos left around five minutes before I did, but I never saw so much as a whisper of them on the trail, and I was making pretty good speed. I’d get to wondering whether some of these lean Spanish pilgrims take the Camino at a run, but there was no such trace in the mud, so perhaps they took a shortcut. Or went by bike.

The initial descent into the valley below was positively murderous underfoot, so Pinta and Niña came to the rescue once again. It wasn’t helped much by the knowledge that once I’d got to the bottom of the valley, I’d only have to go back up again on the other side.

The Lady of El Rocío sent me a gift to speed me on my way. A pine marten came scampering out onto the path as I started to climb, stared at me for a few seconds, and then went bounding off into the trees. I raced after it on stealthy feet, but it had vanished.

About an hour or so later on, as the Camino threatened monotony on a 5km asphalt stretch, she sent another gift in the form of a white raptor: an Egyptian vulture, the first I’ve seen in years, smaller than its griffon cousins but by no means less impressive. Between these two gifts and the cries of buzzards that followed me all the way to Pola de Lena, I was in good company all morning.

Something that caught my eye along today’s route was the quiet fury at the Asturian AVE line. The AVE (Alta Velocidad Española, Spain’s high-speed rail line) arrived late in Asturias, with works completed in November 2023. The project took nearly twenty years to complete, owing to the difficulty of the terrain – namely, the formidable barrier of the Cordillera Cantábrica. The first attempt to dig a tunnel through the mountains hit an enormous aquifer that drained many of León’s rivers and reservoirs, requiring rapid repairs and a considerable sum of money to re-route the tunnel.

All in all, the final cost of the AVE line from Madrid-Gijón was around 4€ billion. For context, the Madrid-Barcelona line cost around 9.5€ billion to lay down, which is just under twice the length, but there is considerably more traffic between the two megacities, and the Catalans have always benefited from their access to the profitable Mediterranean Sea. The Asturians, on the other hand, are proud of the natural beauty of their mountain principality and the decision to mine straight through the mountains does not seem to have been universally welcomed here.

I reached Pola de Lena at around 12.15 and killed some time over lunch (alubias con orejas, chuletón and natillas – and all for less than £10!). I had the same rigmarole with the train ticket as I had in France: the ticket barrier wouldn’t recognise the QR code on my phone, so as there was nobody at the desk, I just bought a 2€ ticket to the next stop. And just like France, the QR code worked perfectly at the other end. No idea what that’s all about.

Oviedo is a very different city to the ones you encounter on the Camino Francés. It feels distinctly more European than Spanish: large green parks, blocky, modern buildings and no plane trees in sight. I had to cross one such park to reach the albergue and practically stumbled upon a statuette of Mafalda, the beloved creation of Argentine artist Quino. She’s a big hit in her home country (and in Spain), but Oviedo has a special place for Mafalda due to the presence of her statue in the park. That’s why you’ll find Mafalda-themed tee-shirts and toys in shops all across the city.

I got to the albergue in time for 16.00, when the hospitalero hobbled in, but it was gone 17.00 by the time I got to check in – despite being only seventh in line. The poor guy seemed to have learned the monologue like a script which he rattled off at high speed, too fast for even the Spaniards amongst us to understand. The only point he was crystal clear on was that we had to be in by 22.00h, at which point he would close the doors. I suppose that must be a recurring problem in the cities.

I can tell you one thing I’ve noticed immediately about the Camino Primitivo. It’s a lot more European. I haven’t met a single American (or Brit, for that matter). Lots of Spanish, lots of French and a scattering of German, Austrian, Italian and Portuguese. But no Americans. I wonder if that’s a thing? Do they only come across the Atlantic for the “big ones” – the Francés and the Norte? The Primitivo is just under a fortnight (I will be doing it in around 10-11 days) so perhaps it’s not worth the investment. It will mean a serious shot in the arm for my languages – and isn’t that precisely why I love the Camino so much?

It would be remiss of me to come all this way and not visit the Catedral de San Salvador, so I slipped in for a flying visit just before closing time. True to form, the scaffolding curse struck again: the cathedral was untouched, but the image of San Salvador was behind a heavy hemp screen, being carefully restored by a couple of painters. There’s plenty more to see, though, and I had a wander around the sacred relics and the pilgrim tombs in the cathedral’s antechambers.

Just before leaving, my eye was caught by a small but incredibly ornate chapel by the exit to Santa Eulalia de Mérida, a teenage saint from Extremadura who is venerated in Asturias. She’s a long way from home, up here in the cold mountains of Asturias; but then, so was the Lady of El Rocío in that shrine by the lake west of Logroño.

I’m only just beginning to take an interest in the cult of saints in Spain – and I feel all the more foolish now for dodging an entire module on the subject at university. Given my especial devotion to the Lady of El Rocío, it seems a subject I really should explore some more. Maybe there’s a space for Eulalia in there. She would be a bridge to the land that stole my heart.

French to my right. Portuguese to my left. Spanish out in front. It’s shaping up to be a good Camino choice for languages. And if my plan holds out, I might even get to say one last goodbye to at least one of the pilgrims with whom I shared the road from Puente La Reina. New friends and old. That would be a nice way to end this adventure. BB x

Camino XXVII: Columbus Rides Again

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue de Peregrinos de Payares, Pajares. 19.30.

Shortly after one o’clock this afternoon, I crossed over into Asturias and crossed off the penultimate Spanish region on my list. After a flying visit to Tenerife earlier this year and a long march across Aragón at the start of the Camino, now only Murcia remains. Which is tremendously ironic, as my family are technically Murcian, since the borders of Spain’s autonomous communities were only redrawn in their present form in 1983, with both Albacete and Villarrobledo falling within the formerly extensive region of Murcia. But alas! It remains on my list as the very last region for me to visit. At least I won’t be short on options.

The other pilgrims were all up at 5am this morning, but I still managed to beat them out of the door and was on the road by 5.20. I still had the crazy idea of combining two days into one – crazy, not on account of the distance (38km is child’s play at this point) but the elevation, which was considerable. It was pretty chilly, so I kept my fleece on for the first couple of hours while I finished I, Claudius.

The young folks of Pola de Gordón were starting to head for home after a Saturday night out on the town (read: village) as I walked in around 7am, though there was still music playing in the town bar, Los Gatos Negros. The Dane overtook me as I was fixing the straps on my bag, but I passed him later on (I have a vicious pace when I get going) and did not see him again.

I have managed to acquire two more books: Spanish translations of the Hungarian author Laszlo Passuth’s Tlaloc Weeps over Mexico, bound in red leather. They were fading away in a book bank at the side of the road and, as I have been looking for this book for a while, I rescued them. I have now acquired six books since starting the Camino and jettisoned the one I came out with. They don’t add too much weight to my backpack, but they’re not as easy to fold away like my clothes… still. This leopard’s spots don’t change so easily, I suppose.

Before reaching Buiza, there’s a spooky silhouette on one of the rocky spurs that juts out of the mountains. We are very definitely in wolf country, and the Lobo de Buiza – a metal sculpture that watched the road into the mountains – would be very easy to mistake for the real thing if you didn’t know to look for it. It’s certainly big enough: my lasting memory of the wild wolves I saw in Poland this Christmas was their size, which little can prepare you for when you see one in the flesh (a true wolf can be taller at the shoulder than a mastiff).

Sadly, I didn’t see any wolves today, though I think I saw one of their tracks. Wolf and dog prints are very similar, but their gait is totally different: a dog walks with its front and hind legs splayed out in two lines, while a wolf trots in single file, like a fox. I did see a fox in the half-dark of the forest, shortly before daybreak.

Wolves aren’t the only large predators that dwell in this rugged corner of the peninsula. Somiedo Natural Park lies 50km to the west, beyond the formidable peaks of the Babia and Luna Mountains, and it is famous for being the final refuge of the Cantabrian Brown Bear. They were once widespread in Spain but can now only be found in the Cordillera Cantábrica, though recent sightings beyond Somiedo seem to suggest that they are starting to creep back into the fringes of their former range – and Pajares in right on their doorstep.

Thirty years ago, this Iberian offshoot of the European Brown Bear was on the verge of extinction, hunted without mercy by the Spanish (and the Romans before them). I remember visiting my friend Kate in Cabezón de la Sal and having dinner in a bar full of dead bears: mounted heads on the walls and black-and-white photographs of groups of hunters standing proudly about the carcass of a slain bear, as though the murder of such a beautiful creature were something to celebrate.

With both bears and wolves about, I was on full alert and so I nearly jumped out of my skin halfway up the mountain when something very large suddenly appeared on my left, crashing through the undergrowth. It was, of course, a cow, but it still gave me a fright. It’s a good thing its English was about as good as the local Asturians, so the torrent of expletives went right over its head.

The climb from Buiza was formidable, but it was only Round One. By day’s end, I think I had climbed and descended no fewer than nine separate ridges, tackling most of the San Salvador’s cumulative 3000m elevation in one day. Little wonder my feet were complaining by the end of the walk! I’d have been done for if not for the valiant effort of Pinta and Niña, my two trusty walking sticks. How the pilgrims of old attempted this path in a time before clean water and blister plasters is beyond me. Faith truly is a powerful thing.

If only it were powerful enough to open the doors of the churches along the way, which have all been locked up since I left León!

The scenery here is a world away from the meditative plains of the Meseta. It feels like I’ve stepped into a completely different country, and yet the Meseta is only a day’s walk to the south. The mighty cliffs of the Cordillera Cantábrica were always visible in the distance from the Camino Francés, but now I’m cutting a path straight through them, I can really appreciate their majesty. My soul will always belong to the stone pines and salt flats of Doñana, but my heart soars whenever I am in the mountains. It is an elixir like few others.

I had some fun counting contrails and trying to guess where the planes where going. Sometimes I’d look up and see a raptor in the blue: usually a kestrel, which are abundant up here, and sometimes a griffon, soaring silently through the ether; and just once, it was a hen harrier, wheeling about and beating its long wings like a child’s kite come to life.

After a rough descent into cow country and its attendant muddy tracks (I had more than my fair share of that in France), the Camino hits the road and climbs up to Puerto de Pajares – climbs being the perfect word, as the farmers have put up a fence across the road, so I had to vault it where the barbed wire was at its least intrusive. The former parador which perches upon the ridge is little more than an empty shell, and its stripped foyer is rather eerie, but the cafeteria is still in action, no doubt kept alive by the fact that its terrace commands a spectacular view of the mountains of Asturias beyond. Access to the terrace is strictly limited to paying customers, which is a master stroke as without it I should be surprised if the café would survive at all.

The photos don’t quite do the view justice. This must be one of the best views of all of the Camino routes, including sunset from Finisterre and sunrise from O Cebreiro. My presence at the café drew no small amount of interest: as popular as the route seems to be right now, I don’t imagine they get many foreign pilgrims passing through, especially as young as me.

The descent from Puerto de Pajares was the toughest yet, compounded by the fact that it was now gone half past one and I had been climbing mountains for nearly seven hours. The sun was also fierce and I have now officially run out of sun lotion, so my right arm got burned on the way down. I’m currently rocking the classic “Camino tan” that consists of very brown calves and right arm, due to the constant north and westward trajectory of the Camino.

I reached Pajares at around 2.45pm, without being eaten by any bears (as one of my students thought might happen to me), and practically fell into bed – after climbing into the only top bunk remaining. The room I’m in is full of Catalans in their late 40s, most of whom have an odd habit of talking to themselves. Not whispering, talking. I was woken up twice from my nap by their charlitas. The hush and stealth of the Camino Francés seems a long way away.

I won’t be doing another two days in one tomorrow, as I’m already technically doing so by bypassing Mieres the day after, so hopefully it will be an easier day. A belt of clouds have rolled in this evening, so I should probably prepare for rain – rain, and an earlier arrival time, just in case. Pola de Lena looks a bit more “happening” than Pajares, and it does have a supermarket, so I should be able to resupply before the final push to Oviedo. Here’s hoping! BB x

Camino XXVI: The Journey Continues

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue de Peregrinos, La Robla. 16.13.

I’ve just woken up from an hour’s nap. It might have been a little longer, I’m not so sure. All I know is that when I fall asleep there were only three of us in the albergue, and now it’s looking astonishingly busy. Mostly sporty Spanish types in their 40’s, mind: tall and lean, with hawklike handsomeness in their Roman profiles and dressed from head to foot in short-sleeved Lycra and health-tracking smartwatches. The exceptions are a greying Dane and a Japanese couple, neither of whom speak any Spanish whatsoever. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting company at all, but then, perhaps it’s hardly surprising that others beside myself should seek out a more rugged and quieter version of the Camino during high season.

Hopefully it doesn’t get too busy. I’ve come here for quiet reflection and a spiritual challenge, not a hiking holiday.

I left León shortly after six this morning and took the north road at the Convento de San Marcos, leaving the Camino de Santiago behind. I will not see that road again until I reach Melide, a little under two weeks from now.

I cast a glance down the westward road into the empty but well-lit streets of León’s industrial district, across the bridge where I said farewell to Audrey, Talia, Alonso and Steven yesterday morning. By now my companions will have reached Astorga and beyond a few manic longer days there is little hope of catching up to them before they arrive in Santiago, and with the terrain ahead I would be foolish to try. I have to let them go.

I had the Camino to myself all morning: no flashlight-wielding pilgrims in front, no Italian conversations behind. Just me, the morning and the voice of Derek Jacobi in his retelling of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.

The pilgrim detritus of the Camino Francés is nowhere to be seen. This is what I had heard: this is the Camino as it once was, where the occasional painted stone, makeshift cross and shrine to the Virgin Mary indicate the way, not a scourge of senseless stickers and pilgrim graffiti. It was perfectly easy to follow, though I am glad I set out early, as the cloud cover began to fade before ten o’clock.

One such shrine to Mary was a little disturbing: her disembodied head had been impaled upon a branch staring down at the road, while her hands stretched across her chest to her sacred heart had been similarly affixed to a nearby branch. I could not find what became of her legs.

The Camino climbs up into the hills a couple of times, forging a path through the forest between the road and the river. Now and then it breaks out into the open, but for the most part I wandered beneath the canopy of ancient trees covered in carpets of trailing lichen. There was a strong smell in the forest that might have been fox, though it was different to any fox scent that I have ever caught. I thought at first it might have been wolf, but wolves are not as pungent as foxes – they also are good at covering their tracks by rolling in dirt to hide their scent so as to hunt more effectively. So I am not sure what it was.

I reached La Robla for 11.30 and considering pressing on to Buiza, but as tomorrow is Sunday, I figured it wiser to stop here, buy supplies for the road ahead (as nowhere will be open tomorrow), and rest. I popped into the local AlCampo supermarket to get some fruit, some bread and a few tinned meals in case of emergency. I took the flip-flops (a bad idea over anything but a short distance, but I needed a change of shoes) and managed to smash my big toe against the step when my flip-flop caught. It’s fine now, but it wasn’t a lot of fun at the time, though it may take some of the discomfort away from the blisters on my heels.

The lady at the checkout was very keen to get me an AlCampo card which they were “giving away”. The whole thing took around fifteen minutes to fix (as I had to use my long-since defunct Spanish mobile number and the town’s postcode, since the website wouldn’t accept either of my English credentials), but it may save me a little money in the long run – provided I shop at AlCampo. Which, I am sure, is the whole point.

The hospitalero still hasn’t appeared, but it’s nearly six, so I’m sure they’ll be here soon. In the meantime, I’m going to do some reading. BB x