Santiago

Camino V: A Man Out of Time

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After the Carabiniere’s tip-off about the limited options in San Juan de Ortega, we made the collective decision to strike out early for Agés, the next town along. So, after a day’s hiatus, I had my sunrise again – at the cost of my fingers, which were numb with cold for the first half hour at least. Mikel the Dane caught up to my ferocious pace to lend me his fleece-lined gloves. The way everyone looks out for each other on the Camino… there’s really nothing quite like it.

Shortly before reaching Tosantos I picked up the trail of Enrique the Arriero and his mule, Jena, and as soon as he came into sight I picked up the pace to catch up to him. It was a merciless effort on my already beleaguered heels but worth it – with so few in his trade left in the world, you don’t pass up a chance to learn something of that vanishing world. One of our number had lost his card to a hungry ATM so I couldn’t stop to chat long, but I told myself I’d try to catch him further down the road if I could. I had already penned “Entrevista con un arriero” in my journal and that would just be a waste of paper if I couldn’t fill it in.

After grabbing an early lunch/late breakfast at Villafranca Montes de Oca (20€ fed all seven of us with a sizeable tortilla & jamón bocata and drinks) the Camino wound steeply uphill into the Sierra de La Demanda. I won’t be the first pilgrim to say it was demanding and I won’t be the last, but it was a welcome change to be under the shade of the trees after the roadside meandering of the last few days.

There’s a monument about halfway through the Sierra to the fallen of the Civil War – that is, the opponents of the Nationlists in Burgos who were dragged out of their beds and summarily executed up here in the woods in the early days of the war. Most Spanish families can relate to this grisly tale: most of the circle of friends of my great-grandfather Mateo similarly disappeared, being known for harbouring or having harboured socialist sympathies even after the war was over. I said a prayer and moved on.

After another steep climb we finally made it to an open stretch of the Camino where the Carabiniere led us to a shaded spot where a food van had been parked on his last run of the Camino a year prior. The proprietor was still here, and while the ‘stamp girl’ was on her way (she’d gone to get fresh ink) he was happy to provide us with fresh strawberries free of charge while we waited.

Here, at last, I caught up again with Enrique, and was able to ask him all the questions I’d had on my mind about being an arriero.

Enrique – or Kike, as written across his hat – has been a muleteer ever since he was a child. He picked up the trade back home in Argentina, where the vast distances and tricky terrain have allowed the profession to long outlive its run in Europe. He likened the trade to studying to become a surgeon: long, hard work and dependant on the collected wisdom of many teachers and masters of the art. Experience, said he, was the best teacher of all, and – now in his sixties – he has had almost six decades worth of it. He grew up a poor man, living on the streets and carving a life for himself in the countryside, not that you’d know now from his noble bearing, bright white smile and polished riding boots (an bold choice of footwear for the Camino). Since his move to Spain twenty-five years ago, he’s got by working with horses and mules wherever and however he can, teaching, buying and selling, running activities for children… whatever he can turn his hands to. I remember as a child seeing the odd arriero in the country around Olvera, so it was more than just an honour to meet a man whose profession is that of the title character in my books. It was a warm dash of nostalgia.

The dark pine forests of the Sierra de La Demanda soon gave way to a skylit swathe of leafless oaks, covered so thickly in lichen that they looked half-dead, like greying, flayed cadavers beneath the sun. However, the forest could not have been more alive. A cuckoo called in the trees and followed us like a shadow along the Camino for some time, while chaffinches, blue tits and the piping song of a wryneck played a merry tune to carry us along. It helped to take my mind off the blisters forming on my beleaguered feet and then some.

Then, before we knew it, the trees were at an end and there, stretching out before us, was the meseta. The prehistoric treasure trove of Atapuerca lay between us and Burgos, but far away in the blue beyond rose the mighty snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera Cantábrica, as impressive now as they ever have been. We came down into Agés shortly after half past two – well into the afternoon – and within another half hour we had all decided to take a siesta.

The other pilgrims have gone out for a beer. I needed a little longer to recover this time, and besides, I wanted to strike while the iron is hot with the blog rather than wait until later. With the last twenty-three kilometres of this stage of the Camino still to go tomorrow ending in Burgos, I don’t think I’ll see Enrique again. So I wanted to record my interview here before I forget.

You never know who you’ll meet on the Camino. Teachers, scholars and sailors, bereaved parents and happy families, policemen and anarchists, priests and atheists. Now, finally, I can add an arriero to that number. BB x

Camino IV: To Be a Pilgrim

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

After three to four days on the Camino de Santiago, you really do start to become well-acquainted with the faces of your particular clan – that is, those who are walking the same stages as you and, by extension, staying in most of the same albergues, too.

I’ve fallen in with a group of younger pilgrims ranging from eighteen to thirty-four, and rather than being an unsociable bastard and cannonballing my way toward my next stop, I decided to hang back and take the road with them today. The result? A more leisurely, more talkative Camino – and ultimately, more fulfilling. In some senses, quite literally!

While I didn’t manage to track down Enrique the muleteer today (though there were clear signs on the road that his horse and mule had gone on ahead but recently), I did track down the Professor (the Californian I met on day one), the Sailor (a Spanish/Australian globetrotter and his wife) and the Carabiniere, an outrageous but loveable Italian former policeman for whom the saying “the man, the myth, the legend” might well have been coined. And because I had company on the road, I was much more inclined to stop for food, which made today’s long, sun-scorched hike across the plains of Castile a lot more enjoyable.

Top tip for pilgrims on this stage: just as you reach the village of Viloria de Rioja, the Parada de Viloria on your right as you hit the town is one of the friendliest places on the whole journey. They don’t have a menu peregrino, but rather the husband and wife who run the albergue cook up a simple lunch with a donations box on the side – you give what you can. The eggs, the bread and the tomatoes are all fresh and presumably their own produce, if not sourced from the farmers a few houses down the road. I had what was probably the best tortilla sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my life today. Hell, I’d do that stretch again for another bite.

We left La Rioja behind today and started out upon what will become the Meseta Central. In a very real sense it already felt like we’d reached the middle stretch between Burgos and León – sun high overhead, the Camino cleaving close to the road, dust clouds and rolling wheat fields replacing former river valleys and distant mountain ranges. It’s stunning, but in a different way – a very Castilian kind of beautiful, austere and proud in its starkness.

Fortunately I had company to chew the fat with rather than lapse into the same clichés that other (and considerably better-versed) British travellers have used before me.

We arrived in Belorado shortly after two o’clock to find the town heaving with both pilgrims and locals – the festivities for Jueves Santo had just begun, and between that and the concentration of pilgrims in this small town, the albergue municipal was already fully booked. Luckily there were other options, and the place I ended up – Cuatro Cantones – could hardly have been a friendlier establishment. It even had a covered pool, which was a godsend after a twenty-three kilometre hike across the dusty plains.

Sopa de Ajo – a personal favorite!

I’m now over halfway through the walking stage of this attempt at the Camino. In two nights it will be over: I will have reached Burgos, at which point I will take my leave of my companions as some move on and others return home while I stay and rest in the city of the Cid. I will be immensely appreciative of the break, but no more so than my feet, which are not used to this much walking – even from somebody who doesn’t drive!

Tomorrow, we either roll the dice on San Juan’s one pilgrim hostel or push on in search of pastures new. Luck be an albergue tonight, I guess. BB x

Camino III: Green Fields Forever

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

If this is a later blog post than usual, it’s because I’ve bought into the spirit of the Camino a bit more today and allowed myself to socialise with some of the other pilgrims – which often takes some doing for an introvert like me. Tonight’s digs are fantastic, though, and I’m writing from the genuine comfort of my dorm bed in Santo Domingo de La Calzada’s cofradía, one of the longest-serving albergues on the whole Camino.

So first, a confession. After arriving in Nájera yesterday, I got itchy feet. The cliffs above the town were calling to me, and the voice telling me I’d already walked 30km that morning was drowned out by the other saying go on, do it, you’ll regret it if you don’t. The summit – a lonely bluff called Malpica – even had a cross at the top, which is essentially putting a hat on a hat. I had to climb it.

Oddly enough, nobody else was up there at half past four in the afternoon with temperatures pushing into the twenties. Which is just as well, because it turned out to be a hands-and-feet climb to the summit. Fortunately I’ve been doing that kind of thing since I was a kid, so I’m pretty handy with my feet. The view from the top of Malpica was breathtaking – moreso because I didn’t have an awful lot of breath left to take – but the real reward was the butterfly show. For whatever reason, a swarm had descended upon the clifftop, among them some of the most beautiful butterflies you can find in Europe: swallowtails. One or two of them – zebra swallowtails – were so large you could hear their wingbeats. The ‘blood dripping from their fangs’ kind, as my mother would put it. I was just happy to sit up at the top and watch them frolic for a while. It delayed the inevitable descent – again on hands and feet – for at least a short while.

I fully intended to wait for some of the other peregrinos this morning, but when 7 o’clock had come and gone, I came and went with it. I’m rather fussy about catching the sunrise on the Camino, and will happily sacrifice a sit-down breakfast for it. This morning, I’ll admit, I really should have dawdled, as it was biting cold out. It had been well below zero during the night and, with the sun still below the horizon, it was still -1°C when I set out. You notice these things quickly when you’ve only packed with heat in mind.

That being said, the Camino was busy. The Koreans had all set out well before sunrise. They’re turning out to be most of if not the only real pilgrims (in the religious sense) on the Camino, with the possible exception of the odd Brazilian. I’d hoped to explore some of the churches along the way, but they were all closed – a possible drawback to setting out so early – so I powered through the first fifteen kilometres alone, soaking up the silence of the green fields of La Rioja.

And what a silence! At the start of the day the birdsong was explosive, and I got quite used to listening out for certain motifs in certain places: the rasping call of a black redstart on tiled roofs, the drawn out wheeze of corn buntings on fence posts and the singsong warble of woodlarks in the vineyards. But at one point it suddenly all went quiet. No birdsong, no cars, not even the sound of distant chatter from other pilgrims on the road. I had to stop walking to listen, taking out the monotonous beat of my own two feet that’d I’d long since tuned out. It wasn’t eternal, but it was powerful while it lasted. I’d even say it will be a treasured Camino memory.

Just before Cirueña I fell into step alongside the only other English peregrino I’ve met thus far. It was good to share the road at last, and we swapped stories to the backdrop of the patchwork fields of La Rioja passing by.

Just shy of Santo Domingo itself, we caught up with a genuine arriero, making the Camino in riding boots and a high vis jacket, taking his mule Jena and a Connemara horse along with him. It was a fleeting encounter, cut off all too soon by our imminent arrival in Santa Domingo, and I hope I can catch up to him again – I must have a hundred questions or more from years of research on arrieros that only a real muleteer could answer. Wait for me, Enrique! BB x

Camino II: Dawnbreaker

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Holy Week got off to a flying start last night outside Logroño’s cathedral, Santa María de La Redonda. It isn’t always easy to tell which towns will have a serious procesión, but for the record, Logroño goes the distance. It looked as though all the brotherhoods were out in force last night, garbed in white, red, green, black and blue. Crucially for me, they also beat out the same halting drumbeat from my memories of Holy Week in the south. Not every town does it, but you’ll notice if they do: it’s the ever so slightly delayed drum roll during the march that, once you hear it, you can’t unhear. It’s the suspense of the last days of Jesus’ life, as his followers waited to see if he would save himself. At least, that’s one way of reading into it.

I had supper with a rather awkward American, the only other guest for dinner at the albergue. He wasn’t even staying there, but appeared to have wandered in looking for a menu peregrino (the cheap three-course fare offered to pilgrims on the Camino). He had his reservations about how sociable people are on the Camino and pined for the quieter stretches, and from his less than satisfied reaction to the ‘vegetarian option’ he’d asked for, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing out here. He was quick to want to fact check my anecdote about his home state of California being one of the only places in the world named for a fictional location (it takes its name from the mythical island in Montalvo’s 16th-century chivalric novel, Las sergas de Esplandián) but I won’t begrudge him for it. After Trump and the fake news boom, who’d trust anyone?

I was definitely one of the first out of town this morning. Though I passed some pilgrims on the road a few hours in, from the speed at which they were walking I suspect they’d been lodging one or two towns ahead. As a result, I had pretty much the whole 30km hike to Nájera to myself – including the first hour and a half before sunrise, which is always one of the most magical times to walk the Camino.

Approaching the Laguna de Grajera from the east, I counted about six or seven night herons flying in from their roost somewhere beyond Logroño. You can just about make out the silhouette of one of them in the photo above, as dawn was starting to break. There were rabbits everywhere – more than I’ve ever seen in this country – and the morning sky was alive with the songs of blackbirds and larks. I could have waited for company at any point, but I do love to have that part of the day to myself. Self indulgent, perhaps, but worth indulging all the same.

There was even an icon of Nuestra Señora del Rocío on the lakeside. Whether or not I sang her into existence through various repetitions of Las llanuras ardientes and El Rocío es un milagro as I was walking is conjecture. It felt special to find her here, so far from her usual haunt in the marismas down south.

Now, while I needn’t have set off quite so early (the 8 hours in the guidebook is a joke, the trek is at the very most 6h30 with a stop for lunch) I did have my reasons, and one was to catch a very specific angle of the sunrise at just the right moment.

At the brow of a hill to the west of the laguna stands one of the famous Osborne bulls for which Spain is so famous. By the time I got clear of it – at around 8.20am – the sun was almost exactly behind it. I could not have timed it better. Point and shoot!

The rest of the walk was pretty straightforward. The ruins of the old pilgrims’ hospice at San Juan de Acre were picturesque and the Camino itself, though it cleaved close to the road on occasion, was quiet and easy underfoot. I let a couple of Dutch pilgrims overtake and continued to have the road to myself. The Sierra de Cebollera remained cloudbound for most of the walk, and I kept my hoodie on until I reached Nájera – it simply wasn’t hot enough to justify fewer layers, and that’s not bad thing!

Navarrete was stunning – easily one of my favourite stations on the Camino so far. The church is a classic Spanish affair: pokey and generic on the outside, and an immense explosion of heavenly gold within. I lit a candle for abuelo, left a story in the visitor’s book, sang through Thomas Morley’s Nolo mortem peccatoris (since there was nobody there) and moved on.

From Navarrete, the final stretch rolled across the hills before sloping down toward the cliff face of Nájera. Legend has it the French hero Roland fought a Syrian giant on one of these hills in a single combat that went on for days, but I was happy enough to see the familiar silhouette of the giants of my childhood: griffon vultures, circling high above the meseta in the distance. I didn’t keep a tally, but there were raptors everywhere today. Kestrels and kites – both black and red – and buzzards and booted eagles, these last in both white and brown. Since it’s still early enough in the season, some of them were displaying still, climbing high and then plummeting down in a sharp V with wings tucked in. Between that and the flute-song of woodlarks that followed me for the last hour before Nájera, I have been in seventh heaven all morning. Oh Camino, I have missed you!

The Albergue Municipal is filling up. Maybe I’ll meet some of these people later. But for now, I’ve done my write-up for the day and I could use a little shut-eye before I seek further adventures in Nájera this evening. Until the next time, folks. BB x

Peregrino Soy

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Last night, according to the Beeb, there was a planetary parade. After yesterday’s exceptional conditions – the first day of spring in every sense – it would have been easy to spot from home. That the news decided to report the phenomenon exclusively in the past tense was a kick in the teeth. At the very least it would have been something to write about before the holidays. A warm-up exercise, so to speak, since that’s usually when I have the time to write. I bent the usual dry spell of the summer holidays to my will last year, but this year’s summer break is looking to be all about wheels with little to no time for anything else. Knowing I have to spend a great deal of the summer learning to drive is a pain in the neck, albeit a necessary one, and it’s naturally got me thinking about all the things I’d rather be doing. Fortunately, at this point in my life I can limit all those things to one thing and one thing only, and that’s the job I didn’t finish two years ago: the Camino de Santiago.

So, in my typical stubborn fashion, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and booked a return flight to Bilbao to pick up where I left off over the Easter break. Peregrino soy, volando voy.

Last time I made the trek I got as far as Logroño before having to fly home for both a house move and my pre-PGCE literacy and numeracy test. That’s somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of the total distance (780km). And though I’m not a fan of re-starting things if I can help it, it does feel like one of those treks that ought to be made in one, if you can.

Realistically, it takes about a month to walk the whole Camino, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. A month of 5am starts and 12pm finishes, racking up around 20km a day before noon with afternoons spent resting, exploring and talking to fellow pilgrims. It’s an experience like none other. Everyone is on the same road, but no two people started in the same spot or with the same motivations. You fall into a healthy routine after a couple of days, and yet every day is different.

People come from all over the world to walk the Camino. For the first couple of days, I tagged along with three Italians and an Argentinian. We parted ways at Estella when I stayed behind, enchanted by the Basque town. You could easily walk the Camino in a month, but there’s so much to see and do that it’s worth stopping every so often to see all the towns along the pilgrim route have to offer – and your feet will appreciate a day off after five or six days’ walking. Since I’m traveling within the parameters of a two-week holiday I don’t have all the time in the world, so I’ll try to follow the same pattern this time around: five or six days of solid walking, broken up by a decent night’s sleep in somewhere that isn’t an albergue at either end. That tends to be a good idea.

My credencial, or pilgrim’s passport, is already sitting on the coffee table, open at the last stamp. My sleeping bag is rolled up and ready to go and I’ve ordered a good quality rucksack as the one I used last time is at my parents’ place – and it was falling apart after more than a decade of use. For a sense of continuity, I’ll aim to stay at the same place where I came to a stop last time. My Spanish colleagues at work expressed some dismay at the idea of doing the Camino at this time of year – “pero oye, esto se hace en verano” – but I’m going to trust my instinct on this one.

I’m well aware that I’m heading out in none other than Semana Santa, the holiest week in the Spanish calendar. As well as adding to the colour of the Camino nights, with all the reckless passion of the pasos, it may well make for a busier (and more Spanish) Camino than usual. But after a couple of safe and highly-organised school trips, I’m more than game for a proper adventure. And few things provide quite like the Camino.

Bring it on! BB x