summer

A Surfeit of Films

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 10.50.

After a flight that seemed to go on forever, I have made landfall in Chile. Tomás, my host for the next four weeks or so, very generously offered to come and pick me up from the airport – an offer I found it impossible to decline, operating on about an hour’s proper sleep and six hours of sleepless shut-eye.

Being right at the back of the plane meant that I was the very last customer served dinner, by which point they had run out of everything but chicken. I hadn’t eaten much, so that was fine by me – I thought it was really top-notch, by plane standards (or any standards, for that matter). The film choices were fab too, once I’d worked out where to plug in the complimentary headset (hint: it’s in the armrest to your right). I watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (largely on fast forward, as I’d had it on my mind a few days prior), considered Avatar III: Fire and Ash and then changed my mind and opted for Michael, the biopic about my all-time favourite artist that I had somehow managed to miss in cinemas this summer. I’m not normally a fan of biopics, lumping them somewhat unfairly under the same “cash-grab” category as Disney’s recent slew of remakes, but I thought this one was genuinely moving. Then again, I adore MJ and his music, so that’s probably my own bias talking.

I still managed to watch a silent version of Avatar on one of the telescreens in the row in front. It looked almost identical to the previous two films, boiling down to a sequence of who-took-who-prisoner and Eywa saves the day again, but maybe I was missing something without the dialogue.

I also managed to watch The Batman before landing in Santiago ahead of schedule at 7am this morning. That’s around six or seven hours of films, plus another six trying to get some sleep – and that’s still not the entirety of the flight time. That’s an indication of just how long the journey to Santiago is. Thank goodness it was all in the dark!

It took about an hour to get through customs, largely because the immigration control was very busy for seven o’clock in the morning. I had a gut feeling I’d be assigned to Gate 13 – unlucky for some – which I was, some thirty minutes later, only to find that Señorita Allende at the control desk was writing her next novella for each customer, so the queue for Gate 13 moved at a snail’s pace. I was two clients from the desk when she put on her coat, packed her things and signalled to the rest of us that her shift was over and to find another gate. The man at Gate 12 was much more efficient: a quick glance at my passport, a stamp (yay!) and through.

I was stopped at customs, which was an interesting change, because of the marmalade I’d brought over as a gift for Tomás and his family. I’d forgotten how much of a fuss is made of preserves! They let me through without a fuss – and with the marmalade, amazingly – but maybe next time I’ll stick to chocolate.

First impressions of Santiago? I’ve barely got to know the place, but from a single drive across the city to my host’s home in residential Las Condes, it’s a very different city to Lima or Arequipa. It feels instantly more like Madrid or Barcelona in its architecture, with its tower blocks and its vast network of underground highways. A dense wintry cover of cloud is currently hanging over the city, shrouding most of the snow-capped peaks beyond a grey veil, while the thick layer of smog that hovers above the city was immediately obvious upon leaving the airport.

It feels decidedly weird leaving England with a tan and a t-shirt, getting on a plane to somewhere abroad and immediately having to throw on a jumper and some warmer socks. It’s also a positively balmy 17°C here, a point emphasised by the faraway screeching of monk parakeets, an invasive species in most European cities but just as native to this strip of South America as the puma and the condor. It’ll be even colder down south in Patagonia. I hope my winter gear is warm enough!

I’m giving up on trying to catch up on lost sleep. It’s not working, and probably dangerous to try, or I really will throw my sleeping patterns right off. I’ll get a proper night’s sleep at the hostel I’ve booked in downtown Santiago tonight, after getting my bearings and catching the Spain v Belgium game, of course. Until then, let’s take it slow. Don’t want to burn out before I’ve even started my placement now! BB x

Retreat from the Heat

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London Heathrow Terminal 5, London. 20.00.

So far so good! I hit the exact hurdle I expected at check-in – namely, Iberia failing to allow for middle names and slapping them on the end of my surname, making for one heck of a name – but the lady at the desk waved me on in without a fuss. My suitcase is off on its merry way, and in another half hour or so I’ll leave this charging station and set out after it.

It hadn’t really dawned on me quite how far a fourteen-and-a-half hour flight truly is until I saw it printed on my boarding pass. That’s an odyssey of a journey right there, and all of it in the dark, being one of those nightchaser flights that seemingly travels backwards in time.

My contact in Santiago has got in touch, so I no longer need concern myself with my suitcase once I reach the other side of the world – and that really is a load off my mind! I have an aisle seat at the very back of the plane, so I can’t guarantee I’ll have slept all that well by the time we arrive. I hope they have a decent film or two on tap! I’m conscious that I’m missing the France/Morocco quarterfinal as I write, but maybe it’ll be showing in one of the bars en route to the C Gates.

The news here is all about the heat – that, and Nigel Farage’s impending by-election against Count Binface. There are so many reasons I would move abroad – not least of all the number of colleagues who tell me (in the nicest possible way!) that they don’t think I belong here – but when it comes to political satire, we really are the best in the world. Where else would a would-be prime minister be forced to spend the summer debating against a man with a bin on his head?

Enough of this madness. Onwards! To a country of wonderful wine and breathtaking mountains where they speak my grandfather’s language. The forecast is eternally in flux, but it now looks like it’s set to snow throughout my stay in Puerto Natales. Strangely enough, it will be the first snow I’ve seen in nearly two years. I hope I have packed enough for the cold! BB x

Overencumbered

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Carriage B, Delayed 16.05 to London Paddington. 18.07.

No adventure ever worth setting out on ever started easily. That’s what I’m telling myself as I lug all of this junk across country. I have to face the facts. It was my decision to maximise my time in Chile, leaving a single day’s pit stop in the UK before setting out again for Greece. Both occasions require formal wear, but Chile is in the grip of deepest winter and Greece will be just past the zenith of its summer fury. It felt decidedly odd packing my quilted coat, gloves and rain gear when the temperature was ticking past 31°C outside, but I have to be prepared for any eventuality. I really dislike traveling with anything more than a few changes of clothes and a backpack, but on this occasion I have no choice. Thankfully, I don’t have to lug my Greek summer wear around Chile. It’s just getting all of this junk out of Somerset that’s the kicker.

It’s pretty hot out there. The corridor is full of suitcases and a pram, most of them belonging to a retiree in a summer dress. I wondered at first whether she was a candidate for the most inattentive grandmother on the planet, since she only popped out into the corridor to check on the inhabitant of the pram twice over the space of an hour – until at last she scooped up the little thing, which turned out to be a little brown puppy. She proceeded to try to encourage it to drink from a metal bowl of water – most of which went onto her dress and the floor – and then took it into the toilet cubicle, picking up super absorbent puppy training wipes from her pram en route. The Japanese family trapped in the corridor with me seemed more than a little bemused.

We were delayed again outside Castle Cary by a fire at the side of the track, which appeared to have started some five or ten minutes ago, judging by the speed of its advance and the trail of charred grass it had left in its wake.

Fires starting at the side of railway lines? Two heatwaves back to back? I’ve never known a summer like it. The sooner I am up in the air and down in the southern hemisphere, the better. I may have Spanish blood, but on this occasion the Englishman in me wins out. I’m really not a fan of this kind of heat.

23.03.

Check-in is officially open, but the website is telling me it’s “too early” to check in, despite the fact that this time tomorrow I’ll be one hour into my fourteen-and-a-half hour flight to Santiago. It’ll be something to do with the fact that it’s British Airways operating the flight out, not Iberia, and Iberia’s website usually forces me to input my middle names as part of my surname, since middle names don’t exist in Spanish society (but two surnames are expected). One of those two usual stumbling blocks.

I’m too tired to deal with it now. I’ve packed a proper headrest cushion for the journey, as it will be the longest flight I have ever been on in my life, so if I have to check in at the airport and get a rum deal as seats go, I guess them’s the breaks. At least I have Friday and Saturday to readjust! BB x

Waiting

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The Flat, Taunton. 23.30.

Still no word from Chile. A voice in my head is trying to tell me that something is amiss, but I’m tempted to chalk that up to institutionalisation. I have to remind myself that I knew next to nothing about Villafranca de los Barros when I set out to live and work there for the best part of a year. I didn’t even have my accommodation thought through until a few days after I had arrived. There is simply a lot less stress in the way the Hispanics go about these things, and I should be on board with that – it’s the system I started out with. I wonder whether it’s just a psychosis of the English (or, perhaps, the Americans) that we need everything planned and sorted right down to the last detail.

I am not a planner. Sure, traveling twelve thousand kilometres without much of a plan might be reckless even by my standards, but it doesn’t trouble me. Not really. After all, if the worst comes to the worst, I can always store my luggage somewhere and go traveling.

England is back in the grip of another heatwave. This one isn’t as fierce as the last one, but it is noticeably hotter than usual. Perhaps I’m noticing that all the more because A) my barber’s has always been busy when I’ve gone by, so my hair is longer than usual; B) the fan in my air purifier has given up the ghost; and C) I’m packing for an austral winter, so I’ve had the odd experience of going through my winter wardrobe in 30 degree heat. The incoming El Niño may alter the weather in Chile while I’m out there in ways I cannot predict – it could be hotter, wetter or even colder than the average winter – so I have to pack for every eventuality. Thank goodness I paid for a suitcase this time around! I really hate traveling with suitcases, but at least it gives me the peace of mind to pack enough supplies to keep me comfortable, whatever the weather.

Just a short couple of posts for now – I don’t have an awful lot to report on. Just wanted to get back in the zone before the next adventure begins. Writing is an exercise, and like any sport, it needs a good warm-up! BB x

U-Turn

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14.02, The Flat.

In the blink of an eye, my second year at Taunton has come and gone. It’s been another hurricane season, I won’t deny that. A little easier than last year, perhaps – if only because of the repetitive nature of teaching the same course – but every bit as busy. Since September, I’ve taken my student Funk Band out to their first external gig, joined a band of my own, taken a team to the Oxford Schools Finals Day for the second year in a row and led a public speaking workshop in the form of a legal practice (which, of course, I am totally qualified for…). I have returned to Extremadura under iron skies, taken yet another school trip to Barcelona and travelled all the way to Peru in search of the Andean condor on one of the most amazing adventures of my life. I have not found Her – Somerset is proving a very dry place – but I have made some good friends at work, which is a positive. I haven’t exactly had much time to commit to the search, and I have also spent almost every day of my holidays on the road, which is terribly self-indulgent of me, but it is how I survive the manic 24/7 existence that is working in a boarding school.

True to form, my summer holidays are set to follow the same trend. After a few days’ reprieve – just about enough time to tidy the flat and pack – I will be traveling across the Atlantic again, bound this time for Chile, nearly 1,500km further south than where I left off in April. Please don’t get me wrong – this one isn’t a purely self-indulgent adventure. I’m off to work at a school out there in Chile’s capital, Santiago, for three weeks or so. As to what form that work may take, I am still completely in the dark. I imagine any rational human being might balk at the idea of being less than a week away from traveling to the other side of the planet at no small expense without so much as an address or even the vaguest idea of what to expect, but I’m at that stage of my life where I am entirely my own agent and any change is welcome. The alternative is a rather static Somerset summer, alternating between driving lessons and debilitating bouts of hayfever. With my timetable for the next academic year allowing some time for the former, I think I can allow myself to dodge the latter by switching seasons in a Spanish-speaking country.

I won’t be hiding under an austral snowstorm all summer. When my five weeks are up, I’ve a wedding to attend in Athens, which I have been looking forward to for a very long time. Once again, I’ve only planned the beginning. How I get home after four days in the Greek capital remains up in the air. Maybe I’ll find a quiet spot in Thessaloniki and soak up the Mediterranean sun while I work on my novel. Or maybe I’ll travel back home across Europe, seeing Romania like I planned years ago. I haven’t decided yet.

I really don’t know what the next two months will bring. At the very least, I hope they bring change, whatever that looks like. My boss would really like me to stop saying yes to everything. She means well, I know. But if I don’t say yes to things like this, my youth will slip through my fingers and I will find myself in the same job ten years from now, still hoping that She will appear. The apps don’t work – everyone is exhausted – so, like a good scientist, I have to go and do the fieldwork. I don’t expect to find Her in Chile (let’s be honest, at a distance of nearly twelve thousand kilometres, it would probably be better for me if I didn’t), but it can’t hurt to try – and along the way, it would be nice to make some new friends and learn something new. I have work to do, of course – this Spanish Language A: Literature course won’t write itself – but with several long flights on the cards, that shouldn’t be a problem. With one “buffer” week on either side of my placement, I should have plenty of time to explore.

In short, I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know how it middles either. But I do know how it starts. Since I’m going all the way to the far side of the world, I figured I could go a little further. Before my placement begins – the day after the FIFA World Cup Final – I will be indulging my inner Attenborough once again in the desolate wilds of Patagonia. After a little shopping around, I’ve found a respectable guide who will take me in search of one of Chile’s most magical creatures: the puma. I didn’t have any luck with the jaguars in Manu this Easter, so hopefully Patagonia will deliver.

I hadn’t planned on going back to South America so soon – but here we are. Life is full of u-turns, but they aren’t always as exciting as this. So here’s to the summer of ’26! BB x

Heatwave

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The Delayed 14.29 to Taunton, Reading. 14.51.

England swelters under the glare of an unseasonably ferocious sun. For the second day in a row, the temperature is pushing well into the thirties. It’s all the news can talk about. Trains are running slower due to speed restrictions, three children have “gotten into difficulties” while bathing (a tactful way of avoiding the potentially triggering d-words associated with fatal water incidents) and the whole of the South seems to have jumped into the car and carved out a four-square fiefdom on Bournemouth Beach.

I’ve hopped out east to pay my mother a visit, and in so doing stepped right into the hottest part of the country – bar London, of course, which is usually a couple of degrees warmer than the rest of the island. England is rather pretty in May, though she wears her best dress in the first two weeks of the month, when the flowers are still fresh and the wind is cool. Now, the early summer sun is at that particularly British angle where it’s high enough to burn but low enough to blind, and the heat feels more like the first week of August than the last week of May.

Retreating before the summer’s wrath, I have sought solace and shades along the banks of Hampshire’s rivers.

England is at its most beautiful wherever a river can be found. Crystal waters running over gravel, with shadowy trout and grayling darting from sunlight to shadow. Clumps of weeds and watercress wafting in the water as though in the wind. The trailing arms of a weeping willow gently tracing the water’s surface. Iridescent dragonflies of every shape and size – dragons, damsels and darters – hawking from bank to bank, playing a longer game than the mayflies, whose inert bodies drift downstream, their twenty-four hours spent. Chiffchaffs, wrens and blackcaps singing from the trees, the lazy purr of an overheated wood pigeon and, now and then, the explosive song of a Cetti’s warbler from deep within the darkest heart of a reedbed or thicket.

When I am traveling far from home, this is the image of England that I miss most of all.

Did you see the pike in that first picture? Don’t worry if you missed it – they are master ambush predators. Go back and see if you can spot it.

This corner of the River Alre passing through Alreston is supposed to have otters and kingfishers, but I was over the moon to see a pike. They were always my favourite fish when I was a lad, and it’s not hard to see the appeal for a young boy: fully grown, they’re huge, sinister, almost crocodilian monsters with soulless eyes and fins that move so slowly that their every twitch seems calculated. A perfect killing machine. Hardly surprising for a fish that outlived the dinosaurs, whose ancestors prowling Cretaceous rivers were not all that different from the river monsters that lurk in reedbeds outside Tescos and Sainsbury’s.

I can see why adventurous young lads might get a kick out of fishing up one of these ancient beasts, but I’m just as happy spotting one drifting between the weeds. It makes a change from chasing chiffchaffs through the branches of the tallest trees.

I’m racing home now, clearing the green fields of the Vale of Pewsey under a mercifully cloud-studded sky. I acquired a few books in a second-hand bookshop for a couple of pounds and a new sketchbook for a little more. I’ve been meaning to get my hands on the Horrible Histories books for a while, since they had an enormous impact on my art and my love for history and storytelling. Everyone seems to remember the enormously popular TV show (which, for my sins, I have never seen) but the books appear to have faded into collective oblivion. I dare say Martin Brown had more influence on my pen-and-line drawings than any other artist – besides the legendary Chris Riddell, of course.

Power’s running out. I’d better stop typing and leave enough juice on this thing to get me through the ticket barrier at Taunton station. See you around! BB x

Camino XXXVIII: Santiago

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Albergue Seminario Menor, Santiago de Compostela. 18.11.

Two years ago, when I walked into Santiago’s Praza do Obradoiro under a cool white cloud, I could not shake the feeling that I had not quite earned the triumph that the end of the Camino usually entails. I had walked in alone, in the early hours of the morning, after setting out from Burgos some twenty-one days prior. My credencial showed that I had walked all the way, but not all at once: my circuitous route had taken me four years, starting in the summer of 2019 and continuing in the spring and summer of 2023, after COVID and a number of other factors prevented me from walking further.

Not this time. Today felt like the finish you read about in books and in the films. Today, after walking over a thousand kilometres across France and Spain, to be welcomed like a hero by old friends in front of a crowd of thousands before a cathedral bathed in light… I was on the verge of tears this time.

Ribadiso was silent when I left at around a quarter to five this morning – the earliest I have set out along the entire trek. A few cows had wandered down to the river for a drink by the reflected light of a few lamps along the bridge, but I could hardly make out more than their silhouettes in the gloom. My phone did a much better job than my eyes could do.

Darkness shrouded my steps until well after seven o’clock, so the first two and a half hours of my walk were made in the long shadows of night. As usual, I avoided using my phone’s torch as much as possible, navigating by starlight and the shadows of the trees against the sky, turning it on only to check I was not in any danger of leaving the trail. I passed a few pilgrims on the road who turned their glaring flashlights on me as I motored past, no doubt perplexed as to why I had decided not to light up the way in front of me.

I picked up considerable speed whenever I saw the dim moving light of a headtorch on the road ahead. I have not been a huge fan of headlamps and torches since two were trained on me like searchlights at two o’clock in the morning on a beach in Almería, during my mad trek across Spain at the age of eighteen. The fright that experience gave me has never really gone away, which may go some way to explaining my general disdain for the invasive, almost threatening white light of a handtorch. But there’s also my natural stubbornness, which I suspect has much more to do with it. You don’t really need a torch to navigate by night… not when your eyes grow accustomed to the gloom. So why bother?

I considered stopping for breakfast at a number of cafés once they started to open their doors after 7am, but every time I neared one, it looked packed to the gills, so I moved on. If I’d known that this would be the case all the way to Santiago and that I would not stop again until I reached the holy city, I might have shrugged off my pride and popped in for a tostada. But I didn’t, and when I accidentally took the forest route bypassing O Pedrouzo altogether – the usual staging post before the final push to Santiago – I decided to push on to the end on the power of a Bolycao and the last of my Nakd blueberry bars. It wasn’t much of a breakfast for a forty-three kilometre hike, I’ll admit, but it did the job.

The road got quieter before O Pedrouzo after I had overtaken all of those pilgrims who had set out from Arzúa, only to ramp up again as I hit the back of the O Pedrouzo brigade. I met a few new characters as well as the first of a few old faces from the Camino Francés: Don Decibel, a raucous Spanish soldier whose phone call to his friends ten kilometres back hardly required the use of a phone at all (though I’m not sure I’d count the repeated phrases “oyé maricones” and “viva España putamadres” as a conversation); the Shadow, a French pilgrim who seemed to catch up to me constantly despite my attempts to race on ahead; Tim & Jackie, an Australian couple who fell behind us at Carrión de los Conded when Tim’s legs started to cause him trouble; and Edoardo, the charismatic Don Juan, who had slowed down to walk with a large group of Italian pilgrims.

And then there were the school and university groups. Hundreds of them. Well over a thousand, if I’d bothered to count them all. The ticker in the Pilgrim Office in Santiago showed that 847 had already made it to the city before I arrived at around twelve o’clock, so that number is not as much of a hyperbole as you might think.

The post-Sarria rush is real. It wasn’t quite as obvious two years ago as it is now, in the middle of August, when the crush is at its highest. I’d wager that I’d have seen even more if I’d left even a little later. They were all in very high spirits and many of them were draped in the colourful flags of their home regions: Andalucía, Valencia and Asturias were the most obvious. I looked for the black bars of the Extremaduran flag, but I didn’t see one.

I wondered, if I’d carried a flag, which one I would have the right to bear. Not Andalucía, surely, as I only lived there for a little under a year as a child (though it has forever marked my accent and identity), and not Extremadura either, since I have no familial connection to that earthly paradise whatsoever. La Mancha, perhaps, as that is where my cousins reside – but when my great-grandmother was born, that part of La Mancha was part of Murcia. My grandfather and his father, on the other hand, were from the Valencian province of Alicante.

In short, I have no claim to any of the regional flags. So I would have settled for the rojigualda instead.

I couldn’t find the famous pilgrim statues on Monte do Gozo – I wonder if they’ve been moved to a different location? Their pedestal was where Google Maps said it would be, but I could not find them. I did, however, see my destination for the first time, and that was motivation enough to proceed: the twin turrets of Santiago’s cathedral, between the gleaming white houses and the towering eucalyptus trees.

When I left Ribadiso this morning, Google Maps thought it would take me around nine hours to reach Santiago. It took me seven. I had some powerfully uptempo music to get me through the last ten kilometres, up to and including:

  1. Rhythm is Gonna Get You – Gloria Estefan
  2. Higher Ground – Stevie Wonder
  3. Voodoo Child – Rogue Traders
  4. El Cid March – Miklos Rozsa
  5. It’s a Big Daddy Thing – Big Daddy Kane
  6. Qué Pasa Contigo – Alex Gaudino
  7. Walk Right Now – The Jacksons
  8. Deliver Us – The Prince of Egypt

The last one was the killer. I get emotional listening to that track at the best of times, but the timing was absolutely perfect, reaching the triumphant crescendo finale just as I reached the back of the square and turned to face the cathedral. There really were tears in my eyes this time.

Let’s face the facts. I walked a bloody long way.

I had hardly arrived in the main square when I was jumped by three old friends: Juha the Finn, Max the Austrian and David the American. To be honest, I was not expecting to run into any of the old guard at all: my side quest over the San Salvador and along the Primitivo put me almost a week out of sync with the crew I had walked with, and even three double days wouldn’t have been enough to catch up to them all.

However, with the exception of Chip (who left for home several days ago) and Audrey and Talia (who I missed by a matter of hours), everyone else was here, including Alonso and Gust, the last remaining members of our little band of seven. I could not have hoped for a better welcome wagon.

Alonso, Gust and I are all at the Seminario – along with a good number of familiar faces – and we had a decent lunch (if a bit pricey for what it was) and a phenomenal Gujarati supper at Camino Curry, a brave new enterprise by a family from Birmingham that was both the most delicious and the friendliest meal I have had on the entire Camino. Given that the fellows had been advertising on my Facebook posts, I’d say they earned my custom.

We said farewell to Max and Juha for the last time on this Camino and returned to the albergue for a couple of rounds of Go Fish (instead of watching the 10pm screening of the Superman movie at the local cinema and risking the nine minute dash back to the seminario before lock-up). I’m normally averse to card games but I had a great time. It reminded me of those dark internet-free nights in Uganda long ago, with Teddy and Maddy and Mina. That feels like a lifetime ago.

Well… tomorrow is another day. No more 5am starts. That’s something to look forward to! BB x

Camino XXII: Starlight

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Albergue de la Santa Cruz, Sahagún. 21.17.

Today was a lot more like the Camino Francés that I remember: long, unforgiving, sociable and under the stars for the first half of the morning. I’ve been taking it easy with all these post-sunrise starts with the other pilgrims, so with my fork from León now very much on the horizon, it’s good to get back into the routine.

We agreed the night before to strike out for Sahagún, partly because Audrey wanted to go further and potentially save a day to add to the end of her trip, and partly because I wanted to get to Sahagún after having had the place recommended at least twice. There was also the very real possibility that we could both shake the freeloading Englishman and catch up to the endlessly entertaining double act of Juha and Mad Max, who have been at least a day ahead of since Grañón, where the floor beds didn’t agree with Max’s back.

So, at five on the dot, the five of us set out from Carrión and into the night. We lost Edoardo sometime before sunrise – I’m not sure he could keep up, as he does appear to be carrying the biggest stick on the Camino (which probably might be better described as a branch or log). I also got lost: in my stubborn refusal to use artificial light, I completely missed the turn-off to the pilgrim road after Carrión and lost twenty minutes backtracking once I’d realised my mistake. On the plus side, it did mean total silence and an unrestricted view of the night sky, which was spectacular this morning.

There’s no lighting along the nineteen kilometre road between Carrión and Calzadilla, and all the towns are distant, so the stargazing was almost as good as it was on Tenerife. Even the Milky Way was visible, stretching westwards toward Santiago like the songs describe.

I spent a great deal of the morning racing ahead, mostly because of an obnoxious pilgrim who was lighting the entire path with a brilliant LED head torch, even though visibility by star and moonlight was perfectly good enough once your eyes had adapted. With him in the dust, I allowed myself some time to listen to a couple of chapters of an audiobook (some short stories about the Sargasso Sea from Strange Tales from the Deep and I, Claudius).

Not too long after sunrise, I saw flashes of white in a field by the road and trained my eyes on the spot: I counted ten great bustards, closer than I’ve ever seen them. Of course, they were far too distant for my iPhone (which makes for a superb camera, but is utterly useless as a telephoto lens), but you can just about make them out in the photo below (to the right).

After a brief pitstop for breakfast in Calzadilla, I raced on ahead once again. This time, I took advantage of the empty pilgrim road to do some singing practice, mostly from Jesus Christ Superstar, which I pretty much sang off-copy for all parts. I don’t have an eidetic memory, but I do have an uncanny ability to retain enormous amounts of information about things I’m interested in. Musical scripts fall under that category.

I stopped in Moratinos to pick up a beautiful wax stamp from Il Guru Improbable. I’ve missed this one before, as it’s much too soon after the usual staging post of Terradillos de los Templarios to obtain in the early hours of the morning, so I’m glad I pushed on today.

At Moratinos, I took up with a new group of pilgrims: Tom, a retired education superintendent from Michigan; a Finnish woman on her fourth Camino; and Tina, a Swiss-Guatemalan girl inspired to walk the Camino by a German comedian who hates walking. It made for a healthy change, and it was fun to tell my grandfather’s tale in full once again, which I haven’t done anywhere near as often on this Camino – last time, it usually preceded me by the time I met a new face!

Audrey caught up to me as we approached Sahagún and we entered the town together, seeking a pharmacy (for her feet) and an ice cream (for my appetite). At 13.10, it was the latest we’ve arrived at a destination yet, but it did mean no waiting for the albergue to open, which was a huge plus.

The bells are ringing for 22.00, and the white storks nesting on the bell tower are doing a lot of beak-clicking. That’s a sound I will always associate with Spain, no matter where else I may hear it.

Tomorrow we’re going to do another long slog, striking out for Mansilla de las Mulas if we can – which should, in theory, catch us up to the others who we lost on the road over a week ago.

Catch you later! BB x

Camino XIX: White Magic

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue Rosalía, Castrojeriz. 16.44.

I’m back in Castrojeriz, a Castilian hill-fort town some twenty-one kilometres down the road from last night’s stop in Hornillos. I probably could have gone a little further today, but there’s a local festival in town and I wanted to check it out. It’s much too easy to lose track of things on the Camino over a good conversation, and in so doing miss something special.

I mean – it is a garlic festival. So it’s nothing extraordinary. But I happen to love garlic (sopa de ajo is my favourite dish in the whole world) so I feel duty-bound to check this one out.

The hospitaleros at Hornillos left out a proper spread for breakfast, so we ate well today. Even so, we were up and gone by 6.20am, shortly before sunrise – which is getting noticeably later each week. The turbines on the surrounding hills continued to spin in the twilight, their red warning lights blinking like eyes along the blue horizon.

A gentle blanket of cloud shrouded our ascent up to the high meseta west of Hornillos. Apart from a few simple crosses erected along the road, the terrain was featureless, and all the shadows harrier-shaped: I counted at least seven Montagu’s harriers quartering the fields between Hornillos and Hontanas, from the agile ring-tailed youngsters to the ghostly silver shapes of the adult males. Vultures always take the top spot in my animal pantheon, but Montagu’s harriers are absolutely in my top five.

There’s not much a mobile phone can do with these elusive spirits, but you can just about make out the long-tailed shape of one in the photo below.

The sunrises over the meseta are peerless. It’s amazing just how many colours come out of the fields of gold, which pairs better with the sky than the grapes of La Rioja with the local jamón. I can’t imagine walking this route in winter, when the fields are stripped and bare. It must be spiritual then, too, but I would miss the warm hues of the wheat.

To reach Castrojeriz, you have to pass through the ruins of the Monasterio de San Antón. According to my route planner, I had intended to stay here, but it was only ten o’clock, and the day was still very young, so I pressed on – but not before snapping some photos of what is easily one of the most breathtaking buildings along the Camino Francés, with its ruined arches spanning the road to Castrojeriz.

The monks quartered here used to treat those afflicted with Saint Anthony’s Fire, a sickness we now know as ergotism. Advances in agriculture have more or less eliminated the disease, but the source is all around us in the wheat and rye that once carried the sickness. Before the causes were understood, the spasms and hallucinations that sufferers endured were believed to be a form of divine punishment or demonic possession. It’s hard to say whether the monks’ sanctified treatments truly worked, or whether the cutting-out of rye from their diet was what made the Order so effective. Either way, the monks resorted to a Christian form of white magic to keep the locals safe back in the day.

I like to imagine their ministrations might have saved the lives of at least a few pilgrims bound for Santiago over the centuries.

Gust was waylaid by a photographer for about half an hour on the road to Castrojeriz, and I was only spared the same fate by his silent warning to stay away and the timely arrival of two British university students, one of them a Durham undergrad. They stopped a little way along with their group so I couldn’t walk with them for that long, but I hope I can catch up to them again at some point before León.

I rejoined the Americans at Castrojeriz and we grabbed a drink before lunch, partly out of curiosity to see whether Gust could extricate himself from the photographer’s grip. We were more than a little surprised to see a MAGA hat, but nobody dared to engage the man in conversation. If he was a pilgrim, he was traveling very light indeed.

Downtown, the garlic festival was in full flow. A charanga band was marching around town, playing their oompah-like music wherever they went (just like back in Nájera), while old folks huddled around their collection of cloves and groups of kids in matching tee-shirts ran rings around the market stalls.

I suspect the Feria del Ajo is a relatively recent innovation (I’ve seen the number 46° floating around), but I shouldn’t wonder that this kind of harvest festival has been happening here for far longer. There’s a food-tasting event we’re going to check out later, and even a concert by the New York Youth Orchestra at 8pm tomorrow – though we’ll be long gone by then.

Garlic is famous in folklore for its protective characteristics, especially against malevolent spirits like vampires and demons. It’s also mightily medicinal, and has been fighting off disease and bacteria in humans for far longer than it has been used to ward off the undead. Given its life-giving properties, it’s easy to see how the latter superstition came about, in an age when Galen’s law of humours was widely accepted as gospel and any and all imbalances, including light and dark, required correction.

Frankly, I can’t think of any imbalances that couldn’t be corrected by a nice, hot bowl of garlic soup. It really is the very best of restoratives.

Audrey has popped out to explore the town. Alonso is watching a movie and Talia has fallen asleep. I might head out for a wander in a moment too, now that things are starting to open again after the afternoon siesta. Here’s to a little more white magic this evening! BB x

Camino XI: Not Here

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue de Sansol. 16.38.

Well, so much for Plan A. The American pilgrims I set out with this morning were in such a tearing hurry to beat the heat that we reached Los Arcos shortly before 10am. I’ve done the Camino a few times before, and my instincts tell me that – shy of the discovery of a true marvel – it’s nothing short of ridiculous to call it a day before the hour has even reached double figures. So I excused myself, picked up my sticks and set out, as I did all those years before, for Sansol.

Estella is pretty much an essential stopover on the Camino de Santiago, but the primary disadvantage of doing so is the fact that the famous wine fountain of Iratxe is hardly a forty minute walk from the city. If you save your visit for the small hours of the morning, and expect the wine to flow like water, you will be disappointed. At least today it was running – the last time I came by it wasn’t operating at all – but it hardly gave more than a few drops when we reached it at around 5.50am.

I can’t think of many places in the world that have actual wine fountains, so it’s definitely worth checking out, but for those who want a little more than a few drops, this may be one to investigate via an afternoon sortie from Estella.

I walked with the Americans for a bit, but I stopped for breakfast in Azqueta and let them press on. It was easy to seek them out for a laugh and good company, but even easier to forget the gulf in age between us (I am about ten years older than all of them), which became steadily more apparent as the conversations went on. I was also missing the solitary aspects of the Camino that had become so deeply ingrained since Oloron – as I suspected I might – and the distance did me good.

My DNA Heritage tests results came back today. Turns out I’m actually more Spanish than English, if the test kit is gospel (which I would very much like to believe!): 37.5% Iberian to 26.4% English. Either the Spanish genes on my mother’s side are ridiculously strong or the English genes on my father’s side are a lot more varied than I thought. As it turns out, as well as the obvious Spanish genetic indicators (I didn’t really need a box kit to tell me that), I apparently have a not inconsiderable amount of French and Breton ancestry (6% each).

This last detail is really very interesting, as I’ve latterly developed something of a soft spot for Bretagne after spending the summer in Saint-Malo last year. Granted, the Breton genome encompasses most of Normandy, too, so it’s just as likely a relict trace of Norman (aka British) DNA, but still – I’ll take it. I’ll take any connection to that beautiful part of the world.

Now I’m on the Camino Francés, pilgrim junk is much more of a feature of the Camino. Stones piled in cairns upon the trailmarkers, obnoxious stickers plastered all over the signs, clothes and prayer flags left hanging in the branches of low-hanging trees… Even if the yellow arrows weren’t there, it would be hard to lose your way for all the detritus.

It’s very easy to criticise, and perhaps I shouldn’t. After all, as is so often repeated in hostels and on the Camino Facebook groups, everyone walks the Camino in their own way. But I do think we forget that this is a country, with real people getting on with their lives, long after we have come and gone.

Do the piles of stones left behind really make a difference, even to those who choose to do so, or are you just following a fad you’ve seen? And what happens when they start to change the landscape, as at Cruz de Ferro, and need to be removed by heavy machinery to prevent further damage?

Do the stickers you leave on signs actually contribute to the experience of the Camino for those who come after you, or are you just creating one more labour-intensive task for some local official who will have to spend hours scraping them off – or even using local funds to buy new signage?

Do we really need to be reminded to visit Baden-Würrtemberg? For the record, I thought Baden-Würrtemberg was bloody beautiful when I stayed in Karlsrühe in 2019, but after seeing the “Nett hier” stickers once too often in a place of spectacular beauty, I have developed a profound dislike for the name and the arrogance implied by the stickers. There is such a thing as overadvertising!

At the root of my consternation in today’s post is this. It’s been eleven days on the Camino de Santiago and I’ve yet to encounter somebody who’s here for reasons of faith. Everyone – everyone – is here for a walk. Because they’ve heard of the Camino. For a challenge. A holiday. An adventure. And the pilgrim community, like a hive, is very quick to turn angrily on anyone who voices the opinion that somewhere, underneath the spirit of free and individualistic adventure, might be found the bones of a genuinely spiritual journey.

Maybe I’ve just not had much luck. But it would be nice to share the road with another believer, in a place where you might have thought it so much more likely to find one.

I’m still stopping in every church I pass. I still say a prayer to God on behalf of my grandparents and my dear friends’ father before every cross, every chapel, every shrine. I don’t feel “holier” than my fellow pilgrims, because I’m just as guilty of using the Camino as an affordable excuse to spend my entire summer holiday in Spain. But still – it’d be nice to meet someone who has come to the Camino for a genuine reason beyond “I heard about it and it sounded pretty awesome”.

Perhaps the Koreans are the answer. The trouble is, they don’t speak much English, and no Spanish at all beyond Buen Camino, so conversation is something of a non-starter.

Spain needs pilgrim money now as much as it did when the wars against the Muslims were still raging on and cash was hard to come by. But I do wonder where they all are, those walking the Camino with spiritual intent. Maybe I’ll find them out on the Meseta. It truly is a magical place.

England is experiencing another heatwave, but out here, the weather is mild. The hospitalero is cooking up an enormous paella to share between us tonight. That is, me and the five other pilgrims who made it out here: a quiet German lady, an ageing Italian who talks to himself a lot and snores like it’s an Olympic sport, a Tuscan with a strong accent and a couple of very lovey-dovey Romans. The least that can be said is that English is no longer the lingua franca and that is such a sweet relief. I was almost starting to feel I’d left Spain behind! BB x