travel

Camino XII: Tormentón

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue Parroquial de Santiago, Logroño. 19.20.

Last night, quite out of nowhere, a summer storm swept across the north. No rain, no hail; nothing but the unfettered might of the wind. One moment the sun was shining, the next the wind had reached gale force and the shutters were slamming against the windows as a dirty vortex of dust, leaves and debris slammed into Sansol like a hurricane.

It didn’t last long – five minutes, tops – but it darkened the sky, and lightning bolts fell in silent flashes all through the night.

When I left Sansol the following morning, after a long night of waking dreams, it was to a battered world. A pool full of leaves. Branches uprooted and cast across the path. Trees felled. A solitary stone curlew cried its mournful call in the darkness amid the devastation. Perhaps it’s the same bird I heard six years ago. As I tiptoed through the debris, I nearly stepped on a baby toad, almost invisible amid the scattered stones.

It’s a fair hike from Sansol to the next town, Viana, but it is the last stop before Logroño, which you can see from the hills long before you get there. This is also where we say goodbye to Navarra and the last glimpse of far-off Aragón, before they disappear behind the hills for good.

We’re now in the wine country of La Rioja – the rolling fields of wheat are still with us, but they’re interlaced with green vineyards now. Rioja wine is famous the world over, so it should come as no surprise that one of Spain’s smaller regions can’t handle the demand all on its own. In fact, most of the grapes that make a good Rioja actually come from neighbouring Castilla La Mancha, one of Spain’s largest regions, before being processed here. La Mancha produces its own incredible wine (which, realistically, should be up to the same standard), but it isn’t quite as famous as the world-renowned Rioja. One day, perhaps.

The wind picked up again as I reached Logroño. I didn’t much like the look of the clouds, and it looked like the storm had done even more damage here than in Sansol. Several of the trees lining the Ebro river had been ripped up by the roots and lay where they had fallen across the pavement. A quick glance at the Spanish news implied that it had looked even worse this morning, so perhaps they just hadn’t got around to fixing the park yet.

A flash of electric blue caught my eye as I crossed the bridge – a kingfisher. Who could ever lose that sense of wonder at such a sight? It didn’t hang around for long, but long enough for me to see it dive into the river in a halcyon blur before speeding away downriver.

It was still a good three hours until the Albergue Parroquial opened its doors, so I stashed my luggage in a locker which I hired for 6.50€ and set out to explore, unencumbered. It costs about the same to have the Jacotrans couriers deliver your rucksack to the next town for the day, but I felt a lot less guilty about this minor transaction. It’s difficult to justify lugging a whopping great backpack around a museum, after all.

The rain came down while I was in the Museo de La Rioja, so I managed to dodge the worst of it. It wasn’t as impressive as the collection in Jaca or Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but I was rather taken with one of the paintings, which featured a blonde Virgin Mary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her painted with blonde hair before. Jesus seems to have more colourings than a Pantene catalogue, but Mary is pretty consistently dark-haired, so this one stood out for… well, looking so odd. Beautiful, but… odd. Like an understudy. Was she the artist’s unrequited love, I wonder?

Once the rain had cleared, I grabbed my bag and checked in, before nipping back out for another wander. A tuna band was in town, dressed in their usual medieval splendour and serenading ladies left and right.

I’ve always loved tuna bands. If I’d done an Erasmus year or studied abroad, which was my original intention, I’m pretty sure I’d have launched myself at one. My uncle Rafael was in a tuna in his university days, and I suspect my grandfather and great-grandfather were also involved to some degree. It’s a tradition that goes back to the 13th century, so it’s a little bit grander than the a cappella groups that have taken the university music scene by storm. However, it is limited to Spain, and it is fundamentally a social and busking enterprise, so it’s not likely to break into a world championship anytime soon. After all – surely the real prize is a smile from the serenaded lady in question, be she twenty-one or seventy-three!

Logroño’s tapas street was absolutely packed, and with good reason: it’s famous for its gastronomy (not just the wine), with around fifty bars serving tapas and pintxos all within the city centre. There were at least six stag/hen do’s in town, all with matching t-shirts (together with one fairy godmother and one Jafar) so I was quite relieved to have a communal dinner with the other pilgrims at the Albergue Parroquial.

Dinner was a lovely affair, and a linguistic hurdle for me, constantly switching between English, French, Italian and Spanish. Sometimes I get bugged by the language barrier (I’m not fluent in Italian), but it does me a lot of good to listen and learn as I walk.

Tomorrow is still up in the air. I have in mind a rest day of sorts, going only as far as Navarrete. I’m not a huge fan of rest days, but I figure I might need it if I’m going to stay fit and healthy on my feet for the next four weeks. It might also be nice to shuffle the pilgrim pack a little. I haven’t really found my scene yet.

It’s gone twenty past ten. The Slovak flirt in the next bunk has finally stopped yapping away with the American girls and gone to bed. I should head, too. I might change my mind and make for Nájera tomorrow, or I might not. I’m still undecided. And that’s the best thing about the Camino. It allows me to be free. Every day. If only every day could be like this. BB x

Camino X: Hellmouth

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Albergue Municipal, Estella-Lizarra. 20.39.

Excuse the late entry – I’ve chosen to be sociable today and have spent most of the afternoon in the company of fellow pilgrims from around the world. It’s been a welcome change after nine days of silence! But a promise is a promise, and I have a duty to uphold! So here’s today’s report.

I was up early this morning – five to four, to be precise. Falling asleep around ten didn’t help my sleep pattern, I guess. I couldn’t quite justify striking out for Estella so soon – it is only just under 22km from Puente La Reina – so I dawdled until five, at which point several pilgrims were already getting ready to go. Again, I dawdled, not wanting to arrive in Estella with two hours to kill before being able to jettison my rucksack, so I carved the names “Niña” and “Pinta” into my sticks (after Columbus’ ships – the Santa María, the third of the trio, is my rosary). It’s not especially visible, as all I had to hand was a kitchen knife, but it’s a start.

I was one of the first to strike out, but I gradually let a fair number of pilgrims overtake me. I stopped frequently; waiting for the sunrise at Cirauqui, sketching a lonely cemetery, grabbing a tortilla sandwich at the same bar I ate in when I walked this path with my mother six years ago. I also managed to collect a few stamps, which is always a plus.

I spent a lot of time today looking at the decorations on houses and doors, which suddenly become more elaborate upon entering the Basque territories. Many houses bear a heraldic crest, and around here the motif of the knight’s helmet with the visor raised is fairly common. In heraldry, this is usually the sign of high-ranking nobility. Many of medieval Spain’s most prominent nobles were of Basque extraction (or Basque adjacent), like the Mendoza, Loyola and Haro lines.

Curiously, scratched beneath one of these crests were two symbols. One is easily recognisable as the Índalo, an ancient fertility symbol from Spain’s southeast. The other is… well, I’m not entirely sure. I’m fairly certain it’s an invention by the artist who left the Índalo, in much the same style, with what seems to be a serpent drawn out of the end. Graffiti usually has a point to make – I wonder what it could mean?

I couldn’t help noticing the door knockers as I passed through Cirauqui. My mother used to fill memory cards with photographs of these things, which in the south (and here) often take the shape of a woman’s hand holding a metal ball, known as a Hand of Fátima. It’s an ancient Moorish motif used to ward off the evil eye, and appears in a lot of Mediterranean and North African jewellery. The lion’s head – a style much more familiar to those of us who live on the other side of the Pyrenees – does much the same thing, warding off evil spirits with its frozen roar.

I am, of course, reading far too much into this. I imagine your average Joe (or José) probably doesn’t consider how effective this or that door knocker will be at warding off evil spirits. Still, it’s one of those things that’s so deeply embedded into our psyche that we don’t even realise we’re doing it. Like Christmas, in a way. Most of us don’t give thanks to God for the birth of Jesus Christ on the 25th December, but that doesn’t stop us from opening presents and celebrating late into the night.

I spent so much time hobnobbing with fellow pilgrims this afternoon that I didn’t really get to explore Estella much. It was also a sweltering 36°C, which didn’t exactly encourage an afternoon wander. Fortunately, I stayed here for two whole days the last time I came through, so I’ve seen all of Estella and its charms before.

One thing I did seek out, though, was the remarkable archway of the Iglesia del Santo Sepulcro. It caught my attention today for the same reason it did all those years ago: the horrifying maw swallowing sinners, and dragging them into Hell.

This motif is not unique to Estella. It can be found all over Europe. I’m fairly sure I saw one in Bordeaux last week. It’s known as a Hellmouth, and it can be found in Anglo-Saxon artwork at least as far back as the 8th century. It’s thought to be a representation of the “Crack of Doom”, the Day of Judgment – crack having a dual meaning in English, being both a harsh sound (like a thunderbolt or trumpet blast) and a chasm or pit. It may even have ties to an old Scandinavian legend of the Fenris Wolf, who was destined to swallow up Odin, the Allfather, and thus the world entire.

It’s certainly funny to think that such an English (read: Anglo-Saxon) blend of Christian and pagan imagery should find its way onto the doorway of a Spanish church, over a thousand kilometres to the south. It’s just one more reminder of the power of a good story: dropped in the right place, and told in the right way, it can send ripples that cross entire oceans.

Tomorrow I make for Los Arcos, a town I bypassed last time in favour of the ice baths of Sansol. Let’s see what I missed! BB x

Camino VIII: A Hundred Eyes

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Albergue de Peregrinos, Monreal. 15.10.

One of the best things about the Camino – at least, for somebody who does not particularly enjoy sticking to a strict plan – is its absolute freedom. You can aim for a particular destination at the end of the morning, but if you overshoot, or find a place you like along the way, you can always change your plan. And – it goes without saying – there is no “true” Camino. There never has been. There is simply your route to Santiago, wherever that may lead you.

Today, I decided to take a major detour through the Foz de Lumbier, deviating from the “official” Camino by some six kilometres, in search of one of the most striking landscapes to be seen on all of the routes to Santiago de Compostela.

Google Maps suggested the detour would take around eight hours, so I set out early, leaving Sangüesa’s albergue at around 5.15am (5.20, technically, as I left my sticks behind and had to double-back to get them). The Camino turns off about half a kilometre north of Sangüesa, just before the Smurfit industrial complex, but I pushed on along the road towards Liédana. There was quite a bit of traffic at first, but it was mostly workers going to the factory: after leaving the complex behind, I hardly saw anyone on the road.

There were a few scattered yellow arrows west of Liédana, indicating that this must once have been one of the many Camino routes, if not perhaps one of the more commonly known alternatives. I had timed my arrival at La Foz for sunrise, knowing that any earlier would have been far too cold and dark and any later would risk a merciless march along the roads later on. Plus, in the first hour after dawn, it’s always possible you’ll find something unexpected, as the animals of the night make their final rounds before retreating into the dark places where they hide during the day.

I had not counted on the wind. A fierce north wind was blowing this morning, almost strong enough to knock the sunglasses off the top of my head, and easily powerful enough to make it impossible to listen to the audiobook I had on (Robert Harris’ Conclave – a little late to the party, I know).

La Foz de Lumbier is one of two major canyons that can be found in the Sierra de Leyre, formed by the southwest passage of two rivers, the Irati and the Salazar. The other, La Foz de Arbaiun, is even grander still, but stands some twelve kilometres to the east of Lumbier, putting it well out of reach of even this overambitious pilgrim for today.

The north wind was still howling down the canyon when I arrived, which made the tunnel access all the spookier: the only way in and out of the canyon is via two long tunnels cut into the cliffs, neither of which are lit. The southern tunnel curves around to the right, pitching you into total darkness for half a minute or so.

Once inside, a gravel track known as a Via Verde (a converted railway line) leads you along the gorge. Had I arrived later in the day, perhaps, I might have seen some of the canyon’s famous Egyptian Vultures: bizarre, chicken-faced creatures with white plumage and diamond-shaped tales that migrate to Spain from their winter quarters in Africa each year. However, they were nowhere to be seen this morning, presumably sitting on their nests deep in the many caves within the cliffs.

The gorge’s other resident vultures, however, were everywhere.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that my passage through the canyon was being very closely watched, as though hundreds of eyes were following me along the river. My guess wasn’t far off the mark: once my eyes adapted to the twilight of the canyon, I realised that many of the bushes atop the canyon walls were in fact a great host of griffons, staring down at me with bobbing movements of their snakelike necks.

Every so often one or two of them would spread their monstrously huge wings and take off into the morning, before returning, feet dangling, to land on some other outcrop downriver, before turning their hulking shapes to see how much progress I had made.

I make no secret of my love for vultures. They are far and away my favourite animals on this planet, and especially griffons. I have never recovered from seeing one for the first time during that first trip to Spain: never accustomed to anything larger than a herring full, I was spellbound by the sheer size of the beasts, with their hulking shape, their silent circling flight and the long, trailing fingers on the end of each wing. That obsession only intensified when I came face to face with them during a solitary climb up the misty mountain of El Gastor, where I spent an incredible hour watching the giants appear suddenly out of the mist at eye level, merely feet away from my perch at the edge of the mountain.

So perhaps you’ll understand why I was so quick to slap an extra six kilometres onto today’s 27km hike, if only to spend some time in the presence of these magnificent creatures. They truly take my breath away.

But Lumbier had more than just vultures to sling at me. Just before leaving the gorge, I noticed something moving in the water below. It might have been the wind, which had been making shapes across the surface of the river all morning, but this was moving slowly against the current. Something long, snake-like, with a white-whiskered face: an otter. Talk about a stroke of luck! Just like the lynx I encountered in Doñana earlier this year, this was a first: I have never seen an otter in the wild before, or at least, one that I could call with any degree of certainty. iPhone cameras are good, but they can’t zoom and they’re not brilliant at moving objects in low light, but if you look closely you can just about tell what you’re looking at!

Really, I ought to have hung around at the other side of the tunnel to see if it reappeared, but I wasn’t entirely sure how long it would take me to get back to the Camino, so I played it safe and left the otter to his morning swim. I certainly couldn’t have done an awful lot better with my phone camera even if it did return. I’ll just have to come back someday with the rest of my kit.

Instead, I skirted the town of Lumbier and made my way back to the Camino. This was easier said than done: the “official” route meanders through the turbine-topped hills on the other side of the roaring A-21. Getting back to it was no easy feat, so I followed the old concrete road to Jaca for about 8km.

Normally, road stretches along the Camino can be quite hairy, with grim or even challenging looks from drivers. A spate of pilgrim deaths on the “original” Camino, now overlaid with concrete highways, led to the move toward the current network of tracks and footpaths. However, thanks to the A-21, which runs parallel, there was hardly anyone on the road at all, which made for a very peaceful (if monotonous) walk.

The sun was well on its way to its throne in the Castilian sky by now, and with it, the vultures of La Foz de Lumbier came drifting out on the thermals, as though to see me off.

I had a veritable fleet of raptors to keep me company today. As well as the vultures, a few kestrels, buzzards and booted eagles were circling the hills around Izco, along with the usual red and black kites. Today added two new encounters to the mix: a pair of short-toed eagles – exceptional snake-hunters – and a young hen harrier, my first (and hopefully not last) of the Camino. I have an especial fondness for harriers, especially the ghostly grey males, whose long, tapering wings and bouncy flight always conjure up images of the endless meseta in my head.

The cattle-crowded foothills of the French Pyrenees seem like an age ago. We are now very much in crop country. It hasn’t had much of an impact on the flies, which are everywhere this summer (I suspect the two months of rain Spain had this spring has caused their numbers to explode this year), but it does make for considerably easier terrain.

Contrary to what the guidebooks say, Monreal does have a working bar/restaurante. The hospitalera should know – it’s her husband who runs it! So I will grab a pizza there tonight, before the last long march of the Camino Aragonés tomorrow toward Puente La Reina and the start of the next stage of my journey: the busier Camino Francés. At least, I hope it will be busier! There’s no guarantee in July, but it should at least have more than one pilgrim in the albergue from night to night! BB x

Camino VII: Out of the Woods

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Albergue de Peregrinos, Sangüesa. 16.06.

I overslept today – by Camino standards, anyway. I’m pretty sure I set both alarms last night, but I have a habit of turning them off and falling straight back to sleep. Either way, it was gone six o’clock when I woke up today. Mari Carmen, the seventy-eight year old Valencian who is the only other pilgrim on the road, had already packed and gone. I dressed quickly and had breakfast, which had been left out for me in the dining room. I wouldn’t exactly call two slabs of bread with butter and jam and tea-making facilities a bargain – that cost me 6€ yesterday – but Ruesta is so cut-off from everything and everywhere else that there were no other options, and beggars can’t be choosers.

Gronze (the Camino website I’ve been using to map out the Voie d’Arles and the Camino Aragonés) describes today’s stage as “melancholic”. I thought that was probably a bit melodramatic, but it’s actually a pretty accurate adjective for the first hour and half. Leaving the abandoned village of Ruesta behind (I was genuinely the only person in the entire village when I left), the Camino snakes downhill to ford a narrow stretch of the Embalse de Yesa before climbing slowly back up the other side over the space of an hour. I usually like the forested stretches, as they can be more mysterious and refreshing than the unforgiving plains, and yet… something was off about this forest. It was far too quiet. There’s usually some birdsong in the early hours before the sun crests the hills, but over the space of an hour, I only heard one sound, and that was the screech of a jay far off.

I’ve often experienced this feeling in the presence of Spain’s false lakes. The Embalse de Yesa and its surrounding pine forests are entirely artificial. I saw a doe racing through the trees near the summit, and a red squirrel high up in the branches of a tree, but the lack of birdsong was chilling. It’s as though they keep a mournful silence for the drowned valley below, unwilling to disturb the rest of the watery dead.

I sometimes wonder if nature is laughing at us when we try to shape the world like her, or if she is just quietly disappointed.

As for me, I was quietly relived when the trees cleared and I was in the sunlit fields once again. The quails had returned, along with a host of finches and larks, and with my spirits restored, I set off toward Undués de Lerda.

Undués looks like many Aragonese hillside towns: built of the same stone upon which it stands, it has a habit of vanishing from sight under the cover of cloud, becoming obvious to the eye only when the sun reveals the shadows of its doors and windows. I arrived shortly before nine, but the town was still fast asleep, and everything from the bar to the church was shut up tight. So I moved on.

Near the Aragonese frontier, I saw something in the grass at my feet that made me pause. It was a swallowtail, and it wasn’t leaping into the air as they are wont to do when people draw near. On closer inspection, I think it must have had a run-in with a predator, because one of its swallowtails was missing and part of the same wing was damaged.

Known in English as the scarce swallowtail (on account of its rarity as a migrant in the British Isles), this species is actually fairly common in Spain. It’s not often you get to see one so close outside of a butterfly sanctuary, however, and the markings on its wings are really remarkable. They’re actually made up of thousands of scales, each one containing pigments like melanin or papiliochromes, that create a vivid array of colours used for sending messages, either to potential predators or partners. I saw a sign in a butterfly sanctuary on Tenerife where somebody had managed to make an entire alphabet just from close-ups from butterfly wing patterns. With nearly 20,000 specified of butterfly in the world, perhaps that’s not surprising.

This little fella was in a dangerous spot, right in the middle of the road, so I gently coaxed it onto my hand and then found a more sheltered spot in the verge where it might be out of harm’s way. Unless it recovers the ability to fly, it will probably end up as a snack for an enterprising bee-eater – a bird both large and nimble enough to deal with a swallowtail – so I hope it finds its strength.

A small stone marker in Basque lettering indicated that I had left Aragón and was now in the former kingdom of Navarra. The landscape has changed: the high mountains of Aragón, ever at my side for the last few days, have been replaced by a series of endlessly rolling hills, a patchwork of gold and olive green. This will be the scenery for the next week and half, until I reach Burgos and the meseta begins in earnest.

I was lucky to see one of Spain’s oldest traditions in action shortly after crossing the border. One of the cañadas reales crosses the Camino here, specifically the Cañada Real de los Roncaleses. These are the old migration routes across the country, where shepherds have led their flocks from north to south in search of fresh pastures since the medieval period. A source of milk, cheese and the precious merino wool, Spain’s sheep were a highly valuable commodity and the cañadas received royal protection and their own guild, El Honrado Concejo de la Mesta, which had tremendous privileges.

Nowadays, of course, merino wool can be found all around the world – you can thank Napoleon’s invasion of Spain for breaking that monopoly – but the shepherds still use these ancient pathways, as their ancestors have done for over a thousand years.

It’s been a pretty mild walk today, so it was surprising to see a mass of estivating snails on the way in to Sangüesa. They must have done this during the heatwave, when temperatures in some parts of Spain soared into the forties. They’re not dead, as such, but in a state of dormancy, waiting out the worst of the summer until they can return to life when the temperatures cool down.

Well, Sangüesa is the busiest town I’ve seen so far. The albergue is nearly full, though not with your usual pilgrims: these are almost entirely Spanish bicigrinos, a term used to describe pilgrims who travel by bicycle. It’s a portmanteau, but one can’t help the feeling that it’s almost always just a little pejorative, with many pilgrims feeling that their lycra-clad one-night companions are not true pilgrims in the strictest sense. The decibel count in the albergue has certainly gone up since they arrived, just in time to replace the building site next to the albergue and the slamming windows.

Still – it’s a good ease-in to the popularity of the Camino Francés, the most popular of all the roads to Santiago. I’ve enjoyed my own company for the last week, and though I’m looking forward to meeting all sorts of interesting people on the road, I will miss these long stretches of quiet. BB x

Camino VI: The Ventriloquist

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Albergue de Ruesta. 16.20.

Picture this, if you can. Call upon all of your senses.

First, sound. Wind, cool and dry, blowing in the branches of the pine trees above, their branches coated in trailing clumps of lichen. A blackcap singing an enchanting solo in the forest, and an endless percussion of cicadas, assailing the ear with their rasping ostinato from every side. You can’t see them. But they’re there. Hundreds of them.

Next, smell. The fresh scent of pine bark, mingling with the dusty trace of crumbling masonry. The occasional coolness of water blowing in off the lake. Mingling with taste, a hint of fried fish from the bar, which closed up shop half an hour ago.

Touch, then. The feel of carved wood, nearly two centuries old. The trace of numbers in stone, chiselled in many hundreds of years before even that. The uneven cobbles of a road long since neglected, and the powdery feel of the houses that line it, within which a thousand plants have weaved a citadel of their own.

Finally, sight. Picture an entire village abandoned a hundred years ago. See the stone balconies, carved with Roman triumph, presiding over an empty world. A church, with fragments of brilliant blue still visible in the decaying fresco above the spot where the slate once stood, stripped bare and opened to the heavens. A lonely watchtower, manned now by thirsty crows, their beaks agape in the heat of the afternoon.

This is my stop for tonight: the abandoned village of Ruesta, one of the last stops before leaving Aragón.

I left on time this morning, shortly before six, sent on my way by Lulu and Nicole with a packed sandwich, an orange and a boiled egg. It felt like being sent off to school. Some hospitaleros really do push the boat out to make you feel at home during your brief stay!

I missed the sign in the darkness and so headed north for a kilometre before joining the road and returning to my westward trajectory. It added about fifteen minutes to my time, but it did give me an unrestricted view of the morning.

Camino sunrises are something of a tradition on the way to Santiago, but I am going to miss these Aragonese mornings. There’s something about the mountains that makes them that much more mystical. Maybe it’s the way the light turns each row of hills a different shade of blue, always fading toward the base.

I spent a considerable part of the morning chasing quails. They’re almost impossible to see with the naked eye, standing at around 16cm tall (that’s just over half a ruler) and seldom taking flight when alarmed, preferring to sit tight and rely on their cryptic camouflage to avoid detection. They were all over the place, though – I must have counted at least forty individuals calling from different spots along the Camino in the hour or two after sunrise. They can throw their voices around 150 metres, which can make them very hard to locate, especially when there are four or five in the same field calling at once. I flushed one completely by accident at the side of the road and it took off into one of the vast wheat fields on sharp, whirring wings.

England must have sounded like this, a long time ago. There are places you can go in the UK and hear quails, which do migrate that far (some make it all the way to Scotland), but not on the same scale as you can here in Spain.

Along with the quails, I saw a grey partridge – a rarity in Spain, confined to the north – and goodness knows how many corn buntings, but I think it’s the foxes that stood out the most. There must be plenty in the area, as I saw three within a rather short space of time, including one sprinting across a field near Martés.

A major feature of today’s walk were the badlands de yeso: strange, wrinkled mounds of gypsum, a distinctive feature of Aragón, Navarra and Almería. This is the kind of terrain that contains fossils like the shell I found yesterday: a prehistoric stockpile of marine life, buried deep beneath the soft grey hills. They’re really quite striking, and since there are no Caminos that pass through the Bardenas Reales to the southwest (one of the strangest lunar landscapes you can find in Europe), the Camino Aragonés does at least provide an introduction.

I stopped for water shortly after a brief exploration of Artieda and its gypsum hills (to the great confusion of a local who thought I’d lost the Camino). Here, at my feet of all places, I found one of the ventriloquists: not a quail, but a cicada. They usually conceal themselves high up in the trees, where their voices carry and their mottled bodies blend perfectly into the bark. This one was clearly an amateur, however, as the motion of its churring was trembling the blade of grass in its legs, making it stand out like a sore thumb.

Not to be outdone, my final hour was a butterfly parade, with a scarce swallowtail taking centre stage. I have fond memories of this little creature as it’s one of the ten animals I recorded on my first trip to Spain as an eleven-year-old. Contrary to the famous adage popularised by Muhammad Ali, most butterflies don’t “float”, having a rather manic and jerky flight. Swallowtails, however, are on the larger side, and they do float, or at least seem to, fanning their wings out midflight to glide on the air. They’re skittish, like most butterflies, so it’s hard to get close, but their size, acrobatics and striking colours make them a delight to watch.

Which brings me to Ruesta. There’s really all sorts on the Camino, and Ruesta is very much one of the sorts. Abandoned in 1959 after a lengthy decline – largely because of the construction of the nearby Yesa reservoir, which flooded most of the agricultural land the village depended on – the village has largely fallen into a slow state of disrepair.

Ruesta’s church had some spectacular frescos, which were carefully transferred to Jaca’s Diocesan museum to prevent them from being lost forever. I imagine the place might once have looked not too dissimilar to Artieda, a hilltop town not too far from here. From some angles, you can still just about imagine life as usual: children running down the street to school, the bakery in full swing, old locals gathered at a street corner to gossip…

Ruesta has two functioning buildings: a casa de cultura (of all things) and an albergue, complete with a lively bar/restaurante. The secret to Ruesta’s survival is its acquisition by the CGT, the Confederación General del Trabajo, one of Spain’s larger trade unions. There are plenty of clues for those who don’t recognise the red-and-black flag: the raised fist, the quotes and dates graffitied across the walls and the plethora of signage in Catalan, Galician and Basque (the CGT, being anarcho-syndicalist in its outlook, has strong ties to the local separatist movements).

To their credit, they’ve done a wonderful job. The regional government won’t step in to rebuild Ruesta, as it’s just one of over two hundred abandoned towns in Aragón, so the syndicate has stepped in. They’ve carved out a fully-functioning community in the heart of the old village and are carefully coexisting with the place, without feeling the need to develop or bulldoze what doesn’t serve. The result is a very unique staging post of the Camino de Santiago. There’s not many places along the profitable pilgrim road that have been allowed to fall apart, and yet at the same time been so carefully curated.

I wonder how the future will see us? The creatures of the past left their traces in the rocks by chance. We’ve been deliberately stamping our seal on the earth for thousands of years. Will they marvel at tyre tracks in the mud and put them in museums? Will they weave fantastical stories around the objects they find, like discarded vapes and perfume bottles? What will we make of it all, a thousand years from now?

The Camino gives you a lot of time to think. Six hour walks through the countryside, every day for six weeks… It’s a test of resilience, if not of your sanity. Thank goodness I’m perfectly happy with my own company! BB x

Camino V: Along the Aragón

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue de Peregrinos de Arrés. 13.48.

I bid Mariano adiós at around 5.45 this morning and left Jaca just all the young folks were finding their way home after an enjoyable Friday night on the town. Far away to the south, a summer thunderstorm lit up the sky every four or five minutes, and by counting the seconds between flashes, I was able to catch one of the strikes with my camera.

With Jaca behind me, I am very conscious I am headed into a world of great distances and tiny villages, so I did double-check to make sure I had enough cash to last at least three days – the time it will take to get to the next town with a functioning ATM.

With the thunderclouds rumbling away in the distance, I had to keep turning back to watch the sunrise, which was singularly spectacular this morning. The sky was a shade of pastel pink normally reserved for Renaissance paintings, and the clouds building up above the mountains could only hold back the sunburst for so long. When it came, it pierced two gaping holes in the clouds, like gleaming eyes, before ripping an almighty gash right through the centre and sending a hundred golden rays into the morning sky.

I had a choice to make today – to press on to Arrés or take a lengthy detour via the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña – but in the end it was the weather that made my mind. A gentle summer rain began to fall shortly after sunrise – not the heavy, sheet rain that makes any outdoor activity miserable, but a light, warm, refreshing rain. The kind that provides relief after a long morning on the road – but makes cross-country hikes hard and soggy work. Rerouting to San Juan de la Peña turns an already reasonable itinerary (24.6km) into a trek (38.4km), and after my ascent and descent of the Pyrenees in one go two days ago, I thought it wiser to forgo the monastery this time – after all, these feet have to take me all the way to Santiago. I have to be careful!

The Camino from Jaca mostly follows the road and the river, but it does provide several forested cross-country stretches that offer some relief. On one of these, in the hills south of Ascara, I stopped for a breather and there I found a most remarkable thing: a symbol of Santiago, a shell, but ancient. A fossil from an ancient sea, perhaps ten million years old or more, just sitting at the side of the Camino, waiting to be found.

I’ve always wanted to come to Aragón for its fossil beds. Teruel, Aragón’s southernmost province, is believed to have the highest concentration of fossils per square metre in Europe, and there’s even a sauropod named for the region (Aragosaurus). There are some incredible relics from the ancient world to be found in this vast region, including a large number of well-preserved dinosaur footprints at El Castellar and Galve. I wasn’t expecting to have any luck with dinosaurs on the Camino, as the fossil beds themselves are far from the pilgrim road and pretty hard to reach without a car, so I can’t believe my luck in finding a Miocene scallop shell – and in such good condition!

Today’s hike was a pretty solitary one. That’s not to say I’ve met many pilgrims on the road – today I saw one, and that’s one more than the last four days – but the distances between the towns today felt immense. That’s fairly typical of the Spanish interior, and Aragón is no exception. What makes this part of Spain so striking is its singular orography: so many of the hills in the Río Aragón basin are perfectly flat on top, forming an alien landscape that reaches its peak in the Bardenas Reales to the southwest.

Naturally, in this land of shifting frontiers, many of these mesas have a hilltop town or castle sitting neatly on top. I can see at least one from my stop for tonight in the hill town of Arrés: Canal de Berdún, away to the north. If Arrés had proved to be a ghost town, I would have tried my luck there.

Fortunately, it isn’t. Arrés is little more than a hamlet tucked away in a cleft of the long wooded sierra that runs the length of the Río Aragón, with some fifty permanent residents or less to its name, but don’t let its silence deceive you (even on a Saturday afternoon when everything seems to have ground to a halt). The municipal albergue is fully operational and perfectly equipped, allowing for a stay in possibly one of the most beautiful corners of the Camino Aragonés.

I’ve done my washing by hand, as usual, and it’s hanging out to dry. In this heat, it already will be within another ten minutes or so.

To end the day, the French hospitaleras, Lulu and Nicole, gave us a tour of the village, showed us the sunset from the highest point (which was spectacular) and cooked up a wonderful dinner which we shared between the six of us (including two Aragonese bicigrinos who showed up five minutes before dinner).

I’m just penning the last details now, drinking a chamomile tea, and listening to the night sounds of crickets, a distant dog barking and, somewhere in the valley below, the ceaseless extraterrestrial churring of a nightjar. It’s blissfully quiet here. I’m looking forward to the sociable side of the Camino Francés, but I’m so glad I came this way. It’s been spectacular. BB x

Southbound

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Gare SNCF de Dax. 10.04.

If you’d asked me what accent would be the first I’d hear on arrival in Bordeaux, gaditano would not have been my first guess. As it was, there was a family of gitanos from Cádiz waiting at the metro stop outside the airport, and they didn’t have to mention their hometown in conversation before I clocked that iconic intonation (and volume) that can only come from the southwest coast of Spain. It’s the accent that I grew up with, so I’d recognise that accent anywhere.

I had a good night’s sleep in my hostel in Bordeaux, and a proper breakfast, too, so it’s been a gentle start to this year’s Camino. It was a half-hour walk to the station from the city centre, so I had some time to appreciate the city before taking my leave.

I don’t envy the homeless in this heat. They seem to be a lot more numerous here than in similarly-sized cities in England – or maybe they’re just more visible. Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether I was looking at a sandbag or an occupied sleeping bag. Now that I’m teaching A Level French as well as Spanish, I’m trying to keep both eyes open to these things.

I was so enthralled by the stonemasonry on the portal of one of Bordeaux’s churches that I almost didn’t notice the man sleeping in the doorway. He looked like a dead ringer for a down-on-his-luck Alexandre Dumas. The way he was stretched out in sleep, he might have been a fallen detail from the paradise arches, come to life.

Granada’s Alhambra must have looked like this, once upon a time: the crumbling ruins of a peerlessly beautiful palace, its walls carved with ancient stories, become the roost of the city’s poor and dispossessed.

There was quite a surge for the southbound train at Bordeaux’s Saint-Jean station. I noticed at least one or two travellers who might have been pilgrims. I can’t think of anyone else foolish enough to have a heavy backpack on in the middle of summer, with the temperatures set to soar as high as 40°C today. In a rare turn-up for the books, there’s a beautiful French woman in a cherry-red dress in the seat next to me, but she’s fast asleep. I’ve been chatty enough already with the staff at airport security and the hostel, so I’ll save any more chitchat for the road.

As the train rattles through the sandy forests of the southern reaches of Nouvelle Aquitaine, let me show you the shell I’m taking with me.

The first time I did the Camino, I picked up a shell from a shop in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It felt a little undeserved, buying the shell from a shop, but it is something of a Camino tradition. In the early days of the Camino, the shells were not just a pilgrim’s badge of office but also an essential part of their kit, primarily serving as vessels for drinking water from the fountains along the pilgrim road. These days, of course, they’re completely ornamental – keepsakes for the wall or mantelpiece, next to your compostela.

My original shell lasted all of five days, before shattering when I had to remove my rucksack in a hurry after a wasp went up my sleeve and got trapped (the five or six stings it gave me on its way out were with me for weeks!). I took it with me on my last Camino, but I had to have it tucked into one of the outer pockets in its smashed-up state. I didn’t want to buy a shell this time, so instead, I’ve made one of my one using a scallop shell I brought home from Saint-Malo last summer.

It’s really quite easy to do. Seashells are rather brittle, but if you heat one up over a flame, it softens the shell a little, making it a lot easier to perforate the surface without cracking the structure. I did this in my kitchen with a lighter, a hammer and a small nail.

For the cross of Santiago, I used a red Sharpie. I didn’t have any string lying around, so I made an improvised knot with the wristband from the Cofradía de Mengíbar that I picked up three years ago. That brings the total of Saints guiding me to Santiago de Compostela to four: La Virgen de la Cabeza (the Mengíbar wristband), La Virgen de la Caridad (my aunt’s rosary), La Virgen del Rocío (la más santa de mi devoción), and Santiago himself. Well, technically I suppose that’s only two, since three of them are the same person, but Spain (and the Catholic faith) would be a poorer place with only one incarnation of the Virgin Mary!

I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily that religious. Spiritual, maybe. But it is nice to know you’re not alone on the road, and because of my faith I am never alone.

And there they are. The jagged peaks of the Pyrenees. They were only ever a faraway vision in the east before, but now they’re towering above me, a colossal natural barrier between me and my grandfather’s country. It was easy to say I wanted a proper challenge from the comfort of my sofa back home, but now that I’m here, they look quite daunting. Somport – from summus portus, the high gate – looks like it will live up to its name. I hope I have the stamina.

Église Saint Martin, Pau. 11.39am.

The streets of Pau are almost empty – hardly surprising, with the temperatures soaring. I found a shop selling sturdy-looking walking sticks, but they had childish carvings of lions and eagles on the top, so I passed on. New journey, new stick… but not that stick. I can wait for the right one.

I’ve retreated into the shade of the Église Saint Martin. There were two tourists wandering around, but no pilgrims – I’m not yet on the Camino. That said, I saw at least three Japanese pilgrims in the station. They didn’t seem to speak any French. If they’re still there when I get back, I’ll see if they need a hand. Lord knows I’ve fallen foul of the French train system before!

I lit the first of many candles, said my prayers in the Lady chapel and took my leave. No stamps here, but it would be disingenuous to collect any before I get to Oloron, the real starting point of this year’s Camino. All the same, I can feel my credencial burning a hole in my pocket. The stamp fever is real!

Oloron-Sainte-Marie. 14.03.

If this isn’t a heatwave, then I’ve never experienced one. The merciless sun has driven just about everyone indoors. There’s a gentle breeze coming down from the mountains, and the twin rivers of the Ossau and Aspe sure do make the place sound less hot than Pau, where the screams of swifts seemed to increase the temperature by several degrees, but there’s no escaping the fact that it is hot out here. The Relais du Bastet, Oloron’s pilgrim hospital, doesn’t open until 3pm, so I’ve grabbed a cold bottle of water from a nearby magasin and have set up shop in the public gardens, where the sound of the fountain provides a temporary relief.

I’ll have to play it carefully over the next few days if this goes on. Early starts, absolutely, but it’s how you play the waiting game when you reach your destination, as almost all albergues shut for midday – by which point you should have stopped walking, if you value your skin – that’s the real question.

No stamps yet. I guess I’ll have to wait until I check in for stamp number one.

Well – here we are. I’ve checked into the Relais du Bastet and had a shower. The daily rhythm of the Camino will be a welcome return after the madness of the summer term. Once I’ve had a rest, I’ll go in search of some more stamps. Christian, one of the two French-speaking pilgrims on the Voie d’Arles who is sharing a room with me, has offered to cook for us this evening, so that’s dinner taken care of. I’ve missed this.

À bientôt x

Preparations

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Reports written. Exams marked and feedback given. A couple of workshops with the Y12s on character strengths and interview skills given. With the exception of six lessons at the start of next week, the school year is all but finished. I had nothing to do this afternoon, so I popped into town to get some Camino supplies. In two weeks’ time I’ll be on the road, and for six weeks at that – the longest adventure I’ll have ever taken – so I need to make sure everything is in place.

One thing I won’t be short of this time is stamp space. The credenciales I ordered from Santiago have arrived: two, plus a freebie with the guide I ordered to the Camino Primitivo. Each one has space for about 78 stamps, so even if I collect three stamps per day every day across those six weeks, two should cover it nicely. I can hold onto the spare for myself, or give it to a pilgrim who is running low. I’ll take all three in any event.

Am I hoping to meet some people around my age? Of course I am. There weren’t all that many the last time I did the Camino in the summer of ’23 (compared to the spring, that is) but maybe I just timed it wrong. Being a teacher, summer is all I really have to work with, so summer it is.

I’ve been walking in my new Keane sandals, and they’re as reliable as ever. I have some new Merino wool socks that should help with the prevention of blisters, and I have dug up my supplies of Compeed blister plasters from whatever hole they’d disappeared into since the last Camino – I was surprised by how many I still had. I didn’t pick up a First Aid kit today, but that might be an airport job, as there are useful implements that I wouldn’t be able to take through security anyway.

Not too much to report. It might not be such a bad idea to get back into the habit of blogging daily before I go – writing requires regular exercise, just like training for a hike. Maybe I’ll try to do something with the books I’ve been reading. That might be illuminating. BB x

The Long Road

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s been nearly a year since I left my post at Worth School and moved to the West Country. I’m supposed to be making a start on my Year 9 reports tonight, but it’s my birthday, for pity’s sake – I could use a break. Between house duties, calendar committee meetings, end of year speaking exams, invigilation, improv workshops and regular teaching, I’ve barely had time to sit down today.

The summer holidays are drawing near. My original plan was to spend them learning to drive, but I’ve kicked that can down the road for another year. This year has been hard work, and the last thing I need is to give myself something to dread once a week for every week of the summer holidays. I’ve never been good at doing things I don’t enjoy, and I really don’t enjoy driving. My last instructor was a vocal and humourless Brexiteer, who reminded me a lot of the father of an ex-girlfriend, and just a few lessons with him pretty much put me off driving since.

It’s a hurdle I definitely need to overcome, but not this summer. I need something uplifting after the manic year I’ve had, and I firmly believe there’s no cure like the Camino. So tonight I’m booking my flight to Bordeaux so I can do what I’ve never really done before: a full run at the Camino Francés.

Well – I suppose that’s not strictly true. I’m planning to start in Somport this time and begin with the Camino Aragonés, joining the Camino Francés proper a week later. I’ve also pencilled into my plans to travel north from León via the Salvadorana to Oviedo and then walk the last stretch along the toughest and oldest of all the Caminos, the Camino Primitivo. It will take me around six weeks, in all likelihood. Six weeks that will be tough on the feet but good on the heart. Six tiring but purposeful (and very affordable) weeks in the most beautiful country on earth, meeting people from all around the world and telling stories. What’s not to like?

I will, of course, be back to journaling as I go, so expect a flurry of activity on here towards the end of this month. You can follow me on my journey if you’d like. There’ll be stages that I’ve done before, but it’ll be a very different cast of characters this summer, and it’s so often the people that make the stories.

It’s also now mandatory to collect two stamps a day, so I’ve already ordered my credencial. I’ve ordered three, on the logic that the two I had last time only just got me to Fisterra, and that was with careful rationing toward the end – and over a fragmented span of five weeks. Over six, I can afford to go stamp-hunting with a little more reckless abandon. And who doesn’t love the stamp-collecting element of the Camino?

Escapism? Absolutely. But for once, perfectly justifiable. I don’t say it often, but I could use a holiday. BB x

For the Legion

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Departures Lounge C, Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport. 9.18am.

My adventure is drawing to a close. In a matter of hours I will be back in the familiar settings of my flat. Sometimes, at the end of a holiday, I’d be feeling glum at this point. There’s a bit of that right now – I’m never overly happy to leave this country behind. But it’s been such an incredible three weeks that I have no regrets whatsoever, so I’m going back home with a full heart and a nauseatingly broad smile. Not even the British weather waiting for me when I get home could take that away from me.

I was up early this morning to check in to my last pensión of the trip. Nowhere is open for check-in at 8 o’clock in the morning, but I was suspicious about the link I’d been sent asking for confirmation payment up-front, and wanted to dot the I’s and cross the T’s in person. I was right to be cautious: their Booking.com account had been hacked, asking customers for a down payment that “might not be the same as on the website” – in my case, a fare ten times the amount agreed. Thank God I went in person to sort things out. God helps those who help themselves, or so the saying goes, but I’d like to think that La Virgen del Rocío is still watching out for me.

With my mind at ease, I had my last chocolate con churros of the trip and then set out to see the Legion, who had just disembarked and were on their way to their casa de hermandad west of the river. Once again, I was lucky to find a space to stand, since by the looks of things the entire city had turned out to welcome the troops.

La Legión, also known as the Tercio, is one of the most famous wings of Spain’s military. Though modelled on the French Foreign Legion, a similarly fearsome fighting force, la Legión is not as foreign as its name might imply: Spaniards comprise the vast majority of its troops, with Latin American and citizens of other Spanish-speaking countries making up the rest. This was the unit that Francisco Franco commanded, a mighty and highly professional unit used with devastating effect against the Republican forces during the Civil War. My allegiance should be straightforward – my great-grandparents were Republicans, and my great-grandfather Mateo was a victim of the regime that La Legión helped to put into power – but even I have to admit that I thought them impressive as they paraded through the city, belting their battle hymn, El novio de la muerte, at the top of their lungs.

The past is the past. Hate has to find the hands that it knows, and I’m not one for grudges. I’m also a Catholic who bloody loves a good spectacle, and the Legión certainly provides.

In one last stroke of luck, when I came back to the pensión to check in, the receptionist asked if I would rather “dormir o ver la procesión”: somebody had cancelled just minutes before I arrived, and a balcony room had suddenly become available. As a good friend once said, “you can sleep when you’re dead” – so I snapped up the balcony room. My pensión of choice looked out over Calle Especería, which just so happened to be the primary conduit for all but one of the eight pasos making their way through the city. Not only would I be able to watch the processions from the comfort of my room, I would be able to do so without having to deal with the inevitable crowds, now at their greatest in number as Semana Santa reached its summit. I really couldn’t have been dealt a better card.

The first paso arrived shortly after half past five, at which point the street below became impassable. It’s just as well I had supplies, because one procession followed another – it would be past one o’clock in the morning before the last procession had come and gone, and the spectators walling the street with it.

From my vantage point on the second floor, I could see a lot of things I hadn’t noticed before. Like the old-fashioned jugs each paso carried with it, appearing suddenly from beneath the tronos every time the procession came to a halt to provide relief to the weary costaleros. As the night went on, the train on the dresses of the Virgin Mary got longer and longer, and many of the costaleros were entirely reliant on the sound of the llamador (the bell at the front of the trono) and the voice of the capataz (the man in charge of guiding the costaleros) to know when to stop and when to go.

The Legión arrived a great deal sooner than I expected. I’d just popped back inside for a drink when I heard the first verse of El novio de la muerte (literally, The Groom of Death) and had to double back. I must have only seen one of the four tercios (divisions) of the Legión this morning, because they seemed to have quadrupled in number. Led by their officers, the nazarenos of their brotherhood and a number of standard-bearers carrying golden flagpoles, it had all the trappings of a Roman triumph. I guess that’s part of the look they were going for. Either way, it was quite something to watch from on high – especially the way their marching steps fanned out in a perfectly synchronised wave from the left.

I experienced my first genuine saeta shortly before midnight. There is little that can compare to a proper saeta: it is, in essence, a religiously inspired solo piece, sung by a spectator who feels so moved by the emotion of the procession that they put their feelings into song. The origins of the saeta are unclear, but they’re thought to have derived from a fusion of Islamic calls to prayer and Jewish psalmodies with old Franciscan processional hymns. In Andalusia, the region most commonly associated with the practice, they have a strong connection to flamenco, which becomes immediately obvious when you hear the wailing style of the singer and their wild gesturing toward the paso, which must by tradition come to an immediate halt when a saeta begins.

I’ve seen saetas before, albeit slightly less impressive – the kind where somebody stands in front of the church and reads from a score. Not this one. This came from the heart and soul of a man in his sixties, who was leaning half off his balcony and crying out to both El Cristo and La Virgen with every ounce of duende that his spirit could muster. It was really something to behold, and it had the whole street in silent rapture – which, with hundreds of people lining both sides of the street below, only made it all the more impressive.

There’s something about the music of Semana Santa that is fundamentally powerful. It could be the wailing solos played on the keyed trumpets with that quality of vibrato that is so ineffably Hispanic, often associated with bullfights and Mexican standoffs. It could be the way that the drumbeats make your very heart tremble within you as they reverberate off the walls of the narrow streets, or the way that one of the drumrolls is always delayed, producing an effect that is almost hypnotic. But I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that the music is modal – that is, a music form phased out by the Protestant Church as it was felt to be “too ornate” for worship.

You can say what you like about the quality of modern Christian worship music, but as far as I’m concerned, the moment that this kind of music was deemed “too distracting” was the moment that the decay set in. In the opinion of this author, there’s nothing that Hillsong and its ilk could ever do to even come close. Semana Santa is an endless replay of the last week of Jesus’ life, with all of the grief and pain and none of the vapid Jesus-we-love-you-ness that marks a lot of modern Christian music. That’s one of the reasons I have a thing for Gospel music, too: while it also indulges in giddying joy, it draws on the shared pain of its creators to delve into the dark heart of suffering in ways that Hillsong just can’t. There are three hundred and sixty days in the year to celebrate the joy of Jesus’ resurrection, but Semana Santa focuses the lens on the five days where he suffered most terribly. It’s a memento mori, a reminder of the relatable human mantle that Jesus took to suffer and die for the sins of mankind, and of the grief of a mother over the death of her son. Christ the Lord is Risen Today seems almost farcical by comparison (especially if you’ve seen the infamous John Daker video, which I have far too many times). By making worship music more accessible by simplifying its structure, they ripped out its soul.

Spain is a country that has experienced a tremendous amount of religious rage and repression, arguably more than any other in Europe if you factor in the tumultuous conquest and reconquest by Christian and Muslim overlords and the religious persecution that followed over a period of seven hundred years. So the suffering evoked by their saetas and processional marches is very, very real. In some parts of the country, the music isn’t enough: there’s a town in Extremadura where the penitentes bind themselves to crosses in a simulation of the crucifixion and do some of the procession on their knees, while the most devout Spaniards will even follow the processions with crowns of thorns of their own, or whip themselves as they march down the street. The suffering becomes as much a performance as the music itself. Church attendance may be on the wane here just as much as it is everywhere else, but in Semana Santa, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the official statistics were wrong.

La Virgen de la Esperanza and her bearers returned home shortly after seven o’clock in the morning, almost an hour before sunrise and just before I walked past on my way to the train for the airport, after a nine hour march through the city. In a few days it will all be over, and the city will return to normality until the whole process starts all over again in a year’s time. But I have bottled as much of the magic as I can and am returning to England with my head and my heart ringing with the rattle of snare drums and the wail of trumpets. I have been reminded in no uncertain terms that it is here in Andalusia that it all began, when my parents made that mad decision to move out here for a year, and my future was lashed forever to this wild and passionate corner of a wild and passionate country.

I’ll be back. So help me God, I’ll be back. BB x