2004: Camino Week 2

The usual cafe con leche and bun for breakfast at Azofra, and then on to my favourite time: after breakfast, feeling fine and marching along on my own singing hymns and 1st world war marching songs, loudly and badly. Least favourite time is last 5 km each day.

Pause to see the cock and hen caged up in the beautiful cathedral at Santa Domingo de la Calzada, and the first pilgrim at Granon, where I trudged up to a door in a church wall, and went up dark stone stairs to an empty albergue built into the church wall.

There was an open box (right) on a table with a pile of notes and coins, and a sign saying ´put in what you can, take what you need´ in four languages. A special place: the clothes washing and drying place was actually in the church roof over the vaults, and at mass you could see the damp spot in the ceiling which was under the sink. Just mattresses on a floor, and we all cooked the meal and ate together. Very special place.

Stuffed myself with tortilla and a nice cold vino rosado in Belorado while emailing from the bar.

In Tosantos the volunteer hospitalero was like a mum, clucking around us, and so pleased when one of the dozen pilgrims was a Catalan priest. So a surplice and chalice were found and we had a mass in the little chapel in the roof. But first we all had to attend choir practice, complete with song sheets and harmonies. We were engish, spanish, new zealand, french, brazilian and german. No beds, so all lined up on mattresses including our priest.

The hospitalero spent ages dealing with everyone’s feet, all lined up around the dining table, cutting up absorbent dish clothes to fashion cushions around the worst bits. An extraordinary sight is people dealing with their blisters by sowing cotton through them and leaving the thread in to drain them. It seems to work, but fortunately I am blister-free, which I put down to the lightness of my pack and always wearing two pairs of socks.

Lunch in the bar in San Juan de Ortega, but decided to skip the famous garlic soup, so admired the church and plodded on. So many birds – actually saw a cuckoo. Just on and on, walking quite fast and loving every minute. Perhaps it is 7 hours hard exercise a day but I feel high as a kite and want to shout my good fortune. And do if there is noone around. Keep on meeting and leaving people, which is all fine. Never bored, and mind feels reasonably still most of the time, which I think is simple vacuity rather than a higher mental state.

Dark gloomy room at the albergue, with bunks pushed together like double beds. But warm fire and good company as P and F turned up for dinner together. The snoring was extraordinary.

Woke too early when selfish pig next to me started to noisily pack at 5.30. Trudged along in thick mud and then dull main road into Burgos. The cathedral was astounding in a rather over-the-top way – El Cid’s tomb and so on. As peregrinos we get reduced entry fees, but stumbled around in muddy boots and grubby clothes, feeling a bit like the filthy smelly pilgrims must have felt years ago when they reached these opulent centres.

Friendly small albergue, and experienced only unpleasantness of whole trip when drunken (Spanish) pilgrim tried to pick a fight and got thrown out of the bar and then out of the albergue by the hospitalero. Kept on hearing about him on subsequent days.

Left behind the vineyards and olive trees and started on the great plain meseta between Burgos and Leon. Wonderful wild wet walk past stone walls into Hontanas, home of the infamous lecher Victorino and his filthy bar. It lived up to its reputation: O said that he wouldn’t have washed his feet in the sink the glasses were washed in, and the ‘guest book’ was full of rude comments about the proprietor, which he presumably could not understand.

I had done 31 km with F, when he found an albergue run by Italians had just opened so we did another 10 km. In a 13th century chapel, altar at one end and bunks at the other, just 11 of us staying, while a charming Italian from Piedmont and his dog looked after us, cooking spaghetti and serving us his mother’s blueberries in grappa. All by candlelight on a long table in this ancient high room. And all given freely, just a donation box by the door. There was wine and grappa and we all got a bit riotous, taking awful digital photos with people’s heads cut off. So beautiful, simple and generous, which I suppose is what I hoped the Camino to be, and which it has turned out to be in bucketfuls.

Boots were disintegrating but seemed to have stopped getting worse so just pressed on with them. Feet fine, especially compared to some of the horrible specimens seen being bathed in bowls of salty water in the evening. A great spectator sport, other people’s feet.

At Villalcazar we were shown up to the top floor of the ancient ayuntamento (town hall), and were asked not to hang our washing out of the front window as the locals got upset at pilgrim’s underwear flapping next to the Spanish flag. Then the sweet hospitalera (right) took us for prayers in the huge Romanesque church, tiny windows and full of Gothic images in gloomy side-chapels. All done in six languages. Now we know we will be prayed for by name each evening at 6 for the time estimated to finish the pilgrimage.

Through Carrion de los Condes and then 17km over a plain into a strong head wind, all bent over for hours like polar explorers man-hauling their way to their doom. At the end of this a nice dutch lady just gave up and said she was going home after doing 350 km. I suppose she can finish it off another year.

The local bars have caught on to their moving market and offer a Menu Peregrino served from 7.30, an unthinkable time for Spanish to eat. Three courses with bread and 1/2 bottle wine for around 7 or 8 euros (a good deal and as the albergue are 3 or 5 as a donation this is a cheap trip.) A beer before and a brandy after and I’m ready for total collapse at 9.30. We are all so fit that the alcohol seems to have no effect and everyone pops up at 6.30 am. The bars all have a massive TV blaring football, but they tend to put the dining tables under the screen so it can be disconcerting to look up into a row of grizzled faces, gesticulating and shouting insults, presumably at one of the teams but quite possibly at us as well.