Hamish: we are now roughly one third of the way through our trip having walked a mighty 271.9km! We only this morning walked into our third and final district before entering Galicia (don’t ask me the name as I have forgotten and the wifi is being unkind).
(Edit: the district in question is in fact ‘Palencia’ after having finally connected to the Albergue wifi.)
We have roughly 426k to go and we are all slowly getting better at early starts and early evenings. I admit that I am by far the slowest to learn about early starts… This morning was the second that we managed to get out and walking before the sun rose and the first that we had a rather spectacular view as the sun crested the horizon! (A sight I admit I haven’t seen for a long while).
The tiny Spanish towns are a sight to behold and every one leaves me wanting to buy up a derelict house and move in immediately! I fear I may be romanticising them somewhat. Nonethetheles, I would not be surprised if this were to happen…
Yesterday, as we wandered around the beautiful town of Castrojeriz, we came across a Silencio, something quite surreal and very beautiful. It was an empty house, filled with some beautiful photos and decorated with such care and attention. Each room was laid out precisely and the garden was well tended sporting a tranquil pond with running water, a single congregation, unlit church which had been excavated into the mountain and some unshaded seats in the garden proper for those who draw strength from direct sunlight. This silencio was based around the simple rule “don’t say anything”. After many days of constant company and many many ‘hola‘ and ‘buen camino‘, it was such a peaceful change to hear no voices and sit, tranquil and cool, listening to the sound of running water.
All in all the first third of the trip has been a great success! We have been rained on, nearly lost our bag a couple of times, walked in the blistering heat and eaten more tortilla than I ever thought possible. We are still standing, and somehow smiling however, so we shall carry on and see what the next 420km brings us!
Steve : Way back in Pamplona we were in an albergue when an unusual snoring-related event happened.
The albergue had some 20 beds, so we expected at least 4 snorers. I think we had three and they were giving it the full treatment.
But, but… glory of glories. The three of them were (a) snoring all at the same pitch and (b) had snorts of the same duration. So rather than the quasi-random snorting you get with the solo snorer this trio were synchronising nicely. One would start and just as his snort came to an end another would pitch in. When he had finished the third started, ending just in time for the first to kick in again.
Result? We had a constant background roar. Think of an old air-conditioning unit in a dodgy American motel. I can sleep through that! Easy-peasy!
So, snorers of the world. A plea. If you must snore in shared dormitories than please plan your trips such that groups of you, of similar pitch, always travel together and snore in symphony. A grateful audience would surely agree….
Steve : We were up the big hill beyond Hornillos this morning for the sunrise, so, of course, Sheryl Crow started up in my brain’s music player.
Jen and I have been discussing ideal playlists on a pilgrimage theme – however you’d care to define that.
Top of our list is the great Paul Simon song, “America”:
Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping And I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike They’ve all come to look for America
There will be more…
Ironically, given we’re on a pilgrimage where you’re supposed to be paying attention, on some long days, like today, when the sun is hot, you need distractions from the relentlessness of the trail. For the last few days I’ve walked the meseta listening to ‘Cabin Pressure‘, from BBC Radio 4, on my Sansa MP3 player. If you’ve never heard it, I urge you to give it a go. Extremely funny. Unfortunately I finished it last night in bed, whilst trying to block out the snore-fest.
So, today’s trek across the wide open spaces was accompanied by a BBC ‘Book at Bedtime’ recording of Robert Harris’s novel ‘The Ghost‘, from, I think, 2007 or so. This novel, and the Roman Polanski film version, are favourites of mine when travelling. I’m not entirely sure why, but they seem to transport me better than most. I remember listening to the BBC recording about ten times whilst my brother and I took shifts driving a minibus full of kids to a camp in Finland.
So, in the 34 degree heat of the Spanish midday I strolled into Fromista with the book ending about half a km from the albergue.
Steve : Another beautiful day. In an effort to beat the sun we got up at 5:30am when the air was cool and damp. Out on the trail by 6am.
A short climb out of town and we were on the meseta again. I know I keep saying this but this place really is magical. Last night we met a couple of Frenchmen who had walked from Grenoble and were doing 40+ km/day. They arrived in Hornillos around 7pm and were going to keep going. It was a full moon and they wanted to cross the meseta by moonlight. What an excellent idea.
Moon at your front…Sun at your back
The sun rose at our backs around 6:30. This place looks like The Shire from Lord of The Rings.
Wildflowers along the trailCatching the dawn light
A breakfast stop around 9am in Hontonas.
An interesting fountain
We passed through ruined churches…
…along perfectly smooth empty roads…
…and finally saw the town of Castrojeriz and it’s ancient hilltop castle.
Today is a short day of around 20km and we were in the albergue by 11:30.
It was getting proper Spanish hot.
We couldn’t quite suss out the town of Castrojeriz. Like a lot of the villages through which we walked there were many ‘Se Vendre’ (‘For Sale’) signs.
For sale, anyone?A not untypical façade
Similarly for this small town of population 500, according to Brierley. It looked like some money had been spent on Castrojeriz. There was a rather good museum of the Camino that we visited and the street furniture of road signs and lampposts were all new and of interesting design.
Half way up the high street (the whole town is strung out along a single road) was a house with a painted bicycle outside. ‘La Casa del Silencio’ read a sign hanging on the bike – ‘The House of Silence’.
We entered in to find an entire house filled with art, books, music and no-one around. It was really lovely. We must have spent the best part of an hour looking at the art and drinking in the atmosphere.
House of Silence back garde – beautiful
Grade One Hippy and all the better for it. If you’re in Castrojeriz pay it a visit.
Now, we’re still sending on a bag each day because we’re basically lazy. Each morning for the last week we’d attach a courier envelope, with 5 euros, to our bag of stuff and it would automagically show in the albergue that evening. But in Hornillos we’d not read the small print (we’d never read the small print) and we didn’t know we had to phone the courier to arrange pickup. We thought that the couriers just visited all the albergues and picked up whatever was there. So, we found ourselves in Castrojeriz minus clean clothes and the other pilgrim essentials that we were too lazy to carry.
Oliver, the immensely helpful German ‘hospitalero’, who actually ran the hostel, sorted it out for us. Our bag showed up around 3pm and we felt very stupid and grateful.
Dinner that evening was a big pasta-and-thing concocted by J and H. We shared it with Tom, an American gent from Florida, who was good company.
Early to bed as tomorrow is a long 25km and we need to be up to beat the sun.
Steve : I have an MP3 player packed with stuff but I find myself largely walking in silence.
But, that doesn’t stop the internal music player in my brain from running.
Today, we saw the sun come up over the meseta. And it was a thing of beauty. My internal MP3 player could only think of one song with any lines about sun rises, so my morning was spent singing Sheryl Crow’s Crash and Burn.
I watched the sun come up on Portland I waved goodbye to all my friends I packed my car and headed to LA I gave away all my loose ends
I’ve no real idea what the song is about but I did remember that first line. And there’s a splendid liquid electric guitar throughout. A great song for the day.
Steve : The Camino is supposed to be what you make it. You do what you want in your way. It’s your Camino.
That said – you want to do it ‘properly’, and ‘properly’ should not involve getting on a bus. More on that later.
My feet were giving me hell. 21.3 km to do today.
Leaving Najera
Past the route markers and through Azofra and Ciruena…
..with the compulsory breakfast stop of strong coffee, potato tortilla and an orange juice.
It was getting properly hot, at least for this Scotsman. As a former skin cancer patient I always keep full covered, which I reckon is the best idea anyway. At the end of this day H’s legs were traffic light red.
We arrived in Santo Domingo and had a crisis meeting.
We’d lost two days because of the British Airways IT failure. And our original Plan A required us to claw back a day at some point in the trip. The idea was to take three 20-ish km days and do them in two 30-ish km slogs. But our experience of the last few days has told us that 30 km is too much.
So, to make our flights on July 3rd, and to have something of a good time in Santiago (after all, the point of the exercise!) we decided on Plan E…
Take the 14:58 bus to Burgos, cutting out three days of walking. Jen tells us that we’re not missing much in these three days, in fact today’s walk was too much road and not enough country. Looking at the map, if we were to skip any section this would be the one to choose.
This would get back the lost BA days and might give us enough time to do something that both J and H really wanted to do – go on from Santiago to Finisterre ‘the end of the world’ on the Spanish Atlantic coast.
So that was our plan. We got the bus and went to Burgos. And we hope to make it to Finisterre.
I took no pictures of this sad departure from plan.
As the air-conditioned and completely splendid coach pulled out of Santo Domingo for the 70km trip to Burgos we were conflicted. And rather startled at the speed of the bus! After all these days of being a pedestrian it was rather a shock to roar along the road – the pilgrim trail follows the main road for much of the trip – and pass all the Camino route markers. In an hour we were there in Burgos. It felt like cheating.
We booked into the enormous municipal albergue. Very modern and very splendid. And very cheap, 5 euros each.
Burgos albergue
Jen performed surgery on my feet, with sharp scissors and a safety pin that had been sterilised with a cigarette lighter that we’d bought for the occasion, plus a lot of tissue paper to catch what Jen refers to as ‘blister juice’. I put on my sandals and felt grim.
Take good care of your feet
Somewhere along the way Jen had picked up some bed bugs. Jen greatly loves all kinds of animals but bed bugs aren’t in the approved list. They bring out the screaming heebie-jeebies. So she hot-washed everything – clothes, sleeping bags, the lot. And wrapped her backpack in a couple of plastic bags to be left out in the sun. The little beggars stood no chance.
Burgos has a truly magnificent cathedral. The albergue is just up the street from it, so we took our broken feet for a small walk and went to see what we could see.
There was to be a pilgrim’s mass in the cathedral at 19:30, so we scrubbed up nice and went along. This was a very different affair to Los Arcos. A real priest showed up and conducted the service. Being neither a Catholic nor a Spanish speaker I didn’t really have a clue what was going on but it was nice to watch other pilgrims for whom this was clearly a meaningful experience.
After that we found a restaurant that had a good vegetarian selection and we splurged. J and I continued our discussion on liturgy and authenticity. Whereas I rather like the Burgos pilgrim’s mass, she thought it was totally lacking in sincerity.
Maybe Jen will fill us in on her ideas on ritual and religion at some point.
Back to the albergue, just in time to miss a thunderstorm.
Thunder in the air
A few words of advice….
As the Beach Boys put it in the classic 1971 album, Surf’s Up, you need to take good care of your feet, …
Day 9 : Stats
Najera to Santo Domingo de Calzada
Steps 38,071
Distance covered, according to Brierley
21.3 km direct, 22.8 km actual walking
565.4 km to go
Other Fitbit stats
34.3 km walked (based on 0.9m stride length)
335 ‘active’ minutes
5,088 cals burned
Santa Domingo de Calzada to Burgos by bus.
Bus trip removes, according to Brierley, 72.7 km and 3 days of walking.
Muriel: Just spoke with the very weary peregrinos who are now on about Plan E, or was it Plan F or maybe even Plan G?! The British Airways debacle has left them seriously short of time and in spite of VERY long days they have not been able to catch up enough so have resorted to something they had hoped to avoid at all costs….they got a bus at a cost of E5 each. Sadly, the little villages they are travelling through have no internet so we’ll have to wait for one that does to get their updates. In the meantime, they are well, utterly exhausted and looking forward to another snore-filled night…
Logrono is a pleasant town with a huge park on the outskirts.
We’ve now come far enough to get a better calibration of our physical abilities. I was fine, except for probably the most important part of the walker’s body, the feet.
My trusty Merrells, which have transported me without incident for nearly two years, were producing blisters. And then blisters on top of the those blisters. I was hurting a lot.
My default position when in physical pain like this is just to knuckle down and go. This is fine when I’m at home in the Scottish hills and I can spend the next day resting up. But the Camino is relentless and you simply cannot rest up. If we are to get to Santiago in time for our flights home for J and H’s graduation we have no slack at all in our schedule. In fact we need to claw a day back somewhere.
At the end of this day we knew that wasn’t going to be possible. We can do 20-23 km days, we cannot do 30 km days. At least not without sufficient rest, and that’s just not possible.
We’ll need to make an alternative plan.
In spite of all the pain it was another beautiful day in the Spanish countryside. Lunch in Navarrete…
Navarrete roofs
..and a climb over Alto San Anton. Then a long descent in Najera, a rather scrappy town by Spanish standards. But it does have this rather famous landmark.
We trudged into town, absolutely exhausted. This abandoned sofa next to a yellow ‘go this way’ sign felt like an appropriate metaphor…
The municipal albergue was full so we went private, which was probably a good idea. Jen had a spot of sun stroke – nothing serious but enough to send her to bed for the evening. We had a room with shower for just the three of us – a rare luxury. No snoring!
Our fellow albergue occupants were a gregarious bunch of South Africans so we sat in the back garden and talked.
H and I dragged ourselves for an evening walk around town, primarily to try and prevent our legs from seizing up.
Muriel: I spoke with the peregrinos this morning and they are all well and walking again after a memorable communal evening meal and breakfast with the ‘blessed’ bonus of a snore-free night. It was their first night in a donativo (donation hostel). They’ll no doubt tell you more when these very long days of walking ease up a little. They are currently walking through industrial areas but the sun is shining, the locals are very generous and friendly, their packs are lighter and their spirits are good. Please help our ME Research UK Charity to raise more money and get closer to that “breakthrough” we are all longing for by sharing this blog and/or tweets with your friends and family or maybe even your work colleagues. Every donation helps! Thank you so much.
Here, at home, our ME constrained lives have very different highs and lows. A big high, for me, was enough energy to have lunch with a lifetime friend yesterday. Delicious food, charming and friendly cafe (Comrie Croft Tea Garden http://www.comriecroft.com/tea-garden/introduction.html ) and the always pleasure of a best pal made for a very special day for me.
Ali continues to regain his extremely limited strength at home. He’s helped by the boundary pushing Herbie dog who is determined to make the other half of Ali’s double bed his own in spite of knowing full well that the house rules preclude such antics from a dog. While we completely understand Herbie’s line of reasoning – cats are allowed on the bed, they are smaller and obviously less significant in the ‘family pack’ than he is, so where’s the problem?! – we know full well that if Herbie wins Ali will soon be pushed off one or other edge of the bed by Herbie’s expansion of territory behaviours. To not be master of your own bed seems a step too far for a severe ME person!
An additional blessing in our day is that the sun is shining (yes, it does shine in Scotland!) After a thrashing – from 3 of the 4 compass points at some or other point in the day – wind and rain storm yesterday, today has dawned with a largely clear blue sky. Bliss! I see a few whispy clouds creaping in over the Sma’ Glen but I’ll just ignore those and hope they go away! If my energy looks good at any point in the day I might even get to plant out my bok choi, parsley and kohlrabi seedlings that have been ready to go out for weeks now. Yes, I do eat my greens – as many and varied as I can find them!
