Santiago by Seventy - 11

Day 13 - Tuesday 24th April Belorado to San Juan de Ortega

Lisa is going to ferry our bags to San Juan, and while stowing them into her car, I notice a Dutch couple, who I had noted before were very well prepared for the Camino - the woman even has a nylon zip case for her sticks, lurking behind a pillar.    My actions instinctively become furtive, until I realise that they are waiting for the bus to Burgos and are also cheating.

We set out about 0830 in the company of Dave Smith and his sister Maggie.  They too are using a luggage ferry for some surprisingly large suitcases, and carrying only day bags.   Dave has a tablet which uses to take photos – is this something I should have instead of my tiny laptop.   The windows of anm albergue are open and Penny peeps in to see the bunk accommodation and agress she wopuldn’t mind, for anight or two.

It’s a much better day and the wind has dropped.   Tosantos is closed, but at Villambistia a sign hopefully points to a bar at 100m.    The Spanish idea of distance can be understated, and just when we think of giving up, we find ‘Alabama’ ensconced at the bar – talking, of course.  We enjoy a great coffee and bocadillo stuffed with a ‘French’ tortilla i.e. no potato or garlic, and learn that ‘Giggling Dave’ has also caught a bus to Burgos.

We pass Espinosa del Camino chatting and with noticing it.

The bridge at Villafranca Montes de Oca is lethal:   very narrow and large trucks whizz through the narrow streets, and stepping to the side to avoid one, I don’t see or hear a small van until it brushes my pack.   Penny sees a shop and cannot resist going in to see what they have.  

The path leads up through the village past the church, rated as one of the most important churches on the pilgrim route:  it is closed, of course.

 But the Queen’s Hospice, the 3* hotel-restaurant-albergue of San Anton Abad, is one of the most delightful places on earth.   Newly restored, beautifully appointed, the staff and owners friendly and helpful, we seriously consider calling Lisa and suggesting that this is where we will end our pilgrim walk.    The owner shows me a choice of courtyards where we can rest, and we chose a sunny walled yard out of the breeze where we can also watch and wave to our fellow pilgrims as they walk by.    Although it is early, by Spanish hours, the kitchen is opened to give us lunch, and my glass of tinto is a veritable bucket.  When I explain that I have come from St Jean but Penny has just joined me for a couple of days, the owners make Penny an honorary pilgrim and give her a gourd to carry, bearing the stamp of the San Anton Abad.

Sinfully, the guidebook hardly gives it a mention in his guidebook.

This would be an excellent stopover before tackling the next 12 kms through oak woods and pine forest, along which there is not much more than a single fountain, called Mojapán (wet-your-bread).    It is a delightful walk down dale and up, following a broad path, presumably the old road which would, in England, be a sheep-drovers’ trail.   A feature is a monument to los Caídos where a new plaque slightly confuses the issues about who it is to – 300 Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.   In the undergrowth behind the monument, a smaller, humbler, headstone commemorates the Republicans who also died here.

It is a delightful walk, sometimes chatting, sometimes in companionable silence, with Penny.   Dry and sunny, and the wind has dropped.   There are buzzards crying overhead, and we spot a woodpecker.

It is not often you meet a beautiful woman strolling through the forest with her handbag over her arm, but Lisa has walked up the trail to meet us, and we finish the last three kilometres together into San Juan de Ortega.

This has been the longest and the most beautiful day of the Camino, 26.8 kilometres or 15 miles, and with magnificent views over snow covered mountains to the south and west.   

San Juan de Ortega is the target for this first phase of my Camino:  I think I am, about a third of the way or 250 km towards Santiago.   ‘Do you want to go on?’ Penny asks.  The answer is emphatically, ‘Yes’, I want and need to finish this by coming back in the autumn or more probably next spring, 2013.   

La Henera, the new casa rural is not quite what I imagined:   I had failed to weigh the significance of the word ‘new’:  it is fine but soulless.   In fact San Juan seems a curious place for the guidebook to show as the end of a stage of the Camino, as it is tiny and all the only bar can offer is platos combinados.   The bread and garlic soup which once was offered by the monastery is not on offer.

I attend the pilgrim mass and get my blessing by the tomb of the saint, disciple of Santo Domingo.   The priest is less forbidding than the one in Roncesvalles.   There we non-Catholics were forbidden to take communion.   Here I detect a slight difference in emphasis:   those who wish to be in communion are invited to take the host.

Afterwards, sitting on sheltered stone bench I talk to Ingrid, a little old Dutch-Australian lady who tells me her life story and how worried her daughters are about her being here, alone on the road.    She started from St Jean a week before me, is making only 15 kms a day, and is worried that she may not get to Santiago by her target date, which is Pentecost.    Ingrid also has two tin knees.   She also tells me that though she, like me, is Protestant, she took Communion – ‘Would God refuse nourishment to his believers if they were invited to his table?’   Good point.  Then comes a surprise, somehow I have her categorised as her little old grey-haired lady needing to chat, but she tells me she is 68, only a year older than me.  We form a foursome for dinner, and I get to eat lomo (pork) and morcilla de Burgos (blackpudding).  

Unexpectedly David the Canadian starts to talk to me about Admiral Rodney, and I would have listened quietly, but hopefully knowingly, but Penny tells him of my amateur interest in the subject.   It is a typically, unexpected, varied conversation on this Camino.  

Seventy by Seventy - 10

Day 12 - Monday 23rd April   Santo Domingo to Belorado

The first serious blisters have appeared.    My right knee was clicking and twisting and I was persuaded to borrow a knee brace, but I think this changed my gait and hence my boots rubbed in differently and so I have developed a hot spot on my left inner ankle.

At breakfast in the parador I find that after ten days or more of coffee and tortilla for breakfast and the change in diet, my stomach and my expectations are so shrunken  that I cannot begin to do justice to the parador’s buffet breakfast, though their chocolate and churros are exquisite and so too is their scrambled eggs.

The concierge has rung ahead to book rooms in Belorado for me – and I only just catch his whispered warning ‘Son pelegrinos’

We eventually start late, at 1100, and what follows is the worse day ever on the Camino.   I had thought those pictures of pilgrims bent double were struggling with the weight of their sin and maybe of their packs, but am taught the sharp lesson that they are leaning into the wind which blows hard from the West.   For long stretches – too long – the path follows the N120 along which huge lorries swoop.   The wind is in our faces and blowing Force 4-5, chilling and drying us, and the young wheat in the field alongside us is bent double.   An old peasant tells us the wind is most unusual and damaging.  

En route we meet Tara who seems to have teamed up with Linus the Swede and three or four German boys, who strut round her like mallards round a duck in the park.

She tells me that James is still on the road, but Catlin has been forced to return to the USA suffering from some kind of memory loss.   Roisin is also close by, but has stopped for sightseeing in Santo Domingo.   They are staying in Grañón, where there is a church tower with mattresses on the floor, because they have heard it is ‘cool’.

El Chocalatero, well reported in the guidebook, turns out to be a truckers’ halt, and a rather poor one too, though there is at least decent chocolate.   One wonders what experience the writer had which made him so enthusiastic.

The church at Viloria de la Rioja, the birthplace of Santo Domingo, is closed, as seemingly is the rest of the village.   Even though Liz picks us up in Viloria de la Rioja, this at only 15 kms has to be the hardest day of the Camino so far.   At one stage poor Penny who has her head bent against the wind cannot hear to noise of an approaching tractor, on our track, above the noise of the busy main road.  My hat is whisked off by the wind and flied 100 yards before catching on a fence.

Into Belorado and the Hotel Jaboceo which despite its modest 2* and proximity to the road, proves to be a more than decent place, and shows that even without a parador one can enjoy a little luxury and privacy, and, compared to the great unwashed mass of the pilgrimage, a hot bath.

The blister has grown.   Compeed is brilliant, easy to apply and flush-fitting:   the own-brand sold by a large household-name chemist chain are more difficult to use.   But neither has made allowance for the fact that my arms are not long enough to reach my feet or rather that I can no longer bend my legs to get my feet close enough, and need reading glasses to tear the different layers of the plasters apart.   I appreciate why ladies should need clear or skin-coloured plasters so that they don’t show in their ridiculous footwear, but I need coloured ones to see where they are!

I insist that the girls should experience the joys of a pilgrim menu.   After all, I have had some excellent pilgrim meals.   The meal in Roncesvalles included fresh trout, elsewhere there has been home-made soups, and plenty of chance to top up on carbohydrates with patatatas fritas.   And at Jakue there was a four course buffet, and always good wine and fresh bread.

The pilgrim meal at the recommend Etoile is a disaster.   The service poor, we sit in a draft, the red wine comes chilled, the bread is burned, the merluza looks like a fish finger which has been run over on the N120.   .

  All told, a bad end to a bad day.

santiago by Seventy - 9

Day 10 - Saturday 21^st April Navarette to Azofra

The way today is across gently undulating countryside through vineyards and fields of more beans, peas and asparagus.    Mac sets a cracking pace and we eat up the kilometres, it is dry and somewhere, while changing socks on the bridge outside Nájera, we march off into Huércanos.    Thankfully I am not in the lead and there is no opportunity for jokes about officers and maps.

The effect on our morale is catastrophic; the way now into Nájera is now along hard surfaces in hot sun.   Fortunately a kind old lady leads us through her village, proudly pointing out the fronton court and the fountain (no more than a dripping tap but ‘The same water we all drink in this village’).   She is indistinguishable from all the other old ladies I remember from Spain long ago, the only difference that she is not wearing black.   How does Spain produce these?

At last we pick the signs of the pilgrim route and walk down to the river:  Mac and Stephen intend to rest up for the day here, but the principal hotel seems to be shut, so we eat lunch at café on a boulevard which follows the river, and in the sunshine.   We point them at the tourist office, and Robert and I set off again for Azorfa – and are promptly lost again in the side streets of Los Arcos.    The problem is that various bar owners have painted yellow arrows to lure pilgrims into their establishments.     This time it is a smartly dressed woman who accompanies us back on to the correct path, past a large monastery.  

The guests are filing out of side door to greet the happy couple as they emerge from the main door:  we have to squeeze through lots of lovely Spanish señoritas in impossibly high heels and men in black suits.   Our temporary guide has told us to turn right up a ‘calle en rampa’ – and the road climbs steeply up before us. 

I am slow on these slopes and Robert has plenty of time to rest while I catch up:   we walk on through vineyards, noting the broken irrigation channels which have been replaced by no other visible of irrigating these fields.    And our conversation is about books and literature.

It has turned out to be another dry day – the second? – and we swing into Azorfa at a merry pace.    The municipal albergue here is the best yet, new, well equipped, inclusive and accommodation in two bed cubicles.    There are several people I recognise here, and Eamon and Christina – a chirpy young German who slept on an adjacent bunk to me in Roncesvalles – invite us to join them for supper.   The kitty is 5 euros each.    They will do the shopping, so all Robert and I need do is retire to our room for foot repairs.   He has syringes to lance and drain his blisters and inject iodide, I still only have some hot spots which can be covered with plasters.     

We are joined at dinner by two more Germans, Sophie and Natalie, and as we sit jawing over the remains, Rosie comes by and ask if she can finish up the leftovers.    This is very jolly, and the company is beautiful, but would I would need to be at least two generations younger to take any advantage.

Eamon is keen to see the football and we go to a bar where the entire village seems to be cheering goals on both sides.   One player gets a yellow card for an outlandish piece3 of play acting which the cameras repeat.    Having tripped he sits on the ground, waves to the referee and then goes into pretended paroxysm of pain.   Otherwise the game is very enjoyable.  

Eamon, this gentle giant of a man, shows me the photos of his family – he is a father of four – and his photos of the Camino, all photos on his phone.  I make a mental note that I am carrying one piece of equipment too many: also, with the camera buried in a pocket of my rucksack I have taken fewer, less interesting pictures.

The bill for evening’s drinking and football, which includes a coffee and two large Soberanos and Eamon’s tinto comes to 6 euros:   I think we have been made honorary locals.   

Day 11 - Sunday 22^nd  April Azofra to Santo Domingo de la Calazada

By 0730 we are en Camino, benefitting enormously from the sleeping arrangements in that we can be up and packing without disturbing anyone else. 

The way is through pleasant fields and along a rural rural track until we encounter miles of red sticky mud which clogs our boots.

La Cirueña turned out be a ghost town:  several hundred houses clustered around a golf course, and only one car in the street.   There are several hundred more houses unfinished, and an old man and his dog walking up the centre of one of the streets:   the dog looks like a young foxhound, but she has already had pups.    IT seesm that the old man of following the route he has ahs always used befeore these hosues were built to blight the landscape.

In bar of the old village (café con leche and the best tortilla yet, loaded with potatos and garlic) Stephen and Mac catch up – their night’s rest ruined by the noise of disco music and grim tales of partying youth still on the streets when they left Los Arcos.   The mud has aggravated Stephen’s wounded ankle.  

By 12.00 we enter Santo Domingo, where it’s time to say goodbye, over tinto and tapas, to Robert who is pressing on to meet his wife in Burgos in few days’ time.    Mac and Stephen have caught up, unable to rest in Los Arcos because of the noise, and enlist my help in booking into rooms at the parador for two nights.   The porter quite understands that I also want access to a room, even if Penny has not arrived with the voucher, and within minutes I have stripped and left my laundry outside the door and am soaking in a hot bath, followed by an early siesta.   I fall asleep wondrous that this parador is where St Francis of Assisi stopped while he was proselytising in Spain,  

Penny is not answering her phone and I go exploring:  my best discovery being a yard where the relief cockerels live.  (The story is a maid in an inn fell in love with the son of German pilgrims, but when her advances were rejected she planted a silver goblet in his knapsack, for which he was hanged in chains.    His parents returning from Santiago many weeks later, found him still living – by a miracle so Santo Domingo - and went to the governor to ask for pardon.   The governor said there’s as much chance of that as the chicken which he was about to eat jumping up and crowing, when – by a miracle of Santo Domingo - it did just that, and the parents were given back their boy – and for the last 500 years a cock and hen have been kept in Gothic henhouse inside the cathedral.)   

Eventually I end up in a charming square sitting in a patch of sunshine and talking to Dave Moran, a postman from Dublin.

Strolling back towards the parador I am a little worried that Penny still hasn’t answered her phone.   I wonder if this means she and Lisa haven’t set out yet, and after checking the times that cathedral is open to visitors set out to ask the concierge if there are any messages for me, when out from behind a pillar, steps Penny.    The surprise is complete.

Dinner in the parador is taken in considerable luxury compared to previous meals so far.

Thursday 19^th April – Los Arcos to Viana

            I was worried about the puny alarm on the watch I bought at Gatwick, but it wakes me at six, or rather as I have usually been lying wake for some time, it tells me when that bewitched hour has arrived.    I’m still not entirely used to bed before ten, when it’s lights out in the albergue, but there’s much advantage to being first into the bathroom and first to breakfast before the hearties arrive – in either place!   Usually I’m awake in the dark for a while before the alarm sounds off, but so far there has been insufficient light to charge up the dial on my new watch.

            Have solved the Olympic challenge of rolling and stuffing my sleeping bag.   Instead of trying to stuff it in the dark into a its bag, when it forms a hard and immalleable brick which then has to be manoeuvred into the bottom compartment of my rucksack, I stuff it straight into the bottom compartment and cinch this up tight.   Simple, really.

            Cleaning my boots and applying saddle soap again cause some amusement, but I tell Janet that next to her, my boots are my best friend on this holiday.   A few minutes later someone else comments and I tell her much the same thing, much to Janet’s consternation.

            After waiting in the early morning light outside, I set off slowly towards the next milestone.    While stopping to look back over Los Arcos and admire the view, I have a brief chat with one of the many Koreans who are on the Camino:  apparently there has been a television programme about it and this is what has encouraged so many to take the path.

After a few minutes Alastair catches up and we fall into step.    He is an ex-soldier AND a published poet and that is subject for the next few miles, while I try to encourage him to write more.   He is modest about his experience, while I see him as the new highland poet.   He is very aware of the context in which he is writing and the market, and clearly very sensitive and well informed. 

            Our company today is Alastair, Stephen and Robert, and Irish quantity surveyor.   Alastair and Stephen are both scarred by their experiences in the army, and Robert is taking a year out at 40 to decide on his career.   Stephen has a wonderfully dry sense of humour which can set us all going is stitches of laughter, and I as the only ‘rupert’ in the group have to take a great deal of stick from the two soldiers.          

At Sansol we hope for refreshment, but like many of these smaller places, it is closed.   What do they do in all these Spanish villages – they can’t all be commuter or holiday homes, yet there seems to be nobody around.

Torres del Río is better, where a shop-cum-albergue-cum-café is run by a couple South American boys.    Sock-change, and café con leche, and bocadillas make a welcome break.    The church is a miniature Templars’ church, and like all those I have seen it is bare of altar or ornament.   The acoustics however are wonderful.

On through fields of peas, beans, and asparagus, turning into vines and more vines, we are entering the rioja country.   Somewhere on route we recognise a fellow pilgrim on the other side of the valley, and after shouting and waving persuade him he has taken a wrong turning.

Our destination is Viana, where there is another parish church built on a cathedral scale and gloriously filled with amazing golden retablos.    How did they do this work several hundred years before the invention of elective light?  Its distinguishing feature is the tomb of Cesare Borgia, son of the Pope, who died leading the Navarrese and Pontifical troops against the Moors.   The priests are the oldest yet who I have seen – are there no new ordinands in Spain?

The municipal albergue is a hell hole, with crowded, three-tier bunks and one loo only for each sex.   My company christen is ‘the subamrine.’

As well as Penny, I ring Mum and Isabel, and then dine with my troops.

The distance covered today is 20.1 kms.

Friday 20^th April – Viana to Navarrete

I had again contemplated taking a bus through Logroño, but we walk – rather boringly along made-up paths which are hard underfoot, and somehow there is no spirit in the group this morning.     It is relieved by a wayside shack where a wonderful old granny, Felisa, and her family are dispensing coffee and biscuits to passing walkers

There are many halts as we walk through Logroño, to sports shop, at a pavement café, and various junctions and road crossings.   We visit briefly the massive cathedral but miss out on all the other tourist attractions in this city, agreeing that already we are unused to towns. After a cold start when I wore fours layers of clothing, the sun is out at last and I am in shirtsleeves and wearing sun cream.   

Wee are dogged though the town by ‘Giggling Dave’ and his companion ‘Alabama’, another talkative American.   She has serious blisters on her heels with red, raw spots – ouch!

After miles of paved roads at last we reach the Pátano de la Grajera where there is a restaurant for lunch of tapas and Coke, and the manager gives us coffees on the house.    The Coke is something new for me, but very refreshing:   I have also taken to drinking at every fountain we pass, and this carries me up to the summit of Alto de la Grajera at 540m

About 3 p.m. we arrive at Navarrete, mildly cursing that that we have to climb up to this hilltop village.   Still no blisters, even though Alasdair, the expert, has two!

21.5 kms today, still no blisters, and somewhere on the way today we passed the 100 miles mark or one-fifth the way to Santiago.

While we are talking in the comedor, which serves as the communal room, a Frenchwoman cooks a wonderfully smelling supper, which her husband appears for, like the prototypal MCP, when all is ready for him.    There has been large party of Irishmen travelling with us of whom Eamon, a silent giant of man, is the last and he is going to join us for supper.   Toni, an Australian nurse, who says she has given her home to her children and left to explore the world has been vaguely travelling in our time ‘slot’ and she’s going to join us too, and I am despatched to find somewhere suitable.   After days of eating the pilgrim menu, which can be summed up as salad or lentils, and pork loin (thin!) with chips, and postre (the Spaniards aren’t good at postre), I am sent to find somewhere proper to eat.

At the restaurant Albero the owner, Vicente, is smoking and watching television in a deserted bar and his opening gambit is ‘Es vd pelegrino?’   and he is positively discouraging when I tell him that yes, I am pilgrim.  Over a glass of wine I discover that there is a menu, startling at more the double the normal pilgrim price, and that the restaurant doesn’t open until 8.    This involves negotiating with the hospitalero who grudgingly concedes we can stay out till 22.30 but not later.   But there is definitely meat on the carta del día.   

The Spaniards in the bar are watching a bullfight, their tables laden just as if they were at the arena, with wine and bread and sausage.    This is the first time I have watched a fight in colour on television and I’m impressed by the camerawork. Robert, married to a Spanish girl, explains the finer points of the fight, many of which I had forgotten, and then it’s steaks all round except for Stephen who has a giant portion of ox on a hot grill plate (Euro 44), which he has to cook himself.       

As we leave to beat our curfew back at the albergue, the Spanish and their families are just starting to fill up the restaurant, so that part of Spanish life hasn’t change.

It’s been an interesting journey, and I’ve met many fascinating people, as well as experiencing the changes in Spain since I first came here over 50 years ago.

Compared to the enforced prudery of Franco’s time when married couples could barely hold hands in public, mixed dormitories in the pilgrim hostels must be one of the more symbolic changes.     There are for example 18 beds in tonight’s accommodation in Navarrete, and like in previous places there are different ways of dealing with nudity and modesty.    Some perform incredible contortions inside their sleeping bags, sucking in clothes like strange food, vomiting out old ones, and emerging like chrysalises in their new garb.   Others wait for the dormitory to be clear, however temporarily, to change clothes or find a quiet corner.   I usually take a bundle to the bathroom and change there after showering.   If, inevitably, you do surprise someone, then it is possible simply to ignore anything you may have seen.  

Going to bed is another matter, and with doors locked and lights out by ten p.m. in most albergues, getting into your sleeping bag is simply a matter of dropping whatever clothes in a pile where you can find them in the dark in the morning and snuggling down.

There must be sex somewhere in the dark, but with so many people to act as chaperons, opportunity is limited and immodestly is self-regulating.   Besides, come ten p.m. most people are exhausted after a day’s walking and only too ready to drop off to sleep.

Snoring is a problem:  and some walkers are known and feared for their ability to create sound waves during the night.    Robert is a known snorer and, while we were in Logroño this morning, I went with him this morning to the pharmacy to find a cure, and after tasking advice from the lady pharmacist, he thinks he may have one.   The night is relatively quiet, however a pack of barking dogs somewhere on the hillside above the albergue keeps me awake, and about 3 o’clock I am surprised to realise from the cautious movement in the dormitory that Toni the nurse has got up to turn Robert over and stop his snoring.  

Santiago by Seventy 7

Tuesday 17^th April

                The bed in the albergue of los Reparadores cost only E4.00 (£3?) for the night, but have decided that there must be limit below I should not in future go.  This is alright for backpackers and a certain type of traveller, but there must be a better than this – which I can also afford.

            I leave at 0730 and stop in the Calle Mayor for a hot chocolate and a bun: if not one0horse, then pretty a one street town, leading to the fascinating Puente de Reina, built by the wife of Sancho III in the 12c to facilitate the huge number of pilgrims passing this way.

            Last night I popped into the Iglesia del Crucifijo complete with its German, 14C epsilon shaped cross and startled myself fin the church opposite, complete with its gilded retablos and scary, life-like statues in dark alcoves.   On the way out of town I also visit the convent of 12C of Santiago, complete with its grills behind which the nuns watched the services and received communion.

Henriq passes me on the slope out of town and there is a brief acceleration in my pace until I tell him to get on ahead.   Time enough to discover that in Barcelona he is an entrepreneur, buying and selling clothes, and has recently left his girlfriend who, he explains, ‘whose biological clock is ticking’ (yes, we can translate that!) and he thinks it’s unfair on her if he doesn’t wasn’t to settle down.

A few minutes later María overtasks me walking very quickly, and asks if I have seen Henriq, I tell her he’s just ahead – has something happened?

Next to overtake me are Stephen and Alastair or ‘Mac’ who become my best friends for the day.   They have both recently left the army as Warrant Officers and have different tales to tell me about of their careers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and working for various close protection squads in the FCO and the UN.   We walk in a three and in pairs, and I have to say that they are two of the finest gents I have met for a long time.   Stephen especially looks after me and wants to adjust the straps on my pack and make sure I’m drinking enough water, feeds me Brufen, also, I didn’t notice him doing it buys our drinks at lunchtime.

            Stephen is wearing some kind of exercise tights which re giving him nappy rash! So we poi not a pharmacy at Mañeru and help explain what he needs.

We march through the next village Cirauqui, but at Lorca we stop for lunch and they change socks and we sit for half an hour and refresh ourselves.   I have decided to stop at Villatuerta, which will make it a 20 kms or 12-ish miles for the day.   Though IU have to say there is something very wrong with the Spanish reckoning of distances and in the guidebook.    Villatuerta is the highest point the day (1673’) and my legs won’t carry me any further.   The day has been sunny though not very hot, and Stephen and Mac show me to the albergue which is called the Casa Mágica.  

And indeed it is.   It’s an ancient Spanish house in the middle of a recently re-developed suburb.     I’m greeted by a Great Dane who barks once for his mistress who is an ethereal beauty: an oval face, piercing blue eyes, and blonde hair.   She is Simone, a Brazilian who met her Portuguese husband on the walk and decided to refurbish la  Casa Mágica as an albergue.   I’m the first to arrive today and it’s perfect.   Simone whisks off my washing which I have carried wet from Puente la Reina, shows me the establishment, strokes my beard and recognising my exhausted state gives me a hug of welcome.  

It’s Spain and 14.30 so I indulge in a siesta which takes me to five o’clock.   When I truly wake up, my washing is neatly folded at the foot of my bunk.   I’m dozing when three new travellers are shown to my room and I can hardly believe what I’m hearing – they are from Lund where so many years ago I was at university.   Anyway it is polite to say something before they say something rude in their own language!       

The three Swedes are Linus, Martin and Johan.   The local restaurant doubles and triples as a community centre, and old folk’s home and the pilgrims’ supper is served in the community hall where five old biddies are playing cards.   While we are dining their children arrive to take them home and as each walks past our table they solemnly wish us good night and ‘Buen camion.’  Supper is lentil soup, stew, and cuajada or curd.   Remind me not to bother with cuajada again, a sort of (very) poor man’s yoghourt.

We dine the five of us – all there is at la Casa Mágica – with Marianne (?) a German woman who has vaguely been accompanying us en route.    She is a marriage guidance counsellor at home in Germany and the boys are amused to draw her out and seek tips for their relationship with their girlfriends back home in Sweden.   She is imprecise, but confirms what I have always thought, that man will never understands woman.

Later Linus confides that he is bored and disappointed with his friend a and is thinking of leaving them.   But he is also very drunk, he’s been training for this walk while his friends haven’t and he wants to get on and meet girls.    We shall see in the morning, when my destination is Villamayor de Monjardín, ‘only’ 12 kms away. 

Santiago by Seventy - 5

Monday 16th April

Woke to the sound of stair rods of rain bouncing off the courtyard outside my room, and having gone to bed at 9.30 last night cannot sleep.   Outside Alex’s younger brother (for Alex must be in León by now) is getting dressed to race after his brother and wants my help to pin reflective strips to his poncho, and sets off into the dark with a head torch.    I wonder what the chances are of him taking a wrong turning:   I can understand the possible pleasure of setting off early when it is light on the morning of a hot day, but it’s too early in the season for that.

I might consider setting out for an early breakfast somewhere, but my plans are put out of kilter by a French family who sleep in, can they be walking the Camino?

Eventually the four French adults get up and we saunter out for breakfast in Parrallada, where there is also w-fi.  They set off while dress in all me rainwear and few snowflakes settle, just to remind me that winter is not yet over.

En route I am passed by Henriq the Catalan who I have seen now several times, diminutive Maria from Puerto Rico who seems now to be travelling with him, and in the village of Zariquiegui, where we have coffee and dress for the crossing of the Alto del Perdon, there are Henrique and Miguel.   Maria has only a torn plastic sheet for protection and someone lends her a sort of trench coat which comes down to her ankles.

Two lovely strong white horses are being unloaded from a box, and a little later two absolute poseurs in leather hats, leather waistcoats, and leather chaps, high saddles and saddlebags pass me on the mountainside.   Unfortunately our relative speed is too different for me to get my camera out.

In Zariquiegui I overhear the Spaniards taking about barro, which I gather is mud, and the climb up to the ridge – which is lined with wind generators – is indeed thick with glutinous mud.   In the midst of this is the French family – Dad is carrying the smallest child who crying and he is assuring that this is just one adventure of the Camino, and Mum who obviously shopped for a picnic lunch in Zariquiegui is carrying bedsides her rucksack and the little girl’s, two plastic bags out of which poke some loaves of bread.   I relieve her of these while she negotiates to the bottom of a particularly treacherous muddy slide.

The Alto del Perdón is at 2,590’ where the wind rushes over the ridge and drives a line a generators.    Sheltering on the other side of the slope and out of the wind are two members of the Guardia Civil, once the terror of Spain.   There is also my first pilgrim tout sheltering in a car and I notice he speaks to the Guardia Civil before coming over to hand me a leaflet for a new albergue in Puente de Reina.    I persuade one of the guards to take  a picture of me, and then in conversation we stand looking out over the next valley and he takes pleasure in pointing the names of the villages through I must pass and that Puente de Reina is the most distant one we can see.

I have carried the largest, blackest, ugliest stone I could find up to the Alto de Perdón and I leave this at the foot of the monument.

On the way down I overtaken by man and woman pushing a three-wheel buggy, though I cannot see who is inside.   Later I discover they are a Peruvian and his Canadian wife who is on maternity leave, and inside the buggy are her new baby and a two-year.

At Uterga there is a pilgrim stop and I have a delicious lunch of sausage eggs and chips, Spanish-style.    The sausage is a kind of local chorizo – chitxorra – and the waitress suspiciously asks ‘Sabes que es?’ but this is what I had in sandwich the other day.  A bit like those chorizo sandwiches we used to get in Borough market, except juicier.

I sit too long and am very stiff when I set off again, the rain has stopped, and the sun has come out – it is still cold but for the first time I take off my hat.

Walking very slowly we eventually reach Puente de Reina, distance of 15 miles since this morning.   Oh, and the couch potato came all the way with me too.

By 4.30 I am washed but not shaved, have washed some clothes and hung them out to dry, cleaned the mud off my boots and given them a rub with saddle soap, and Carlo, the Italian who is paying for his trip by massaging fellow travellers on the way to Santiago, has massaged my legs.   Cleaning my shoes raised some eyebrows:   most seem to think mud on their boots is an outward and visible sign of hardship on their pilgrimage, while I think that my boots are my best, inanimate friend on this trip and they deserve to be cherished.

The sun is still shining and I wander into town to find a towel (my magic one which I have had for years was left behind in Cizur Menor) and blinded by the low sunshine (yes!) I am greeted by Henrique and Miguel, ‘Hola, don Pedro!’   who take me to the bar for one of Henrique’s Cuban puros, and a seminar on Spanish politics and the evil expansion plans of Germany who are trying to do with the euro what they have several times failed to do with tanks, etc. both nod vigorously as they give this lesson and the conversation in the bar soon becomes general.    Goodness, if this is what all Spaniards think.     The news on the TV is that the King’s grandson has shot himself in the foot and they gleefully speculate that as he is a minor and legally able to bear arms, then the Prince is liable to a hefty fine and even a prison sentence.    Without anything else being said we leave the bar to wishes of ‘Buen Camino’ – I suppose we are strangers with no other obvious reason for being in town.

Dave, who I saw on the plane from England, and again in the streets of St Jean, arrives late with an American and a Dutchman on who he has forced some kind of trinity.   They are here so late, he says, because they got lost in the town, rather difficult to do I would have thought.

For supper I go to the Hotel Jakue where I am ‘sussed out’ by Stephen and Alastair, two ex-military policemen (redcaps) as a senior officer, ‘a brigadier or a commodore’.   They were in the albergue in Cizur Menor and helpfully gave me directions to the restaurant last night.    I am shocked, but they explain that it is the bearing and the accent.    Oh dear, I didn’t know that I could be so obvious.

The pilgrim’s supper – for E11.40 (a very precise price) - is the best I have enjoyed – soup, salad, main course, pudding and fruit and good red wine, which I enjoy sitting with Noel (a banker made redundant who is thinking out what he shall do next), Janet his wife (big on the National Trust), and Lia and Miguela, two ladies yet more ancient than me who on the way.    One of the sites today was the Templar church at Eunate (again not really explained in the guidebooks as being, I suppose, a symbol of anti-church authority).   I speculate that having expropriated the Templars’ property in the 13C, the rest of the church’s property in the 16C, it will soon be time to expropriate the National Trusts’ …

Tomorrow I have a different plan and going to stop earlier and in some of the even smaller places, so walking slowly I suppose that many of these people will draw ahead of me.

The night was horrific:   there are about 12 people in the dormitory, a Dutchman talked in his sleep, another coughed all through the night, the chorus of snoring was painfully loud, with long periods when the sound came in waves of disharmony, and even the little Korean girl in the next bunk to me – who had modestly hung towels as curtains round her bed - joined in.    And my mouth was dry when I woke, so I suppose was guilty too.

I am writing this in the kitchen – the only place where I can find light and a table – on my way through the hostel I found people sleeping on mattresses in the halls – maybe to get way from all that snoring.   It is 6.30 and I have shown three Dutch ladies how to switch on the oven and for reward am getting a cup of coffee.

Santiago by Seventy 1-5

Santiago by Seventy

"I think you're mad," and that's only Trevor the handyman, as he stands in the doorway of my library-cum-office to wish me well. He can't come in any further because of the books, and my books aren't my only friend I'm going to leave behind.

"Do you have everything?" says Penny venturing a random question without any preliminaries, the sort of question out of the blue which can only be posed between couples.  In this case I know what she means: do I have everything for the walk?

The pack sits on the chair: it’s already got a personality; the personality of a couch potato, dull, glowering and heavy. In my youth we used to plan on thirty pounds and thirty miles. More recently my meetings with soldiery have taught that the packs they carry weigh seventy pounds and more, mostly batteries for their electronic equipment. I’m trying to keep mine as light as possible. One guidebook says to keep the pack to 10% of body weight. That can’t be right: there are big blokes like me, well big-ish, and many more tiny scraps of people.   In my case 10% would be 22 lbs. or 10 kilos while a chit of a girl - 8 stone - would only be carrying a pack of only 11 lbs.  And in my limited experience, quite a few girls’ handbags weigh almost that much.   So, obviously the guidebook was written by a man, a man who follows his advice with five pages of things to take on the Camino including a pair of binoculars to study the higher church ornaments:  I think he means the church ornaments nearer the roof.   He also cautions the pilgrim against consumerism, immediately before endorsing several commercial products.

However with careful selection and re-selection I’ve got the pack down to about 25 lbs. No individual item seems to weigh very much, but together they do add up.  No binoculars ever got near the pack.   Out has gone the sleeping mat – a pity as this was one of the few things bought specially for the walk, very expensive and very clever with a one-way valve which makes it self-inflating, though now I shall never know how well it works.   Out too has gone the Leatherman - too heavy.   But a look at the weather forecast persuades me to keep the leggings - it's raining in the Pyrenees.   And out goes the shaving gear.   

Surprisingly the medical kit seems to feature large, filled with everything which friends tell me I shall need.   The single bulkiest item is what the guidebook coyly calls salva-slips: apart from their obvious purpose these will serve as reminder of one of the reasons why I’m doing this: to celebrate surviving cancer.   The good doctors have over treated me and left me with colitis for which the only remedy is more eye-wateringly invasive surgery which I think I’ll put off for as long as possible, and hey! I’m here to tell the tale.     

So, I am planning on thirty pounds and five hundred miles. Santiago by seventy, that’s my aim.

Literary Reconnaissance

The Footprint Guide to Northern Spain by Andy Symington which is oddly imbalanced and the maps poor, and though it makes reference to the Camino, some important places are missed entirely from the text.

For history I have read TD Kendrick’s (1960) Saint James in Spain, tortuously set out but sets out how lists the story of St James grew in northern Spain and spread across the country with the expulsion of the Moors.   Clavijo, the alleged site of a battle between Christians and Moors when the apparition of St James riding on a white charge changed to course of battle, and indeed the tide of Moorish conquest, is on my list of places of visit, though, having read Kendrick, it seems less important.

I suppose I should count Bengtsson’s Röde Orm (aka The Longships) in my readings, because doesn’t his hero visit Santiago during the course of his service as a Moorish warrior?

Oh, yes, and a book on Wellington’s campaigns in northern Spain and the Battle of the Pyrenees two hundred years ago.

Then there were three personal accounts, To the Field of Stars – a Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago de Compostela by Kevin A Codd, an American catholic priest working in Belgium, spiced with his own religious observations which left me feeling they had been written for his bishop as some kind of promotion exam, and Robert Mullen’s Call of the Camino – Myths, Legends and Pilgrim Stories on the Way to Santiago de Compostela spiced with home-spun tales culled from history and from philosophy.    The best of these three however is Tom Moore’s Spanish Steps, his account of walking across Spain to Santiago with a donkey, which is more light-hearted and amusing than the others.

There was also a film, Martin Sheen’s The Way directed by Emilio Estevez, about a man who loses his son and carries his ashes on pilgrimage, and a television series, 

Brian Sewell’s Naked Pilgrim.   Sewell repeats a journey which he made 40 years before, this time by car, boat and horse and almost despite himself is moved by mass in the cathedral of St James and mourns for his loss of faith.   He ends by burning his clothes on the beach and bathing naked in the Atlantic.   I may not do this part of the pilgrimage, but no one explains whether there is – or not – some pre-Christian origin to this walk which ends symbolically at the end of the earth, and a ceremony for fire and water.

All told, however, considerably less literary reconnaissance than I is used to when approaching a new subject.

The two guidebooks I have brought with me are A Pilgrim’s Guides to the Camino de Santiago by John Brierly (a little sanctimonious in places) and the Confraternity of ST James’s own, economic, practical guide No 1.

As for reading material then I have decided to bring with me The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, whose dark them about the clash of civilisations in the mid-20th century somehow seems to mirror the clash of civilisations which brought St James to his prominence all those centuries ago.  I hope to finish it tonight and maybe leave it at Liz’s

For the journey I have Isabel Allendes’ La Suma de los Días:  I have always liked her writing and it may help improve my Spanish.

Reading, Berks

In a sense the journey has already because on Thursday last (5 April) I was in Reading for the Falklands Commanders’ dinner at Pangbourne to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the start of the 1982 Falklands War.    There were many old faces from those days, much medalry and bright uniforms, and each group standing at the end of dinner when their regimental marches were played - and recognised. 

I sat between Sir Robert Armstrong, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary in 1982, and JW, captain of one of our ships.   Armstrong was gracious and informative in recalling his memories of those events, including Admiral Leach’s gate-crashing of a meeting of officials and ministers in the House of Commons and swinging the meeting in favour of sending a Task Force.   JW managed to be dull and pompous.    Opposite was Mike Layard, whose face fell when he realised he was sitting next to an Air Marshal (Peter Squire), but they talked amiably after I introduced the information that Squire had been a Harrier pilot ‘down south.’   Next to Squire was Group Captain Jeremy Price who was CRAF on Ascension Island for a few weeks during the war:  quizzed, he had no memory of Don Coffey bringing him BDA after Operation Black Buck, but, tellingly, no time for Don Coffey either – who I thought was vital to our operations on the island.    Nor did he (Price) get promoted.   On the other side of Armstrong was a Squadron Leader who talked non-stop to senior crab on his left and so gave me more than a fair share of Armstrong’s attention.

Others I spoke to were John Shirley of the Guardian (reporter for The Times in 1982), Geoff Till, Robin Brodhurst, Al West, Jonathon Band, Jeremy Black, Ralfe Wyke-Sneyd, Chris Wreford-Brown, Chris Parry, Robin Gainsford and a very amusing soldier whose family have bought the former Admiralty House at Rosyth.

The Royal Marines band were at their very, very best, though I was disappointed not to hear one tune:    I remember in 1982 he then band, in khaki uniform on the clay cricket field at St George’s, playing a Lloyd-Webber song from the musical Evita “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” as a slow match – then, 30 years ago, I wasn’t the only man with a lump in his throat.

But back to Reading, where we all stayed in a central hotel.   Here in the 12th century the Empress Matilda gave the hand of St James to Reading Abbey:  it was brought from Italy in the 11^th century to Hamburg by Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen where it became part of the imperial regalia.  This hand is now in a glass case at St Peter's Church, Marlow, Bucks:  it was found in an iron chest at the abbey in 1786. After its re-rediscovery it was displayed in a museum, and in a private chapel until the grave of St James was found in Spain – with a hand missing whereupon Pope Leo XII declared the bones to be genuine, and in 1896 the hand was given to St Peter's Church.  

Anyway, the abbey contained many relics, and pilgrims from Britain started from Reading for the ports of Bristol, Weymouth and Southampton, choosing a short sea route and a crossing of France, or a longer sea route and a lesser distance from the ports of northern Spain to walk to Santiago.  

Helpfully the modern Confraternity of St James, based in Southwark, now provides a walking route from Reading via Winchester to Portsmouth and the ferry for France.

My own journey from Reading is by train to Liphook, car via Milland to Gatwick and Easyjet to Bordeaux, and train to Orthez and car to Liz’s.   

Geoff has rung and we have the longest conversation for long time, about his studies at Oxford, but I think his main aim is to quiz me about my readiness for the walk:  I assure that I have done some long training walks, my aim worries are whether my old knees will bear the strain, and about fellow-travellers wanting to get too close.

Isabel rings while driving north from Devon via Oxford (!) where they have had supper in Geoff’s favourite Chinese restaurant.  We have a lovely chat and she wishes me well, then Tams in rings back to speak too with her good wishes, and I hear a chorus of sleepy kids in the background. 

Wednesday 11^th April

Today’s itinerary is Easyjet EZY5013 from Gatwick at 1115 to Bordeaux, and then the train from Bordeaux St Jean at 1635 via Dax to Orthez arriving at 1829.    I am sorry to miss Eleanor at Gatwick who is arriving by an early morning flight form the Philippines, but she is going direct to work and cannot stop for breakfast, while my flight leaves at lunchtime and I have a long queue to check-in.    Instead, have lovely telephone conversation with Ells who sounds happy, and delighted with her holiday, and promise to go up to town when I’m back and help her finish moving in to her new flat.

Penny gets me to the airport in plenty of time, more than 1 ½ hours before take-off but Easyjet’s check-in is hopeless:  this is an economy airline and the first thing they have economised on is staff.   There are more people bossing the queue and panickily calling ‘last call’ for this place and that than there are check-in staff at the counters, and I barely make my flight.  

            At the airport I spot a few people who might be also be walkers.

The travel in France is very easy – the bus for the station is waiting outside the station, and the trains are smart and run to the minute.  A smiling Liz, full of enthusiasm and chatter, greets me at Orthez, with only a gentle reminder that Puyoo would have been a better station to meet at.

Still Wednesday.  Many the place names are familiar to me because they lay on the border between what was Vichy France and Occupied France in the Second World War, and this is the route along which Mary Lindell (in my next book) organised her escape line for stragglers for the British army at Dunkirk and downed airmen.   That is another reason for wanting to cross the Pyrenees by the high route tomorrow so that I can share something of their experience as they escaped internment or imprisonment.

Liz and Ian are on good form and am treated to two generous whiskies – this first I have had since before Shrove Tuesday – while we discuss plans for the end of the month.   Penny and Liz will join me at the parador at Santo Domingo de la Calzada; it’s up to me to make the booking and Liz to find the means of getting there, probably by train.

Their chateau – neogothic and artdeco - is at Osserain in the French Pays Basque, guarding a crossing of the Saison, and occupied by Highland regiment after the Battle of the Pyrenees and by the Gestapo during the last world war.    Orthez and Sauveterre de Bearn are fortified medieval towns, fought over by the French and the Norman kings of England.

            However, let’s see what the weather is like tomorrow and decide if I shall take the high road, the old Roman road now called the Route du Haripse and the Route Napoleon, or the low road, which Charlemagne used through Valcarlos when he was fighting the Moors.

Thursday 12^th April

Wake to the tolling of a church bell and cry of an owl, followed by the dawn chorus.    First light is about 7 and, having read about pilgrims who rise at 4 to get to the next place and – rather un-Christianlike - bag the best beds (can they all be Germans?) resolve not to start walking any time before first light which is about 7.

            And the weather seems fair: I can see the Pyrenees, though my attempt to tell a Frenchman in his language that if you can’t see the hills then it’s raining, and when you can see them, it’s going to rain, fall flat.

Liz kindly drives me to St Jean Pied de Port where we visit the pilgrim office and I’m assured that there is ‘auncune risque’ in taking the high road.    We meet Pierre Bouresmau at the Boutique du Pelerin, 32 rue de la Citadelle, and I collect my poncho – packed in an impressively small pouch and weighing almost nothing and Liz selects a bastón which she thinks will be good when walking her dogs.   We take coffee sitting in the sunshine, buy a sandwich and water and say farewell in the carpark.   On the stroke of noon I pass out through the Port d’Espagne.

No sooner have I set out than it begins to drizzle and the drizzle turns to a steady downpour, so out comes the rucksack cover (I had thought of leaving that behind) and the poncho, and before long the leggings.   It might keep my pack dry but inside this clobber I am soon soaked, whether by leaking rain or sweat or I suspect, both.

 The five miles to Refuge Orisson are every bit as steep as I remember from my reconnaissance here last September.   If anything, with a full pack and the rain and mist sweeping around me, it seems steeper.   1:6 for much of the way, with short stretches of flat.   It amazing to think that 200 years ago 30,000 French troops with two regiments of cavalry marched up here to try to outflank Wellington’s advance into France.

I catch up with Catlin, a retired American surgeon.   This is so unexpected – I never expected to overtake anyone at my pace – that I walk the rest of the way with him.   He is 74 years old, so between us we have nearly a century and half.   We stop at Hunto for coffee and share some chocolate and a banana while we also readjust our rainwear and the rain turns to stair-rods.   No sooner do we step out from our shelter than the rain stops – the law of natural cussedness!

But we are making good speed:  it is 14.15 by my new wrist watch and we are over half way to Orisson.   The rest of the way is in glowering cloud which occasionally opens like curtains to show the dramatic peaks around us, with snow on the high hills, and the valleys below.  Several hundred yards through the greyness are uphill, there’s a short flat stretch and we pause and shake hands to celebrate that we’ve done it.  It’s just gone 16.00 and the Refuge Orisson lowers through the mist!

Inside we meet Catlin’s grandson, James, and share a beer.    I discover they are keeping in touch by radio handsets.   

Accommodation is a six berth dormitories, where one bunk is already occupied by a woman from Florida who has bagged all the blankets and complains that there’s no heating.   True, but ungracious.    In the dining room, the languages are mainly English (including Irish and American), Dutch, German, and Italian.   Most seem to be allowing themselves, six, seven and eight weeks to get to Santiago.   There’s one young, Spanish lothario trying to chat up three girls, Japanese, an Irish and American.

Dinner is communal: soup, beans and pork slices, and postre.   There is lots of good wine and laughter and mine host makes us all introduce ourselves.   Jesús the Lothario is first then me and round the table,  what a mixed bunch – most going all the way to Santiago, some like me dropping in for a couple of weeks, and several Spaniards only doing a few days. 

But very tired, and when the bar closes at nine, I go straight to bed.    I am however up about four for a chat with an Irishman who like me can’t sleep because of (a) the snoring and (b) he’s used to only six hours sleep.   Returning to the dormitory – is this the first time I’ve slept in a dorm or a mess deck since I was a midshipman? – all is silent and I get a couple of hours decent rest.

Friday 13th April

Axel the German is first up starting in the dark to pack his rucksack and I commence a new Olympic competition which is roiling and stuffing a sleeping bag in the dark.  Breakfast of stale bread and café con leche is 0700 to 0730.   Axel is away like a racing snake wishing us ‘God Bless’ and the rest straggle after him at 0800.

Catlin and I are now firm friends and he is my excuse for taking thing easy.    The view over France are fantastic, but soon it begins to snow.

What follows if the most amazing, exhausting, exhilarating experience of my life, crossing the Pyrenees in the snow.   Two or three inches fall and about six of us stick together as a little flock, Catlin, me, Jesús, Mariko, Tara and Rosheen.   Jesús is hopelessly ill-equipped in a pair of suede boots, and a stick he has seized from the roadside and keeps slipping over until one to girls lends him her stick.    However much I may have thought of a bastion as an affectation, it proves it’s worth today, even so I suffer one bad fall when walking on the edge of road and a chunk of turf gives way, but the stick saves me.

But it is a huge privilege to cross the mountains, 17 kilometres (10 miles) rising and rising to 1,500 meters is about the most adverse conditions imaginable, sometimes only able to see the next marker and the footprints of those before us and then entering the forests where the tree branches are covered in snow.   A new hazard arises when we take a brief break and the wind blows frozen snow and ice on our heads.   Eventually we find a refuge and crowd in to share our food and drink.

On the way Catlin and I talk medicine, and reflect that’s between us we have more years and probably fifty more to spare!   Jesús entertains with singing Spanish poems (to the girls), and I fall occasionally into conversation with Tara, who wants to be a writer, and Rosheen who has got a job to go back to in a microbiology lab.   It is difficult to keep any conversation going with Mariko, whose English if very limited, but clearly she if very brave girl to undertake such a journey so many miles from home.

Most of the walk is uphill.   I thought we had cracked this yesterday but most of the way today is uphill through the snow, and the descent into Roncesvalles is as the it says on the signpost ‘muy pendientes’, and the effect on shins and knees is agonising.

We arrive at Roncesvalles at 1500, manned by some ineffectual Dutch volunteers, is well equipped and welcoming.  Two of my Falstaffian Spanish friends from last night, Miguel and Henrique who are escaping their wives, have already arrived and eaten well in the village, and Axel has been here for hours.

The pilgrims’ hostel is however new and well-equipped.  

Friday evening.   Penny (30+ Irish) and her 13-year old son, Zac, arrive about five – much to the relief of us all, they having made the crossing without the benefit of as group to help them through the snow.   They also are poorly equipped:  Zac has no more than trainers and apparently wore plastic bags over them in the deepest snow.   Another Dutch couple got lost when the footprints before them were hidden in the snow and missed the turning.   All told everyone is exhilarated by having accomplished this stage of the journey, which is 16 miles from St Jean to Roncesvalles – mostly uphill and only the last stretch is precipitously downwards.

The pilgrim’s supper is soup and grilled trout and yoghourt, hardly substantive enough to reward us for our labours.   However I do find Carlo, an Italian who massages my calves and thighs and causes a miraculous recovery in my ability to walk!  Almost Biblical.

Attend evening mass in the abbey church is lead officiated by two old priests.   I am concentrating so hard on trying to make sense of their Spanish that I am thrown when they start to read a welcoming message in English.

Jesús gives tutelage in drinking patxaran.   

Saturday 14^th April

The whole place is awake at 0600 and most are away by 0700.   We – Catlin and I – set off about a quarter of an hour later in the dark and the rain.

We stop at Burguete (of Hemingway fame) for breakfast and when I ask ‘Que hay bueno de comer?’ we get panada which seems to be a double ham and egg pie – with two different kinds of egg and of ham, delicious.

The rest of the morning in spent in more snow, and bitterly cold until we over take a Korean threesome.   One of the girls has twisted her knee and while Catlin bandages her leg while I administer Ibuprofen.   There is little more we can do except advise her to follow on to the next town and take a taxi, and for our good deed the snow stops.   They catch up with us in a bar in Gerendiain where we were are re-hydrating ourselves, and help to organise the taxi.

If yesterday was the most on of the more exciting of my life, today is just hard, gruelling slog, 17 miles up and down on wet greasy surfaces, and Zubiri seems to get further away.    We are following a valley through green hills and gentle rises and steep declines.  Catlin confides that he wouldn’t mind dying on the Camino, and promptly we come across a memorial to a Japanese pilgrim who did just that:  I ask Catlin to defer his wishes for the next two weeks until I am back in England.   Eventually we arrive very wearily about 16.30.

Am thinking of taking a taxi into Pamplona, so that I will at least get to see something of the city.

The meal tonight is salad, soup, llenos (rice cakes with tomato sauce) and cod – which Mariko eats elegantly with chopsticks which she unwraps from some personal container.   More substantial than yesterday but tomorrow I may have to look for some meat to eat.

Sunday 15^th April

Yesterday’s weakness resolves itself:  there is a transport service not mentioned in any guidebook called Jacobtrans which for a small fee will pick up your bag and deliver to the hostel or hotel of your choice, so I help several other of the wounded, strained, over-tired and over-aged to consign our bags to this and hope for the best.

 Catlin is called to look at several of the wounded.   He treats then and I act an interpreter and dish out the Ibuprofen.   He is an unusual doctor because he doesn’t believe in intervention, and his advice generally is if the twist or strain isn’t swollen, then to walk through the pain, or, in one case, to by a proper pair of walking boots with some ankle support.

Maria the cook who rather ungraciously dished out breakfast suddenly is wreathed in smiles when I thank her politely in my best Spanish and as I am leaving I am called to arbitrate in a dispute between a woman who wants stay – against the rules - an extra night with her husband who, she says, needs rest.   Catlin has already pronounced that hubby should pick up his bed and walk.   However after I have told Maria how kind she is, she makes a generous offer to the couple to move into a private room, but only after she has cleaned for the morning and she offers juice or coffee.

Odd, how we revert to our national stereotypes.   The Spaniards are friendly and want to indulge in long conversations so soon as you utter a word in their language, while the French, I notice, are proud and aloof and rather seem to treat the Spanish rather rudely.

We set off into more rain and sleet, first walking in a group and then just the Doc and I.   We do leave behind two Australians, a widow and her daughter in law who have making a noise for the last few days:  last night the older one talked loudly about it being the first for ten years that she has slept next to a man. about their relationship – mother in law and daughter in law seems an odd combo.   However, I would have liked to have inquired about their relationship – mother in law and daughter in law seems an odd combo.  One of them is a nurse and has annoyed Catlin by trying to try one of ‘his’ patients.    I think it rather odd that James, the grandson, should rush off ahead.    Anyway we keep company walking very slowly.   I realise that he can’t see too well either and that I am his cicerone is more senses than one.  

We catch with Heinrich, a German, who had lost his way and we had to call back from a wrong turning he had taken.   He wants talk and philosophise but to do so he has seize my arm, stop and turn to face me.    After half an hour of this I feel a disappointment to him, but I make an excuse to catch up with Catlin.  I do discover that he is 71, and with Miguela, the Italian-Canadian who we see form time to time who is 77, I am the youngest of the old guard on this route.   

And I soon think that I have made a bad decision because at this pace we won’t get to Pamplona before late afternoon.   Just when I begin to chill and to despair we enter the village of Irotz where two enterprising brothers are selling local wine rioja casera and pizza and tortilla from their garage.   Revived we set off but now Doc is concerned for me and keeps offering me advice about keeping warm, until the sun comes out – the first for days!

We do indeed reach Pamplona in late afternoon and having delivered the Doc to the Albergue de Jesús y María, I feel my job is done.   He looks completely exhausted and intends to rest up for day or so, and I’m going to walk on to Cizur Menor, where I think, my bag is.

Pamplona is a fine city with 19^th century ramparts and fine churches and palace facades and narrow streets.   On the steps of the cathedral I meet Miguel and Henrique, who have been here for hours having followed some separate which follows the river Arga rather than the Pilgrim Way.   And, again, they have lunched well, and I am greeted as ‘Don Pedro.’

On, on to Cizur Menor and somewhat unkindly, my clothes having dried in the afternoon sun, cold, cold rain sets in again and on the last uphill stretch I am soaked again.   When I take out my guided book, I also discover that the pocket on my not so cheap North Face jacket leaks.

The zip of this jacket is also pretty poor.   On the positive side the equipment for which I am grateful is:

·         The riding gloves which I bought the day before leaving – the only injury I have so far is a sore on my right inner thumb and the gloves keep my hands warm and save the sore from developing.

·         The stick – and others I talk to swear by their two sticks.

·         Also the Altus poncho which I ordered in St Jean.

·         My leather boots and the Bridgedale socks.

·         My Regatta pants which dry so quickly in the wind.

·         My floppy hat, which one day might keep the sun off my ears, but fits under my jacket or poncho hood and give me a little extra space and movement without having clammy plastic round my neck

·         The leggings

 Frankly after walking all day with only stuffed pockets and my staff, I wouldn’t care if I never see my pack again, but when I arrive, there at reception it sits like a long-lost, black-sheep of a brother.   The nice lady at reception helps me choose tomorrow’s hostel and I know what’s going to happen to this particular couch potato. 

Supper in the Parrillada (sic) is pasta, filete of my old boot, and flan and the waitress subtlety leaves the bottle of temporanillo on the table.  Modestly I take less than half before ordering a café solo and a Soberano to finish off the evening.   There is a poetic soccer match on the screen between to Spanish teams which is a joy to watch, then on comes Man U v A Villa and after a disgraceful  and dishonest  ‘dive’ some the schoolgirl striker, Gascoigne, scores a penalty – what a shameful contrast.

The problem now is that having arrived dog-tired and eaten early, if I go to bed early and then when I wake after six of seven hours’ sleep, it’s difficult not to get going again: I shall try to resist this tomorrow, especially as I shall not be waiting for my philosopher-friend-doctor Catlin.