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.