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of time to rest while I catch up:   we walk on through vineyards, noting the broken irrigation channels which have been replaced by no other visible of irrigating these fields.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.