Camino Twenty-Five – Monsoon in Arzúa

 

I slept, almost well.  The Spanish couple left so quietly.  I hear them go, I hear cats walking on carpet, but they are so careful in their quiet movements, so conscious that the door has a handle when they close it.  How many people ignore the handle, slam a door instead of practising silence, stealth, and other good shamanic training towards invisibility. 

It seems to me that no one wants to be invisible any more; everyone wants to be Very Noticed these days, with far too much Ego in their Cosmos.  The need for noise affects and disturbs others, but has that thought ever penetrated their little homespun brains?  I was once thrilled to read: noise is the emblem of anarchy, the very fingerprint of entrophy.  Something to do with the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics if I recall correctly.  Reading it gave me such a sense of, I’m alright then, it’s the rest of the world that’s out of kilter.  A most restorative revelation even to my homespun little brain. 

This morning I can just lie here, because John is driving to Melide today and will drop me there.  I accept with gratitude and grace and I can breakfast slowly. I love how magic just – happens.  Leisurely I listen to pilgrims tapping their sticks along the road below the window; enjoy the muffled sounds of morning chatter; know I have three hours in which to write up my journal, have a quiet breakfast, idle the hours.

I am charmed to see two Frenchwomen massaging each other’s feet as they prepare to put on their boots.  I collect my towel from the washing line, I washed it last night.  It is still wet, so I’ll pin it to my mochila to dry as I walk.  Its sunny colour will surely attract the sun, it has been grey and drizzly overnight.  I hear the clatter of horses’ hooves and leap to the window – the three glorious Andalucians are walking past. 

John arrives just as he said he would, we have a coffee before leaving.  I ask him if he would mind a tiny detour; I discovered that a village on the way is called Leboreiro, meaning Place of Many Hares.  My imagination plays – how can I resist the possibility of having a sello of a hare leaping over a scallop shell? 

Alas, we find no office or albergue and thus no sello  in Leboreiro and we miss Melide, there is a huge festival in the main street and detours took us, as strangers to the town layout, far beyond the town.  John drops me at Panabispo where the milestone to Santiago shows double figures.  I feel momentarily bereft standing there as John hugs me and wishes me Buen Camino; I sense I will not see any of the three Americans again.

I stand a moment, watch peregrinos as they enter the wooded path ahead of me. I am tired and wonder if knowing that I am nearing the end of my marvellous pilgrimage has thrown a cold douche of reality over me, dampened my wonder at walking an impossible dream?  I shake off the feeling, photograph the milestone of Panabispo with its double red figures and walk on to Boente, climb another hill to Castañeda and make a steep descent into Arzúa.  

 

A huge festival fills the streets, my intention to reach an albergue in the old part of town is hampered by crowds and I feel momentarily confused. 

I walk into a small hotel, they are full but recommend Hotel Begoña in easy reach down a side street.  It isn’t quite that easy, or quite so close, and I could have negotiated my way to the albergue as easily.   

But I am here, the room is blissfully quiet, the shower blissfully hot, I wash everything and rig up my trusty washing line between balconied, but not accessibly balconied, windows and lay down with my legs up, clean feet against the wall, recovering once more. 

 

That washing line, an invention with now well-rusted rings at each end, has travelled a few hundred thousand miles with me around the globe; I am fond of it, appreciate its humble purpose.  It is lime green, a plaited cord of nylon and a length always perfect for the myriad spaces in which it finds itself strung anywhere over the world.  That is it so amenable to infinite variety is a small and practical miracle in itself.  I’ve grown so attached to its helpful adaptability and good temper even in the most trying surroundings that I hesitate to use it in open shared spaces these days – I might forget it, or it may prove unfaithful and take off with someone else ...

My feet remind me they are cold stuck up there on the wall so I swing about and tuck them under the blankets, doze off for an hour or so before dressing and food foraging.  The markets are closing down now, I have a not so good pulpo, dare I write that those I ate in neighbouring Castilla y León were vastly superior? 

I return to my room just as a colossal clap of thunder rents the air and lightning bolts pierce the horizon in pirouettes.  The heavens open.  I have no need to go outside again and decide to send my mochila on to O Pedrouzo in dry comfort tomorrow so go down to arrange it with the receptionist.  She takes my details and €3 for David who is the mochila taxi here and tells me that there is to be live and very loud music in the town square tonight until 3 am.  

My heart sinks, the town square is just around the corner from my bedroom window.  Furthermore I notice when I strung out my trusty washing line that the building opposite is a dosshouse for old hobos a few of whom were already reeling below the window.  Noise!  But then the monsoon.  I love rain.  Love monsoons.  

And the storm of all storms, liquid carnage, washes out play, the bandstand is flooded, the music called off and the old soaks in the hostel opposite my bedroom are silenced too. I watch from my windows as the rain gathers in rivers to flood down the street. 

 It is dramatic and I have a wonderful night’s sleep. 

The sky is clear when I wake, the air filled with ions so negative after the storm they positively dance in front of me as I step out. Today’s walk to O Pedrouza is only nineteen kilometres. 

I take the wrong turn, again.  But a sixth sense alerts me and I turn back and round a corner to see a trail of peregrinos heading down a narrow alleyway left.  It is a lovely easy walk, my heart and back are light, the sun shines through clouds which have been cleansed of their rain burden. 

I am charmed by the horreos, especially the ones with protective symbols.  What better way to protect the grain that will give you life than to hedge ones’ bets by using Catholic as well as pagan symbols on the roof apexes of these grain stores, life stores. 

Another donativo table appears and I choose a banana, but to my dismay have no coins.  Nor have the German couple who pause and take.  I take, but feel so ill at ease I write an IOU to Felix for my banana. 

I sign it, promise to pay next time.  I don’t know that I will do the Camino ever again but if I do I will honour the 50 cents.  Perhaps someone reading my IOU will indulge in an act of random kindness and leave Felix what I owe.

I recall Caroline’s Camino with rain rain rain from when she entered Galicia; I remember Gerald Kelly’s misery as he recounted wet, wet, wet right through Galicia; and I thank my lucky stars that the rain has passed – and I am in Galicia.  

 

I reach a grave of a woman; it has a photograph, she is younger than I and died while doing her second Camino.  While I digest all that is written, breathing in a marvellous smell of eucalyptus oil as I stand at the edge of the eucalyptus forest which will take me all the way to Santiago, another couple pause next to me, one reads out loud to the other.  They are Australian and my Alice in Wonderland moment is poised to resurface. 

To be continued ...

 

 

Camino Twenty-Four – A Camino Miracle on Castromaior

Twenty kilometres today.  A grand walk with only a few small hills brings me to Vilcachá and I decide to stop right here.  No one is at home, so I sit in the sunny garden after washing out a couple of things, socks get so dusty, and hang them on the lines in a large open air barn which is near the entrance.   A pair of dreadfully sick cats are lying on the grass on the opposite side of the garden.  I have never seen such ill looking creatures, so weak and glazed eyed they might be dying.  They are too weak to hunt or forage.  I do not want to disturb them by going over to them; they haven’t even registered my arrival.  I wonder if I should stay here – such unhappy creatures are a sure indicator of the inner health of people too.  Cats have a thin time of it in northern Spain as far as I can see, but these are beyond despair.  St Francis didn’t come this way that’s for sure. 

Eventually the owners of the albergue return.  They are unfazed by the feline Death Row on their lawn.  I ask what is wrong with the cats, prepared to take my wet washing and continue walking.  They don’t belong to us, I’m told, but the Australian next door hates cats and we think she might be poisoning them.  We let them lie here in the sun, but we can’t help them.  I have my credencial stamped, am shown into a lovely dormitory, choose a bunk, lay out my sleeping bag and then go next door.  On the table in the courtyard there is an ugly notice signed by Suzanne warning people not to feed the cats, they multiply.  Not that sick they don’t, I fume, and knock, rather tentatively I must admit, heaven knows what kind of monster might appear, at Suzanne’s door.  There is no reply, and what will I say anyway? 
 

As I turn back to the street I hear horses hooves and look left to see three stunningly handsome Andalucians, almost plumed, one ridden by a highly costumed rider.  They are riding to Santiago, and a marvellous sight they are.  Two greys lead and a chestnut ridden by a woman follow a minute or so later. 

During a chat with Gordon I’m told that Suzanne has no visa to stay in Spain and no liscence to run her little illicit shop either.  There is a veil of ill feeling, fiscal as well as feline, between the legitimate albergue and the illegitimate enterprise of their unattractive neighbour. 

I sigh, send the starving and sickly beings all the warmth and love I can without invading their space which would make them use up what energy they have in their effort to move away from a human; I wonder how they eat, but know it is too late now.  They cannot hunt, and probably, hideously, are only able to crawl over to eat Suzanne’s poison bait. 

Later, a good and generous meal cooked by the two women and Anne Marie tells me if there is a snorer I can come down to the salon and sleep on the huge sofa.  There is – and I do.  It is a marvellous old building and I am content lying there listening to the wind and the rain on the window. 

Breakfast was reasonable, Vilachá has no bar anyway. Gordon, who owns the place, has a marvellous story to tell of how he walked the Camino because he lost his memory after six small strokes, and is the subject, loosely, of Thea Hughes’ novel of the Camino.  He advises us not to go up the thousand steps to Portomarín, the rebuilt drowned village that lies beneath the central bridge we will walk over, or to be lead astray by the kilometre and a half detour around the new town only to come back down to turn left at a 200 metres from the same steps, but to bypass it all, continue on past the steps, and walk back over the river by way of an old bridge further along to climb the hills to Hospital de la Cruz. 

And that’s what we all do, with great gratitude.  It is a silvery morning, crisp and cool and misty, the weak sunlight glancing off the ghostly river under which lie the lives and memories of millennium.  Gordon tells us the scheme set to gain from the drowning of the village only profited the planners and the engineers.  He is a wry and cynical character and I suspect his insight is accurate. 

 

Dripping in the humidity I reach the heights of Monte Torros, thankful for the slight plateau to Gonzar, and then lurch and stagger up the sheer vertical to Castromaior.  It’s only 11 kms from Vilachá, but imagine your lounge wall as being 700 metres vertical and that’s about the incline of the walk, give or take a degree.  I reach the second heights of the climb,  Castromaior.  As I come out of the forest to confront the road I lean heavily on my stick, catch my breath in great gulps, and send up a futile prayer.  It has to be futile; I do not know a single human in northern Spain.  Holy Mary, I puff and wheeze and pray sans hope, please send me a taxi, a lift, anything ... 

Hey! Zoé!  I hear it.  I think I am hallucinating from exertion, hear it again, and see across the road a car pull up and an arm cheerily waving.  It is, miraculously, John, the third of the three charming Americans, John who drives (and who rescues animals in his home state) because he is unable to walk distances.  He has pulled up and I am truly incredulous.  I leap the ditch between where I stand and the road, run across and voila! jump in the car.  He switches off the air-conditioning as I am dripping in the humidity and it would chill me.  Angel! 

We were wondering how you were, he said, we hadn’t seen you for a couple of days and I decided to look out for you ... I wasn’t quite sure it was you coming up over that rise ...  

Even I, used to such things as homely miracles, have to confess this one beats them all; although, walking into a closed restaurant in Rome, a city of merely 6 million people, to find the only remaining diner was Sue, the American woman I so wanted to keep in touch with from our meeting in Assisi, was also pretty impressive.  I hadn’t even prayed for that as the odds were so stacked.

John drives on to Palas de Rei, twelve welcome kilometres.  His hotel is full, and lovely it looks too, one storey log cabins set in greensward ringed with pine and chestnut trees and wide gardens.  The receptionist offers to phone a new albergue in the town for me and John drove me down.  It proves perfect.  I am taken to a ten bunk room; later a Spanish couple come in and take up residence at the other end.  No one else comes in. 

I walk the town in five minutes, find The Forge, a café with good food, a pilgrim three course meal with wine for 9€.  Later I walk up the Camino steps to a small church dedicated to San Tirso for a sello and am surprised by two Madonnas.  One stands on a spiral shell; a Brazilian peregrina, more communist than Catholic she confides, is suddenly overwhelmed, as I am, by this symbol of, she tells me, the Great Earth Mother Goddess.  She speaks in capital letters, and I hear them.  We sit in equal awe, and a bit teary.  Soft music of all the Ave Maria’s ever written is playing.  A Korean woman light candles, sits back down with her husband, they remain in prayer.

 

I watch other pilgrims clump past the altar to the sacristy to get their sello without so much as a by-your-leave or a nod of acknowledgement and I send my churlish thought to the Madonna of the Spiral Shell.  How, I ask Her, can you bear such rudeness?  In your own home!  I hear her smile and her words: I love them all anyway!  I wish I did, but accept her admonition with a grin and a giggle. 

A quiet night.  The Spanish couple at the other end of the long large dorm are perhaps mid forties, rustic, very quiet, no lights on or noise; she is suffering. They are Camino babes, only began in Sarria.  I show her the leg stretches, but I think she hurt too much even as she attempts them to understand their benefit. 

The Brazilian peregrina had told me there are only three days walking to reach Santiago.  Oh no, I think, shocked, how sad, my wonderful Adventure can’t be over.  She walks with her husband, they also began in Sarria, and she is suffering.  I think of my weeks of aching and pain pain pain, but saying, one just gets on with it, would be poor consolation, so I nod sagely. 

 And the peregrina's tale continues ..

Camino Twenty-Three – A 007 Moment, Saintly Temptation and Camilla of the Three Swallows

 

One shower, one loo, in a mixed dorm of twenty-one.  Not an inspiring experience at albergue del Oribio.  Made worse by the snorer of all snorers, in the bunk below me.  His mate apologised as the snorer snored on, having a wondrous night’s sleep while the rest of us suffered, allergy, he said.  Allergy, my eye!  Keeping twenty people awake on a walk as gruelling as this is not an allergy, it’s the height of selfishness. I lay sleepless; I prayed his mother in heaven would demand his company; I prayed he would stop breathing; I prayed he would fall out of bed; I prayed wildly for anything to happen to the poor unsuspecting, blissfully sleeping, bastard!  And I tell you all, do not attempt to walk the Camino without bringing with you, tucked surreptitiously into your passport, a Licence to Kill.

The morning walk was magical.  Of the two roads I chose the longer and the lower road to Samos where I sat in Lola’s Café in the misty sunlight, eating and drinking all manner of deliciousness’s while waiting for the tour of the extraordinary Benedictine monastery. 

 The two young women who own the café proudly display their own compostelas’ framed on the wall for all to see.  Being there lifts my tiredness, the walk, cool and shady, is restorative.  I don’t know how I can walk without sleep, but I do. 

The monastery is worth seeing, for all that so much was destroyed in a fire not so long back. 

 Some rare manuscripts survived, and some of the contemporary frescos lining the walls of the cloisters, telling of the life of St Benedict and his raven, one of St Scholastica, his twin sister, are attractive. 

 

Benedict had refused her request that he wait awhile with her one evening as she sensed she was about to die.  She invoked a storm so fierce that he could not leave to return to his hermitage. 

 

 Great gal, never mess with a wild woman is the moral of that story. I would like Scholastica.  I once sat in a bus going down to Dharamsala from a hill post further up the mountain with a Nyingmapa rainmaker.  He was an impressive character too, and I wouldn’t have dared cross him with thigh bones as hairpins in his mane and malas of miniskulls round his neck.  

Mermaids are another surprise in the monastery – painted on manuscripts, carved on the huge courtyard fountain.

I spend a couple of hours in Samos, the village itself only exists because of the monastery, but the day is pleasant and it takes a while before I decided to gird up my loins and get going on to Sarria.  

 

Sarria is the beginning of the end.  From here it is only 110 kms to Santiago.  I learn that from here thousands of people begin their Camino, it is the last point from which one can start and still receive a compostela.  It will become a bed rush, so I’m told, but I don’t quicken my pace or feel unduly worried, there will always be a bed.  And there is – in Los Blasones, probably not the best choice of albergue in spite of being welcomed by Rufus Sewell without the glint in his eye.  I beg a small room, of women only.  I shouldn’t have bothered.  I was given a room with two bunks and in due time three other women arrived.  One said her friend snores only a leetle.  I showered, went to eat and to explore. 

I walked the mediaeval alleyways to find good food and many albergues that felt inviting.  In the window of one is an 11^th century Madonna that stops me in my tracks.  She has all manner of tickets on her; I am drawn in to rescue her.  I swear she calls me.  Alas, the hospitalero doesn’t move from his seat and my plan to spirit her away in response to her being ignominiously ticketed is thwarted.  I asked him if I could photograph her instead.

She was worth doing time for.  She’ll sit in my memory along with Borovinsky’s amazing silk embroidered dressing gown I once stood in awe of in the Kars Museum when I was tripping across the Old Silk Road and about to descend on Marco Polo’s bridge.  As I stood there I gave full reign to the possibility of a year or three in a salt mine in Siberia but decided a suitcase of summer clothes would prove cold comfort against 60 degrees below freezing.  

A bit like St Claire’s robe, these ancient things sing, mine mine, as I re-encounter them this lifetime.   It’s a puzzle.

To sleep – or not to sleep.  I didn’t.  The leetle snorer is oblivious even when I tweak her toe.  She turns over and carries on snoring.  The Licence to Kill would come in handy but I plump for something more calming.   I lay turning the Rosary ring on my index finger, Tina gave the ring to me at my pilgrim Mass and blessing at St Mary’s a couple of days before I left for my Camino.  After a few Hail Mary’s I slip into the dual consciousness that meditation brings.  The snoring is just as discomforting, sleep doesn’t follow, but I dolphin-dose the night away, half awake, half asleep, as dolphins do to stop them sinking.

The pretty young French Canadian girl above me doesn’t sleep either.  She is only nineteen and has walked from St Jean Pied de Port.  We leave at 5.30 am.  It is still dark.  A Frenchman shines his torch for me when I fail to see the arrows, continues to turn and shine his light as I walk quite behind him slowed by my tiredness.  The temperature is so humid my glasses fog up completely and keep sliding off my nose. Slowly daylight dawns and the French man continues on apace.

The municipal albergue on the farther outskirts of Barbadelo looks marvellous; a plump and contented ginger cat sits on its porch.  Fabulous walk again today, twenty kms and very rural, cobalt columbines cheer the wild verges, a granite walkway leads by a stream, springs and brooks really babble.

 

At Las Tres Golodrinas a welcome donativo table by Camilla from Italy is set outside a huge barn.  She has spread it with a gay table cloth and with all one could wish for breakfast.  She has had a pretty sello made, of three swallows, which we stamp into our credencials.  The Japanese woman who rescued me from under the barrier that led to nowhere by pushing my mochila flat against my back while an unchivalrous Spaniard ignored my plight is here.  She throws her arms around me and we hug hugely, she tells me her name and I try to pronounce it.  She is so brave; she speaks no English and no Spanish and is walking the whole way covered from head to toe so not a sunbeam can touch her pale skin.  She is possibly forty, plump, has a very sweet smile.

Copses of holm oak, banks of foxgloves, tiny hamlets like Mercadio, Morgade.  Morgade, five kms further on, has a charming restored albergue, an equally charming owner, and I am served tea and cake with a certain panache.  Patricia is here, the pretty French Canadian.  She tells me that for her the Camino changed after O Cebreiro.  I nod, silently agreeing, but will not speak of why.  What would words convey anyway, we share something ineffable. 

I continue on.  A man, an old rustic, comes towards me.  He indicates that he wants to give me something, places a walnut in my hand.  He asks if I will give it to Santiago and pray for him, he is too old, and not a little infirm, to go there himself. 

 For good measure he hands one to a Frenchman who passes at that moment, the Frenchman looks at me and says, we must do this, it is a trust. 

 I have no thought of not doing it, whether I am the first or the squillionth pilgrim who has been entrusted with a walnut and a prayer; it is indeed a trust, a holy pact! 

I think as I walk that the Camino can be walked in three ways: as a prescription (my plane leaves on xxx date and I must walk xxx kms every day to get to the end as prescribed by time); as a performance (I did the first one in 30 days, I can do better than that, race for 29, 28 ...); as a prayer (no plane booked, no time set, as long as it takes, always in awe).  That’s it, Three P’s for a Pilgrim!

To be continued ...

 

 

 

 

Camino Twenty-Two – O Holy Grail – and Weston-super-Mare!

 

I recover my equanimity and walk back to my room.  I meet one of the Americans on the way and mention St Francis and the cabinet holding the Grail.  He is surprised that I hadn’t known: there is a huge monolith at the entrance to the village, he tells me, with a bronze of the Grail story.  

 

I hurry back to see what I have missed.  Sure enough there it is – a bronze map of England and Spain, and a trail marked of the Holy Grail and its journey with Parsifal to O Cebreiro from – Western-super-Mare!  Wolfram von Eschenbach’s story on this map for the world to see, bypasses Glastonbury altogether.   

 

Well! Well!  is all I can manage as my loyalties are seriously miffed.  Even more disagreeable is that this bronze map of Britain in front of me, one of Boadicea’s daughters no less, doesn’t mention Glastonbury at all!  My ire grows apace!  Weston-super-Mare!  That mud bound plot – huh!  No way Weston-super-Mud will ever be named “this holiest Erthe”, as Glastonbury is. 

This is borderline blasphemy and I need another hot chocolate.  I am steeped in these legends, yet I am aware that in no Glastonbury church are these images given concrete form.

Joseph of Arimathea appears in the tapestry behind the altar of St Mary, Our Lady of Glastonbury; the window of St Joseph of Arimathea in St John’s is Victorian; Langport has a mediaeval window, but neither Grail nor cruets have ever been found...  Did Herr W. von E. know something about Weston-super-Mare that no one else does?  Or did the sculptor of the bronze map just fancy the triple barrel name?  I ask you, the Holy Grail in Weston-super-Mare!  Huge billowing laughter rises in me as I stand in front of this grand non-sequitur and I stroll across to the knoll, laughing to myself, to wonder at the foolishness of humankind, and myself in particularly, for our, my, fierce attachments to our, my, little conceits and vanities.  

 The wildflowers have more honesty.

Later I go to the pilgrim Mass in the church.  A woman in her forties or so stands next to me.  She shuffles uncomfortably and I glance down.  I am appalled at the sight of both her feet which have horrific blisters, are bandaged with transparent elastic weave over the whole foot pulled over massive pads and gauze bandages all over her heels, toes, balls of her feet. Her pain reaches me.  Feeling helpless I send a prayer to Santa Maria a Real up there on the wall to help heal them. 

The priest invites people of different languages to read the Reading.  After my earlier epiphany bathos follows.  The reading in English is offered by an older American woman with a voice that would grate cheese.  Actually it would grate the Cheesewring down on Bodmin Moor.  She hasn’t the grace to genuflect before stomping up to the lectern either, a sure test for my tired tolerance levels in spite of my restorative laughter of less than an hour before.  Her voice is painful to listen to, she relishes her moment with the microphone; her excruciating mispronunciation renders the already ghastly reading of the day incomprehensible, which is probably just as well, it’s the Ahab Jezebel scenario.

I happen to have great sympathy for Jezebel.  She was related to Dido, the tragic Queen of Carthage whom Aeneas used, abused and betrayed, and so the world lost Carthage. Her Lament from Handel’s Xerxes is quite the most haunting aria I know.  Jezebel worshipped Astarte, Ishtar, the Mother Goddess, which is right and proper for a woman to do.  The Jews of the day didn’t like that.  Jezebel was thrown out of a window by the worthies to be eaten by a pack of dogs; thrown to the dogs.  Our Jezebel was also a Daughter of Zion, an inconvenient truth when it came to getting rid of her.  The Hebrews, on the other hand, worshipped female deities, SHE, who was to be later eradicated under the extreme pressure of the male Jewish priesthood. Reflecting on this I forgave the cheese grater for not being able to pronounce what she read, she probably couldn’t believe what she was reading!

I squirm.  I’ve never fathomed why we insist on perpetuating the Old Testament when its blatant mal-treatment of women and nature runs counter to the new leaf Jesus was said to have turned.  The OT has long been on my list of books to-be-sidelined as antithetical to women. 

The priest was lovely.  He asked St Francis and St Clare and St James to protect and guide all peregrinos safely to Santiago de Compostela. 

And so to bed.  I fold up one of the seven quilts lengthwise to lay put on the glacial tile floor of my iceberg so I can step warmly all the way to the loo.  I eat cake in bed, and spend ages writing. 

 

18^th June - to Triacastela 

Fab night’s sleep in the iceberg.  Today I will walk to Triacastela, according to my Michelin deserving a red walker sign for a difficult descent; 660 metres and steep.  I will take care and put fleece in the toes of my socks to cushion my toes against hitting the crown of my boots on the descent.  

Paulo Coelho took a taxi from O Cebreiro to Santiago de Compostela, a whole 150 kilometres.  He obviously didn’t collect a Compostela.  In fact I’m not even sure Shirley MacLaine did, she doesn’t mention it either.  I’ll give it mention for sure, I will have earned it. 

O Cebreiro is my epiphany.  I leave as the sun is rising; know my own Camino will be different from now on.  I will continue to walk every step but there, on the mountain, after that breathtakingly lovely walk and a whole day of Memorable Moments I feel I have penetrated a ring-pass-not. 

All pilgrims walk in silence as the hills and wind and forests seem to demand.  The fleece in my boots cushions my toes; bluebells, significant of these cooler heights, line the banks. 

Alto de San Roque has a marvellous windblown pilgrim statue, many times life-size, on the crest of the climb; as his hand clutches his hat the wind is frozen forever in bronze. Coming into Hospital de la Condesa a young Italian passes me, stops: I take a photo of you he says and I ask: why?  He indicates with his hands my polka dot ribbons, the rose in my scarf, my billowing skirt, the beribboned walking cane: so spirituelle, he smiles.  I giggle.  Only 144 kms to Santiago. 

A slow-worm too slow to escape some deliberately cruel boot lies bleeding and only half crushed in the centre of the path, the centre where no one walks.  I am saddened by such gratuitous mutilation.  Would it make it less bewildering if I thought whoever left it to die so slowly mistook it for a snake?  No.  Nothing deserves such cruelty.  It is a protected species in England but I am helpless to protect this one. 

Mount Poio at 1340 metres nearly does for me on the last sheer rocky and shale-slippery moment.  Another young Italian reaches for my hand and steadies me, helps me on up. 

I don’t stop at the café, too many pilgrims, but walk on past Fonfria and Biduedo to Filoval.  Huge rock crystals are everywhere, some even placed as park benches.  I stop at a new albergue and café in the last magical hamlet.  Had I foreseen Drearcastila would be just that, drear, I would have set my mochila down in Filoval for the night.  The food is so good, so plentiful and so tasty; gazpacho, the freshest bread and an arroz con leche.  All made in the kitchen and eaten outside on a hilltop garden levelled out of the steep incline, spectacular views down to the valley and Triacastila. 

 

Drearcastila – I walk the whole of the small town in search of an improvement on the dorm in albergue del Oribio with its washing lines on the busy street and chairs on the busy street but other pilgrims had walked faster than I and all rooms and dorms had been snaffled.  I return with foreboding to my top bunk by the window of a dorm of sixteen and lay out my sleeping bag, have a hot shower, dress in the same skirt and check out the church which I see from my window. 

and the tale continues ...