A day on the road

Come with us for a day as we take you through what has become the routine of our lives for the last seven weeks. 

Our day usually begins at about 7 am.  Not by choice! The expectation at all albergue hostels is that everyone will depart by 8 am, allowing the staff to clean and prepare for the next group, when it opens again at 1:00 pm. Besides, there are always some very early risers who are ready to leave by 6 am (and apparently walk in the dark for the first hour!).   We are always among the last to leave and very deliberately so. 

Packing our rucksacks is the first task of the morning, and their contents are very basic.  In addition to the clothes we wear for the day, we each have: the clothes we change into at the end of the day, thermal layers, towels and toiletries, basic first aid supplies, technology plugs and cords, ponchos. Anne's weighs about 8.5 kilos plus water and food for the travelling day; Bob’s is about 11 kilos.  We've become used to these weights, although with more specialised (read expensive) equipment we would have been able to decrease it.



 If Anne looks tired and dazed its because she usually is at that time of the morning

Breakfast this morning is at a nearby bar/cafe.

Translates to "Breakfast for Pilgrims" and the use of different languages is in response to the many nationalities that walk the Camino

We have slept at the delightful town of Astorga, right next to the cathedral. After breakfast we had a quick look at some of the ancient Roman walls.  We would love to have spent more time there and in the other places we have gone through, but find that the life of the pilgrim and the life of the tourist don't meld so easily. Shops, museums, churches etc only open at 10 am and by then we need to be well on our way.  Rucksacks on our backs don't make sightseeing a pleasure either.

Today we have glorious spring weather – warm and sunny with clear skies. We will walk 22 kilometres which we now find is an easily manageable distance. Although our guide book gives us a basic description of the country we will go through, each day is a surprise and we never know what we will see. 

We find that that it is a gentle climb into higher country and the views open up before us. We have frequently seen snow-capped mountains and today is the closest that they have been.

Todays walk is a delight, with wild flowers in abundance.  When we stop, the silence surrounds us except for the chatter of birds and buzz of insects. Not all days are like this and after the cold and wind we had last week we really appreciate the warmth.

While much of the Camino is on dedicated paths, it is not always so and part of todays walk is on the roadway. We need to take a lot of care at these times for it is very scary to have large trucks whizzing close by – and more scary is that our instincts don’t account for their being on the right-hand side of the road!  We have rocky sections as well, making walking a lot more difficult.

 

We have found that in traversing the country the style of villages varies immensely.   A feature of the three villages we pass through today is the incredible amount of stone that has been used to build the houses, walls, and animal shelters. The labour taken to do this would have been immense.  Now, many are falling into a state of ruin, but enough remains to catch a glimpse of the days when life did not hold all of the comforts we now expect. 

 Here a stone wall acts as an animal pen. Behind it is a cemetery completely walled by stone, with a stone chapel at the rear.

The old and new, side by side

Each village has one or more 'bars' but these are not the bar sthat Australians immediately think of, for here as much coffee is sold as alcohol. For pilgrims they provide a place to stop for food and drink, but for the local people, they are the social hub of the town.  In the early mornings it is common to see older men starting their day with a glass of spirits and women drop in for coffee after the children are at school.  In late afternoons the men congregate to play cards or a form of dominoes. Separation of seating and times of use by men and women is quite noticeable. Some food  always available but what it is will vary in nature, quantity and quality. There is often a very noisy TV going which is the centre of attention when there is a soccer match on.

We usually take our morning tea and lunch breaks out in the open, enjoying the scenery. Taking our boots and socks off is an important part of our ritual at break time , as it really helps revitalize tired feet.

 On the road again,  Anne greatly appreciates the walking poles that were given as a gift from Living Faith staff, and uses them every day.

We have enjoyed todays walk so much and it doesn't seem long before the village where we are going to sleep comes into view. There is usually a choice of several albergues and after a little searching we find the one we have chosen. The Camino is full of surprises and this albergue is not at all typical of the normal experience, but is a sheer delight with its friendly, homely feel.

We are warmly welcomed by a British lady, who greeted us in perfect English. We couldn't resist. Our pilgrim 'credentials' or 'pilgrim passports' are stamped and passports checked. The Credential gives one recognition as a bona fide pilgrim and the stamps validate that the holder really did walk the distances your daily travel and sleep overnight at the said village.

Our first task at an albergue is always to claim our bed (we've learnt that the bottom bunks are always best), and to then unpack the rucksack, trying to maintain some semblance of order.  Today the room where are sleeping in is quite large with ample floor space, but sometimes it's very squishy and difficult to find a place to put things.

Then it's time for a hot shower, always good at the end of a long day’s walk, followed by some hand washing of our clothes.

Then, at 4:00 pm, tea and biscuits were served to all pilgrims staying there .....this has never happened before at any of our albergues!!

Tonight we will cook our own food so it's off to find a 'supermarket'.  Finding food to cook is always a challenge in a small village and although there are two shops in this town their contents are minimal and much the same. Lots of tinned food, a few fresh veg, packaged meats, cheese, bread. In the early weeks of our pilgrimage, we used to visualise during the day of what we would like to eat for tea, but very quickly got over that as the reality never matched the dream.

 

 Its not Coles or Woolworths, but we have learnt to be flexible and creative.

 Tonight we manage a frittata and veg, flavoured with herbs from the garden. Delicious.

And today it's even warm enough to eat it in the garden!

We also went to Vespers at the church next door....mostly chanted by the monks in Spanish but with a few sections in English. Many pilgrims attend.

As it moves onto 9 pm people start to go to bed. We've all walked a long way and are all tired. Hopefully there won't be too much snoring tonight and well get a good night’s sleep and do it all again tomorrow.

A more typical albergue experience goes like this: Checking into an albergue is time consuming. Firstly, the albergue may be difficult to find. Will we try the first one we see as we enter the village, or try to locate one that is listed as having a kitchen? Where abouts in the town is the one we want anyway? Will it be full? Will we need to sleep on the top bunks? Does it have wifi? 

Most albergues have no space in which to place rucksack contents, so they get strewn over the floor and under the beds. Often we share adjacent beds with people who speak languages that we don’t understand. That always makes for an interesting conversation!

Toilets and showers are mostly bisexual/unisex or whatever, and since the shower cubicles are always tiny, with no space to hang one’s dry clothes, that too makes for an interesting conversation!

Most pilgrims seem to eat out rather that do their own cooking. A ‘Menu of the day’ at the Bar costs about ten Euros (fifteen dollars – each). These are good value in that there are three courses, plus bread and a bottle of wine included, but the menu is very repetitious and easy to tire of. The first course is usually a choice of soup, salad or pasta; this is followed by either pork and chips, chicken and chips, fish and chips, ham and chips etc. No vegetables are served with the second course so if you don't get soup or salad you don't get vegetables. Yogurt, fruit or an ice cream make up the dessert choices. Both restaurant meals and home cooked ones include a bottle of wine.

Bed-time is quite orderly. There’s always some people who get to bed before 9:00 pm – they will be the early risers. We retire by 9:30, and lights are usually off by ten – which doesn’t mean much because daylight continues till about 10:00 pm!

Nightlife consists of listening to snores, the shuffling of blankets as people turn over periodically, creaky bunk beds as people ascend or descend, mutterings and whisperings. Needless to say, not much umm – privacy …

Postscript

Since preparing this posting we have crossed three mountain ranges and are now walking in the most beautiful province of Galicia, with just 100 kilometres to go. In our next post we will give more detail of this section. 

The following photos will have specific meaning for Living Faith readers.  Some of you will recall that in last year's closing service I made reference to the Cruz de Ferro, the iron cross where many pilgrims leave a stone, symbolic of their life or prayers. Here is the stone picked up from the school's Nature Space, brought with us to Europe, carried 800 km across Spain and now nestled among stones from across the world and placed there with prayers and love.