English Hospitality

Wednesday: Estorga to Rabanal
This is a short day (only 21km) but Rabanal is the only place at which I have been certain that I wanted to stop. I read a piece by one of the two monks there, and since then discovered that the hostel run by the English Confraternity is directly across from the church. As it rains in the afternoon we were grateful to have arrived somewhere cosy and be out of the elements before it turned nasty.

After breakfast we have a look around Estorga Cathedral, which is fine without having much to admire. If there had been more time then a more fruitful visit would have been too the Gaudi bishop's palace next door (now a museum of the Camino).

Estorga has promenades offering views across the plain, but we retain our height and climb gently along a pleasant path. The slanting morning rays of the sun soon lights up the red soil and the green of the trees.

Nico asks about James and James the Less. I puff out my cheeks, wondering where one starts, and dive into an attempt to disentangle the Jameses (with reference, of course, to James the brother of the Lord). This leads on to, Paul and the Church of Jerusalem, an explanation of New Testament understandings of the Law, the dating of NT writings, and basic two-source theory.

We stop for coffee in a beautiful village and then press on, upwards, to Rabanal. We find the albergue and I am greeted by Brendan from Tynemouth who knows all about me and is expecting me. The welcome was superb and the hostel is lovely. There was even afternoon tea.

I meet Fr Piers (we soon discover that we have a mutual friend in Mark Butlin) and I am able to celebrate mass for 6 of us in the church before vespers.

Tuesday: I have no wisdom for your walls.

From Monsilla it is a long 30+km walk (one guidebook says 31, another says 35) to Astorga. The weather, which has been pretty good for the last few days, is brilliantly hot and sunny today.

I walk the first 16km with Nico along a straight farm road. The distant bluish grey clouds slowly differentiate themselves from the greyish blue mountains. The sun riding behind our backs lights up the dried out fields of maize and red earth. Once again the colours are so vibrant that Nico and I can't help but think of the monochrome winter colours that we will return to in November.

We cross the enormously long bridge into Hospitalet (around which there is much medieval jousting legend) and reunited with John and Angela, have a picnic lunch. However we still have another 16km to go. The country is beautiful, wooded rolling country, but the sun is hot, and we are tired by the time we get within sight of Astorga. We come across David, a man from Barcelona who accosts us with generosity. "This is your home?" we ask. "No, this is your home." "Please help yourself, David made this today." Referring to oneself in the third person is never a good sign, and David's story is troubling: he left his own company behind, but also a wife and children. And yet he lives here, and has done for three years, in a shanty style dwelling, in order to give away food and drink to pilgrims. There is something wonderful about the Camino, in that it invites and enables people to set up houses and bars and albergues on principles of great generosity. And yet, for David, well-intentioned though I'm sure he was, something had clearly gone awry.

The hostel at Mansilla had graffitied walls, again with the invitation to make your own contribution. It's as if we've reached a point on the Camino at which we are meant to have acquired such wisdom and boiled it down into pithy aphorisms. Constanze, Andre and Angela discuss what they might write on the walls. I too think of poems and quotations, but of course, I write nothing. As I come away I reflect that I have no wisdom to add to these walls. I have jokes and poems and stories and history and lives of the saints, but everything I have is so derived. I have no wisdom to give to these walls.

About two kilometres before I reach David I was reflecting on what I life and the Camino might have taught me. Vaguely I reach for some conclusion along these lines: we do not know happiness until we learn generosity. And here on the road I meet someone trying to be happy by possessing nothing and giving everything away. I'm not convinced he's quite found his happiness, but he was certainly sincere.

The last few kilometres into Astorga seem to go on forever. Outside of town a multi-ramped footbridge rises over the railway line like an absurd joke or an instrument of torture. Everyone at the hostel, when we finally reach it, comments on it.

San Javier proves a lovely hostel in which to flop and recover. Mass is at 8pm and despite a desperate search for an open restaurant that isn't Italian or Cuban, we eventually find a place that will serve the local speciality: Cocida Maragata, which is meat first, vegetables second and broth last.

Happy Feet

Sunday
Walking on my foot is still awkward, but today is a mere 18km into Leon. Apart from a short stop at a bar where they are playing Strauss waltzes we push on for Leon and arrive at about 12:30. This just gives times enough to visit the frescoes at St Isadore and the Pantheon, which has an 11th c frescoed Undercroft. The right hand aisle is nativity and infancy, with the shepherd's flock and a massacre of innocents. The left hand aisle is passion narrative. And the central nave, i.e. over the place of Eucharist is the Last Supper and Christ Pantocrator.

We sign into the hostel of the Benedictine sisters, though run largely by volunteers. Here again I try to make arrangements to celebrate mass. Antonio, on of the hospitelleros, is delighted to have a priest and calls me "padre" at every opportunity. One of the sisters turns up and tells me that mass at 6pm will be fine, and all will be prepared in the sacristy. So i ut up signs, "English Mass, 6pm". However, come 6pm nothing is prepared and no one is in evidence. Moreover Antonio is determined not to let anyone pass from the hostel end of the Benedictine plant, to the chapel which is in the hotel end. Eventually I am able to nab a sister and the sacristy opens. I here someone trying to door that opens to the street and by pulling back a couple of bolts I am able to allow a small congregation of about a dozen to enter, though once I am in the sacristy I see another sister re-locking the door. I keep thinking that it should be a simpler thing to celebrate mass on the camino for fellow pilgrims.

Nico is fed up with pilgrims' menu and pasta dishes cooked in the hostel kitchens, and is determined to get a real meal like a normal human being. Unfortunately the hostel door closes at 9:30 and the restaurants don't start serving until 9. We trail around town only to return defeated to the place from which we set out, in the beautiful cobbled square in front of the hostel. There we get a pilgrims' menu with all the same familiar options: spaghetti bolognese and chicken and chips.

Back in the hostel for night prayer and straight to the dormitory where Antonio is charging about, shouting at the top of his voice that we should all now be asleep.

Happy Feet from Scotland
Monday
Antonio returns at 6am, shouting again, but eventually it becomes clear that a pilgrim, James from Korea, who travels with his son, has been robbed. €2000 has gone from his wallet which hung beside him as he slept. Malte has also lost €70 from his trousers. There are maybe 60 people in our male dormitory, some familiar, some not. It is tragic for James, whose Camino has been marred. It is also tragic, indeed most tragic, for whoever took the money.

The group decides to delay departure in order to give ourselves a look at Leon cathedral. It is the Spanish Chartres, a triumph of gothic engineering, designed to maximize the scope of stained glass. Its story is more remarkable for its near collapse and the extent to which its gothic form has been restored by de-Baroquing.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself. The cathedral doesn't open until 9:30 and the nuns evict us at 8am, which means a good number of erstwhile bedfellows pitch up in the one cafe that seems to be open to sit out the time until opening. This gives me the opportunity to run an errand of which I had despaired. Rachel, from Glasgow, had texted me to say that she had sent a parcel to Leon post office for me to collect. I stumbled across the post office while wandering, disorientated through town on Sunday afternoon. It was only a 15 min walk from the cathedral. My next doubt was that they would actually hand over the goods. My cousin, Helen, had had difficulties getting the parcel containing my backpack. But, amazingly without any Spanish, and by simply presenting my passport, I am given my parcel. It contains 1000 mile socks which Helen Hunt had recommended but which I couldn't find (honestly I looked for them, Helen!). And Green & Black's chocolate and compeed. It also contains a Happy Feet card. (One of my favourite YouTube clips is Kermit singing Happy Feet, look it up now if you don't know it. It begins with Kermit responding to the many requests all asking, "Can the frog tap dance?") So I return to the cafe, happy and triumphant.

Nico and I take time to visit the diocesan museum. By the time we are finished it is 11am. The hostel where we left our bags has reopened. We rejoin the others and Malte breaks the news that he will take a bus on ahead on order to get back to Barcelona to meet his family. Malte is such a good man, and has been such a wonderful companion that we are all a little devastated. We all wonder if the theft has led to this decision. We hug and wish him well and promise to keep in touch.

It takes a while to get out of Leon. All the way to the unlovely Virgen del Camino is warehouses and totally liquidised furniture shops. Finally we get out into open country, and it feels good to be properly on the road again after our indulgent morning off in the big city.

Andre, a German guy, and Angela from Hamburg have walked with us today, and Andre cooks a pasta salad with sausage. Kris from Canada prepares a green salad. However good the food is, and it is, the real event of the evening is the unexpected arrival of Constanze. Unbeknown to us, she arrived in the mountains, and then decided to walk backwards (not for Christmas) but towards St Jean and to see us again. As ever she is full of life and sunshine, and although we only have one evening, it is a delight to have her company again.

Sleep when your [sic] dead

Saturday: to Mansilla de la Mulas
Saturday
Lanced the blisters on my right heal last night and that foot is now pain free. Unfortunately, the pain on the base of my right foot is on the rise.

Although it was wet last night Joanna and Giovanna have done all they can to get pilgrims' clothes dry and they give us a good breakfast and send us out into a beautiful morning. After the rain it is fantastic to see such colours again, and to see the mountains, which suddenly had us surrounded. We were headed to a town about 20 km short of Leon.

Now that the sun was shining everything looks startlingly brilliant. From Boadilla many of the buildings have been made out of red earth and straw, sometimes as bricks, sometimes as render. Set against clear blue skies they are articulately vivid.

The walk today, however, is long, almost 30km. About 5km from our target we come to a brightly painted cafe covered with graffiti to which punters are invited to add. The place is run by a spritely old man who hurries around cheerfully, occasionally singing snatches of Aretha Franklin songs, and making upon the most enormous bocadillo sandwiches. john is sufficiently recovered to tackle one of these. The town seems wonderfully happy: a cat curls itself in Nico's lap, a dog runs excitedly by a car to greet its owner who obligingly rubs its tummy, and small boys creep round corners clutching wooden swords deeply absorbed in their play. The pedant in my is drawn to graffiti, I have to correct the bad grammar above the door.

Eventually we tear ourselves away and soon afterwards we stumble into Mansilla footsore and tired. After dinner Nico does his nightly rounds. He had thought that the problem on my left foot might be an inflammation of the tissue around the bone. Now however, he concedes he was wrong, and that it is a very deep blister which he proposes to syringe. I offer the syringe I was given a week earlier, but he dismisses it as too small. He gets a much bigger needle, tells me to bite something (my sleeping bag liner in its stuff bag) as he will go in on the count of three. I bite, I grip the bedstead and I writhe as if I were having the leg amputated from below the knee. The needle seems to go in forever. Nico says it is the deepest blister that he has seen, and that he has taken out 1.5cm of fluid.

They shall bear you upon their hands lest you strike your foot against the stone

Friday:
Both Malte and Constanze have deadlines: Malte to be in Barcelona with his family and Constanze, a flight to return and help with a course in her diocese. Both have considered leaving and taking a bus further up the trail in Burgos Malte got as far as getting up,at 6am, saying his goodbyes, and then finding the hostal's door locked until 7am, 15 mins after his bus departed. Constanze, too has made abortive attempts to leave. She pines for the mountains. I didn't think she would actually leave- I hoped she would change her flight and excuse herself from her obligations, but no. So we walk to Sahagran, have a paella lunch and say our goodbyes. She is on top form, full of vitality, but we all wonder how it will be without her. Afterall, we have been together since the first day. She leaves us after lunch and we plod onwards struggling to decide which of the two possible routes to follow and where to stop.

Today blisters are back on my right heal, and I have a sharp pain on the base of my left foot. This is particularly sensitive to the stones that litter the path and so I pick my way along looking all the time for the smoothest way. Malte suffers too with his blisters, and it is hardly surprising that many of us are in significant pain: we are walking between 20 and 30km a day, every day without break, carrying at least 10kg more than our usual bodyweight. But it is not necessarily these bodily sores that are the only hardship; today we heard that a tall, apparently fit German guy had given up and taken the train to Madrid.

Nico's guide directs us to a wonderful albergue. The hospitaleros are a Canadian called Joanna & an Italian called Giovanna. Neither have more than their native tongue. "Somehow," Joanna insists, as if to persuade herself, "it works." And, in fact, it does. Fortunately Joanna is on meet and greet and Giovanna is in charge of the kitchen. We have a fantastic pilgrim dinner of minestrone, lentils and chorizo, and potatoes in olives and tuna.

Afterwards I'm asked to lead the pilgrim prayers. We have a period of sharing in our respective languages. And then, by candlelight I read Psalm 90 giving particular emphasis to the lines, "they will bear you upon their hands lest you strike your foot against the stone." I also subject the gathering to my singing of the nunc dimitis and the salve (Giovanna joining in with this).

Wednesday & Thursday: Rain

There was a fantastic rainbow over the church as we walked back from Breakfast in Boadilla. Unfortunately it was the rain and not the sun that prevailed, and does so in fact for the next two days.

The walk to Fromista was a gentle one along a canal. There we had "the worst coffee on the Camino". The rest of the walk was along the side of a road and the rain and wind became vicious. We we stopped for a hearty and protracted lunch in a town dominated by the huge bulk of San Maria la Blanca, which sadly was shut.

The walk on was dreary. Nico said later how glad he was to have run into us and to have company for what would otherwise have been a very dull, and wet couple of days. He's a big hit with everyone in the group, sharing stories of travels, and jokes, and tending to our wounds.

We arrive in Carrion de Los Condes* where the main hostels are run by religious sisters. Nico's guide book guides us as to which nuns to head for: we avoid the Poor Clares and the youngish sisters who run the parish hostel and head instead for the diminutive (there seems to be a 5ft height limit) sisters who run the Spirito Santo hostel. The rooms are quite large, but again beds rather than bunks and the sisters scurry around making sure that radiators are on so that we can dry all that got wet. All of us were disappointed by the performance of various bits of our equipment in the rain. My Gortex Timberland boots seemed to allow water ingress as quickly as any regulation shoe, and from the toe, not from the top. Expensive Gortex Jackets were similarly leaky, and backpacks too. On this last score we collect plastic bags from Dia supermarket: all that expense and ultimately we keep our things dry with free plastic bags!

I go to mass and leave Malte, John and Constanze to cook. (I've typically taken control of the kitchen too many times so it's time for me to stand back.) They cook a lovely cheese pasta and salad and we have a happy dinner.

* The other strange/ disturbing thing about this town is that the central square is named Plaza de Generalissimo Franco.

Thursday:
The walk from Carrion is described as as study in monotony. There is 17km before the first town with a bar along a straight road through fields that seem from a distance to be ploughed earth but on closer inspection turn out to be filled with nothing but stones. It rains again pretty steadily. The bar, when we hit it, is full of familiar faces and we settle in for a longer than normal break eating bocadillos.

After a while I start to feel nauseous and head for the bathroom. Fortunately this visit is enough to put me right: my temperature returns to normal, and with some fresh air and water, I am okay again. But before we depart John feels unwell too. He tells us to go on ahead and he'll catch us up. He does eventually catch us in the next town, but he is struggling (and John is a big athlete).

When we arrive in Terradillos Los Templarios we had already discovered that the Templar hostel was closed for the off-season and so all pilgrim piled into one cramped hostel, with steamed up windows and rooms. Constant rain stopped anyone venturing very far and we were content to accept reports that there was precious little to see, and no other place/ restaurant/ shop to go to.

We ate in where the conversation was considerably better than the food, except for John, whose illness turned out to be a bad dose of gastro-enteritis. He was badly sick, and it was not certain whether he could walk tomorrow.

The doctor with the lamp

Tuesday:
We all felt better for a night's sleep in a room shared with only six other sleepers and no snorers. One of these was Nico, a doctor whose two houses, we worked out, I passed very close to in Holland and Belgium, and who walks with us the next day.

The first place we come to is the ruin of St Anton, a fine gothic church which may have been Antonine judging by the Tau crosses in the rose window. Burgos cathedral was built while, or just after, the great French cathedrals of St Denis, Amiens, Rheims etc were built, and was modelled on this new style. Moreover, Burgos became a model for the surrounding area andré doorway of this, and neighbouring churches reflects this fact.

The road now leads to a village on a hillside. Nearest to us is a perfect assembly of monastic buildings, where we stop for "the best coffee on the Camino".

From there we had a steep climb up the Meseta, which was narrow at this point and tools crossed in only a few kilometres.

We had intended to reach Fromista but this was too far and we stopped instead in Boadilla. The hostel here was truly "one of the best on the Camino". It is a converted barn, of which we choose a row of single beds (i.e. not bunks) on a upper loft. Out front is a lawn and a pool and sculpture and people lying in the sun drinking beer. The hospilladero is so laid back, he insists payment and credentials, and paying for beer can all be done later, "relax," he insists. He also serves one of the best pilgrim meals we have enjoyed: local stew and beef.

That night on our hay loft, dodging the low exposed beams, Nico make his way from bed to bed with his torch tending to the afflicted (it could easily be a scene from theCrimean War). By this point I am no longer the one most in need of his ministrations. He tells me, "Of course they are shocking to look at, but your feet are okay, I think, because new skin is forming," and I a delighted with this positive assessment.