28 April to Ventosa

There are more types of pilgrims that I didnt introduce you to yesterday.

Firstly is the sort who gets sick and doesn’t take a private room, but shares their gastro bug with everyone in a communal dorm. I have to really make an effort to be kind to them, even as I try to maintain as much distance as possible between us.

There is another sort that some nights I wish would take a private room too. The Snorers.
(For maximum effect, turn up your volume to as high as it will go before hitting PLAY……and make sure you play the recordings for at least a few hours)

Snoring videos x2! The pig and the chorus

There is a more amiable kind of pilgrim…although initially I thought it was one of those crowds of pilgrims who get dropped off by bus to just walk short sections when I heard a mob descending on me this morning.

Invariably they tend to be Spanish, they walk fast and they chatter constantly. But this lot were not the bussing sort. I know, because I got into conversation with three of the ladies. This group of about twenty is a group of friends from Barcelona, who walk three stages together every year, booking hotel rooms months in advance. They started in Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port and will take about twelve years to get to Santiago de Compostela! Today was the first day of this year´s adventure and they were most excited to be walking again. They left Navarrete and probably saw the same things I did:

I am not sure if they tried the gate to the cemetery at the edge of town and went in – more likely they just admired the enclosure and walked on. The facade was moved in the 1800s from the ruins of the pilgrim hospital at the edge of town that I posted yesterday.

They will have seen the grape vines for sure. This is La Rioja and there is no missing them.

And they saw Ventosa, where I have stopped. Some of them walked up to the church, others just had a snack in the bar and then waved goodbye as they continued on their way

There is another pilgrim I would like to introduce you to. She will be 75 in July and is celebrating LIFE by walking a camino. She started yesterday and sat opposite me at dinner the night before. Three years ago she had a brain aneurysm and had surgery that apparently only 9% of people come through. She had to learn everything from scratch, and did not expect to walk again, but here she is, determined to make it to Santiago.

There is another sort of pilgrim too, almost the opposite to her. It’s the American lady, who never walks anywhere at home, and decided walking a camino sounded like a lot of fun. She is delighted that she has done 100 miles and only taken a bus twice, and today was trying to catch another bus to Burgos instead of walking there – she’s going to spend a week being a tourist and staying in a hotel. She has had enough camino!

There were two pilgrims I had to say goodbye to today, which was a little disappointing. Due to injury we were all walking short stages and had enjoyed spending evenings together, and expected to continue at least until one of them recovered and went ahead. But today I was the only one to get a bed in this town and they had to taxi on a couple of towns to available accommodation. No more German conversations, at least not with them (it was our only common language, although the Belgian lady speaks Flemish, Dutch, German, English, French and some Spanish!)

Dinner