1 May to Santa Domingo de la Calzada

Wow wow wow

I don’t know what language she was speaking, but it’s what she said as she came up behind me and saw the view I was filming. We were unable to communicate any more than that, but wow wow wow said it all.

I can’t show you the video, sorry, because videos gobble up all my available storage.

Later I would walk with a Korean couple for a while, and after exhausting my Korean vocabulary that they turned into a song (Hello*thank you*goodbye) and repeated over and over as we stepped along in unison, poles and feet hitting the stones at precisely the same time, the man would spread his arms wide and exclaim, “Wow wow wow”.

At one point I would chat with one of my children at home and her response to seeing where I was walking was: that looks fake. It really was that good!

Arriving in town, May Day festivities were in full force, the girls handing out unleavened bread to inhabitants of the town, and by mid afternoon I would find myself watching an exquisite saxophone and trumpet duo playing on a crowded street.

The Albergue is completely surrounded by amazing churches and a cathedral. Such a contrast to the morning’s walk, but equally magnificent.

What a rich day!

I must have been subconsciously creating this blog post as I waited for Jill (I’ll tell you about her in a minute) to join me for a look around, because I said to the pilgrim sitting next to me, “Wasn’t it an especially beautiful walk today?” She thought every day had been beautiful, but today was just cold and windy. What she said was true – every day HAS been beautiful, today WAS cold (again) and the wind was unrelenting and coming straight at us with such force you had to strain against it….but at the end of the day, I will remember the awesome expansive beauty the most (For you to truly appreciate the pictures and see the mountains off in the distance, you’ll need to read this on as big a screen as you have access to!)

Now, about Jill. She’s an angel.

Here she is helping me eat some of my food. The rest of it, we packed into a bag and she carried it to Santa Domingo for me. She’s an angel, not a super-hero (although she has run marathons and done triathlons)…unfortunately she has a tendon injury which is preventing her from walking, so she took the bus…and my bag of food. We managed to eat a lot of it for dinner!

And do you remember Krzysztof, the Polish cyclist? Yesterday he told me that after a rest day he is (and I quote) “a volcano of energy”. Actually, he was such an upbeat individual, I rather suspect that even when he is down he is still a volcano of energy! Anyway, yesterday was essentially a rest day for me and today I may not have been a volcano, but I set out at the fastest pace yet and very quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm. When I have done very long walks, I have sometimes experienced the body just propelling forward without any apparent effort on my part. I had not expected to revisit that feeling on this walk, because I will not be walking very long distances, and I am stopping so often to take photos it’s a wonder I get anywhere! But today I came close to that feeling less than a kilometre after starting. I was almost a volcano….and I was certainly bubbling with wonder.