Planning to walk just over 5km today to accommodation that was already booked, I had thought I would drop my backpack and take a detour up a ravine to see the amazing cliffs and reservoir. I expected the detour would be the blogpost for the day, but as I walked I realised I could feel a burning at the back of my right heel. I knew I had exceeded the planned distance for the week and reluctantly decided to give the detour a miss. Except that I fell in beside an Australian-with-a-London-accent gentleman, who told me he was planning on this amazing walk this afternoon and I found myself saying I was also doing it. Before too long another Aussie had agreed to join us.
There was just one small problem. The guy was concerned that he would not get a bed for the night in this town as the municipal Albergue was closed. The lady was also unsure of her reservation and so I offered to go up to the private albergue and scope the place out. Mrs Aussie wanted me to come back down to the bar where we were sitting to tell them the outcome, but my foot was having none of that. Mrs Untechnical here showed her how to find her QR code on WhatsApp and I scanned it and saved her as a contact, flicked her off a message so she would have my details and left her thinking I’m Ever So Clever. I did confess to only learning how to do this on the camino! I set off up the hill, promising to message them when I had news.
I followed the sign and realised that on previous caminos I would have presumed I was in the wrong place and walked out if I had ended up here
This time I was able to ask.
Yes, this was the check-in area for the albergue. Yes, Jan, the Aussie, was on the reservation list and yes, I could reserve a bed for Patrick. What’s more, they were opening in twenty minutes.
This is a hotel (three stars, no less) that is owned by a guy who walked the camino and wanted to “give back” and so opened an albergue on the premises. The more cynical ones sitting around the table in the afternoon would suggest that he could have installed a kitchen if he really wanted to serve pilgrims, instead of making them pay for an expensive meal in his restaurant! They had a point.
He did provide a microwave and if I had known the little shop down the street was open (surprising given it is Sunday) I would have been satisfied with instant noodles.
Patrick and Jan arrived and as always happens, we chatted. They had stayed at Tosantos last night, at a lovely little donativo albergue where we had stayed last time. It was amusing hearing them talk of it….they had to help prepare the dinner, they all had to walk up the hill to the chapel in a cave where they couldn’t even see anything after dinner, they had to go to a service thingy in a little woo-woo room upstairs where they were asked to write a letter to themselves but there was no way they were doing that sh*t, they had to read out a letter someone had written the night before as a prayer, but they couldn’t even hear what anyone was saying and they had no idea why some of them were crying! Surely no one could be that moved. The one Patrick had to read out was all about trying to find the balance between having a social camino and walking solo. He had a simple solution – work out what you really want! Then they had to go back to the kitchen and do the dishes. By crikey! One of them was frustrated with the First Nation situation back at home, both were frustrated with walkers who pay to send their bags ahead in a van – they might as well stay home and walk in their own countries. I suggested there are many ways to do a camino and Patrick agreed, “Sure are, the right way and the wrong way.” I told him I might have just found the angle for my blogpost today. He may have thought I was joking.
Anyway, they headed off for the walk and I prudently opted out of another three hours on my feet. I was not meant to exceed 77km this week and I have done 95, so it is perhaps no wonder my Achilles is letting me know.
Eventually Jan would return alone and drop into a chair, exhausted. She had a few choice words to say about the narrow steep stony track, the ravine and Patrick! It made an amusing soundtrack.
As for my little walk:
I left the Albergue, thinking how even though it was a very nondescript place with little character to speak of from the outside (my initial impression yesterday), it now held wonderful memories and along with Asun, the hospitalera, had made its way into my heart.
I did not believe the weather forecast that suggested rain, but as I walked on, I started to wonder if I may have made a mistake.
The sun was out behind me, but dark clouds were gathering ahead.
The first hamlet appeared after just a couple of kilometres, and was of interest to me primarily because I thought I found a bread oven:
An elderly gentleman was trimming plants in a nearby garden plot and so I wandered over and asked him. Yes, it was the village bread oven some time ago.
Then back to the fields, racing the clouds, this time with a raincoat over my pack just in case.
Grandpa at home, who is reading ahead in a guidebook, had warned me I would be descending into a ravine and climbing out the other side. It turned out to be a bit underwhelming. The descent was less steep than our driveway, and only three or four times as long! That’s it in the picture up there ^^ Then there was just a completely flat walk along a track beside the road all the way to the village.
The rain won.
And soon after that I was bumping into Patrick and the rest is history.
By the way, he returned from the ravine adventure a good hour or so after Jan. His report was a little different. He got to the very top of the hill and looked down on the reservoir, and by all accounts, his photos were spectacular. He admitted they had got lost, although he did manage to eventually find the track they were supposed to be on – only it was closed due to dangerous rockfall. Having tried to tell me before they left that I will only be here once and should be making the most of the opportunity and no one can tell me how far I should be walking each week, he reluctantly admitted it was probably just as well I had not joined them….although I could have made it as far as the fountain, which would have been worth seeing.
You do what you can manage to do.
I had a lovely afternoon stitching…Grandpa had mentioned this morning on a phone call that I had only shown one teaser of a photo, so I thought I had better show another. If I had already stitched one of the geese after which the game is named I would have taken it to the sign in the village that has a goose on it (the village also being named after geese)….but so many people kept stopping me to chat and have a nosey and take their own pictures that I didn’t even get close to starting one.
Soon enough it was time for dinner with Patrick and Jan – and I invited a lady sitting on her own too. She turned out to be most interesting – a Francophile Canadian artist, who is 80 years old and, yes, walking the Camino!
solowalk 2024 