Author: Rachael

I came out of the chapel for the last time and looked up the road.
The first time I had stood on that spot I had been keenly aware that if I had been joining this monastery for forever I would always look up that road and want to see what was at the end of it…and beyond. Today I got to walk back along it. As I did so, my heart was full. And then suddenly, unexpectedly I saw this sign and my eyes were full too. What’s with that?!

I think my first few days on the camino didn’t really feel like a camino, because I knew I was about to stop for a week. Now I feel like I’m really walking, albeit not far each day. I am well rested and ready to fall into the pilgrim rhythm. I decided to take photos of the signs – they are what remind you that you are on the Camino. It is easy as a sixth-time-camino-walker to take them for granted.

And of course there were other camino-ish things too

I found a rock to sit on and do a little sketch.

And then there was Villatuerta. I certainly appreciated the mural on the sports hall wall

I’m staying in a place called Casa Mágica tonight and it sure is magical.

I think I must have had a few words bursting to escape after the last week! When the hospitalero opened up and came outside to greet us, I didn’t stop with Hola, but had to ask “?Estás listo para nosotras?” (Are you ready for us?) Of course he was, but I needed to talk!!!! In the supermarket I asked if it was possible to buy half a loaf of bread…..this one and not that one please. Of course it was (and I could see a half loaf sitting there beside the till), but I hadn’t used up my words yet. I wanted to try using the money card I have brought with me and so the cashier got the full sorry about “I don’t know if it is possible to use this card. Do you know if I can? Can I try it?” It worked and she gave me a thumbs up!
As nice as silence is, there is also something special about speech. This morning the smiling-waving nun had smiled-and-waved-and-winked at me as she entered the chapel….then when the Hospitality Nun prayed a blessing on the pilgrim sister who was leaving them today and walking to Santiago, the smiling-waving-winking one turned around in her pew and gave me a massive grin. I wondered if they ever want to talk.

Now there are plenty of people to talk to – from Spain, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, England, USA, Hong Kong, Ireland, Australia, France….and that’s just the ones I have already talked to LOL

I’ll leave you with two videos from today….one from this morning which is more about the audio than the pictures and one that reminds me it’s Saturday and people who live here are out doing their thing

Video cyclists

Video grain field and hills

PS For the little four and Rob, do you remember this fountain? (As there are some people reading this blog who do not know us, “the little four” are the youngest four of our eight children. At six foot two plus, some of them are no longer so little, but we all know what I mean when I say that – they are the four who walked this camino in 2014 while the big kids did things like work/university and be sent to India)

We have a photo of this fountain taken from straight on, but the sun was in the wrong place to do that today. Half the village of Lorca was out in force this morning doing a community tidy-up, clearing moss off steps and muck out of the fountain, weed-eating and cutting back plants in public spaces.

A week ago as I walked up to the Monasterio de San Jose de Alloz I had no idea what to expect.
I couldn’t even work out which door to knock at!
I didn’t know that a week later the words of the Gloria would be rattling round my head replacing thoughts for much of the time.
I didn’t know that I would get sick of Gregorian chants by Day Three and have come to appreciate them more by Day Six.
I didn’t know I would get to sleep until 7:15 this morning and be woken by the bells and have to scramble to pull almost all my clothes on because it was only 2 degrees outside and I have to walk the full length of the long building OUTSIDE to get to the chapel – I felt just like Maria from the Sound of Music rushing to arrive in time.
I didn’t know the nun in charge of hospitality would chitter chatter when she delivered lunch and dinner, which meant it wasn’t quite as silent as I had thought it might be.
I didn’t know there would be two other pilgrims for a meal or two each so we spoke a little Spanish and German as we ate.

I didn’t know I would become quite fond of the hospitality nun, a wee lady who reminds me of Dr Seuss’s Cat in the Hat.
I didn’t know I would also become fond of the nun who would smile at me and sneak a wee wave at me from under her dangling sleeves as she entered the chapel.
I didn’t know I would only see the nuns in the chapel and that they would be so serious.
I didn’t know there would only be nine nuns and that they would not all attend all the services.
I didn’t know there were So. Many. Prayers. (Who would’ve thought?)
I didn’t know you would get a whiff of the wine when the cover was taken off, and that only the priest would drink it.

I didn’t know I would learn so much church-speak. But I should have guessed my linguistic brain would be working overtime. I didn’t know I would learn when to stand and sit and cross and bow and end up knowing when to say Amen.

I didn’t know today I would head out for a walk, knowing exactly where I was going and as I looked around would know every road I could see and each village and building, and what was on the other side of each hill. I would know where there was a growling dog and a scarecrow and which path had horseshoe marks on it. I would know where the chicken farm was and the dam. I would remember exploring and following a sealed road that turned into a dirt road that turned into a narrow track that turned into a meadow….and that I scrambled down the hillside to cross a proper road and continue on another dirt road. (Thanks to Organic Maps I was never really in any danger of being lost)

Vídeo from road

I didn’t know I would meet the postie nearly every day as she drove from village to village to delivering mail and feeding stray cats.
I didn’t know I would find myself bird watching.
I didn’t know there would be so many poppies.
Or that the sky would be so blue.

I didn’t know I would look up today from a stony road I have walked a few times and notice in the distance, the town I walked from before I was here.

I wasn’t sure what the food would be like, apart from obviously being Spanish.

I didn’t know this would be a time of rest and refreshment.
I didn’t know I would discover from friends at home that there is an appetite for silent retreats and prayer retreats.
I didn’t know I would end up imagining what more silence might be like.

I didn’t know I would enjoy this place so much

Video starting with bells

A week in a monastery:

El día de los flores (especially poppies/amapolas)

And a scarecrow, whose head I lifted

And some crests

And a spot of birdwatching

Finally a video in which I get to see the village I’ll be walking to in a couple of days

Video from top of hill

Oh, ok, one more video then

Vídeo poppy

Then I took a walk to Alloz (ah-yoth)

Pondering how these teeny tiny flowers are so small on their own, but together make a glorious display

Waiting for the bells to ring…

Video bells at monastery

….this happened:

Video sheep and dogs

I saw a church on a distant hill and tried to get to it…

I kept walking and wondered where this path might take me:

To a wonderful view of the valley, including the monastery…

Video of panorama from top of hill

…and a cute wee village with a twelfth century church. Still awed by how old that is!

A little walk

Video of the kites

When you start the day on top of a hill, you know you get to go downhill.
Down through the village…

…and out onto a Roman road:

At the bottom of the hill you find a Roman bridge, and just like yesterday, if you just take a few steps to the side, in this case onto the well.signposted bike route, you get a good look at it.

None of the pilgrims who passed seemed to care for a look. Their loss.

The Roman road continued and I continued to be amazed by it.

Luckily I remembered to look up occasionally…

Then it was getting close to the time I needed to start paying attention for my turnoff. It was time for my detour to the Monastery of Alloz. As it is not right on the camino trail when I was at home I had “walked” along it on Google maps street view to check it was safe and to work out where to divert. I knew that after crossing the road at an intersection there would be the red.barriered motorway going overhead, followed by an aqueduct, also overhead, and then a dilapidated house. The camino would turn left just after the house and I would go straight.

Sure enough…

Have you noticed all the cyclists in those pictures? Must have been a race on and what´s more, the route must have been on the camino trail, because they just kept popping out of that path. I was quite pleased to be continuing along the road.

Video bikes at turnoff

I walked on and a young guy came down from a side road carrying an enormous lettuce in each hand.
“¿Vas a Santiago?”
“No, voy al monasterio”
“Claro, vale, vale”

The exact same conversation would be had twice more with not.racing.cyclists who were keen to put me back on the right path. So kind.

There goes one of them down the double rows of poplar trees I was expecting to see:

And there goes the other over the bridge:

I wouldn’t be crossing the bridge, because there´s the monastery straight ahead.
I am going to be here for a week doing a silent prayer retreat. I don’t expect to be blogging. Or maybe I will. No promises. Once I start walking again, I will be back.

Here is a free hint for if you ever walk the Camino Francés: when you are leaving Puente la Reina, do not go straight over the bridge.

If you go directly over the bridge you will probably stop in the middle and look down at the murky green water, maybe even take a selfie…but if you take the little cobbled path to the right of the bridge it will take you down to the water´s edge in four seconds and you will get to see a beautiful reflection in the river. Well, I did.

Before I even got to the bridge I was overtaken by a number of pilgrims on Calle Mayor. Because I am walking short days I have the luxury of really experiencing each moment. I was fascinated by the sun shining above the rooftops, the crests and the doors:

At the edge of town in an enormous stretch of plain windowless brick wall, I spied a half open door.

The voices that wafted out invited me in and I caught the last ten minutes of morning mass in a highly ornamented church, which was in stark contrast to the exterior.

Vídeo Puente mass

And suddenly I was in the countryside again.

At the top of a hill I make a point of looking back. Today I did it even without the hills (although there were hills to climb as well!) and was richly rewarded:

Soon enough the hilltop town of Cirauqui came into view and before long I was sitting in the shade of the church slicing tomato to put in some crusty bread with aged jamón while I waited for the albergue to open.

If you are ever on the Camino Francés, I have another hint for you. Stop in Cirauqui and stay at Albergue Maralotx. The host is hospitality personified.
When I didn’t rush to be first in line when he opened (even though I had arrived well before everyone else), he came out and asked for my sleeping bag so he could reserve me a bed before he let anyone else check in! He gave me the best one (a single bed, not a bunk) with this view:

It may not seem the pick of the crop at 3:15am when the church bells are still chiming every quarter hour!

Vídeo Cirauqui church

Yesterday evening conversation turned to where.are.you.walking.to.tomorrow? Someone immediately observed, “No one will stop in Puente la Reina, that’s much too short a day.” Which happens to be exactly what I am looking for and so that was my plan. It was meant to be 10km with a detour to the stone Romanesque church Santa Maria de Eunate, built in 1170. (Coming from New Zealand where anything over 100 years is thought to be old, the age alone was enough to make me want to see it. Add to that the fact that we detoured to it on a previous camino only to find it closed, and it was not too difficult to convince myself the couple of extra kilometers were a good idea)
I set off with two ladies I met yesterday, and one of them mentioned that they have 12 rules of the camino, number one of which is “Guidebook distances are all lies”. That turned out to be true enough. 14.2km is what my phone read out by midafternoon, although to be fair to the guidebook writers, we must have walked around the church a dozen times and every step I take from when I get up to when I go to bed is logged as I am carrying my phone with me all the time.

Wanting to ease off a bit for the Achilles, which was burning at every little incline, I deposited myself in the garden of the albergue for the afternoon with the intention to move nowhere for as long as possible. It took some resolve to NOT go and see the puente that the village is named after. Having been built over a thousand years ago, it will still be there tomorrow.

I finished off pages in my journal…

…started this blog post and then I will FINALLY get to some writing. (So far I have done no writing, no reflecting, no cross stitch, no knitting…but I suppose I have only been on the ground three days and I am trying to just take things as they come and be open to what is in front of me)

So today…

Another cold start with blustery wind turned into a Stunner.

And a video of it will upload… the church at Obanos

Vídeo – Obanos church with cross