Chris and Chris Break Free

From Hontanas to Itero de la Vegas (20 km)

I am on the road at 6:30 this morning, nice and early.  It is very cold today but there is no wind, at least not in the early morning as the sun rises over the hills. Soon the wind picks up and it is relentless for the rest of the day.  I walk alone to the first town, 9 km away.  I have decided that the best coffee for the day is in the first open restaurant.  You never know when you will find another restaurant.  So I stop and enjoy a coffee and a tortilla which is my favourite Spanish tapa, a egg and potato mixture that is cooked into the shape of a pie.  I meet Chris in the coffee shop and we decide to walk the next 11 km together.  This is the first time we walk together on the Camino.

Chris walks quite slowly, but he is steady.  I walk much more quickly but I stop a lot more frequently, to put on a jacket, to take off a jacket, to rebandage my feet, to have a coffee, to write in my journal.  Really any excuse to take a little break.  But this morning we walk at Chris´ pace, slow and steady.  I am still barefoot in my sandals and I am feeling the strain on my feet.  Even the bones are starting to hurt.  I decide to try my hiking shoes for the last hour and I am surprised that I can get my feet into my shoes and that my feet actually feel better.  At least they are warm and dry.

For the most part, the Camino was flat today except for this one big hill.

As we enter the next town, storm clouds have collected and the winds have picked up.  We decide that we will stop here for the day even though we have only walked 20 km and it is just noon.  We have had a good talk on the Camino and have cleared the air from yesterday.  We are thrilled to find a private room with a double bed and two singles.  For 21 Euro we can have the whole room for ourselves.  Sold!  What a treat to have some space to spread out and to have some security too.  Of course, the pleasure that comes with privacy goes without saying 🙂

We go through our usual routines – shower, laundry, beer and food.  We get all our clothes washed in a washing machine for just 3 Euros.  By the time they are washed, the storm as blown over and the sun has come out.  They dry very quickly on the line in the backyard.  There is a computer in this Albergue with internet and it only costs 1 Euro per usage, unlimited time.  I only manage to write one blog entry because the computer is so slow I just give up.

Erin and Cameron, a young Irish couple arrive later in the afternoon.  Chris and I both know them individually, and now we visit with them as a couple.  It must be strange for people.  We all have dinner together at the Albergue; the Pilgrim´s Menu is a bargain at 8 Euro.  The food is quite good but the wine is undrinkable.  I have been bumping into Cameron and Erin for a few days now and each time I see them, I get to know them a little better.  Erin is a lovely girl, just 22, very pretty, smart and articulate.  She has been plagued with all kinds of issues on the Camino – allergic reaction to mosquito bites, bed bugs, sun burn (she is very fair), and a cold.  She has had more than her fair share of pain.  I learn that she has just finished journalism school and has a job writing a weekly column for a local paper.  I think her biggest challenge right now, and perhaps this is the reason why she is walking the Camino, is to come to terms with her hearing loss.  She reminds me of Tricia who we met on our Antarctica Cruise who also lost her hearing as a young girl.  Tricia proved that it is possible to live a full life even with a hearing impairment.  I hope Erin finds peace and acceptance with her hearing loss, and finds a way to live life to the fullest.

Erin tells me the story of the stolen walking sticks.  Her friend, Leah had parked her sticks outside a restaurant door which is the custom on the Camino.  When she left the restaurant, her sticks were gone.  She was upset because these were good sticks.  But the next day, Erin and Natasha (another Camino friend) spotted Leah´s sticks in the Albergue and together with Leah they confront the woman who is now holding them.  This older, Spanish speaking woman claims she can´t understand them and tries to pay them no attention, I guess hoping they will go away.  But they persist.  They pull out their phones and show pictures of Leah with her walking sticks, the very sticks the woman is holding.  It is very obvious that they have caught the thief red handed yet the woman defiantly takes the sticks and puts them in the bottom of her pack.  The girls are angry at the nerve of this woman. As tempers begin to flare, a tall, dark and very handsome Italian man (I think this is the same guy the Irish girls were swooning over in Narana) intervened on their behalf, talking to the woman in Spanish.  After a rather heated discussion, the woman reluctantly relinquishes the sticks back the Leah, the rightful owner.  I take this story to heart and I am even more determined than ever to guard my high quality walking sticks.  Good walking sticks are a hot commodity on the Camino!

Print Friendly

From Burgos to Hontanas (29.5 km)

I wake up late this morning after a really good, long sleep.  I am amazed at how good my feet feel this morning.  I only feel one pain point this morning so I decide to keep walking and not stick around to buy running shoes.  I wonder if I´ll regret this decision.    I am on the Camino at 7:30.  It is a dreary Sunday morning and within a few moments it starts to rain.  I put on my plastic poncho with the help of a passing pilgrim – it is definitely a two girl job to get this poncho organized around my pack.  It covers my pack nicely and comes down to my knees in the front.  I think it is going to be ok.  It is cold today and I must keep walking fast to stay warm.  It is such a dull day, the kind of day you would love to just curl up on the couch with a good book and cup of tea or hot chocolate.  It reminds me of the many Sunday morning runs I have done with my sister Sonja.  We have run in all kinds of weather – storms, blizzards, biting cold, searing heat.  Nothing stops us on our Sunday morning runs.  I´ll never forget the first time it was raining when I first started running with her.  I had the nerve to call her up early in the morning to see if we were still running.  Of course, she told me perhaps a little tersly, you´re not going to melt in the rain you know.  So I imagine this morning is just like one of my Sunday morning runs and I even have a conversation with my sister (in my head of course).  There is just so much to talk about!

I spend some time thinking about how I am inclined to put the needs of others ahead of mine.  And I try to take care of other people´s feelings. On the surface this seems like noble behaviour, but when I keep putting my own needs to the side, then anger and resentment can easily take hold.  I see I need to work at being more balanced, taking care of my needs and the needs of others.  It does not need to be mutually exclusive.  Lots of thoughts are going through my mind after meeting up with Chris yesterday in Burgos.  We didn´t leave on the best of terms, and I feel unsettled by this.

For the most part, I walk alone today, but for an 8 km stretch I walk with Dave, an American from Virginia.  He is walking with this 22 year old daughter Julie but today she is walking with her new Camino friends and he has gone ahead to give her some space.  When I ask him how he is doing, he proceeds to unleash a long list of things he is stressing about.  I will call him ¨stressed out Dave¨from now on. He is a commercial airline pilot who has been doing his dream job since he was young.  Not too many people can claim that these days.  Dave seems to like to keep things on the surface and is even a little aloof, but we pass the time telling each other funny stories.

I walk alone the rest of the day.  It rains on and off all day and it is really windy and cold.  My poor poncho is not holding up well as the wind is ripping it to shreds.  I guess you get what you pay for!  Finally, I take the poncho off as it is just useless at this point and I rejig it into a backpack cover, quite effective too.

My cheap poncho seemed fine at the outset.

It´s a long day of walking and the weather isn´t all that great but I still am in pretty good spirits.  My feet are holding up pretty well, although they are cold – still barefoot in my sandals.  I enter Hontanas at around 3:30 pm ready to call it a day.  As I get myself checked into an Albergue, Chris walks in with some of his friends.  He had arrived about an hour earlier and was staying in the Municipal Albergue down the street.  It´s a little awkward bumping into him again when we just saw each other yesterday.  It seems everyone I know already knows Chris and vice versa.  We get news about each other through these mutual friends.

We are staying at different Albergues and we eat dinner in different restaurants and hang out with different people.  It is rather weird since it is a very small village, I can see Chris down the street eating his dinner with his friends.  But I enjoy having some space and appreciate that he has respected my need for space even though he doesn´t really like it or understand it.  And so ends another day on the Camino.

Print Friendly

From Villa Franca to Burgos (41.4 km)

Determination is my friend on the Camino today.  As I prepare my pack at the crack of dawn this morning, I hear people complaining about the cold weather and the hard hills ahead of us for the first 5-6 kilometres.  Sure enough, as I head out the door at 6:30 am, I am greeted with biting wind, probably just a few degrees above zero Celsius.  And then I see the first hill, right in front of me.  My feet are still hurting me mainly on the balls of the feet so that every foot strike feels like a nail is being driven into the sole of my feet.

The sun is just peaking out over the distant hills and I take a few moments to admire the beautiful scenery.  And then I think about something my friend Angus wrote in one of his comments, that he thought I was a very determined and strong person.  Well he´s right and today I will draw on my strength and determination to get me through the day.  I am determined to conquer these hills, to get out of my funk, to have a good day and most importantly to get to Burgos before the shops close so that I can buy a pair of running shoes.  Today is Saturday so I must get there today since everything will be closed tomorrow.  It means I must cover many kilometres.

Burgos is my goal today….a rather lofty ambition given the condition of my feet.

I march up that first hill, ignoring my feet, attacking the ground with my walking sticks.  I walk with such zeal that I am passing people, something that I never do.  I barely break a sweat because it is too cold.  But the cold envigorates me and gives me energy.  Soon I find my pace and even my feet seem to know that today they must cooperate because we have a big day to get through.  After a while, I don´t even notice the pain.

Before I know it, I am at the first town.  I´ve covered 12 km of hilly terrain in under two hours.  This is really fast for me and I am encouraged to keep going hard.  I walk mainly through a forest for the first part of the morning.  But then the land opens up offering beautiful views of acres upon acres of barley swaying in the wind like the ripples of waves on the sea.

I think about two stories I heard the night before, told to me by an old Dutch man who was originally from Indonesia.  The first story happened ten years ago on a trip he made back to his home in Indonesia.  While he was visiting his family, he met a young man in his early twenties who was also from Holland and was originally from Indonesia as well.  He was there in search of his mother´s  family.  His mother had died when he was a young child and his alcoholic father had as much as abandoned him in Holland.  He was desperate to find his mother´s family.  During his search, he made friends with the older man who offered him much fatherly advice and assistance.  Well, the young man did not find his family.  Before returning home to Holland, empty-handed, he made a serious request to the older man.  Will you be my father?  This took the older man by surprise and at first did not understand the question.  The young man said he needed a family and wanted to adopt the older man as his father.  Well, this was a strange request. The older man said he must talk to his wife and and two sons back in Holland.  Long story short, the young man meets the wife and kids, tells them his story, and they all agree to welcome him into the family.  From that time forward, the young man called the older  man and his wife, pappy and mammyand the sons are his brothers.  The young man is now in his thirties, with a wife and children of his own, and the wife calls the older man and his wife, pappy and mammy and the children call them grandfather and grandmother.

The second story is quite different from the first.  It happened when the older man was a young boy, living with his family in Indonesia.  His father was the village shaman, a healer with special gifts.  One day, the young child sees a vision, it is the ghost of his grandmother and grandfather.  It terrifies him.  His father explains he has a gift to see the spirit world.  Well, he wants nothing to do with this so called gift. From that day forward, he rejected everything his father represented, thinking it was all quackery.  He has a brother who followed in his father´s footsteps.  But this older man was adamant that he wanted nothing to do with any of this nonsense.  He prides himself in being practical with his two feet planted firmly on the ground.  No new age crap for him.  He is doing the Camino as a physical challenge and is completely closed to experiencing anything beyond that during his journey.

These stories make me think about being open or closed to new experiences, new ideas, new people, etc.  Interesting how we can be both at the same time.  Open to some experiences, like this older man taking in a stranger as a son, and closed firmly to others.  I look at myself and wonder which am I, or am I also a little of both.  I decide I want to be a more open person, and the Camino is a good place to start.  I want to be open to new experiences and people, to be less skeptical of things I don´t understand, and to be less judgemental.  I know I began the Camino feeling very open and I had many interesting experiences, but these last few days I have closed myself off and it feels like the Camino closed itself up too.  I am determined to stay more open for the rest of the Camino, and in my life in general.

I must walk 32 km today to the outskirts of Burgos from where I plan to take a bus the remaining 8 km into centre town.  Some pilgrims would be shocked to learn that I am actually planning to take a bus.  They would say I am breaking the rules.  My view is that there are no rules, each must walk their own Camino in their own way.  And today, I know 32 km will be my limit and I must get into the city to buy my running shoes.  Common sense prevails.

Just another thought about my Camino journey.  I am walking from St. Jean Pied to Port to Santiago, a distance of 780 km.  I know for a certainty that I cannot physically cover this distance in the 29 days we have available for this journey.  This means I will need to take the bus occasionally which as you know I have already done.  The journey is what is important to me, more than being a purist and saying I walked the whole damn thing. Not everyone shares this view on the Camino, so I just wanted you to know this is what I am doing.

Roads strewn with pepples were my curse on the Camino.
Much of today’s walk was along paths such as these. 

I am amazed that I keep my pace right to the last few kilometres when I start to fade a bit as my feet are just throbbing.  I reach Villafria and stumble upon the bus stop and actually catch the last bus downtown.  But when I arrive in downtown Burgos, all the stores are closed.  Turns out to be a holiday today. Doh!  This means no running shoes for me unless I hang around until Monday something I don´t really want to do.  I will decide in the morning if I continue to walk or hang back for yet another couple of days.

At the municipal albergue, I run into Chris.  I am really surprised that I have caught up to him. We end up spending the rest of the day and evening together, getting caught up with each other.  It is interesting how the Camino can bring things up unexpectedly.  We find there are some things between Chris and I that have surfaced and must be dealt with.  Well we have lots of time on the Camino to figure things out.

The Cathedral dominates the Burgos historic centre. I would love to return
to this beautiful city one day.

Today has been my best day walking on the Camino and it all began with the decision to tackle the day with determination and strength, both which came from within.  I walked strong today, full of purpose and determination.  I covered a lot of ground.  I got out of my funk.  But I did not get my running shoes….determination can only take you so far!  Life is good again on the Camino.

Print Friendly

From Granon to Villa Franca de Montes de Oca (27.8 km)

I am on the road at 6:30 just as the church bell rang the half hour bell; you don´t need a watch in these little towns as the church bells ring on the hour and the half hour, 24 hours a day. There was indeed an orchestra of snoring last night and I´m surprised I got any sleep at all. I am happy to be on the road again. My feet feel pretty good, still lots of blisters but no pain this morning. I am barefoot in my sandals today. The weather is quite cool, and a thick blanket of grey clouds spread over the sky. I am sure it will rain sometime this morning. Trying not to think about what that will do to my feet.

Santiago is a long way off and I can’t even think about all the miles ahead.

I am feeling rather low today. I don´t feel like talking or socializing. I want to get ahead of the Italians and the Irish nurses, really, ahead of the whole bunch. But most are on the road around the same time as me so I am in the middle of all of them. 

I walk alone for most of the day except for a short time when a young 23 year old Canadian walks along side me and I learn he is going to be a father. When he hears that I have two kids, he peppers me with questions about pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing. I answer him as best I can….it´s been a long time since my kids were little. But I sense his fear of what is coming and I try to be as positive as possible. Finally, I suggest he buy himself a good baby book where he´ll find all his answers. Shortly thereafter, he ditches me like a hot potato and joins the Irish nurses who are walking in a small group. I can´t really blame him, I don´t like my company today either.

 My feet are preoccupying my thoughts today. Within an hour of walking, I start to feel new pain points. I am regularly stopping and putting bandages on my feet. I am feeling really discouraged about this. My sandals are not giving me enough cushion on this rocky path and pebbles keep sneaking in under my feet. I have to get this resolved somehow. A large city is coming up so I make a decision that when I get there I will go shopping for shoes.

I find a really nice place to stay tonight, an albergue at the back of a nice hotel. It is quite spacious and clean. I opt to pay an extra 3 euro to stay in the room with only 8 beds instead of 18. Maybe I’ll have a better sleep tonight. I am really hungry so I eat a late lunch at 3:00 and then buy a few things for a light dinner later on.

Comfy chairs like these are rare on the Camino.  I spent some time
sitting here, gazing at the lovely view and being entertained by
a pair of peacocks that were wandering around just outside the glass doors. 

The Irish nurses from the night before are my bunk mates.
Today, we all seem to get along much better. 

The church opposite the hotel/hostel.

When I get on the computer, I can tell that Chris has been here as our website has been preserved in the address history. That makes me smile. I then read his posts and sure enough he was here last night. So he is a day ahead of me somewhere on the Camino. I am feeling pretty low right now, in a definite funk. Hope it passes soon.

Print Friendly

Rest day in Granon

I have decided to spend another day at the church in Granon to give my feet a chance to heal. It feels really strange being left behind this morning. I say good-bye to Pauline who has finished her Camino for this year and is off to Madrid to visit a friend. This is Eleanor´s last day of walking and then she returns home. Sinead plans to walk for another week….maybe I´ll see her again. Everyone I have been walking with has gone ahead and will now be at least a day ahead of me. It feels so strange to be left behind. I resist the temptation to ignore my injured feet and follow after them.

After doing my laundry, I go for a little walk around this tiny village. It is deserted at 8:00 in the morning. In fact, most of these villages I pass through are deserted no matter what time I pass through. I think mainly old people are left in these villages; all the young people and young families have moved to the larger cities.

I find a bench in a little square overlooking the countryside and I take some time to think about all that has happened on the Camino so far. A lot of personal issues have arisen, much to my surprise. This is my rest day, so I just sit and enjoy my view: a field of poppies, stripes of farmers fields like ribbons stretched over the hills. The swallows are singing happily and are darting through the trees. I realize how very tired I am, emotionally and physically. I am glad I have this day for quiet reflection and a chance to heal my body and my spirit.

I update the blog on the computer in the bar, a very hungry computer that swallows my euros greedily. I am happy to finally be up to date. Haven´t heard from Chris for a few days now but I hear from others that he is doing fine. Lucky for him to have ¨found¨ his new boots.

I am perplexed about my footwear. I seem to get blisters no matter what I do. I think runners might be the solution. It is funny, I can run 20 or 30 km without ever getting a blister. Now, I don´t do it every day and not with a pack. Maybe that is the difference.

People start arriving at the church later today, early afternoon they start to straggle in. Most speak Italian, no English, Spanish or French so far. A nice Italian man makes a big sandwich and insists I eat part of it….I don´t mind having someone care for me today. In fact I very much appreciate it. After lunch I have a nap for almost two hours, a deep and restorative sleep. When I awake, I find I am in Little Italy, surrounded by mainly older, Italian men in the room. I suspect there will be plenty of snoring tonight.

There are only 30 people in the church today compared to almost 60 yesterday. Somehow the energy is different, more negative today. Not sure if it is me and my filter or if it is the people here. There are only a few English speaking pilgrims and I seek them out but soon regret it. First I talk to a couple of Irish ladies, who turn out to be nurses as well. They are a little older than me and they are bitching and complaining about the miserable, unhappy people in Spain. Nobody greets them in the stores, nobody says hello along the pathways. I am shocked as this has not been my experience at all. When I tell them that everyone I say hello to also says hello back, they make the comment that they shouldn´t have to say hello first, especially in the shops. When they start criticizing the girl in the local shop who I admit is pretty grumpy, I again speak up and say they don´t know this girl´s circumstance, so they really shouldn´t be so harsh. Well, that set them off about us Canadians who are so damn nice and always make excuses for people. I don´t think I won any friends here.

The only supermarket in town.

Window above the choir in the church.

I eat dinner with a Dutch women who is also my mat neighbour. She complains about the dinner which I happened to think is very nice: fresh garden salad and then a main dish with potatoes and beans and sausage. Her observation: humph, potatoes, cheap pilgrim food. She said she was there for the experience, and this was an experience she only needed to do once.

I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with this crowd. The Italians were boisterous and very loud. I really just wanted to get out of there….amazing how different this experience was from the day before. After dinner, I went directly to bed, just to escape. No prayer service tonight.

Print Friendly