Month: May 2019

Moving more slowly then the guidebook, stopped 12K before astorga, and tomorrow I will stay there, so I can enjoy the city. Others I met solved the same problem by taking a bus from here.

I am posting less pictures, for one the take a long time to upload, secondly they don’t capture the feeling of a landscape, and thirdly the medieval towns are beginning to resemble each other. I am slowly getting closer and closer to the mountains.

How far to walk each day is always an issue. You want to hit the big towns with tourist interest. But sometimes they don’t line up with a comfortable walking distance which for me is at most 25k. I want to see Astorga but they are 49k apart and there isn’t a town right in the middle. I went 18k today but I cant do 31k tommorow. I have two choices, take an extra day to walk to Astorga, ie two 15 K days, or walk tomorrow for 20-25k and then take a cab into astorga. What do you think. ?

Today was pretty boring walking, except I met a Jewish man, originally from Istanbul and I learned what the Kabala teaches about the afterlife, which paradoxically gives meaning to life. No yeah yeah when I get back to Seattle I will so take a break

I used an app “my phone tour” to lead me arround th city, but of course, it is the unexpected that is interesting. Just my luck it was market day.

I had asked at the tourist office for a cultural event. I ended up at a a show put on by the municipal music school. I was probably the only one in the audience who didnt know someone on stage. There was a surprising number of adults performing I guess there are a lot of late starting musicians like me. The theme was the Camino, cleary the Camino is important to the cities along the route, It

is hard to say but pilgrims make up a good proportion of the tourists in the town.

Despite the fact that I only had 10miles to walk the walk into Leon seemed interminabable I was mostly alone walking along highways waiting to get the first site of the Leon cathedral which would tell me the end was in sight.

I also had a sad task. The last time the phone fell out of my pocket the screen cracked(again) so I needed to either get it fixed of find a screen cover to hold it together untill I got home. I dis the latter but it probably took several hours to find the store.

Leon is a rest stop, probably the last so I am in a hotel, have my own room, and will be a tourist tommorow.

The cathedral is amazing and in it is the finest Organ in Europe and lucky me, tonight there was a free organ concert.

Being a pilgrim in a city is a strange experience almost like living in a small town, I am constantly running into people who I met on the trail weeks before. It is like we are part of a community. We remember what ailed them and what their story was.

A few pictures of the cathedral and friends in the trail.

Groups of people form and then disolve, effort mustbe made to stay in a group. Also yo meet less new people. Everone walks at a different pace,

Yesterday I aranged to have dinner with Paul and Linda a couple from Vancouver, BC and Amnon a man from Ashville, I got int talking with a Mandy from Barbados, and didn’t make the dinner time. Amnon was very nice to come me. We had an animated conversation mostly about skiing helped by tw bottles of wine. Afterwards, Aminon quietly told me that he felt that I wasn’t listening to him and was cutting him off. Yes this was true, I need to have two ears open, one to the subject matter and the other to the group dynamic. Perhaps there is anouther solution, but the people I encounter deserve better.

I am constantly meeting people and hearing their stories, I am reminded of the Canterbury tales about an ancient pilgrimage whose format is pilgrims meeting and telling their stories. Tone made me cry.

I walked beside a women who said she left South Africa 30 years ago to marry an Austrailian soldier who was in a UN peacekeeping force, Her father was black

and her Mother white and they were poor, but her father felt that the most important thing was her schooling, his friends said, why educate a girl, but his father was insistent, this was the way out of poverty, and a girl might need to make her own way. She recounted walking barefoot to school. When she got there the nuns gave her bread with gobs of peanut butter, she can still remember the taste of it, for lunch they gave soup that had a strange taste, it had protein powder mixed in. Now she volunteers each year, with her husband, and sometimes her children at a hospital in Cambodia.

I have not done volunteer work, my excuse is that had too much work to do and everything I did was socially usefull. What will I do now?

Feeling much better today.Only two more days on the Measeta, I am not mad yet. Today is my first day in. municipal aubergues. Aside from being a little more crowded it is quite nice. It is staffed by volunteers and it is a donativo, ie you pay what you want, of course this for me makes it more expensive than a fixed price because I always feel that those of us with more have to give more, I also didn’t have change of a 20, accomodations and dinner have in general been quite cheap 6-12 E for a bed and 10-12 for dinner, but food during the day adds up. And of course anything adds up when you are out for 50 days.

I pushed yesterday and walked 30k big mistake, I good and sick, I couldnt eat breakfast or dinner. Today I walked 10K to a bigger town where I could get a private room, and slept the rest

of the day. I still have zero appetite, which worries me. Nothing tastes good to me. I might stay here anouther day. The muerta, the great planes of spain seem endless. It is said to drive pilgims mad

This is a convent town, all the pilgrims facilities are provided by religous orders. I went into one of the churches because I wanted to see one of the few surviving Romanesque churches (12th century). A group of young women came in dressed in long robes and begain a service which included sung prayers accompanied by clavicord that echoed through the vast space of the church. There are many catholics on the camino. I am not one of them, but all prayers go to the same place…

On a less spiritual note a broke down and bought a bar of soap. I was using shampoo to wash myself and my clothes. Soap is heavy. Now I am carrying one extra thing, a pair of shorts I bought in Burgos. It is too cold for shorts in the morning and evenings so the zipoffs are the best thing to wear. I like shorts so much that I dont want to abondon them. Now I have one pair of zipoffs, one pair of pants when I am washing the zipoffs, and one somewhat extra pair of shorts, I have three pair of underwear(Just in case I cant wash and dry one) two T shirts, one long sleeved T, one shirt and two pairs of socks.

A short way in the path split, one way was more popular but followed the road, the other was longer and did not go through any towns but looked more pleasant, I took the road less traveled by, halfway through met an old couple(actually a few years younger than me) from australlia and we talked the whole way. The “Canterbury Tales” gives me the idea that pilgrams now are not so different now than then. People meet on the road and tell their stories, although I haven’t yet heard anything like “The Miller’s Tale”

Days have a routine, wake up at 5:30, Breakfast, Walk until 1 or 2 with a snack on the way. Arrive, check in, take a shower, hand wash and hang up your underwear, explore the town wearing your flip flops, at 7 eat then go to bed.