Finding treasure on the Camino de Santiago

THURSDAY 16th JUNE  – Hornillos Del Camino to Casrojeriz 

Km’s walked – 18.89 ; steps taken – 29431 ; Floors – 11

DAY FIFTEEN OF ACTUAL WALKING

“The Camino is not what I expected, but it is everything I hoped for! ” (Anon)

Today we could only start after 8am as our hotel was 3kms off the route and we had to be dropped at Hornillos Del Camino to continue our walk when the owner was ready. The morning was icy, and I got to use my 44 Euro rain jacket I bought in Zubiri after the Horribe raincoat I had disintegrated in the Pyrenees. Nice warm rain jacket.

We started collecting countries early and before 9h30 we had “collected”, South Korea (a lovely couple with no English, where he keeps saying happy, happy and she drags a very heavy looking trolley behind her. He asks to take our photo, and then says ‘Ok, one, two, three, ha! Ha! Ha!”- you can only imagine our reaction). Norway in the form of Aart, took our photo over the Meseta. Italy, cycled past us and sang “We wish you a merry Camino ……”. France popped in at some point, Germany and Puerto Rico too. I have to tell the story about the six Franch people have been walking “with” me since Estella.  There are three couples, they are checked into every hotel I am and we see them every so often at dinner.  WE great one another like one lost friends, but their English is as bad as my French. Lovely group of friendly people who get incredibly sunburnt every day.  We see them walking, we pass them, they pass us, they stop, etc…., then we see they ahve two cars. And because of the language thing we cannot establish how they walk and drive.  Eventually the one woman that can speak five English words solves the mystery. The ladies start walking in the morning while the men drive to the next village in both cars, drive back in one car and then start walking and catch up with the women.  Then repeat in evening to retrieve car. Interesting system.  Such lovely people.

The Meseta was cold today but extremely beautiful. Every shade of green, yellow, red, purple, brown and blue colored every spot we looked at. Flowers everywhere.  At some point after asking for about 10,5 Km’s only seeing fields, flowers, sky and hills, we cam over a rise and came upon Hontanas another classic Pilgrim village.  Very quaint, population 70. Sarah and I were having our ritual daily 10km point cafe con leche, when up walks Jennie (from Eureka).  Jennie had only left Hornillos at 9h15 as she had to wait to be lifted too.  Jennie is like the Road Runner, she moves it.  We had just sat down, so she must really have been moving it.  Jennie then delightfully joined us for the rest of the walk. 

 As we were leaving Hontanas, we came across a white van with the sliding door open just enough and a tiny old lady hovering outside the van buying something, I saw that it was a Fishmonger, and got all excited and told Sarah to take a photo.  The man saw her taking a photo and practically jumped  out of the van shouting at her, “NO PHOTOS! NO PHOTOS”.  Scary man.  Sarah deduced he was probably selling fish illegally. Interestingly we have seen a few of these white vans going though the tiny deserted villages, hooting like crazy, then people run out, and buy their wares. Some sell fish, some sell bread, others look like general dealers.

It rained a little and was quite chilly, but everywhere you looked was pleasing to the eye. We happened upon a man in a Van in San Anton (ruins of an old Pilgrim hospital), he was offering to stamp your Credential (Pilgrim passport) for E1,50, and you could choose a little wooden carving as well.  I chose a tiny shell.  We of course had to do this as stamps especially Authentic ones are very important to Pilgrims.  These exchanges of course happen with no English. As we walk away from him, I tell the girls we need to know his name.  They both start giving me tips on how to ask him.  Then follows the funniest thing ever, I ask him in English, pseudo French, and bad Spanish, and I point at myself, saying Stephany, and nothing, he just keep talking about an Alburgue somewhere. Then I suddenly have a brain wave and I point to him, and I say “Pepe, Pablo… And Stephany (pointing at myself). He laughs and introduces himself as Martien.  The  girls were of course rolling in the road, and teased me all the way to Castrojeriz.

Castrojeriz looked gorgeous, albeit gloomy from the dark sky. Population 500.  Beautiful church dominating the village.  The village stretches for about 2kms.  Strange layout.  A huge castle ruin sits on the hill overlooking the town. We had a perfect view of it out of our window at the hotel.

We met Jennie for dinner at Hotel Jacobus. We met a delightful waiter from Italy who had walked the Camino and volunteered as a host at an Alburgue and now he was working here till November to make money to carry on Walking various Camino routes.  He was charming, spoke good Engligh, and was really funny.  At some point we asked for more wine, and he said … “OF COURSE, NO VINO, NO CAMINO!”  We cracked up. A lovely evening.  We wanted to get to bed as Sarah and I wanted to wake up for the sunrise and walk from 5h30.

At some point in our day we met up with a man and woman who had done the Camino backwards no forwards four times.  HE had a half sawn off car being pulled  by a donkey, with a dog on top of the donkey.  His partner sat in the air, he walked and talked to the donkey and the dog. You meet such interesting people on this path.

CAMINO GIFTS ; the pure joy of the Meseta, the rise of Hontanas out of nowhere, the palette of blues and whites painted in the sky, the joy is laughing at stupid things (all of us in our rain coats looking like chickens), meeting such lovely people like Martien and Davido.

FRIDAY 17th JUNE – Castrojeriz to Fromista
Km’s walked – 24,43 ; steps taken – 38656 ; Floors – 16

DAY 16 of ACTUAL WALKING

“In order to enjoy the sun, we must first walk in the rain” 

We slept badly, I some how messed up the alarm clock so we only left at 6h00 instead of 5h30.  I was a bit cross with myself, but then the sunrise came.  And I think the photos should speak for this experience.  Wow. Freezing cold, but just awesome.  I found myself very teary. So pleased we had got up and seen this beauty.

Climbing out of Castrojeriz was quite tough, a steep 1,2 km hill, but the views were spectacular. The day was one of those days where you keep asking yourself, how can this be so beautiful. I must have taken 250 photos today.

Very few villages along the way, but still managed to find a little one for a Cafe con leche.  As we sat down, guess who walks up to us, none other than Jennie (we really enjoy her company).  Jennie had left two hours after us, and had caught up to us. No we don’t walk that slowly (so don’t start making jokes), but she is fast. She walked with us to Fromista.

Today we collected, Germany (a smiley girl with dreadlocks), France, Spain (a guy called Larde walking from San Sebastián), Germany (a delightful young man walking to SAntiago in just more than 20 days), Joe from Ireland, A mother and daughter from Alaska, an Australian/Zimbabwian man, and South Korea, and of course Paul the missionary from Poland. There were others but we didn’t ask everyone.

The bridge is Puenta de Itero.  A beautiful eleven arch bridge carrying us over into the province of Palencia.

At some point in the day we met two men pushing a pram, filled with puppies.  They spoke enough English to tell us we could take a photo for a donation. We did. It rained a bit on and off, but walking along Canal de Castilla was beautiful.  Such color. I want to stop and paint everything (lessons here we come again).

We walked into Fromista in quite hard rain, but it did not stop us clanking sticks in jubilation ( a little ritual I have learned). We found our hotel, unpacked and then met Jennie for dinner. Jennie gets funnier and funnier she really had a beautiful sense of humor and her comments are really clever. After dinner we were chatting and laughing and some men were watching Spain play Turkey on TV, and they kept telling us to Shhh! We just laughed more. Shortly after, a man approached us with a bottle of Brut. He offered us and before we could say no, he had filled our glasses, we thanked him graciously and carried on our chat. We all introduced ourselves, and he was Manual from Italy, apparently driving people around Spain. A while later he came back and asked if we would accompany him to the bar across the road later. I said no we were tired and had to sleep, he called me a granny with a big grin.  Poured us more Brut. Tried hard to convince us we should join him. We giggled like school girls, and said goodnight. We laughed and laughed and kept teasing about whether we had that pepper spray that Warwick had given both Sarah and I. Sarah and Jennie said farewell (as Sarah leaves at 7h30 on a Burgos bound bus).

CAMINO GIFTS: Beauty everywhere, time to just be, the joy of seeing the world in technicolor even when the sky is grey, the simple pleasure of walking and talking with a special friend, the begining of the restoring of my belief in religion through Jennie’s down to earth lovely way, the beautiful music my husband keeps gifting me.