Sabbath

Carrion to San Nicholas (Saturday, June 12th)
Stella and I decided we had had three days of walking in cold and wind and rain and that was enough. So after debating a bit this morning, and looking up at the sky, we bought bus tickets from Carrion to Terradillos, about 27 km. The bus wasn´t leaving until 12:45, so we had hours to walk around and explore Carrion, a really neat little town. It is about 2500 people, though it used to be 10,000. However, there is new construction going on, so it must be growing again. It is located on a river and has a beautiful park and river walk. We walked out to San Zoilo, an old monastery that is now a shi-shi hotel resort. On Corpus Christi, last Sunday, they had a beautiful flower display out there, as they do in many places here. Like the Tournament of Roses Parade, everything has to be out of flower petals or natural elements. But unlike the parade, these designs are flat, like huge carpets, created on the sidewalks and lawns. They are one day only events, and apparently get vacuumed up afterwards. Posters had shown us pictures from previous years, but we were far too late to see this year's. It was a nice walk out to San Zoilo anyway, across the river and we got to see another Roman road through the woods (below right).

Carrion is a town with a lot of little squares or public areas for gathering. And lots of storks' nests. Like many other towns the same size, it also has public art and much of it related to the Camino, such as this scallop shell fountain, which was in one of the little squares. Mostly we enjoyed people watching. We stopped in a little alimentacion to replenish our food supply. And we saw another 'a caballo' pilgrim, but this one had a lame horse that wasn't doing well at all.

When the time came, we caught the bus. Fortunately, we had told the bus driver where we were getting out. He stopped in this little tiny village off to one side of the road. We had not seen any sign and had no idea where we where. We had to ask the whole bus several times if this was Terradillos. They must have thought we were really dumb.

So we got off the bus, found our way through the tired, dusty collection of buildings to the alburgue and found our backpacks which we had shipped ahead, thinking we would be walking. We said hello to some familiar faces, shouldered our packs and took off for 6 km towards San Nicholas. We noticed in passing some dilapidated buildings that the local building material of choice was mud and straw, just like the Hebrews had used to make bricks when they were slaves in Egypt. Only it didn't look like it was holding up so well under the Spanish sun and rain and time.

The fields we walked through were beautiful, nearly ripe wheat fields. Along the way, we also came across a labyrinth in a little rest area that someone had created just for us pilgrims!

The clouds were beginning to build in the skies all around us again, so we hurried through the fields on the dirt track. We made it to San Nicholas shortly before the evening rainstorm hit.

The private alburgue, Albergueria Laganares, at San Nicholas was delightful. We got to do and hang our laundry out in the the beautiful little courtyard out back (after the storm passed by), and then, there was this gorgeous post-storm rainbow visible across the fields from our upstairs window (more vivid in real life than in the picture). Our room was essentially a private room with two bunkbeds, but we didn't have to share it with anyone. The walls didn't go the whole way to the ceiling, however, so noises traveled. It was a small place with just four, four-person rooms upstairs and a private room downstairs. It was very colorful, and done in sort of a 'Spanish country' style, traditional for this region. Very homey. Lovely bathroom and shower facilities. After we got settled in, cleaned up and did our laundry, we sat in the little gathering area at the top of the steps and had some local wine, and some fruit, cheese and crackers from our backpacks as a late lunch to keep us until dinner.

We shared dinner at the table with two women from Canada, a niece and aunt. First course was 'sopa verde,' a creamy green soup of unknown green veggies creamed together, but probably spinach, maybe some broccoli. Second course, I chose pescado, fish, which was thankfully headless, and lightly fried, served with a small salad on the plate. Dessert was flan (we're comparing flans as we go across the country - they vary widely in quality!). Everything was delicious. A number of local folks were dining there as well, which is always a good sign!

The owners of the alburgue couldn't have been nicer. We forgot to call that evening for 'transporte de muchilla' (taking our backpacks to the next place), and when I couldn't get a phone line and he didn't want to fire up the internet, he just called for us and took care of it. Rated one of our better stays!

Weather

Fromista to Carrion (Friday, June 11th) Rain, rain go away, come again, another day. One foot in front of another all day long. All I can see again is out of the front of my little Conestoga wagon view. It is getting very old. I had to get a new poncho in Fromista yesterday. I´m no longer highlighter pink. Now I am olive drab with a large red scallop shell (sort of like Shell Oil) on my back. I feel like a plastic turtle. The road from Fromista is flat and fairly uninteresting. The path is nice and flat, and they are making improvements to it. I later find that my new poncho, even though it is heavier, already has cuts on it, I think from the twenty thousand (okay, that´s a slight exaggeration) concrete bollards I walked by on the path. Across this section, they find it necessary to mark every drive and to keep vehicles off of the path by placing concrete stanchions along it. Every time I pass between the poles, they hit my poncho and ... scratch... oh well. We´ll see how many ponchos it takes to make a Camino!


There is a lot of public art along the Camino about Santiago and perigrinos. I stop to take pictures of some of it. Perhaps it is the rain, or maybe just boredom with the drizzly, steady rain, but I also make a pitstop at every opportunity today. I try to stop in the little local churches whenever they are open. You wouldn´t believe the art treasures of altar pieces that are in the smallest of churches, but this day, none are open, which I guess is good, since I don´t feel much like delaying beyond the stops I have to make. I arrive in Carrion (yes, it sounds like dead meat, but I don´t know what it really means).

Stella is a kilometer or two ahead of me coming into this town for a change. I finally see the donkey we have been following (we always see the droppings, but never the donkey) as I pass Alburgue Santa Clara on my way to finding our Alburgue. I find Stella waiting at Iglesia de Santa Maria, next to our alburgue, which doesn´t open for another hour or more. There is a homeless man under the same shelter. He is just getting settled in, out of the rain, getting a can of dog food out for his dog.

We go find something to eat somewhere and come back. As we walk around town, we see some 'a caballo' pilrims for the first time - those who are completing the pilgrimage on horseback. There are two fine looking men in long leather dusters who could be father and son or perhaps brothers, on very nice quarterhorses. It must cost a lot of money to do the Camino this way because of having to board the horses as well. It is obvious that they have made pre-arrangements, because they are met by someone with a horsetrailer who comes and waters the horses and puts feed bags on them while the gentlemen take their own break (hence the riderless horses in the picture). The trail is also somewhat different in places, too. Those who ride bicycles also have a different trail in some parts. I suspect the two men riding horses will not be staying in a hostel tonight, but rather a more upscale accommodation! We also meet some 'a bici' peregrinos!

We eventually get settled. Nothing gets dry that I wash on this damp rainy day, but I end up having a nice conversation with a group of young people we have been traveling with from Chicago. There is a alburgue meeting at 6 pm. We haven´t had one of these before, but like good little pilgrims, Stella and I showup, not sure what to expect. It is grace. The three sisters, and perhaps an oblate who is multilingual, have a time of sharing and singing. One plays guitar and another a drum. They end up giving us a blessing by making the sign of the cross on our foreheads and by giving us a little paper, 6-pointed star (Compostella) that they have colored with crayons ("it weighs nothing in your backpacks") for us to take with us. People have a chance to share what the Camino has been like for them so far. Tears are in many eyes with the blessing and the grace of the moment. Remember what I wrote earlier about sometimes, when I've had a chance to get to walk and talk with some of the other pilgrims who have bugged me for some reason, I get to see them in a wholly (holy?) different light? Well, one of the guys who always sort of acts flashy, shallow and smart-alecky actually says something very nice and meaningful. I don't know if it is just 'of the moment,' but it forces me to reevaluate my superficial judgment of him and open the door wider, to allow for the possibility that he is not who I have perceived him to be! Oh, if I only had these moments more often, and hung on to them, I would be such a better person instead of being just as shallow as I have chalked him up to be! So, more grace with the realization.


We have dinner with Charley from Scotland and Karin from Sweden at a little restaurant a block from the alburgue. Then, we go to a service in the church next door. Within the church is a nativity tableau that is lighted and moves. It is really interesting and quite involved. Different parts of it light up at different times.

Obstacles

Castrojeriz to Fromista (Thursday, June 10th)
The journey from Castrojeriz to Fromista was not one of the most pleasurable days on the journey unless one takes pleasure in triumphing over significant obstacles and discomfort. It reminded me of the Confidence Courses or Obstacle Courses from my military days, or the series of tasks that Hercules had to perform. The first couple of kilometers from Castrojeriz were easy, across a flat plain, and then it was up and up and up a very steep path, up the side of a hill/mountain/whatever. The track was muddy from rain and at times muddy and windy so that one could almost imagine being blown off of the trail and the side of the small ridge, especially when rounding a bend, but it didn't happen, thankfully. The trail kept winding, surely after the next curve the end and top would be in sight, and yet it would go on. One of the "rules" I allowed myself early on in starting the Camino was that I was allowed all the breaks I needed to take - I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone. So when I had to stop on that long hike up, I did for a few moments until I could handle the next stretch. At last, I saw the the small obelisk that marked the top of the uphill trail. I stepped past it and turned around to see the incredible view of the valley I had left behind. There was a small pavilion at the top, presumably to sit and give thanks for obtaining the summit. There was a group of about 4 guys that had finished climbing the top ahead of me who were taking pictures of each other and had finished resting and were leaving just as I arrived, and one other single male pilgrim.

The next challenge/obstacle was this tabletop mesa itself. The wind was something else. The mesa was perfectly flat, barely a tree in sight, and it, too, was very muddy in some places. It was a very peculiar sight, like something out of the American southwest. Not terribly large, but each step was fought for against the wind. The sky was filled with heavy, dark clouds which were moving quickly. I felt the need to keep the other guys in sight; I didn´t want to be up there by myself and though there were a number of people coming up the path behind me, there was no one visible yet behind me and I needed to know I wasn´t humanly alone up there on the mesa. It was a strange feeling, like being alone in the world, alone against all the elements. But for a little while, perhaps several minutes, I was, until I began the next challenge: the descent.

The descent was an obstacle I had experienced before. An extremely steep, rocky and rutted path that went on and on. Hard on the knees. It´s funny, you develop a preference for size of rock and gravel on which to walk. Something you have probably never considered before. Descents are tedious because you have to concentrate so hard, or at least I do, so I don´t slip or slide or roll. It´s exhausting in a different kind of way from climbing up. Finally, this phase, too, came to an end. Then began a phase I just didn´t expect.

Slimey, sticky marsh mud. The kind that makes you taller and heavier with each step. The kind that you can´t get off of your boots for love or money. I tried to walk around the edges of the path, but even that didn´t work because of the vegetation along the path - about as sharp as the spartina grass we have in the marshes back home and just as dense. This mud went on for at least one to two kilometers, maybe more, which is a very long time to slog through something. And all the while, the wind was still horrendous. Not as bad as it had been up on top of the mesa, but so bad, it just tore my little Kmart highlighter pink poncho to shreds. Alejandro from Argentina told me later, "I just kept finding pieces of Joan all across the meseta!" I threw it away when I got to Fromista. But meanwhile, the wind whipped it around me and the drizzle drizzled. and it was a generally miserable day.

About 12 km from Castrojeriz, I finally reached Itero and the little cafe/bar. I paused for a well-earned break. I was exhausted from all the different challenges, both physical and mental from having to concentrate so hard on the path. Afterwards, I wasn't much looking forward to getting started again, especially since the rain was just picking up again, but a couple was ready to leave again as well and so I started out with them. It turns out they were from Norway. I am one eighth Norwegian and so we got started talking about Norway and Georgia. They were Johanna and Ingevor (or something close to that). He has been a TV-radio journalist for 30 years or so. She has her law degree, but apparently you have to do a 2 year internship and appear in court so many times to be a lawyer in Norway and she hasn´t done that, so she is more like a paralegal working for the city. They live in southwestern Norway, a city where cruise ships pull in. They are doing the Camino in segments over several years and this is their third time. They are a really interesting couple and we had a lively conversation despite the wind and possible sleet and absolutely pelting rain. As it happens, another Norwegian, Klaus, came by and they conversed for awhile in Norwegian. Johanna apologized, but I enjoyed hearing one of my mother tongues being spoken. I had never really heard it before. We traveled the whole way to Fromista together. Just before we got to Fromista, we came to the Canal de Castilla. The Canal, like the Erie Canal, like the Canal in Augusta, was used for business purposes. This canal was used to transport crops (wheat, barley, oats) up to the northern seaports. It was also used to power corn mills. This is the first area where I have seen corn growing. There was a large lock with a major difference in water levels here. We took pictures of each other at the lock. With the invention of the train, and then the highway, the canal is now mostly used for leisure with canal boat cruises and the like. It is also important for irrigation in this area, which is sort of the bread basket for Spain. If it hadn't been raining, it would have been really beautiful and a nice spot for a picnic. There were lots of informative signs about how the locks and canal work.





Fromista is a nice little town, the most important feature of which is the church just adjacent to our alburgue, San Martin. It is an 11th century Romanesque church, very well preserved. In a little gift shop, I find a replacement poncho (a much more subdued olive color!) to replace my highlighter pink one that I have only a few remnants of any more. The new one is also a heavier grade plastic, so maybe it will last a little longer.

Purely by accident, as we are out looking for a shirt for Stella this evening for the cool weather, we go by another church, St. Peter Gonzalez (a local saint), and see a sign, for a concert for pilgrims at 6:30 this evening. It´s after 6 already, so we decide to wait. What a wonderful surprise and gift! A man from Milwaukee, who has made 3 Caminos, was so deeply affected by it, that he has funded free concerts for three venues in the province of Palencia for June through August of this year with about 7 or 8 different artists! Carlos and Gladis Rodriguez from Puerto Rico, graduate music students in Milwaukee, he on guitar and her a soprano, perform classical music, typical Puerto Rican music and other numbers. It is so lovely. And they are such a lovely young couple who are so obviously deeply in love, and so tender and appreciative with each other. They shine when the other performs, it is so sweet. They close with her singing something composed by St. Theresa of Avila, and then (I think Shubert´s) Ave Maria. Not coincidentally perhaps, as she finishes, the church bells are ringing. It is absolutely beautiful way to end a difficult and challenging day!