I can recall Diane, Marta and Barbara and the lovely Susan from Melbourne sharing a table at Bar Luis the night before I left there. It had been a really long day and I knew that the following 2 days were shorter and for the first time I could smell the taste of reaching Santiago. I had never let myself think that far ahead really. I just had to take the next day, one step at a time and soldier on…I think because the whole thing seemed so daunting. The hardest thing was to get out of bed, walking clothes on and the BOOTS and take that first step out into the dark.
But NOW, I knew that I could finish. My feet had grown new muscles and the feet flapped away in my size 7 boots knowing that they were not going to be given a choice. Nature has a way of sorting itself out. One night I had taken my early evening bath, soaking off the dust…and there was lots of it…and the grime from the hours of walking. Originally I had used a couple of Compeed blister patches around some troublesome toes. That evening I realised that I had left one on so I gave it a tug only to find it was a dead flap of skin that had worn itself off!! Gross I suppose but my toe wasn’t complaining.
It was an emotional Adios to the lady at the pension..the one whose expression of help and support that I will never forget . But I spurted out into the dark again to cover a quick 10 Kilometers in the cool of the morning air. My GPS app for the Camino was a godsend…and so was the torch.
Typically I got through those looming woods which at night are silent and the tree trunks stand like sentinels looking down on you as you pant by …when Diane catches me up at a bar just before dawn. She is so emphatic and jolly and her stories kept me enraptured. So we walked together again.
There was a sad story that she told me though.
She had explained how she grew up in small town and there were only 2 girls her age. Michelin, Lucy and of course Diane. They were the best of friends and did everything together. Most days they would wander down the lane to the farm and stroke and feed the horse there. How they loved that horse. They would take him carrots and apples and as 12 year old schoolgirls, they told the farmer that when they had saved up enough money they were going to buy his horse and share it. As they were serious about this, they started saving their cents and pooling the amount together. Then tragedy struck. Luce was killed in a motor accident. The 2 girls were bereft but decided to carry on saving up for the horse as it was something the three of them had planned to do together. The following year, Michelin committed suicide. As a thirteen year old girl she had hung herself which left Diane all on her own. She found the next few years really difficult without her best friends. She still wanted to save up for the horse but the total money at that point came to 92 cents!! Diane still has the purse with the 92 cents in it…she says if she ever gets a horse she will call it Michelu…..after both names of her friends. I sat with her in a little chapel on the Camino when she lit a candle for them both.❤️
That afternoon I arrived at my garden pension. I couldn’t believe that in the morning I would reach Santiago….I didn’t sleep and heard every cock crow and every owl hoot and every car pass by………it would be time to get up soon.