Category: 2018 Camino

Well, meeting Diane in my sorry state was a blessing. Boy..that girl has spirit. As a nurse she understands about her injured tendons but she soldiers on with everything taped up. I started so I will finish she emphatically announces.

’Stopping is not an option but I leave every day at 6.30am so you can walk with me if you want’

I want…..its pitch black until at least 8am so although I have no head torch, I have my phone torch on. I forget how amazing technology is or I could not do this.

Of course today will be downhill all the way…will it? The moon is waning but the sky is undimished with stars in the light of the moon. Why is that I wonder?…when our street lights fade the heavens into insignificance? I see Orion in the sky with his starlit dagger…I can always make it out in the autumn and winter months  around my birthday so I take it as a positive sign.

Diane chatters about her summer house on the river and her large house of windows in Alberta…and her 2 daughters, one of whom has had a baby boy and will get married on December 31st 2019!!! Diane is with Rod, her partner of 10 years and an engineer by trade but well up in the company.Her first husband she had the girls to but they do not like his ‘woman’ so there is friction….but she tells me he loves his girls.

I think i am becoming more of a listener….shock horror…or I recognise that I have a missing piece of my genetics…anyhow she strides on and  is a lovely, lively, practical no-nonsense Nusery…well I think she runs the place now and has about 100 staff!!!…but she is the vocational one you want to look after you.

In the dark,we pass the huge statue of the Pilgrim looking ghostly in the dark morning. I try to take a picture…I think it represents those pilgrims that would carry as much limestone as they could to help build the cathedral…some feat!! I wont carry stone!!! I can’t carry me!!

Well it wasnt all down!! We dipped and then had a climb back up to 1300 meters….AAAAGH!   On the way down I passed through several little stone broken down farm villages but this one had to be the best. It was about 10am and the path narrowed between a stone outhouse and the farm on the right. There was a shed door to which a donkey was tethered. We walked up to it, watching its hind quarters with special care when an old lady came out of the shed right into our path. Well I say old lady because she was stooped and grey and wore the long black skirts that are worn over here. She had a stick…boy it was a stick, more like a staff like John the Baptist used.

She started yelling at me as I was at the front, so I stopped, a bit confused….and out came her HUGE cows, one by one, singling their bells. She waved her stick and yelled at me keeping me back..

That’s fine I thought, I’ll just tuck in behind.

NO, she brandished her stick at me again,I thought she was going to give me the cane. An American lady pulled up behind and was about to walk through.

”At your own peril, “ I said. This is her living so don’t get in the way of her cows. All the time she was yelling at the cows too and hurrying them along the right path….and guess what? After that,the farmer came out, untied his donkey, nodded to us with a big smile saying,

Buen Camino!”

Every farmer needed a mum like his!!

The sunrise had been spectacular and we were well into Galicia. Its green and the morning mist hung low below us. It is such a beautiful part of the country. Almost like an expanded Lake District with its low walls and hedgerows, fertile gardens producing everything you can think of…and so well tended. Of course you constantly walk through through cow s…t but hey…its how we get our milk and our beef.

I get shown into my Triacastela abode for the night.. and I am shown to my own little garden room. I can’t  believe it after the giant foot bath of last night.there is a washing machine room with powder and conditioner  and every conceivable washing product …it made the shelves look something out of Macro,,,but although I have internet …i havn’t got internet!!! Grrr

I take myself off down the main high street and pass a bank that allows me to get out some much needed euros!!! And park in the street with wine and Menu de Dia!!! What more can anyone want….except I am joined with people so the writing had to stop.

Oh yes, the garden lady caught up with me and charged me for the washing!!! No PROBLEMO..