A change of daily schedule.

Villamayor to Torres del Rio.

Dan and I had agreed the night before that we would leave before sunrise and that we would make the target of the day’s walk to be Torres del Rio. This would avoid two of Dan’s three pet hates, (i) walking too far in strong sunshine and (ii) ascending steep hills in sunshine, the other pet hate = not being able to pay for anything where he can’t use credit cards! And so, at 07:00 we made a start. This was the first morning that I had set off from the albergue in the dark. A change of daily schedule indeed. Therefore it was also the first test for my head torch ( a Petzl Tikkina). Hereabouts the sun doesn’t rise until around 07:50 at this time of year, so we planned to have made a reasonable start of 2 or 3 miles before it got light, and before the temperature would begin to start climbing. So a whole new experience. Let me firstly say that the Petzl worked absolutely fine. The air was fresh and invigorating after the night before. It was quite enjoyable in a bizarre sort of way. All the time you could make out the light being cast by the headtorches of other peregrinos who had departed ahead of us. Fascinating, weird and freaky!!! Of course the sky did gradually lighten behind us, in the east, and which began to reveal the splendid vistas of the Camino stretching ahead of us ever westward.

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Just one problem…no breakfast at such an hour! Can’t win ’em all. So imagine our mutual joy of coming across the little jewel of an oasis known as Eduardo’s Mobile, shown above. It was 09:15. The smell of cooked food was divine. The simple hot coffee and bocadillo with chorizo could well have been champagne and caviar as far as we were concerned. Rachel and Pierre had already beaten us to it. So we joined them as they were finishing their breakfasts and we talked and talked and talked….as you do. They departed and we lingered, there was going to be no rushing around on a gorgeous day like this. There is nothing between Villamayor and the next town of Los Arcos which makes Eduardo’s all the more valuable if you’re lucky enough to find it available as you pass by. We left there just after 10:00.

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During the next stage of the journey we caught up with Sandra and Carla, who we had met in the albergue the night before. As previously mentioned they were two Italian girls, but Sandra now works in Dublin, Ireland, thanks to the European Union’s policy of free movement of the workforce and so her command of conversational English was more or less excellent. So Dan and I were once again given a live demonstration of their crusade to rid the Camino of plastic waste…and for that matter any other obvious litter that was visible along the track. For those interested, their cause, ‘Plastic Free Camino’, is well referenced on social media…and YouTube. If I remember correctly we walked into Los Arcos together and Dan, as chivalrous as ever, opened one of the big municipal waste bins for them to put one of the waste bags into.

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Los Arcos is a small but quite nice little place and in the shade of the Plaza Santa Maria it provides another unmissable opportunity to rest and refresh. This sort of thing is quite typical of what you find along the Camino and which makes the experience of the peregrinos walking upon it that bit more pleasurable. Unfortunately for Dan this stop wasn’t just for the pleasure of taking onboard food and drink. By now he was suffering that all too familiar peregrino curse of the blister. But not just one or two, instead he had acquired several on the ball of the foot…on both feet, each of which were threatening to merge into one fairly awful mess. So he was worried about the risk of infection. Being a ‘good egg’ I went in search of the local farmacía to acquire an anti-infection cream! To cut a long story short I did this (though I never did tell him how much it cost) and so Dan was able to apply the stuff over the affected areas of both feet. I secretly wished it would work miracles for him….literally. He was carrying a rather large mochila, no problem with that. But the weight! Wowee!! To this day I do not know what he had in it but it was heavy!!! I mean REALLY heavy!!!! I felt so sorry to see him in this condition and had to admire the dogged determination he’d shown to get this far into the Camino. Dan is quite a big strong lad but my oh my, that enormous weight being carried every inch of the way, up hill and down hill, is a real leveller if ever there was one. But had I not committed the same mistake 44 years earlier on the Pennine Way? For all of those 44 intervening years my constant mantra had been ‘Keep the Weight DOWN’!!!! at all costs. If not, you are going to have a distinctly less than wonderful time. PERIOD! (as they say in America.) It was around 12:15 when we set off for the next stage which took us through a very open landscape under the full glare of the Spanish sun and so it was ‘erm very very warm.

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We caught up with Rachel again and walked together past vineyards into Sansol and then continued up the final hill of the day into Torres del Rio. We stayed in the Hostal Rural San Andrés. How first impressions count! Other than it seeming to be quite busy the most striking visual amenity of this place was the well-attended outdoor pool with its artificial waterfall-type feature. It was very reminiscent of checking in to any of a thousand other ‘hotels’ scattered all over the Mediterranean. For the long suffering Dan who had just endured another penitential baking under today’s sun it was an attraction that he declared he was not going to miss! The time was about 15:15. So once having checked in and grabbed our respective bunks, we both made a bee-line back to the pool which, as the pictures below demonstrate, my compañero just could not resist. I made the rather disgraceful excuse that I didn’t have with me the appropriate swimming stuff so I instead assumed the role of events photographer.

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I always knew there was a calmer and more reflective side to Dan hidden away in there somewhere! Though if I remember correctly the Buddha chose a somewhat less wet spot under the bodhi tree to spend his 49 day quest to break out of the Karmic cycle . I returned to the dorm to make ready for a necessarily short visit around the albergue, but not before paying homage to….

Salomon Ultra 2 GTX. I’m not claiming them to be the best walking shoes ever…as I would need to have tried and tested many many other brands and models in order to have arrived at that decision…but for me they rate superbly well. Green would not ordinarily be my first choice in colours, but I’d chosen it for the Camino, the reasoning being that a distinct colour such as this would make them less likely to be taken mistakenly by some early-bird peregrino whilst scrabbling around in some dimly lit portion of the albergue’s shoe store. Now, after a week of walking the dry and dusty Camino trails they really looked the part, covered in the ubiquitous grey dust….and as comfortable as ever….not a single problem…and despite what some say about the problems with wearing Goretex trainers in warm weather, my feet have only ever been slightly sweat-dampened at the end of each day’s walk…and it has been very warm most of the time. Faithful old friends these shoes! But in a later Camino post I’ll describe an encounter with someone with a very different take on what and what NOT to wear on your feet when walking the Camino. So after putting these fabulous shoes back on my relatively small feet I did go outside for a short tour of Torres del Rio. The dominating feature by far was the Iglesia del Santo Sepulcro. In many respects, such as being octagonal in shape, it resembles closely the iglesia at Eunate that I visited a few days back. In the Camino guide written by Beebe Bahrami there’s an interesting hypothesis….that the iglesias at Eunate and Torres del Río are possibly linked via a ying/yang type of relationship. The iglesia here in Torres del Rio is the yang, a masculine church dedicated to Jesus – an idea reinforced by the only sculpture in the church, a 13th century crucifix of Jesus on the altar. The iglesia de Santa María at Eunate where Mary holds the altar is the female yin. The round church of San Pedro de la Rúa in Estella is right in the middle of these two hexagonal churches and may represent a blend of the masculine and female energies! Maybe it’s the Camino’s way of spelling out to us the universal truth of the equality of men and women. One can’t survive without the other. Harmony can only be achieved if masculine and feminine qualities are in balance and respected in equal measure. A message that sadly does seem to have become forgotten by all too many!

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I sat for a while in the light of a setting sun and reflected on the fact many places along the Camino such as Torres del Rio have a live-in population of just over 100 or less!!! Then it was time for the communal meal, the after meal chat,….then bed!!!

Thought for the day.

1. 91 miles completed so far, giving an average of 13 miles per day. I had estimated 14 to 15 miles per day, so not too bad at this stage. I was feeling absolutely fine. No problems anywhere….but there. was still a long way to go. I don’t think I’ve ready any book describing the walking of the Camino in which the author of it has not at some stage developed a blister or some type of musculoskeletal injury. So it was still going to be important to remain disciplined and keep well within oneself at this quite early stage of the Camino
2. In contrast to my situation of wellbeing was that of my colleague Dan. Already at this relatively early stage of the Camino he was blistering quite badly. But other than feel a huge amount of sympathy for him in this plight there’s nothing else that I could do directly to alleviate his condition. But I did add him to the list of those for whom I was already silently praying. The Camino provides as good an opportunity as any, that most of us will ever be given, to ponder the question ‘Why do we pray?’ and ‘is Prayer effective?’.