Day 8:September 28

The Good?…., The Bad??…., and The Ugly???

Torres del Rio to Logroño

Late evening passed into early morning and so Saturday came upon us all. A week had passed since the start of this Camino, back in St Jean. It was another of the many albergue nights where my body clock, ingrained by years of malpractice into my DNA, was not synchronised with that of the majority of my fellow peregrinos, the overwhelming majority of whom were well into the Land of Nod all around me. Consequently a considerable portion of the early hours (la madrugada) was most nights split between:-

(1)YouTube music videos (such as Peter/Paul/Mary’s ‘Five Hundred Miles’ i.e. the approximate distance to Santiago! and Rudimental/James Arthur ‘The Sun Comes Up’ – superb through headphones, to name but two). Music has always played such an important part in my life, I draw such an amazing ‘strength’ from it and long may it continue to be that way. I was lucky to have reasonable WiFi reception in many of the albergues that I was to stay in. I also had a phone that turbo-charged from 10% to over 90% in about 45 minutes, ideal for those early hours sessions on YouTube.

(2) ruminations of a philosophical nature.

I decided to devote this next day’s walk to my father who would have desperately loved to have been doing this Camino with me. We would go on walks together at weekends all through the 1960s .We could talk for hours about almost anything. Being the iconic decade that it was, there was never a shortage of topics to discuss. When you take into account the fact that both of us shared exactly the same birthday we were both living embodiments of that prime Gemini characteristic of love of communication. It’s just sort of natural. My father wasn’t an ‘academic’ man. Both of my parents came from families hit very very hard by the circumstances at that time…i.e. the Great Economic Depression of the 1930s that affected most of the ‘western world’.The only university they could aspire to was the one known as the University of Life…. the one that has neither lectures nor lecturers, the one in which the message is very simple…when you’ve got nothing you have nothing to lose, if you want something then you have to roll up your sleeves and earn it, whatever it takes…..which is what both of them had to do…so that I, many years later, could go to the type of university that they could only ever ever dream of.

There’s so many beautiful things to be thankful for in life.

I had agreed to another early pre-sunrise start with Dan. He had a knack for spotting the presence of hills in the maps of the Brierley guidebook. If a particularly prominent hill was indicated to be present near the end of that day’s intended route, his strategy was, if possible, to stay overnight in an albergue located close to the start of the ascent of that hill. This meant that he would be ideally placed the next day to depart the albergue before dawn and commence the ascent of the hill whilst fresh in mind and body and whilst the outside temperature was still quite low.

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So leaving the albergue at 7 am that morning we were up and over the ascent of Alto Nuestra Señora del Poyo (1870 ft or 570m.) well before sunrise. No breakfasts though! The track drops away quite steeply crosses a small river then climbs up briefly to a point where the next habitation of Viana comes into view. Then the track follows the side of the nearby road headed straight at Viana. Viana has a population of just over 4000 which makes it one of the bigger towns that the Camino passes through.

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Today we had timed it very well as it was just gone 9am as we entered the town proper……so the three words Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast were prominent in our thoughts. It’s always a good idea to avoid the very first refreshment stop…unless it is THE only refreshment stop … and move on to the next one, which inevitably will be (a) almost peregrino free and (b) consequently more than happy to serve you so the euros you had in your pocket end up in theirs! Which is why we ended up in the Cafeteria “La Rua” located almost opposite to the impressive Iglesia de Santa María. As a special treat from the powers of fate and destiny, Dan and I appeared to be the first customers of any type that were in “La Rua” at that time. Yay!!! There was definitely a nice welcoming ‘vibe’ about the place…starting with the bubbly young lady behind the counter (be careful what you say now, Terry!). As soon as we both walked in we were greeted with quite a cheery ‘Hola chicos-que quieren? Chicos, eh! She just had to be South American, thinks I…possibly Central American I suppose. Latin American quite definitely.There was a definite salsa groove to the music coming from the back somewhere, though not at the ear-splitting volume that normally accompanies it in Latin America. She was half-dancing to it and just seemed so much more alive and friendly than anyone else without exception in all the cafes/bars that I’d been in so far on this Camino. So I just couldn’t resist asking her directly where she came from, to which the reply was ….. BOLIVIA!!!…..you see, I just knew it had to be somewhere in South America. She was the first Bolivian that I’ve knowingly ever met. A first! In fact thanks to geography and history the two versions of Spanish that we shared – her Bolivian and my Colombian are much closer together than they are to Peninsular (European) Spanish. Anyway, changing topic, here’s what I ordered to eat:-

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It was the sort of place that after you sat down at your table to await the arrival of desayuno you then noticed all sorts of other gastronomic delights and specialities advertised on posters and chalkboards dotted all around the walls of the cafe…which is where I spotted the absolutely unmissable Spanish staple of churros con chocolate. Chocolate gloop thick enough to stand your spoon up in. Grrrrrreat stuff for peregrinos.

We never got to know the names of the friendly young couple above that we kept bumping into a couple of times during this section of the Camino….but then again we never asked! …. nor did they tell us!! They swore by their distinctive bamboo walking staffs. So reasonably well fortified with the nutritional delights of “La Rua” we recommenced our onward journey, but not before Dan decided to head over to the Iglesia opposite….

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Dan was a bit of a credencial stamp collector, and despite just having collected one from the cafe he couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing whether one was available in the iglesia, which of course there was. There was me thinking he’d gone in there to give a belated thanks to the Lord for the food that he’d just consumed in the cafe over the road. Once inside though I was quite impressed with the sheer size and opulence of the place, a testament to the importance of Viana in former times. You may notice in this series of blog posts that I don’t make all that many visits inside the numerous places of religious worship that the peregrino will pass by whilst walking the Camino. But please don’t let that be mistaken as evidence of a lack of interest nor respect for religion and the part that such places of communal worship have played and continue to play in our societies’ culture. To prove the point fifteen years ago I stepped across the threshold of our local village church in England to join their choir!!! admittedly at first more due to an interest in the music than a purely religious interest but yes I am present and bear witness to all that goes on within that world. I love the traditions, it appeals to the sentimental side of me, it reminds of times in the past, times that have been slowly and silently slipping away. My parents/folks were not regular church-goers but they were in anyone’s estimation ‘good people’. Neither do I recollect religion ever being a subject of discussion at home. My folks would have ticked most if not all of the boxes on a list of the characteristic values that define the term ‘Christian’. What if anything sets a ‘Christian’ apart from ‘a good person’? Are all ‘Christians’ ‘good persons’? Here in this iglesia in Viana as in so many other places of religious worship and especially so in the great medieval cathedrals such as Notre Dame, Bourges, Beauvais, Canterbury, Norwich, etc I am immediately struck by the amazing sense of reverence the very moment that I step into such places and I leave the outside world behind. A reverence that is born of the sense of immensity of the size and scale of the cavernous space within. A reverence that is born of the silence and tranquility. A reverence born of the sight of the stone columns surging powerfully and majestically upwards into the dizzyingly high vaults, as though reaching up toward God’s abode in the shining light of Heaven itself- just as similarly the branches of a tree grow outward and upward as though reaching towards the Sun, the celestial Giver of Life. It must take a particular form of insensitivity for any human being not to be struck by similar feelings. I dwell upon the fact that the power of faith and belief was so strong that men would spend their entire lives, often at great risk, in the construction of these immense buildings, all in the service of God who in return for their efforts would grant them eternal residence in Heaven. What is it inside of me that produces this sense of awe and reverence? Something deep in my psyche? Something inherited down through the generations?

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So after having another stamp added to our credenciales we both moved onward and out of Viana under the glare of a by now very full and very warm sun. There’s not a lot of rise and fall in height at this stage of the route as it approaches Logroño. But for those of us that don’t use kilometres as a unit of measurement, this stage sees the crossing of an unmarked line that denotes the 100 mile marker!!! which is The Good bit of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, the caption that I used for this posting. So only about 380 (miles) to go until Santiago….and I am feeling really good at this stage…just as well.

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At least it was slightly downhill, leaving Viana, also just as well.

Finally by midday Logroño came into view:-

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The route passes over the River Ebro as it enters Logroño. I believe its the biggest and therefore the widest river that the Camino crosses over. So Saturday September 28 and here we are in one of the bigger cities that the Camino passes through. Saturday, eh! By now I, in common with many other peregrinos, had begun to experience a strange distortion of the passage of time. On the Camino one day merges and morphs into the next. Weekdays merge into weekend days. The boundaries between the hours of the day and the days of the week so familiar to us when we are ‘back home’ get kicked away after a few days on the Camino. The Camino doesn’t care whether it’s Monday or Thursday, so why should we? So now we’re in Logroño – next step is to locate the whereabouts of the Albergue de Peregrinos…. where Dan’s friend Benny was reputedly staying. Turning right immediately after having crossed over the bridge took us down the calle leading to this albergue. It opened at 1pm so we had to queue up (or should I say stand in line, which, as I embarrassingly found on my first trip to the USA is what Americans say) with the other fellow peregrinos that had arrived before us……and they of course were all in the shade (la sombra). Poor old Dan. How 20 minutes can seem like an eternity especially when queuing up under the hot Spanish sun! (queuing is a tricky word to spell, I do admit – I always need to check if I have the correct number of ‘e’s and ‘u’s) At 13:00 and not a minute before, the place opened up and inward we all shuffled to do the bureaucratic necessaries that result in you being given access to a bed for the night.

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So it was up to the dormitory, locate the bed then off to shower whilst the place was still relatively empty. The plan was for Dan and I to accompany Ben who knew a bit more about how to get around the centre of town than we did and indulge in a bit of the pintxos (remember not to call it tapas here!!!) experience. But just before leaving the albergue there came The Bad part of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly …..

The Bad! Before leaving for the Camino I had set up a WhatsApp group as administrator, with just two contacts in it – one being my daughter and the other being a cousin who lives in the same town as my mother – so there was a basic communication conduit in existence, enough to keep those back ‘at home’ informed of my whereabouts and well-being….and vice-versa of course. But others back home had heard about my exploits so they too asked to be added to the group. It would have been a straightforward procedure for the average group administrator but that wouldn’t be me – the self-confessed the world’s worst with anything to do with a mobile phone. So you won’t be surprised that whilst navigating the WhatsApp menus I managed to lock myself out of the group!!! Don’t know how, even today, but locked out of the group I well and truly was. After 20 minutes incommunicado one of my cousins messaged me and became the new group administrator because of it. I just knew that my first week in Spain of problem-free phone usage had been too good to be true.

Just before 3pm we emerged from the albergue into the lovely warm sunshine of a Saturday afternoon in Logroño. The very distinct sound of some sort of live music rang out from the far side of the main plaza and we just managed to catch up with the last couple of minutes of a procession which had those colourful tall figures in the midst of it. These things are a common sight in Spain. The previous week had seen the week-long celebration of ‘La Fiesta de San Mateo’ in Logroño, so I presume this had some sort of connection with it. So onward into a very busy city centre. Crowds everywhere! All the eating places looked absolutely packed and therefore very noisy. To be honest this kind of thing ‘ain’t exactly my scene’ but it’s an essential part of the overall Camino experience…..and so must be indulged in … and tolerated. Eventually we hit upon a veritable oasis of relative tranquility…or at least quiet enough for me to hear what the camerara was saying to me and vice versa. Even with a reasonable knowledge of colloquial Spanish there’s no point in making communication any more difficult than it has to be. The most practical thing to do it would seem is to choose the pintxos from whatever selection of them is physically closest to you at the time of ordering….and don’t dwell too much wondering what the hell some of these things are! Just point at them and ORDER them!!! The wine is much less a problem. We shared the one bottle that we purchased. It was liquid, red and tasted ok! But yeah it was really good just to chill a little and savour the atmosphere of this place on the middle of a Saturday afternoon. After about 45 minutes we moved on, as we knew that pintxos and wine by themselves would be insufficient to satisfy the body’s recommend daily calorific intake. So next task was to gather together the raw materials to prepare late afternoon lunch back in the albergue kitchen. Ben had suggested some sort of Korean noodles so who were Dan and I to argue? He had figured out where to get them from, the question was whether we purchased the normal flavoured variety or the hot variety. We went for the hot ones, along with something a little more Spanish, i.e. a couple of large jars of green olives and lots of fruit juices….almost forgot to mention the bread! So we scurried back to the albergue’s kitchen to prepare this varied mixture of a meal. The kitchen was quite well stocked and spacious and the cooking appliances appeared deceptively all quite modern. The problem being that none of us could figure out how to turn the thing on. The schematic symbols written onto the cooker top may as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the sense they made to us…and to the others in the kitchen at that same time, all trying, in helpful peregrino fashion, their best to help us out. There were probably around ten of us trying to figure this one out! So in the contest between humans (collective IQ of approximately ten times 100 = 1000) versus inanimate machine (IQ =0 supposedly), the latter was quite clearly the winner. So after abandoning all hope of using deductive logic to solve the issue, we resorted to the age-old method of random and frantic button pressing ……and it worked…thank the good Lord above. It had taken around 20 minutes to get electricity to the hotplate. Eventually the meal was ready. The Korean noodles were incredibly HOT and I dreaded what this might imply for my delicate digestive system shortly after…. let’s just say that I made sure I didn’t stray too far away from the toilet (bathroom as some might say).

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Pintxos.

After the food Dan and I returned back to the dormitory where by now the arrival of many more peregrinos highlighted a problem that had not been apparent when we first arrived. Because there were so many bunks (literas) in the room there was only enough space between them for one person to pass. Anyone in the way meant that route was blocked….so that happened quite often. It was only the generally courteous and patient nature of us peregrinos that made the cramped arrangement work. Someone did mention the number of beds in that room. I forget the number but it was a helluva lot. Fast forward an hour and my colleague Dan spotted something small and dark moving along the window ledge by his bed which concensus of opinion declared to be that horror of horrors known as the bed bug!!! Dan went down to Reception to inform them. A minute later two members of staff came into the room declaring ‘No problema, No problema’. But despite this desperate attempt to placate everyone they stiil proceeded to move the literas closest to the window out of the way and proceeded to spray loads of somekind of insecticide all over that particular area. Hmm! That was definitely The Ugly part of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. For me this was the equal worst albergue of the Camino in terms of sleeping arrangements. Far too many people in one room. I know that they have to accommodate vast numbers of us each year…but unsafe is unsafe by anyone’s definition. Garnish that with the fact that bed bugs were a distinct possibility here, it created a great sense of unease. Having said that I must admit that I have seen this particular albergue receive some very good reviews. Maybe the night we stayed there was an exception to the rule. But I can only describe things as I experienced them at the time. My account of this Camino is accurate and honest. Later we went back downstairs, met up with Ben and parleyed with those at tables around us….most of that time discussing the next day’s strategy. For the last hour before bed I went for an evening stroll around the city centre which was equally as crowded and noisy as it had been earlier in the afternoon.

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Then back to the albergue. Once again sleep did not come easily. I was still very very much awake when the lights went out at 10pm! There were a few of us in this same state, given the isolated pockets of light being cast by our respective mobile phones filtered by passage through sleeping bags/blankets. One by one these became extinguished leaving you-know-who as the lone celebrant of the arrival of Sunday whilst doing a passable impersonation of a human glow worm, all tucked up in what was my silky sleeping bag liner beneath the albergue’s blanket and immersed in the world of YouTube. I know I’m not supposed to get so hung up on ‘modern’ stuff, especially the INTERNET!!! whilst on the Camino… it’s just that music means so so much to the human being inside of me. Sorry!

Thought for the day.

1. Today saw the completion of the first week of the Camino and the crossing of the 100 mile marker. So far I felt in very good condition and was having a fascinating time absorbing all of what had been going on around me. At this stage of the Camino I was still relaxed in mind and body and looked forward very very much to more of what the first seven days had been like. So many people all around, so many nationalities, so much amazing countryside to traverse, and the Camino itself was proving to be such a straightforward track to follow. As I had read beforehand, you don’t really need maps and compasses, the route is so well marked that it’s difficult to go wrong. For those that read my future postings you’ll discover that I did take the wrong track on three occasions!!!..but lived to tell the tale.

2. I hope my father enjoyed the day that I dedicated to him today. I hope that all of those fine people that I have ‘taken’ with me on this Camino have enjoyed the days dedicated to them along the Camino so far and continue to do so for what lies ahead tomorrow and all the tomorrows after tomorrow.

I hope they have been able to ‘see’ through my eyes for themselves what they too would have loved to have been experiencing, if they had still been alive. Very touching, yes? The Buddha tells us that attachment is the root of human sadness. Sentimentality and living in the past will not help us with the issues that arise today. The only reality that there is for any of us is the one that we are living in NOW. Who could disagree with the Buddha? I’m probably not as far along the path of universal awareness as the Buddha. My reality, my ‘Now,’ is often inextricably linked with the past. There’s a sentimental streak that runs right through me. I can not and will not abandon the memories of the people that meant so much. In equal measure I will not abandon the memories of those that meant so much to me whilst walking this Camino. And yes the Buddha was right – there is a price to pay for this attachment, an emotional cost that can be quite high. Future posts will describe this very clearly.