The first great scare of the Journey
Grañon to Vilamayor del Río
The night came and went. I had survived the nocturnal session laying upon that wonderful invention known commonly as ‘the matress’. I think I slept from about 01:30 until around 05:30. I’m quite accustomed to sleeping for 4 or 5 hours, it’s quite normal for me, even when not walking the Camino. Dan and I had already planned another fairly easy day with ‘somewhere in or close to Belorado’ being the objective of the day’s walking efforts. The first requirement was to find somewhere to have the mid morning breakfast. The weather looked to be very favourable, once again, but slightly cloudy as the image below shows. Ideal! in many ways.
Moving on from Grañon
So we traversed the gently undulating terrain through which the Camino passes at this stage. Shortly after leaving Grañon we entered the province of Castilla-Leon!
Just in case you weren’t aware. Leaving La Rioja behind. The province of Castilla Leon loves its ostentatious waymarkers.
In the picture above there’s a shot of one of those intriguingly interesting characters that the Camino attracts to it. It’s the young man on the left. I’m sorry that I have forgotten his name – other than I remember that it started with the letter ‘G’. But I would never forget his face. Interesting isn’t it, as I’ve already commented elsewhere, why some things we remember very clearly, and some we don’t. For the moment I’ll call him Mr ‘K’- the reason for this will become clearer in a later post, as our respective paths along the Camino were destined to become intertwined on several further occasions. What Dan and I noticed on this first encounter was the fact that he wasn’t wearing any shoes/boots!! Hmmm!To each his own I suppose!! The first habitation of any note was Redecilla del Camino where there was a cafe open to supply the much needed breakfast – the usual cafe con leche, zumo, tortilla and whatever else catches the eye at the time. Simple stuff for sure, but no less welcoming and delicious because of that. So we both ‘switched off’ and relaxed. How wonderful these moments! Just to sit there and passively absorb the ambience and be grateful for all of it, every last single bit!
Redecilla del Camino 
Redecilla’s ‘iglesia’ awaits.
It wasn’t long before other pilgrims made an appearance. More exchanges of the ‘buen camino’ pleasantries with our fellow travellers. A steady stream of them passed us by. Every now and then some were tempted into the cafe opposite. The tall, the short, the slim, the not-so-slim, the old, the young, the fast, the slow and all shades of grey in between. I’ve always found observation of my fellow humans’ behaviour fascinating. But here on the Camino it is particularly so because here you have representatives from most of the 190 countries recognised by the UN. What brings them here, what has brought all of us here? From time to time a familiar face appeared. The young American couple that we’d last seen in the cafe in Viana were one example, definitely a very friendly twosome. I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned the substantially stout walking staff that each of them were walking with. In fact it was the first thing I had noticed the very first time that they passed me along the route several days before. When I say staff, I really do mean a staff…you know, the thing that medieval pilgrims and travellers brought with them long before the days of adjustable super lightweight carbon fibre shock absorbing walking poles. I imagine, back in the good old days of yore, that they were intended primarily to act as a deterrent to the robbers and bandits that it is said frequented these parts.
Dan at the café. A cat has tickled his fancy! 
Dan and one half of the young American couple…and a young French girl in the bottom left hand corner.
Gradually quite a sizeable group of peregrinos flocked around the café. When it came to the time for Dan and I to move off we teamed up with a group of six maybe seven others, one of which had been the bubbly and talkative little Irish lady whom I had last spoken to in Nájera. She was quite definitely walking the Camino for deeply pious reasons as she had taken the option of following the lengthy detour out to San Millán de la Cogella and the monasteries of Suso and Yuso. We were going at quite a good pace for a sizeable group. The next habitation was Castildelgado. The young French lady who features in one of the shots above (if you expand the photo out) was in front and we noticed that she had stopped and was talking to one of the local inhabitants. When the rest of us had caught up it was evident that the local inhabitant was giving her some fruits from the trees and shrubs that were in his garden. It was that time of year of course… harvest..October, autumn (as we say in Europe). Once these had been distributed amongst ourselves I ended up with a fairly small and furry soft-skinned green fruit. It looked a little like this ….
So we all collectively partook of this spontaneous demonstration of hospitality and collectively digested our newly acquired goodies. I was fully expecting my particular fruit to have the sort of less-than-pleasant taste that you associate with items grown in local garden orchards. I fully expected to be spitting the thing straight back out, once out of view of the friendly local. But I was wrong. The thing was surprisingly sweet. So onward we pressed. Then all of a sudden everything went pear-shaped for me, less than five minutes after consuming that fruit. Up until that point I had been perfectly fine health-wise. Ever since leaving England I’d felt really good. Until this moment!!!From out of nowhere I suddenly felt really unwell. Whatever it was that hit me did so like the literal ‘ton of bricks’!It’s hard to describe it exactly but I felt dizzy and nauseous and ‘spaced out’. I felt very very weak and extremely fatigued. Something had affected my central nervous system quite dramatically. Of course all of this was at the time unknown to the rest of the group who were marching along at pretty much the same fairly rapid pace as before. By the time the Camino left the road and headed back into the countryside I began to have the sensation that I couldn’t feel my feet striking the ground any more. Instead it felt as if I was floating along, but it certainly wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. The others appeared still oblivious and I can still remember hearing the little Irish lady chirping away to everyone in her own inimical way. I was feeling really unwell and knew that at some stage I was going to have to inform the others that there was no way I would be able to sustain their walking pace at that time. Things deteriorated as I know that I started to feel very sorry for myself and I was starting to panic because of it all. Several times at this stage I felt on the verge of collapse and became very negative. I remember thinking to myself such thoughts as ‘Oh No, please don’t let me die here, even though I love the place, I just don’t want to die here!’. That’s how depressed I’d become and I was genuinely scared, I honestly do admit. I’d fallen into one enormous hole of negative mentality. So much negative emotion. I’d become envious of my other fellow walking companions, none of whom seemed to have been affected despite some of them having consumed the same little fruit that I had done. It was just at this moment of extreme despondency that a Guardian Angel intervened…in the as then unlikely guise of my colleague Dan. He noticed what the others hadn’t when he said to me “You don’t feel well, do you?” to which I replied “No Dan, I feel dreadful”. He proceeded to ask me questions which in hindsight I believe were designed to indicate whether I was suffering some drastic affliction such as stroke/heart attack! But the simple fact that I was able to answer “No” to each of the questions he asked, gave me the reassurance that I had been silently crying out for in the minutes that had just gone by. From that point in time I felt that my condition stabilised and from then on the long slow process of recovery began. We had agreed to let the others go ahead by this stage. Because of my condition we agreed to look for a more local albergue than the one where we had originally planned to stay. This would give me a better chance of making a full recovery physically and be in much better shape to hit the road again the next day.
Entering Viloria de la Rioja.
Luckily not too far ahead in the village of Viloria de la Rioja there is an albergue named ‘Acacio & Orietta’. A picture of it is the one in the caption at the head of this blog post. It gets excellent reviews and at least one of the proprietors is Brazilian. Because of this I believe it has connections with the author Paulo Coelho. Sadly it was cerrado when we arrived. Not just because of the hour of the day. From the note by the entrance it appeared to be closed for at least the next few days. Maybe the owners had gone away to Brazil, for a break! So we moved on and then came across Steve the American (the one who resembled The Stones’ Keith Richard) and whom we had last encountered at the end of Day 6 in Villamayor del Jardín. He was seated in a shady little alcove just off the main drag, opposite to some sort of shop. He’s walked the Camino at least five times (so he says!!!) and certainly his outward appearance and what he was wearing lends him the air of a bit of a ‘vet’. He’d have fitted in wonderfully well with John Wayne and Richard Widmark in the cast of ‘The Alamo’. I digress…anyway we couldn’t ignore such a fine fellow. Though I had begun to recover a little healthwise I didn’t mind taking the opportunity for another rest. The moment I remember is when I commented to Steve about how amazingly heavy Dan’s mochila was (in my opinion that is). Steve went over to Dan’s pack and proceeded to lift it a little. I knew that Steve has what is known as a ‘colourful turn of phrase’ and so awaited his doubtless equally eloquent commentary upon the weight of Dan’s pack. There was that moment that seems momentarily frozen in time when the expression on Steve’s face betrayed the fact that (a) he thinks it’s not a problem and he’s wondering what all the fuss is about or (b) he can not believe how anyone in their right mind could possibly conceive of dragging anything weighing this much for 5 miles let alone across 500 miles of northern Spain. As I expected option (b) won out! As he lowered Dan’s mochila to the ground Steve let out between his teeth a much expected and long drawn out ‘Fffffffffffffffff***********ccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk’ followed by ‘that thing is gonna kill you man, you must be nuts, etc etc’. It was a bit like John McEnroe’s finer moments at Wimbledon back in the 70s. Brilliant stuff, just so so funny. All of which ensured that my sense of humour was back in good shape. I just needed to get my appetite (for food) back into the same shape. A slower process I know but the walk through the countryside at a nice sedate pace did its best to aid the process. We bid our farewells to Steve. When we came within sight of the next habitation Villamayor del Rio, I felt well on the way to recovery and actually felt fairly hungry for the first time since mid morning. Luckily there was a roadside café/restaurant/shop selling local produce, named ‘Restaurant Leon’. There’s also an albergue a few hundred yards down a side road leading off the Camino, where we decided to rest for the night.
Albergue ‘San Luis de Francia’
We returned to the restaurant. To be honest I have no recollection of what we ate, but the important thing was it marked the moment in time that I had returned to a state of my usual good health. I presume my Guardian Angel was as happy as I was for this fact. Upon return to the albergue we sat outside in the lovely afternoon sunshine.
A peaceful and relaxing afternoon back at the albergue
For once I didn’t wash any clothes nor did I take a shower. I felt quite well but I also felt tired after the earlier trauma. Dan remained in the dormitory during the evening. I was befriended by two young German peregrinos who did their utmost to involve me in a card game that is apparently popular with German children. I fully appreciated their efforts to include me by explaining the game and both of them conversing in excellent English. I gave it a good shot and thanked them. But I am notoriously slow on the uptake when it comes to card games and it was no different in the albergue that night. So I too returned to the dorm after half an hour and went to bed before 22:00, without the usual YouTube music spree, the earliest time that I was to do so in the entire Camino.
Thoughts for the day.
1. One of the reasons for walking the Camino, that I listed in my blog post entitled ‘Why I did the Camino Frances’, was to say ‘Thankyou’. If ever there was a more deserved person to express this gesture of gratitude towards it just had to be my fellow peregrino Dan, given the events that I have described in the blog post above. It was only after his intervention, by asking me the various questions that I was able to say ‘No’ to, that halted the remarkable decline in health that I was experiencing at that time. What was it that Dan had spotted that prompted him to do what he did? It is said that we each have a Guardian Angel. But they have no form, they are timeless and are therefore ageless. Theoretical physics predicts the existence of 11 dimensions. As humans our perception of ‘reality’ is based upon only of four of them (x,y,z and time). Who’s to deny the possibility that at least one of these ‘missing’ seven dimensions isn’t the abode of all of our Guardian Angels? In that same earlier blog post in the section entitled ‘Destiny’ I wrote ‘in my life I feel as though I have been, guided, protected, moved by something’. Was I describing ‘my own’ Guardian Angel???
1 comment
Comment by Cindy
Cindy December 15, 2021 at 11:05 pm
I’m just thankFul that you are aliVvvvveEeeee!!!!!!!
I truly understand, I got so sick on my Camino. I don’t get it! I don’t understand how I am aliVe to this time!!!!
But I Am!! And So Are YoUuuuu!!! How one piece of fruit could make u sick and one step could be the endddddd. GOD has control but we really don’t haVe that type of control. I’m grapeFulll for your angel Dan!!! Thank youDan for being at the right time for my Firend Terry!! God has a purpose!! That we cannot understand!!