Might make a run for it

im between 75 & 80km from Santiago. The weather has turned very nice which works in favor of trying to finish in 2 or 3 days.

I'm also past my cell data budget so I'm trying to keep it off during the day.

Really just reporting in that all is well since I didn't post last night.

Why can't they forecast fog?!

Sunday evening in Ourense. For some reason I'm exhausted. It might be because today was disappointing. I'm a real weather watcher lately and after several gloomy days I was expecting it to be very nice today. All the weather sites agreed that it would be be mostly sunny all day. I left the house I was staying in at around 10 this morning. It doesn't get light til around 9. The town I was in is called Xunqueira de Ambia and it was old and quant - compact with three bars.

I stayed at a Casa Rural called Miraval. I've never stayed at a crappy CR and most of these country houses are really nice. They're especially pleasant off season because chances are you'll get the whole house to yourself. Miraval was exquisite. I think it was originally built is 1356, then rebuilt in 1776. From what I could gather from the caretaker, Maria, it's owned by a family in Madrid and is literally their country house. Maria lives on the bottom floor and takes great care of the place. Live plants all over, spotless windows, etc. The family has eclectic tastes. It's was like a cross between a museum and spotless, tasteful Adams Family house. As an example, when I called to ask about a room, Maria was somewhere else and had to meet me there. The key to the place is like eight inches long. I'm guessing its the original door and hardware from the 18th century. It's a Dutch door with a modern lock on the top part so she detached the top from the bottom and showed me how to unlock the top, push it in then unlatch the bottom. Anyway there were lots of old-time touches like that.

Anyway, back to the weather. It was foggy like a Nantucket morning all the way to Ourense - and the whole day was on roads. Not long, but an unpleasant five hours.

It's about 100km to Santiago so I should be there on Thursday. I could pull a 60km day (or two 40 km days) but the way I feel now, it's unlikely.

My expectations were low

Last night in A Gudiña was grim. First of all it's not a very nice town - it seems to be there to cater to big agro. I ended up in a truck stop hostel. Usually places like that have decent food and really crappy rooms. This one had pretty nice rooms but after paying €2 for a caña, I wasn't sticking around for dinner. I had a chunk of tortilla at the truck stop next door where the same caña sells for €1.20.

I had checked the weather earlier in the day and all three of my go-to sources agreed that today (Friday) would be foggy with showers in the morning and steady rain in the afternoon. I'd also checked the description of today's route from A Gudiña to Laza. The site I use (gronze) is in Spanish but I figure that at this point, I speak bar, taxi and gronze Spanish. "long", "hilly", "highway", "AVE" (AVE is a high speed train line. They're building one from Madrid to Ourense and there's a ton of construction). I was expecting a very crappy day today.

Before bed I pasted the bronze route description into a translator. Between the bronze words I recognized were some that I had missed. Like "never really on" the highway, AVE "from a distance" and a sentence that I'd completely missed which to paraphrase, said that it's "the most beautiful day's walk in Galicia." I rechecked the weather and low & behold, fog would lift by 9 (sunrise is 8:45), party sunny in the morning and mostly cloudy in the afternoon.

It was pretty magnificent.

Galicia, as advertised.

It not raining hard but there's been that steady mist for the past couple of days. It's supposed to continue tomorrow as well but I think it'll clear up on Saturday.

If all goes as planned, tomorrow will be my last Friday of this Camino. If not for small things like that, there would be no end in sight.

Puebla de Sanabria is a great litttle town but I've been here long enough. The tourist office assured me that the specific fires that were in front of me are out now, and that it's going to rain all night.

That said, I'm not a bundle of enthusiasm. I woke up this morning, went out for the usual breakfast of coffee and toast, then went back to my incredibly comfortable and stylish room with the 40 inch tv. I already knew there wasn't going to be any channels in English, but the line-up was pretty much what I'd get back in the States.  On one channel they showed The Middle all day long, and on the other they showed one episode of Pawn Stars - which is great in any language, followed by non-stop Storage Wars - which always sucks.

Anyway I gave myself a programming exercise to complete. I made it up in my head in between dreams of smoking cigarettes. I thought it would take an hour to render seven buttons, one for each day of the week, with different colors and identifiers. I'm happy to report that it took less than five minutes using the new javascript ES6 backtick tricks I learned in school.

Same old same old

Alls well, nothing's new.

I'm in a place called Mombuey.  Staying at a truck stop. Not the worst place I've ever stayed but in the bottom 5%.

Finally some rain next week?

Its been hot & dry for the past couple of weeks but after tomorrow there should be three days of clouds and some rain. I think there's a hurricane headed for England?  I hope they don't take that lightly. I was in London for the hurricane of 87 and it was no joke.

This region, northwest of Zamora is pretty ideal for caminoing. It's so much less expensive than the mainstream Camino has become. People are really nice, and the pueblos are well maintained with decent bars and food. I'm in Camarzana de Tera where I have my own room & bathroom, plus dinner and breakfast for €30.

I won't stay in a barracks again unless it's an emergency. I'll order a Cabify if I have to.

It feels like the home stretch

It's not really the home stretch. I've got almost another two weeks but today it occurred to that after today I will probably only have one more Friday on this Camino.

For the past 10 days or so I've been in the land of big grain. This time of year everything is gold, orange and brown on the central plateau (meseta), so last night when I arrived at Granja de Mor(blah blah) I was satisfied that I had reached the technical end of the Via de la Plata and today would begin something called the Camino Sanabrese.

The only things that I know about this route is that A: It's greener and hillier than Via de la Plata, it approaches Santiago from the south rather than from the east, and that it's all new to me.

The last two days have provided me with some great visuals. Yesterday I saw what may be the most classic Spanish landscape I've encountered. It's the ruins of an old military fortification. I think it was first developed in the mid 1100s and stayed relevant until the early 1700s. It's called Castrotorafe and is humungous. There's a castle at one end of it and I ended up taking a very wrong turn near that castle. I knew it was a wrong turn but I had gone all the way down to the water and was so curious to see what was around the next bend that I wandered a good hour out of my way. In my book, that is a good day!

Today I got to see more of that river / lake. It was really beautiful, maybe especially this time of year when the sun is never really overhead so there's lots of long shadows and lighting nuances.

At one point I had turned a corner by the river and there was almost  zero sign of modern life. It was like a scene from Nat Geo. Deer running across fields, ducks flying around ...

It's gonna be a long night

In a barracks. Top bunk.

Americans are the worst

I've had some fun talking to a mother -daughter combo named Kirsten & Mason over the past week or so.  They're from Alabama and are excellent American tourists; respectful, insightful, try to speak Spanish etc.  Twice they told me the story of a young couple who stayed in the same albergue (barracks) as them, who, two nights in a row left the barracks to go drinking, then came back to the barracks and loudly got it on - in a room with 20 other people.  The couple hung a sheet from the upper bunk to protect their privacy. Of course I was very happy that I had my own room somewhere because I would not have handled that well at all.  Eventually I had to ask K & M if that couple was ... American.  They were, and that was when I knew I had to leave the Camino Frances.  I told them, and I wasn't lying - that if I was in that albergue I would have shamed them for further embarassing my country and kicked them off the camino.

I've had a cold since this morning.  Yesterday on the bus from Leon to Zamora, some woman a dozen rows behind me did one of those sneeze-gasms - like 10 full, uninhibited sneezes - on a freaking bus.  I'm fairly certain it was an American woman.  If I was positive, I would have walked back and explained to her that she should be charged with assault on the other 50 of us on the bus - and kicked her off of whatever camino she thought she was on. 



                                                                               

Headed out of Leon for Zamora

I figured it would be easy to get from Leon to Zamora, and it is. But I've become so dependent on Google maps and Rome2Rio that when neither of them showed a direct bus route, I worried. Last night after dinner I even walked to the bus and train stations to see in person, but they were 'un-manned' for the night. I went to bed thinking that I'd just continue on the main Camino and try & get down to the Via de la Plata at some point but figured I'd stop by the bus station one more time.

I'm on the bus to Zamora now and it might work out even better than I'd hoped. The walking stage out of Zamora is about a 5 hour walk so if the bus gets in before 1pm I'll probably do that today. That would mean I'd make the transition from one route to the other, including 2 bus rides without taking a day off from walking.

Last Day on Frances Route?

I'm in a place called Terradillos de los Templarios. Sahagun, which is a biggest town about 12km west of here. Since I've already done "this" Camino, which has about 350km left, I'm planning on catching a train or bus from Sahagun to Leon, then from Leon to Zamora so I can finish the Via de la Plata, which I abandoned for the the Portuguese coastal route last year. I think it's hard and hilly, with about 400km left to Santiago, but every step will be new. I think it's the only route that doesn't finish with the route of last years "60km day". Not sure if I've mentioned the 60km day but let me know if you want to hear all about it.

I'm kind of feeling it

The idea of doing the main Camino route again was mainly because of how social I remember it being. Inside I knew that was setting high expectations and so I'm not shocked that it isn't full of fun, funny people, like me.

It's fine though. I have met some really good people - almost always at dinner. The most interesting were the Norwegian couplewith unpronounceable names. They made me feel so proudly Norwegian. Then last night I shared a table with a Dutch couple who were nice and interesting.

So I have four more days to Leon. From there I'm planning on going to Zamora and picking up the Via de la Plata where I abandoned it last year - so I'll be on a fresh route again. Did I ever mention what I sometimes refer to as "The 60km Day"?  Aside from the fact that The shadows were arriving for our 40th anniversary trip, I really couldn't bear the thought of staying two nights in towns that I'd already been to, and didn't much like. So I'll be glad to have a fresh entry route into Santiago.

That's still a long ways always though.

Tautology?

There were seven of us at El Mulino last night. Me, a Chilean couple, father / daughter from Logrono and a couple from Geneva - they walked here from there starting July 20th.

The rooms at El Molino were okay. Dinner was excellent. Some kind of carrot soup to start followed by high end ham, fried zucchini, chorizo and cheese served all together. Then a delicious artichoke tortilla with pimientos de padron, then slightly carmelized salmon. There was a meat thing as well but I didn't have any of that. I ate so much of everything else.

To remind you, this was the place that was 10km (I said 6 yesterday but I was wrong) off the Camino that came to pick me & the Chilean couple up at the albergue in Hornillos del Camino. It was a 20 minute drive.  Once we sat down to dinner I started gauging the crowd's morning routine. All six of those people wanted to leave by 7am. I'm like 'come on? Why?'  They're like 'it's gonna be hot tomorrow'.

I was hoping that there was only one car for the six of us, so they'd have to make two trips - I'd be in the second batch. But the old woman (by the way,  "old" means older than me) who ran the joint proudly told us that they had two cars and two drivers - but we couldn't leave til 7:30. Breakfast was at 7.

I looked into the Chilean couple's eyes and made them PROMISE that they wouldn't leave without me. They looked back in earnest and PROMISED they wouldn't. After breakfast (coffee and toast) it was still pitch dark - and I was 95% packed so a layer back down in bed for a couple of minutes and closed my eyes.

Next thing I hear is the Chilean woman on her way out the door saying "buen camino!"  Bolted up, stuffed the rest of my crap in my backpack, found my boots and ran out just as the old man was shutting the hatchback (His wife was driving the car with me and the Chileans). I shook my head disappointingly at at them and said "you promised!"  They replied "and we didn't!"  Touché to them.

I was in the front seat with the Chileans in back. They were speaking Spanish but I could follow what they were saying. "Nice house. How old?  Has it always been in the family?"  "Thanks. 200 years. Yes."  The grandma asked me where I'm from and I told her. "Muchos Americanos (Spanish words) Camino" to which I replied that yeah porque el peliqula (which is supposed to have meant because of the movie.

The Chileans didn't know about the movie and i was really glad that I'd made that remark because the woman told the Chileans the story  that was in the link on yesterday's post. The girl that married Emilio Estavez's son is her daughter.  It confirmed what I thought might be true: that without the woman who made me such a fantastic meal, and is now driving me back to the Camino, I would almost certainly not be in her car after eating the dinner she made.

Years ago my friend Kevin, who ran a 4:00.1 mile as a philosophy major in college tried to explain what tautology meant in the philosophical context (not the rhetorical).  A story that is true from all perspectives.  I wonder if this story is an example?

Something good always happens on the Camino

Sometimes you can't wait for the Camino to do something good. You have to make it happen yourself. So I've been buying tickets to the Christmas Lottery. Show me a camino miracle!

Anyway, I decided to do the easiest, laziest thing and just keep going on the route I've been on. Once out of Burgos, which is a really nice walk - they seem to have strung together a dozen parks on the western edge of town so by the time you leave the city, you're practically in the country.

It's no secret that the movie The Way has had a big impact on me. I think it's because in a way I thought of it as a gift to me. I saw it within a week of losing my job and my dog dying. Seen it at least ten times and never without bawling my eyes out.  One of the last strung together parks on the way out of Burgos is where the gypsy makes his kid - who stole Martin Sheens backpack carry it all the way the the end of Burgos. I noticed that spot this morning and pictured the filming of the movie.

After some suburbs comes the meseta, the central plateau of Spain and it comes upon you suddenly. It gets a bad reputation on 'Camino forums' as being so long and monotonous that a substantial percentage of people skip it. To me it's the most Camino-esque part of the whole thing.

There are very few choices of where to stay on the meseta and since the Camino is far more crowded than it was last time I figured I'd better call ahead to book a room (most places don't use booking.com, etc in these smaller places.) The guy at the other end of the phone said the his place "Casa Rural Sol y Sol" was sold out, but that I should call him when I got into town and he'd come & take me to 'El Molino' 6km away and drive me back in the morning.

El Molino is way out of the way but it's a very nice old house. There's an autographed 'The Way' poster on the wall, so I googled it.

It turns out that the whole movie was inspired by Martin Sheen staying here in the mid 2000's while driving the Camino with his grandson. The grandson fell in love with el Molino's owner's daughter and they got married. Apparently they live in Burgos. If you've seen the movie, El Molino was also the place where Martin Sheen and his gang made themselves a great dinner.

If you're interested, http://alibi.com/film/39145/Martin-Sheen-and-Emilio-Estevez.html

Still Not Feeling It!

In Burgos which is a fine city. That said, the 'been here did this' feeling is pretty heavy so I'm weighing options.

Door one is a train to Zamora and continue the Via de la Plata that I abandoned for the Portuguese coastal route last year. Behind door two is a bus up to the picos de Europa which, now that I've written it down seems like a lousy idea.

There are other doors. Like continuing to put one foot in front of the other on this one like I'd planned, at least to Leon where I could pick a new door.

I'll Give It A Few More Days

a couple of days ago I made the comment that even though I've done this Camino before, it seemed 95% new. That's no longer true and it's wearing on me.

I'm thinking that I'll continue on this route, maybe as far as Leon and then finish on a route that I haven't done before. I'll be in Burgos tomorrow. Then it's just under a week on the meseta to Leon.