Day 3. October 2, 2016. Santander to Santillana del Mar. 32 kms

You cannot speak of reason to the Dane

And lose your voice

 

Today, I encountered a train on the famous railway bridge at Boo. But I'll come to that in a minute.

I woke up around five this morning, couldn't sleep, made my way out of the dorm, and ventured into the laundry room to write down a few thoughts. As I wrote, a silverfish emerged from a crack in the table. I recalled an old jingle from the early sixties, familiar to every Australian of my age. 

White ants in the floor,

Borers in the door, 

Silverfish galore,

Get a Flick man, that's your answer,

Remember, one Flick and they're gone.

Their slogan, 

ONE FLICK AND THEY'RE GONE

pasted on billboards across the land, was an irresistible temptation to Aussie lads who, with a deft dab of the paint brush, would join a couple of the letters and change the meaning of the slogan entirely.

This was very a strict albergue. As people arrived they were allocated beds, top and bottom bunks alternatively. Happily, the gods were smiling on me. Not so fortunate was a Frenchman with bad feet who couldn't manage the rungs. 

I started to say that I would change with him if I didn't have to get up during the night, but he cut me off after my conditional je changerais, thinking I was saying the future je changerai, and thanked me profusely with Gallic gestures, "Charles, c'est gentil, mais non." Eventually, after much protesting to the hospitalier, he succeeded in acquiring a lower bunk some distance away from me. Incidentally, he was the tall man with the aggressive feet.

It was strict indeed! At 10:01 last night the hospitalier came into our room and turned off the lights, paying no heed to the people in the process of changing or arranging their affairs. I remember that last year she tried to refuse entry to a young Kiwi with pimples. She accused him of bringing bedbugs into the hostel.

I set out with Preben at seven-thirty. We had decided to tackle the railway bridge at Boo.

It was a glorious day. As we left the outskirts of the city, the fields opened up in the early morning sun. I found myself marching along to the music of Mozart.

Quantum tremor est futurus

Dies irae, dies illa....

Hardly appropriate words, but great marching music for the beginning of the day. Thirty-two kilometres later, in the afternoon when my pack was heavy, "Lacrimosa, dies illa...." would be more fitting.

If any of my fellow choir members are reading this, rest assured, I may be skipping rehearsals, but the music is in my head.

Usually I go walking immediately after the last concert of the season, and fragments from the music remain with me. I have marched uphill to pieces from the Nelson Mass, and downhill to Carmina Burana. And you can imagine what I sing when I pass a field of sheep. Like my leather boots, music makes the rough places plain.

Only once, after a performance of music that I had not enjoyed very much, was I left without something to sing to myself as I marched along. In fact, from the whole concert, only three notes remained in my head, and I couldn't march along to them. But they proved very useful.

On a very difficult day on the coast of Spain, I had come down from a hill to a little port at the mouth of the river. How was I to get across? I followed the bank of the river inland, expecting to find a bridge. But there was none. I asked a passer by. Usually, I say "El Camino" and I'm pointed in the right direction. This time, he pointed back the way I had come. That was impossible, I thought. Then he gave me a long explanation, of which I picked up only two words: "El barco." These were the words I remembered from the piece we had sung: the boat. I was to take a ferry. 

By the time I had thought about all this, and sung my Mozart, we had reached the railway bridge just beyond Boo.

At this place in medieval times, pilgrims were taken across the Mogro river by a ferryman. Now there was no ferry, and the path takes a seven kilometre loop upstream to the first traffic bridge. But the railway crosses the river, and pilgrims are advised to catch a train from the last station before the bridge to the first station after it. It is forbidden to cross the bridge, as the hospitalier at Guemes reminded us. Indeed it is forbidden, but it's possible, and quite safe if you follow a little path beside the tracks, if a little uncomfortable and awkward when a train whizzes by as you cross. I suspect the authorities turn a blind eye, but put up the signs to avoid liability if someone gets hit by a train.

I had another Proustian moment as I walked along the track, trying to keep my feet on the sleepers and off the sharp stones in between them. Suddenly, I was with another little kid on the railway tracks just out of Claremont Station, 65 years ago, putting pennies on the line to flatten them (with apologies to King George VI and the kangaroo), when a train came coasting down the hill from Swanborne. One of us, I forget whom, yelled to the other, and we leapt off the track just in time. But today, we saw the train coming towards us.

We let it pass, crossed the bridge, and continued along the tracks to the railway station at Mogro, where we had a beer at the bar. A mistake on an empty stomach, for I left the bar, beerfuddled, missed an arrow, turned left, and walked 500 yards along the highway before I realized that something was wrong. I retraced my steps, climbed a hill, passed a group having a barbecue (a couple of times I have been asked to join picnickers), pressed on towards Bacena and the ugly industrial area around Mar.

Back in the countryside towards the end of the day, we encountered a cow leading her keepers down the highway.

 

I had planned to stay at the Albergue Arcos Iris, about three kilometres before Santillana, but when we arrived at the turnoff, a board with protruding rusty nails was all that remained of the sign. Evidentally, it had closed down. So we staggered three more kilometres into Santillana. And this albergue, too, was closed. For renovations.