Oh for a time machine
To travel back across the ages,
To see the Romans march in stages
Across this lonely scene.
I left town well before eight, for today was a very long day. A few patches of blue between light, puffy grey clouds. It was one degree. I passed a bank of solar panels, and walked on out into the country, lost in my thoughts, when Ignacio, who had been one of four of us at the hostel last night, came cycling by.
He stopped to wish me well. How do I say "Buen Camino" in English, he asked. I was stumped. The French would say "Bon Chemin", but we would hardly say "Good Road", or even "Have a good road." I suppose we would say, "Have a good trip." We used to borrow the French and say "Bon voyage".
It's interesting how none of our "Have a good..." expressions has evolved into simply "Good trip" or "Good sleep" or "Good time". Even "Good morning" doesn't mean "Have a good morning". Nor does it mean "It's a good morning". It's just a greeting. And the same with "Good afternoon". "Good bye" is quite different, a contraction of "God be with ye".
It was a long walk and these musings helped to pass the time.
All morning, I walked along a Roman road, the original Via de la Plata. Sometimes I was walking on the actual pavement; sometimes I was merely following its course. Even then, I would often see a line of stones marking its border, and once I saw a couple of large stones that may have been milestones.
I wondered whether farmers had taken some of the stones to make their walls. What a work of art is a dry stone wall! Stones of all shapes and sizes, carefully fitted in place. This morning, they were in good repair.
A dog suddenly appeared out of a ditch and came bounding towards me. This is always an anxious moment, but no, he wanted to be friendly. He was still a puppy really, his skin hanging loosely about him, as he practically turned himself inside out in his efforts to please. He would ferret about in the ditch, and then come bounding back and contort himself into further yoga-like poses as his good nature bubbled over.
He kept me company for a while, and I wondered if he would continue with me to Santiago, like the China marathon dog (Google it if you don't know the story), but he knew his territory for he suddenly sidled off into a field, probably to rejoin his sheep.
I remembered the dog, years ago on the Camino Frances, who would walk with the pilgrims all day to their next albergue and then return home .
I think I understand why the sheep in this area can be led rather than herded. A farmer came out of a gate in front of me, crossed over, opened a gate on the other side and yelled. Sheep came running, squeezing through the gates, bumping into each other, tumbling over one another in a panic, not wanting to be left behind, as they followed the farmer back to his barn. They were going to be milked.
It was a joy to walk along this Roman road. But it suddenly ended when I came upon a new motorway. Modern construction has no respect for the old ways, and the Roman road was buried forever.
The provisional way detoured to the left, passed underneath the motorway, and then to my horror, kept company with a GR, a grande randonnée, a ramblers' route. Up and down it went, up hill and down gully, hard going after the easy walking along the Roman road. But it eventually descended to the old, and when I had the choice of walking the final ten kilometres into Canaveral by the highway or by the up-and-down, round-about footpath I chose the highway.
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