Oh I am sick and tired of bloody rain.
I want the sun to bloody come again,
To feel its warmth upon my bloody back,
So I can put away this bloody mack.
Sorry about the doggerel, but when I'm cold and wet and numb and miserable, head down and marching into the rain with six kilometres to go, searching for a rhyme helps to pass the time.
I stayed last night at the Hostal Los Émigrantes, but I would have been better at the Albergue. The worst feature of my room, apart from the wall-mounted heater which rumbled like a diesel locomotive all night, was a nineteen-eighties television set mounted on the wall next to the door, at such an angle that without exception I banged my head on it as I left the room.
Even I couldn't use the shower, and I'm not fussy. It was a clammy afterthought in the room that housed the toilet, a small rectangular rusty cubicle mounted with thick crumbling grouting on a tiny bath where the shower mat was permanently fused to the plughole. So today was a pong day.
We were seven at dinner: a British couple and I from the hostel; and from the albergue, two Spaniards with whom I have been keeping in step, and a couple of German birders, one of whom was able to identify a bird I had seen on a fence post.
It was a lark. I had heard them singing, but previously had only seen them as tiny black dots in the sky. It was much bigger than I thought.
I walked around the old walls and made my poorly signposted way out of town, along the road towards Carboroso.
Halfway to Carboroso, I met a walker going the other way, a very rare occurrence. A retired British physicist, he was heading south to Seville. I warned him against the Hostal Los Emigrantes.
From Carboroso, I walked along a dirt road beside an irrigation ditch for some kilometres, but then I was back on the Roman road and into the oak woodland.
It rained on and off all day, but through the woodland my mood lifted. Birds were singing, and cows watched me curiously as I passed them by. Even the sky lightened a little.
But later in the afternoon, I endured seven of the worst kilometres of my life, walking on a road into a gale force wind, the rain stinging my face, streaking my glasses, soaking through my hat, running down my neck, drenching the sleeves of my jacket, chilling my knees, and dripping down the back of my calves into my boots. I could hear myself groaning aloud. And the drivers in their warm cars passing me by were saying to themselves,
"You silly bugger! Why the hell are you walking in the rain?"
I should explain that I was making a detour to Oliva de Placensia, a village seven kilometres off the Via de la Plata, for there was no albergue on the Camino itself. Tomorrow, it will be six kilometres back to the Way, but six kilometres further on from where I left off.
And later, a madness impossible to describe, lost in a village, caught in the rain, chilled to the bone, locked out of my albergue, trying to find another key, for there was only one for the three of us, and the Spaniards had it.
But all's well that ends well. I had a reasonable meal at the bar, when I found it. And now I'm sitting in front of a wood stove at the albergue. But I've still got my down jacket on.
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