It was a merry old time at the albergue last night. I retired early, but as I awoke from time to time, I could follow the progress of the party. First, animated conversation, then loud hilarity, and then a steady drone as the survivors finished off the bottle of plastic plonk.
I walked through the old town, its winding streets leading into a central plaza, and out into a stiff wind, a steady climb up a gravel road, over a hill, and then down a concrete road into the village of Los Santos de Maimona for a second breakfast.
And then on towards a distant factory belching smoke, past grape vines cut right back, prunings in large piles ready for burning, and through pastures, fenced off for some reason with mesh topped with barbed wire. What were they growing there? Then I passed through fields of olive trees, some newly planted, others on their last legs, so to speak, new growth on very old trunks, gnarled and fissured, young heads on very old shoulders.
By a circuitous route, for I missed a turning, I arrived at Villafranca de Los Barros, where I'm staying at Albergue Los Callaberos at the beginning of town. A pleasant enough place, with sheets on the beds. I was alone at first, but several cyclists arrived late in the afternoon.
I bade farewell to Werner and Paul this morning, or rather, I bade farewell to Werner and asked him to say good-bye to Paul for me, who was in a deep slumber after last night's excesses. They are spending an extra day in Zafra.
They are splendid fellows and I shall miss them.
Generous and good-natured, Paul enjoys his wine and fags. If he sees a guitar at the hostel, he will pick it up and play it. A pleasant diversion. He won't succeed on Britain's Got Talent, but then I won't win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He cooks a fine omelette, prefacing all his meals with avocado. Coming from Leicester, he enjoys a certain respect among Spanish football fans.
Boisterous, generous, gregarious, with wild, wavy white hair, a wild white beard, a bushy moustache with tufts that threaten to make advances on his upper lip, red glasses, and a brown felt hat festooned with a shell and enough rosemary for a year of Sunday roast-lamb dinners, Werner is a Camino sage, dispensing advice to all and sundry. "Ho, ho," he chortles.
He has a short fuse, though, insisting on respect and punctuality. On one occasion at a restaurant when the waiter arrived to serve us 20 minutes after the promised hour, he refused to stay, and stormed off, saying, "I have my standards." Werner is a Camino Character.
Some would say that those of us who return year after year to walk the Camino are a bit odd, if not eccentric. As a fellow once asked me rhetorically in a cafe in northern Spain, "How many Caminos do you have to do?"
What are they saying about me, I wonder.
Deaf old bugger, lurching along the Camino, fly undone, one of those funny Canadian hats hiding his bald pate, glasses slipping down his nose, hairs growing out of his ears and nostrils, scruffy, messy, careless, forgetful, leaving behind a trail of socks, books, towels, hiking poles....
Echoes from the past (in a harsh Australian accent):
You'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on properly.
or
When that thing on your shoulders comes to a head, squeeze it, will you?
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