Day 27. April 5, 2017. Montamarta to Granja de Moreruea. 23 kms

The lone and level sands stretch far away

 

I ate a delightful meal with Antoine from France. We discussed everything from French politics to Spanish culture, from organic wine to renewable energy. He lives with his girlfriend in Seville, and speaks Spanish and English fluently. The trouble with meeting cyclists on the Camino is that you spend one evening together and then the next day they are 100 kilometres ahead of you.

It is such a tragedy that Brexit will deny British young people the same opportunity to live and work in other countries. We could expect the disenfranchised, the unemployed, the bigots to vote to leave, but the people who must bear the responsibility for the result, the ones who tipped the balance, are the older people who should have known better, the ones who selfishly wanted to return to "the good old days", days that will never come again anyway, and in so doing, denied the younger people a future in Europe. Great Britain might have been a leading power in a United Europe; instead Little England will drift in the backwaters of history. Ironically, the other countries who have lost an empire see their future in Europe. As a backward step in the movement towards enlightenment, openness, tolerance, international cooperation, Trump is an anomaly, but Brexit is a major setback.

I had been told of a bar in town that opened at eight o'clock for breakfast. I arrived at half past, but of course it wasn't open. When he passed me by, Antoine told me that it was just opening when he passed by at quarter-to. 

Five kilometres out of town I decided to head northwest along the highway, the short cut to Tabara. But after 200 yards I changed my mind. There was no shoulder to walk on, and I had to walk along the road towards the oncoming traffic, stepping aside every time a car zoomed past.

I made a little detour to visit the ruins of the fortified town of Castrotorafe. I sat with my back to a pillar. What a magnificent lonely place! All that remained were remnants of the wall, about 500 yards across from one side to the other. A whole town must have lived around the castle. I could imagine the nobility riding through on horseback, the poor in little hovels huddled up against the walls, the running about of children and the smells of wood fires and cooking. Now all was silent.

 

I had coffee in a dingy little bar at Riego. The landlord  shouted at his wife, and she shouted back. A customer entered and she shouted at him.

In the bars in this part of Spain, everybody shouts, and I mean literally shouts, not simply speaks loudly. Yesterday, in the bar at Monta Marta I countered 25 men, no women, sitting at tables, playing cards and shouting at one another, and every so often, they would smash the cards down on the table. I don't know what they were playing, but it wasn't Enid Blyton's snap. It was the same scene here this afternoon at the bar that handled the key for the albergue. Shouts at every conceivable pitch and intensity.

I walked to the church and stood at the place where I will have to decide tomorrow: west to Orense or north to Astoria.