Lines composed while walking along an irrigation ditch
I walked along an irrigation ditch,
For such it was, Indeed no more, but which
Some would give a grander name, to whit
A canal. A gross misnomer, for each bit
Was choked with reeds and rushes, even trees,
No water flowed in channels such as these.
A muddy pool, a puddle, stretch of slime
To thee, O ditch, I dedicate this rhyme.
They were the most hospitable hosts I have ever met, genuinely concerned for the pilgrims’ welfare. Food was simple but good. We began each meal with a rhythmical grace, involving a chant, much banging on the table, and clapping of hands. I didn’t know the words but my rhythm was good.
There were five of us: the German couple Hans and Doris, Albert the Dutchman, and I. Albert is something of a polyglot. He spoke Spanish to the hosts, German to the couple, and English to me
I set out for Sahagun, 19 kilometres away. The hospitalero had said it was an easy walk: across the fields, along the canal, and across the fields again. Remembering my canal walking of a couple of days ago, I was looking forward to doing some more of it.
It was cool as I walked out of town. I have learned to tell the temperature by the state of my fingers. It was 3°.
I crossed the field and arrived at the near ghost town of Arenillas de Valderaduey, where I admired the beautiful apse of the church. Then I crossed a ditch, and headed out once more across a field. After a while, worried by the absence of arrows, I retraced my steps and found that I had missed a sign. It directed me along the irrigation ditch, the canal.
One of the reasons I write this blog is that it occupies my thoughts as I walk across the plain. I dictate them into the notes app on my phone. The composition of doggerel can carry me over many a kilometre. The other day I composed a poem as I walked along, dictating it line by line. The larks were singing, the muse was soaring. Three stanzas, a real gem. But later, when I went to retrieve the poem, it was gone. Somehow I had touched the undo button on the screen. That was the one that would’ve made it into the Oxford Book of English verse. I felt like Coleridge, but without the opium hangover. An unfortunate bit of pocket dialing! Now I try to remember to touch the done button at the top of the screen after each dictation.
I walked beside the ditch for seven or eight kilometres, passed under the railway line, crossed the bridge over the canal, and then followed a gravel road towards Sahagun in the distance.
But the Camino was not finished with me yet. Sahagun wasone of those towns that seems to get further away as you approach. But finally, I arrived at the junction with the Camino Frances. The end! But I have a few days left, and will walk on to Leon, 55 kilometres away.
The town is not overrun with pilgrims, as I had feared. As I sit here, in the early evening, enjoying a beer in a bar on the pilgrim way, they appear, strolling, rolling, limping, staggering, many with the pilgrim’s gait after a shower, a kind of rolling like an old sea captain on dry land. Bult it’s a trickle, not a stream, or the river it will become closer to Santiago. I watch one now, walking slowly, but not in a straight line, still with pack on back so he hasn’t found an albergue. To arrive this late, if he left in the morning, he must have walked 40 kilometres or more.
I am staying in the Albergue de peregrinos de la Santa Cruz, formerly run by nuns, but now by volunteers. It’s in a fine 18th century brick building, a block long. My roommate, Pascale, walks 40 kilometres a day. I won’t see him again.
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