Borrenes. A Bonus Post for Loyal Readers

This is a bonus post, for I woke up during the night and couldn’t get back to the sleep. Too much wine at dinner perhaps. By the way, I’ve been having terrible problems with Google Blogger, too tedious to describe. Some of you got a premature post yesterday, with errors. I apologize.

Camino de Papel Higienico

On the Camino de Papel Higienico

I suppose if you have  to, you’ve gotta go

But when you can’t find a dunny or bog,

Do as you’d do for Rover, your dog, 

Carry a poo-bag and pick up your paper

You will earn days off Purg. for this caper.

The road to hell may be lined with good intentions, but the road to Santiago is lined with paper.

It’s a very, very serious problem. Whereever the path through the woods widens ever so slightly, pilgrims have relieved themselves. Tissue and toilet paper line the trail, evident at every slight widening of the path, and at any clearing just off the path you will see it covering almost every inch of the ground. Sometimes it’s hooked on the bushes at the side of the trail. This is another reason I was happy to take the road less travelled by.

I miss some of the people I met on the Camino Francés . We all know that one of the joys of the Camino is meeting up with the same people, often unexpectedly, again and again.

I kept running into the young Swedish couple wheeling their baby. I often thought about them as I gingerly inched my way down treacherous slopes. They told me that when they could wheel their carriage, he would carry it, and she would carry the baby. I said that it was a pity he wouldn’t remember his first Camino, and they said they would tell him about it, and it would become a memory.

I miss the German lady with her dog and her new friend Danielle from Portland, Oregon. But I don’t miss the man from Alaska. I don’t think I told you about him.

At supper, at the hotel a couple of nights ago,I was placed in a group who had already started eating. They didn’t open a conversation, so I ventured, “Where are you from?” 

“I’m from Alaska,” said the man next to me. “Alaskan born and bred.” 

“0h,” I replied, “I’m from further south. Victoria, Canada.”

“Pity you didn’t open the border sooner,” he said, seeming to hold me personally responsible for the Canadian government’s policy of trying to restrict the entry of potential Covid carriers. And then his neighbour’s typically European thin steak arrived. “Bet that’s not what your used to,” he said. And then he dismissed a couple who were leaving the table with a tired don’t-do-anything-I-wouldn’t-do kind of joke. Something about bail money. I thought he must have been travelling in a coach, but no, I found out the next morning he was walking the Camino.

By contrast, one of my roomies in the dorm was a very young Italian lad, Luca (I don’t thing I’m spelling that right). Luca was effusive in his appreciation of the cross-cultural aspect of the Camino. “I meet so many people,” he said, “from different cultures, and they respect me, and I respect them.”