Camino Invierno: 12. Outeiro to Santiago de Compostela. 16 kms.

Sluggisher and sluggisher

Well, here I am at Santiago. No fanfare for my arrival, though. Just the wailing of Galician pipes. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m at the end, or whether my body’s worn out, but I couldn’t go any further.

I had no choice but to leave early from the regimented municipal albergue at Outeiro. At eight o’clock all the lights went out, even though it was still dark outside. I had wondered why I couldn’t find the light switches. Everything was automatic and timed. Last night at ten o’clock, the lights in the dorm went out, and at seven o’clock in the morning they came on again, but then at eight, everything went out.

It would have been an easy day, but I was sluggish. In fact, when I walked the same stretch five years ago, I fair bounded along. Not this time. It was up and down over slight hills and valleys, keeping on minor roads, and eventually passing through hamlets which have now been swallowed up by the city. In fact, the Way takes you to within a couple of kilometres of the city before it leaves you on a city street, and there is the cathedral on the horizon.

I passed by the cathedral, but will spend more time there tomorrow. For lunch I had the menu del dia at Cafe de Ripoffeiro close by. Caldo Gallego with a few beans, potatoes and spidery kale swimming in a thin broth, watery roast beef, and soggy flan. All for 17€. A few days earlier, at the Hostal where I was staying, I’d had a magnificent caldo, thick with the appropriate ingredients.

I ventured down for a coffee at the familiar grand assembly of tables on the pavement opposite Alameda Park. Further from the cathedral was better value for money. Crows and pigeons scrambled below and fluttered above the tables looking for crumbs. A pigeon landed on my table, his eye on the cellophaned cake that came with my coffee. He wouldn’t be shoed away.

I’m staying at the Hotel Fonte de San Roque, with a nice view, not of the spires of the cathedral, but the twin stovepipes on the roof across the street. I rather like these cheaper hotels in the old towns. They have poky little odd-shaped rooms (in fact this one is trapezoid), because they’ve been forced into old buildings. They are essentially clean but with rusty patches and eroding plaster in the bathrooms. There is no bath, but a shower closet with those sliding or folding doors that may or may not close. If you’re lucky, the shower is fitted on its fixture and directs the water at you and not the wall behind you. The toilet is squashed into whatever space remains in the bathroom. But you get what you pay for.