I set out in thick fog. I thought that if there were any spectacular views today, I wasn’t going to see them. But the fog lifted by the time I reached the high places.
Chestnuts were scattered and splattered along the road, apples were rotting in the ditch. I passed a few cows in a barn right on the road. How could these these small farmers survive with just half a dozen cows and a few acres of land?
I passed the first horreos I had seen, those raised rat-proof sheds for storing grain, three or four of them in a row. I really am in Galicia, although the shells still point the wrong way from time to time.
Then I left the road and walked for some time along the dirt road to the side of the highway. Gorse in flower along the sides, purple heather peeping through as well. Lots of blackberry, the fruit all gone. Ugly chopped stalks of corn on the field to the side, bent over this way and that, depending on the direction of the harvester. A farm road this, I had to edge aside to avoid being squeezed by a tractor. Altogether, a very pleasant stroll .
I passed the 100 km marker. If I were conscientious, I would now be getting two stamps a day for the Compostela. This was too easy. When was the big climb?
I had hoped that this gentle climb would continue forever and that I would reach the high point without realizing it. But no, suddenly I was climbing up a steep, dirt road, paved with concrete in sections, up, up, up, and up, until it levelled out in a bit of a hollow and then reached a bitumen road where I continued to climb.
Then I was up in the land of the wind turbines, a long line of trilobites, stretching along a ridge to the next hill, slowly turning when the mood took them, some more lazily than others, some not at all. They were taking a day off.
Almost at the top, I let myself be deceived by stations of the cross lining a steep green sward stretching upwards. Was this a short but steep way up to the summit while the road took the long way round? A crocus beckoned. I walked up the grass to a chapel at the top. But then there was also a marker pointing back down. I followed it to find that the Camino had forked sharply to the right, just ten yards beyond the stations of the cross. I had been on the highest point on the Camino without realizing it.
And that’s another thing. On every pillar or pole or space where it is possible to stick something, I am told that Jesus loves me. Now He may or He may not, but I’m sure He wouldn’t be telling me so 34,107 times. I wonder at the mentality of someone who imagines that one of the stickers might effect a conversion.
After that long, long climb, it was pretty much downhill for the rest of the day. Above me to the left was the line of turbines, turning more enthusiastically now that the wind was up a little. But not all of them. In one sampling of nine, I counted only five of them turning. This has always been my experience: some are always out of action. I imagined the maintenance involved to fix them. To climb up the ladder inside to get to the turbine or the generator, would be like yesterday’s climb.
To my right, I looked over a glorious patchwork of woods, fields and villages to a range of mountains that the Camino Francés was likely passing across. I imagined that I could see O Cebreiro.
As I left the ridge, I passed a ganglion of insulators and cables and connections that led to transmission towers, taking away the electricity from the turbines to fuel coffee machines, and other devices for our comfort.
And then down, down, to the fields below with still quite a walk to the town of where I am staying at an albergue.
I have learned that Carlos and Fernando are Portuguese, not Spanish. That explains why they speak English so fluently. Carlos confirmed what a Portuguese pilgrim had told me years ago. The Portuguese speak English because their films are subtitled, not dubbed, as in France and Spain. Young people watching American cartoons and films learn English without realizing it.
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