12. Ribaduma to Villanova de Arousa. 17 kms.

 

 Villanova de Arousa

It was a noisy stay at the Hospedaje Rustico Os Castaños. From the time I arrived until nightfall, the comparative silence was shattered by sequences of explosive blasts. Was this a farmer shooting vermin with a shotgun? Or was there a shooting range nearby? Or perhaps people were celebrating a holiday with fireworks?

And these were not mere background noises: they were very loud explosions.

I twigged this morning when I set out once more on the Route of Stone and Water, not so much stone now, and a gentle brook rather than a rushing stream. The blasts began again and I realized that hese were explosive “scarecrows”, devices triggered by the movement of marauding birds and designed to protect the grapes or the crops. I had seen them in France on a previous camino.

The first part of the morning was an easy strolI along the brook, and thence the bank of a river.

Then I walked for a while through a built up area, the tedium broken only by an encounter with Tim from Ireland who drew me and a few others into a little chapel. It is the spiritual variant, he said. He and his wife(?) sang a little song, and then he gave a blessing and she gave a hug, and I moved on.

Then up into the hills, through the woods and into the vineyards.

From a high point I could see the ocean in the distance, and it was downhill from there, the sea breeze strengthening as I approached the coast.

I hoped this was my destination, but no, I walked for  three or four more kilometres around the shore, in front of a couple of resort villages, past a RV park with half the caravans in Spain, and on to the Port of Villanova de Arousa.

During one of the monotonous stretches, I reflected on a couple of items I had read in the news this morning, both concerning the banning or potential banning of books.

The first was a story about a girl in a Northern Ireland school feeling uncomfortable at the racist words in Of Mice and Men. Fair enough. Why would they teach it there anyway? Is there any book less relevant to Northern Ireland? I suppose it’s short and easy. Great Expectations might be a bit much.

The second was about the banning of the Bible in schools in Utah. What? I rubbed my eyes. Banning the Bible in American schools? Was it because of the Book of Revelations? Or the nasty bits about sodomites? No, it was because of “vulgarity”. 

I knew what they were talking about. There are some smutty bits in the Bible. I remember the kid sitting next to me in Scripture class seventy years ago pointing to the verse on page 444 of our King James Bible about the men who “drink their own piss and eat their own dung”. Early recycling! We sniggered. But I don’t think reading it did me any harm. I never fell into the practice myself.

I am grateful now for those Scripure classes. I was made to learn passages of the most beautiful Elizabethan English off by heart. “A certain man went down from Jerasulem to Jericho….” “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help….”

 But I digress.

I have settled in rather comfortably at the Pension Mar de Rosa, with my own bed in a kind of rec room. I am eating at a nearby bar. After two nights of pulpo I have decided to feast on its poor cousin, calamari.

I fill up on the bread, for tomorrow, before breakfast, I catch a boat at 7:30, following the path of St. James, whose remains were transported in a stone boat, Archimedes notwithstanding, to Padron. The name of the town comes from the Latin for “stone”.