Day 28. April 6, 2017. Granja de Moreruea to Tabara. 26 kms

Go west, young man, go west

 

I walked out along a gravel road in the early morning sun. In recent days my shadow stretched out across the field to my left, but today, for the first time, it marched in front of me. It was truly a wonderful morning: rambles of brambles on one side, lavender bushes on the other, young poplar trees just leafing out.

 

It was rather a lonely night in the municipal hostel, a cold and gloomy building with an electric heater that didn't work, and radiators that remained obstinately cool. 

You will have gathered that I am walking west. Yesterday, I was leaning towards continuing north, but last night I dreamt that I was heading west to Santiago, so, this morning, I paused for a moment, and then headed for Ourense.

 

The soft dirt roads easy on my feet, I passed by green pastures, ploughed fields, last year's stubble, and freshly planted crops. Then I left the plain and climbed into rolling hills, with the typical prickly oak shrubs and the sage white rose, not yet in bloom, and then suddenly I descended into a valley towards a reservoir.

I crossed a bridge, and then had the option of taking a path around the water or continuing along the road. I chose the path, but turned back after having to clamber over some rocks. Too risky with a backpack. Back on the highway for a few kilometres, and then the dirt roads again into Foramontanos de Tabara. After a very pleasant morning's walk, the last seven kilometres into Tabara were tiresome, as the way had been interrupted by he construction of a high speed rail line.

At Tabara there is a fine Romanesque church. Unfortunately, I was unable to visit it.

I am staying at a simple albergue one kilometre out of town. I am not alone. The Germans, Michael and Jorge, have arrived, and another German as well. There is also an Italian pilgrim and a Spanish cyclist.

For the hospitalero, his job is a calling. He cooks our meals and does our washing. It's a simple but homely place with only one drawback: his music. It seems he must have something playing in the background, a kind of mindless beat, an annoying elevator music. But he provided an excellent fried rice dish for supper.

Day 27. April 5, 2017. Montamarta to Granja de Moreruea. 23 kms

The lone and level sands stretch far away

 

I ate a delightful meal with Antoine from France. We discussed everything from French politics to Spanish culture, from organic wine to renewable energy. He lives with his girlfriend in Seville, and speaks Spanish and English fluently. The trouble with meeting cyclists on the Camino is that you spend one evening together and then the next day they are 100 kilometres ahead of you.

It is such a tragedy that Brexit will deny British young people the same opportunity to live and work in other countries. We could expect the disenfranchised, the unemployed, the bigots to vote to leave, but the people who must bear the responsibility for the result, the ones who tipped the balance, are the older people who should have known better, the ones who selfishly wanted to return to "the good old days", days that will never come again anyway, and in so doing, denied the younger people a future in Europe. Great Britain might have been a leading power in a United Europe; instead Little England will drift in the backwaters of history. Ironically, the other countries who have lost an empire see their future in Europe. As a backward step in the movement towards enlightenment, openness, tolerance, international cooperation, Trump is an anomaly, but Brexit is a major setback.

I had been told of a bar in town that opened at eight o'clock for breakfast. I arrived at half past, but of course it wasn't open. When he passed me by, Antoine told me that it was just opening when he passed by at quarter-to. 

Five kilometres out of town I decided to head northwest along the highway, the short cut to Tabara. But after 200 yards I changed my mind. There was no shoulder to walk on, and I had to walk along the road towards the oncoming traffic, stepping aside every time a car zoomed past.

I made a little detour to visit the ruins of the fortified town of Castrotorafe. I sat with my back to a pillar. What a magnificent lonely place! All that remained were remnants of the wall, about 500 yards across from one side to the other. A whole town must have lived around the castle. I could imagine the nobility riding through on horseback, the poor in little hovels huddled up against the walls, the running about of children and the smells of wood fires and cooking. Now all was silent.

 

I had coffee in a dingy little bar at Riego. The landlord  shouted at his wife, and she shouted back. A customer entered and she shouted at him.

In the bars in this part of Spain, everybody shouts, and I mean literally shouts, not simply speaks loudly. Yesterday, in the bar at Monta Marta I countered 25 men, no women, sitting at tables, playing cards and shouting at one another, and every so often, they would smash the cards down on the table. I don't know what they were playing, but it wasn't Enid Blyton's snap. It was the same scene here this afternoon at the bar that handled the key for the albergue. Shouts at every conceivable pitch and intensity.

I walked to the church and stood at the place where I will have to decide tomorrow: west to Orense or north to Astoria.

 

Day 26. April 4, 2017. Zamora to Montamarta. 18 kms

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

 

Looking out the window of our dorm this morning, we spied a pair of storks silhouetted against the dawn sky.

I entered the city yesterday past the cement works, and today I left via the rubbish dump. I walked for a kilometre or two beside garbage, at first exposed and then grassed over. Unlike Winnipeg's garbage mountain where years of garbage have created the city's only hill, Zamora's garbage is preserved in a series of burial mounds. What will future civilizations make of these strange shapes, I wondered. 

Napoleon's army might have marched on its stomach, but the army of pilgrims marches on its feet, and some of us are suffering. I ran into Rene at the hostel last night who had left Seville the day before me. He had raced ahead covering long distances each day, but his knees had given way and he's been forced to stay at Zamora for several days. I am the tortoise, but I too was rather miserable yesterday with blisters. I have applied the latest Dr. Scholl's treatment and they seem to be better today.

 

Leaving the dump, i walked on a gravel road across the fields. Only one incident relieved the monotony of the day. I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a couple of young cyclists approaching. I stood aside, expecting them to pass and say, Buen Camino, but they stopped, shook my hand, asked if I wanted anything, did I have water, and produced their phones for a photo. I prepared to take a photo of them, but no, they each wanted to take a selfie of the three of us. Strange! Was I the Ancient Pilgrim. Were they keeping an exhaustive photograph record of their trip? I put it down to mere friendliness. It quite cheered me up.

My albergue tonight is a disused two-room school house, modernized, one class room converted into a dorm, the other into a kitchen and dining area. Very basic, but clean and comfortable. I thought I was alone, but then a French cyclist, Antoine, arrived. We had a meal together.

Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, I have to make a decision: whether to continue on the Via de la Plata to Astorga, where it ends, or to head west to Santiago on the Camino Sanabres. The latter begins at Granja de Moreruela 22 kms north of here, and heads west 22 kms to Tabara. Or I have the option of walking 27 kms to Tabara on the N631 along the hypotenuse of this right angled triangle and arriving a day early.

I have been asked to explain how I left my sleeping bag behind a couple of days ago. Well, I take great precautions to make sure I leave nothing behind. At night I tie my wallet to my backpack so I can't go without it. And I have a mnemonic that I recite to myself: "Please God. Where am I? Help a lonely traveller." I place all my odds and ends on the top bunk and check this carefully in the morning. I still manage to lose the odd sock or towel when I've left them in the bathroom. But my sleeping bag?

At night, when I have to use my sleeping bag, I get it from the bottom of the pack, pull it out of its stuffsack, loop the stuffsack around a bar on the bunk, and lay the sleeping bag on the bed. In the morning, I stuff the sleeping bag back in its sack, and shove it into the bottom of the pack.

What could go wrong? Well, sometimes, out of consideration for others in the dorm who are still sleeping, I do the assembling and packing outside in the common area. My sleeping bag rolled out of sight. nd because I had stood my pack up on a chair I didn't notice that the bottom compartment was empty.

Day 25. April 3, 2017. Villanueva de Campean to Zamora. 18 kms

Interviewer: Elvis, what do you love most about Memphis?

Elvis: Everythang.

 

Zamora is supposed to be a surprising city so I was curious as to exactly what was surprising about it. Everything!

Well, on the outskirts there's nothing impressive about it. On the way in you pass a very ugly cement works. But as you approach the river you see the solid cathedral  blending into the stone, and then you notice a scattering of church towers standing above the rooftops, not soaring Gothic but solid Romanesque.

 

The town is long and narrow, stretched out along a ridge. At one end is the cathedral and other ecclesiastical buildings. At the other is the more modern city. Scattered along the ridge are 23 Romanesque churches.

The cathedral is very modest from the outside. It has two towers, the one with a cupola so low it looks like it's keeping its head down to stay out of trouble. The other is the bell tower with bells resting in openings around the sides. Inside, there is virtually no nave, for the choir with its beautifully carved stalls takes up most of the centre of the church. But all around are baroque chapels, ornate as always.

A plaza just up from the albergue had the familiar platoon of plane trees, linking arms to provide a green canopy in summer, a characteristic of northern Spain and southern France.

The plaza major has detached buildings around the sides, some arcaded, some not, and it would've been a very large place indeed, were there not a church in the middle. The plaza major in Salamanca was uniformly lined with eighteenth century buildings around the square. Here, I counted buildings in 15 different styles. And the plaza was not square.

 

 

At the commercial end of town, the streets extend in medieval patterns but are lined with more modern buildings in an incredible variety of styles. And every so often there's a church where you least expect it

In the early Middle Ages, humble dwellings must have huddled around parish churches. The churches remain, but the old houses have gone, to be replaced by more modern buildings along the old thoroughfares.

Our albergue, donativo, is elaborate, comfortable and hospitable. Like so much of the town, it is at one with the rock it is built on. As you go down to the dorms, and further down to the kitchen, parts of the walls are bedrock.

For a couple of days, I have been eating and drinking with Joerg, yet another German. He is staying on at Zamora.

Day 24. April 2, 2017. Calzada de Valdunciel to Villanueva de Campean. 32 kms

My dear Norfolk, this isnt Spain, this is England

 

 

I am sharing the hostel with three of the Germans, Sarah, Marcel, and Michael. 

Sarah is the future. Young, she went to an International school in Majorca, took English A levels, and speaks German, Spanish and English fluently, switching from one to the other at will. Like many Camino walkers, she is in between jobs, having left employment in a hotel because she didn't like it. She is confident she will find something else, and she will.

Marcel, in his thirties I would say, is also the future. He developed, and sold, his computer company, and now works on contract when he wants to. Peter the historian maintains that there are many young people like Marcel and Sarah in Europe who move easily from job to job. He argues that this is becoming the new norm.

Michael, a little older, is an elementary classroom teacher with a special interest in music. A gentle man, he seems ideally suited for his profession.

Last night they had stayed at the hostel in Salamanca, and when they left in the morning, they arranged to leave their backpacks at the hostel. Certainly, said the hospitalero, but you must pick them up at twelve sharp. On the dot, he emphasized. They arrived at ten to twelve, just to be sure. No hospitalero. Ten past. Nobody. Half past. Nobody. To cut a long story short, he hadn't arrived by one o'clock. They called the police, because they had a key. The hospitalero, and the police, arrived at half past one. "I was doing my shopping," said the hospitalero.

I had a similar experience, but not such a crucial delay. I arrived at a restaurant at half past seven for the pilgrim's menu. Eight o'clock, said the barman. At twenty past, I asked if I could eat. Ten minutes, he gestured. Twenty minutes later, I asked again. Ten minutes, he said. I left, and ate some tapas at another bar. I have to remember that this is Spain, not England, or Germany.

I left before dawn, with frost on the ground, mist on a pond, and a few rosy streaks in the sky, not only from whisps of cloud but a few vapour trails from distant planes. I passed a battery of solar panels, enough to supply the town with electricity. Spain is taking this seriously.

It was a long day on a dirt road, beside a highway, along a disused railway line, and then across the fields.

I have to say a special word for a very special hospitalero at the very comfortable municipal hostel at Villanueva de Campean. Maria Eugenia, who also runs the hotel which is very fine according to a couple of the guests I was talking to in the bar, drove me 32 kilometres back to the previous hostel where I had left my sleeping bag. She didn't want to accept payment, and I had to force money upon her for the petrol. "I like to help people," she said. I won't bore you with the story of how I came to leave my sleeping bag behind.

Day 23. April 1, 2017. Salamanca to Calazado de Valdunciel. 16 kms

Hither and Thither sat on a fence

Hither said, "We're here," but Thither went thence.

Along came Whither, he knew not whence,

For truth to tell, he was rather dense.

In a bit of a dither, he called to Thither,

"Go not hence, but please come hither."

 

In the morning I strolled around the streets of old Salamanca. It is so different from Santiago, a medieval town, where the narrow streets wander hither and thither, and it's almost impossible not to get lost. In Salamanca the wide streets run in neo-classical straight lines, even if they have to dodge pre-existing churches, for the city was planned in the 18th century.

I paid a quick visit to the cathedrals, for there are two of them. It was not a case of warring bishops, but a desire to replace something simple and elegant with something more grandiose, "to the greater glory of God", and then deciding to keep the old after all.

I paid my reduced pilgrim's rate to enter the cathedrals and found myself in what I thought was the nave of the Gothic cathedral, for it was so wide. But it was only the side aisle. The nave itself was enormous, and the cathedral must be among the very largest in the world. The older cathedral is Romanesque, and is missing a transept, which must have been demolished to make way for the Gothic version. Apparently, and fortunately, when they finished it, they decided not to demolish the rest of the older cathedral, and it is interesting to view them together and appreciate the contrast: one with its magnificent carvings and ornate statutary; the other with its faded murals telling Bible stories. You can guess which one I preferred.

I left at midday. It was only sixteen kilometres, out of town, along the highway, and across the fields, but one is fresh in the morning, not in the afternoon.

I am staying in a little 5€ albergue in Calzada de Valdunciel. It is basic, but warm and cozy, and Maria the hospitalero is a wealth of information.

Day 22. March 31, 2017. San Pedro de Rosados to Salamanca. 22 kms

Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,

His private arbors and new-planted orchards,

On this side Tiber. He hath left them you

And to your heirs forever—common pleasures,

To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.

Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?

   

 

Early this morning I walked on the English downs. A little later I was back on the southern tablelands with its oaks. This afternoon as I walked towards Salamanca, I was on the Canadian prairies with the wheat waving in the wind.

A few miles out from the village after a long climb up a gradual slope I could see the city of Salamanca in the distance.

It is often tedious entering a big city, walking for several kilometres through a built-up area, but I walked into Salamanca along a bicycle path cum walkway which parallelled the highway and overlooked an undeveloped river valley where people were strolling or walking their dogs. And the entrance to the old city is magnificent: a walk across an old bridge towards the cathedral, and then up into the old town.

 

The Plaza Major is supposed to be the most magnificent in Spain. It is huge, and vibrantly alive. Students walk, talk, sit, even lie about the square, and of course, extending out from the arcades which border the square on all sides are the tables with waiters bustling about bringing drinks, even today when it is barely warm in the sun.

I am sharing a room in a hotel with Peter the Dutchman, for we thought, wrongly as it happened, that the albergue was full. Peter is staying in Salamanca for he has already walked the next part of the Camino. He is a former history teacher, passionate about his subject. I have enjoyed our conversations and learned a lot.