Day 10. March 19, 2017. Torremegia to Merida. 16 kms

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

 

After a pleasant breakfast, each carrying a sandwich provided gratis by our host, Steffan and John and I set out this morning from Torremegia for Meridia, a pleasant 16 km stroll after yesterday's long hike. It was more interesting too. After seven or eight kilometres beside the highway the track meandered across some fields towards the town. A fellow on a quad enticed us to take rooms in his apartment. Disappointing.

 

We walked into town across the river on the longest Roman bridge still in use, 780 metres, now open only to pedestrians and cyclists. Better built than the old blue bridge, I guess.

Steffan and John are staying in Merida tomorrow, so I'll be pressing on alone. I shall miss them.

Steffan is a good bloke, quiet and thoughtful. He is in between jobs, and in between girlfriends, I believe. In the morning he performs the most elaborate stretches. I once apologized for interrupting him while he was praying to the east, but no, he was just preparing for the day's walking.

 

John is an entertainer. He regqles us with stories of his aventures with Art, his partner. Art is on the Camino as well, virtually, by means of Google Earth.

"Zoom down on the Main Street," says John, on his new cellphone "See the hostel. See the table in front? That's where I'm sitting." 

"But there's a woman at the table," says Art. 

"It's not live, you fool," says John. "That's where I am, sitting at the table."

John is losing weight. He knows this because he can whistle, something he can't do back in Canada, probably to Art's relief. John says he will catch me up. I hope so.

Merida is very pleasant city, quite touristy because of the Roman ruins. The old city merges comfortably into the new, and as you stroll around you are likely to come upon a gate, an arch, or a temple.

 

 

 

Day 9. March 18, 2017. Villafranca de Los Barrios to Torremegia. 27.4 kms

Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

England hath need of thee

 

Clear blue skies this morning. Cool. Lovely walking weather. I looked out across a wide open plain towards two gently rounded hills, rather feminine, if a little uneven. There, I guessed, was my destination.

Vines and olives. Nothing but grapevines and olive trees planted in red brown soil as far as the eye could see.

The olive trees needed little attention, but farmers were busying themselves about the vines in their tractors, harrowing between the rows or towing a huge tank, addingliquid fertilizer, perhaps.

Patrick from Toulouse once told me that I would be horrified if I knew the volume of chemicals that went into the making of wine. It hasn't stopped me drinking it though.

I have always been amazed how the vines line up in three directions: horizontally, vertically and diagonally. In parts the old vines have been uprooted, and new ones planted, perfectly spaced in little green cylinders. The stumps are heaped in piles ready to be burned.

A sign indicated that 300 million euros had been contributed by the European Community towards the development of this area. How enlightened to distribute wealth in order to build wealth in these poorer areas!

O you miserable, narrow-minded, backward-looking, xenophobic Brexiters!  

Vines and olives! By the end of the day I had had enough of them, and was glad to arrive in Torremegia. It reminded me of a wild western town. I was just in time for the 3:10 to Yuma.

My daughter Rachel New Zealand has asked me the origin of a quotation I used a couple of days ago. Here it is again:

To Thomas, paths connected real places, but they also led outwards to metaphysics, backwards to the past, and inwards to the self.

It's from The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane. In the opening chapter he writes about the tradition of English walking from George Borrow in Lavengro to the poet Edward Thomas, mentioned in the quotation.

I've always believed that walking is a particularly English pastime. There are perhaps as many words in English for walking as there in Inuit for snow, and no other country has the same network of public footpaths, zealously kept alive by local ramblers' societies who brave the bulls in farmers' fields to keep the old paths open.

Walking provides the solitude necessary to think, and the natural rhythms of the body stimulate reflection and introspection. Think of the peripatetic Greek philosophers.

My friend John from Australia is reminded of this line from Rousseau.

Never did I think so much, exist so vividly, and experience so much, never have I been so much myself - if I may use that expression - as in the journeys I have undertaken alone and on foot.

Depending on the weather, and your state of health, and your frame of mind, a walk can be a pensive stroll, a meditative ramble, a serious introspective hike  - or a mindless trudge after too many miles.

And speaking of the old ways.... In old days the wine would flow freely at pilgrim's meals, but of late, not only in the tourist towns, but elsewhere along the way as well, a nasty practice has crept in of specifying one only bebido with the meal. I am happy to report that during our meal tonight when the level of the vino tinto was close to the bottom, the host appeared, grabbed the bottle, topped up our glasses, and arrived with new one. It is such a no-brainer. One euro for an extra bottle! And instead of customers complaining about the miserable old bastard, they recommend the place to their friends. As I do.

I am staying at the Bar Restaurant Albergue Rojo-Plata.

Day 8. March 17, 2017. Zafra to Villafranca de Los Barreos. 20 kms

 

It was a merry old time at the albergue last night. I retired early, but as I awoke from time to time, I could follow the progress of the party. First, animated conversation, then loud hilarity, and then a steady drone as the survivors finished off the bottle of plastic plonk.

I walked through the old town, its winding streets leading into a central plaza, and out into a stiff wind, a steady climb up a gravel road, over a hill, and then down a concrete road into the village of Los Santos de Maimona for a second breakfast.

And then on towards a distant factory belching smoke, past grape vines cut right back, prunings in large piles ready for burning, and through pastures, fenced off for some reason with mesh topped with barbed wire. What were they growing there? Then I passed through fields of olive trees, some newly planted, others on their last legs, so to speak, new growth on very old trunks, gnarled and fissured, young heads on very old shoulders.

By a circuitous route, for I missed a turning, I arrived at Villafranca de Los Barros, where I'm staying at Albergue Los Callaberos at the beginning of town. A pleasant enough place, with sheets on the beds. I was alone at first, but several cyclists arrived late in the afternoon.

I bade farewell to Werner and Paul this morning, or rather, I bade farewell to Werner and asked him to say good-bye to Paul for me, who was in a deep slumber after last night's excesses. They are spending an extra day in Zafra.

They are splendid fellows and I shall miss them.

Generous and good-natured, Paul enjoys his wine and fags. If he sees a guitar at the hostel, he will pick it up and play it. A pleasant diversion. He won't succeed on Britain's Got Talent, but then I won't win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He cooks a fine omelette, prefacing all his meals with avocado. Coming from Leicester, he enjoys a certain respect among Spanish football fans.

 

Boisterous, generous, gregarious, with wild, wavy white hair,  a wild white beard, a bushy moustache with tufts that threaten to make advances on his upper lip, red glasses, and a brown felt hat festooned with a shell and enough rosemary for a year of Sunday roast-lamb dinners, Werner  is a Camino sage, dispensing advice to all and sundry. "Ho, ho," he chortles.

He has a short fuse, though, insisting on respect and punctuality. On one occasion at a restaurant when the waiter arrived to serve us 20 minutes after the promised hour, he refused to stay, and stormed off, saying, "I have my standards." Werner is a Camino Character.

Some would say that those of us who return year after year to walk the Camino are a bit odd, if not eccentric. As a fellow once asked me rhetorically in a cafe in northern Spain, "How many Caminos do you have to do?"

What are they saying about me, I wonder. 

Deaf old bugger, lurching along the Camino, fly undone, one of those funny Canadian hats hiding his bald pate, glasses slipping down his nose, hairs growing out of his ears and nostrils, scruffy, messy, careless, forgetful, leaving behind a trail of socks, books, towels, hiking poles....

Echoes from the past (in a harsh Australian accent):

You'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on properly.

or

When that thing on your shoulders comes to a head, squeeze it, will you?

Day 7. March 16, 2017. Fuentes de Cantos to Zafra. 24 kms

Nothing will come of nothing

 

As I struggled to get to my feet in the evening, and hobbled across the room, back stooped, the hospitalero burst out laughing. This was a sight that could be seen in albergues all over France and Spain. 

Never tired pilgrim's limbs affected slumber more

Werner and Paul are here as well, and the Estonian couple, in this very hospitable hostel, the Albergue Van Gogh, run by the local Camino association. On my arrival, Antonio the hospitalero, and Juliana, his Dutch companion, offered me a delicious lentil soup and a meal of fried mushrooms. Steffen the German is at another hostel and John the Canadian has a room of his own in the centre of town.

Antonio and Juliana are kind and helpful, and drove Terje back to Fuente to get the money back on her boots after a sole had come apart after one day's walk.

For several hours this morning, I walked the old road again, the Via de la Plata, in the footsteps of Phoenicians, Romans and Moors; Christian priests, knights, pilgrims and minstrels; Spanish merchants as they traded; and villagers as the travelled from town to town for )weddings and feast days. Eventually, the old road met the highway where it was swallowed, because the new road found it convenient to follow the course of the old one.

Some days are more interesting than others. This was one of the others. It wasn't a particularly difficult day and I arrived in Zafra quite early in the afternoon. Mind you, I had woken up at four and left at seven. But after the joyous variety of yesterday, my trek today was uninteresting: rolling pasture and fields of wheat. Rather like Saskatchewan, I thought. No profound thoughts, no interesting events. Even my photos were dull. So I leave you with a photo of a friendly goat, and take the night off.

Day 6. March 15, 2017. Monesterio to Fuente de Cantos. 21 kms

To Thomas, paths connected real places, but they also led outwards to metaphysics, backwards to the past, and inwards to the self

 

What a glorious day! I walked along a country lane between dry stone walls, with sheep and cattle grazing among the oaks in the meadows on either side, past an orchard with fruit trees not yet green,  and then on to open moors dotted with large clumps of broom. Eventually, I descended into fields of wheat and open pasture ablaze with daisies. 

Yesterday my pack was heavy on my back, weighing me down; today, it floated above my shoulders. I was striding along, arms swinging wildly, when I suddenly realized that I was unencumbered by my hiking poles. I had left them behind at the Hotel Moyà and I wasn't going to walk back four kilometres to retrieve them. It was meant to be. The only time I missed them was when fording a stream, as I balanced precariously on a wobbling rock.

My Garmin Forerunner 25 sports watch has given up the ghost, and if the shop where I bought it does not give me my money back, it will join a certain food store on my list of boycotted and maligned businesses that do not understand the importance of satisfied customers.

I walked for a while with Silver and Terje, an Estonian couple. He reminds me that his name is appropriate for the Via de la Plata; she pronounces hers with the stress on the last syllable, and demonstrates this by throwing out her right arm, high and wide. I think they resented a little my rather predictable Westerner's question, did they feel threatened at all by the Russians? No, was their response. Indeed, they were happier under the Soviet system when people had more fun together. Now, everyone was for himself.

There is much competition for the pilgrim trade. Two cars approached me as I neared the town, handing out leaflets advertising their accommodation. I am staying at El Zaguan de la Plata, a suite of double rooms not to be missed, part of an amazing complex that includes a rooftop patio, swimming pool, a garden and a magnificent museum.

This was the best kind of Camino: a winding road with a new vista, a surprise, around every turn, quite the opposite to the straight highways of our previous days' walking. It was an old road, little used today. One tractor passed me, and the two cars that were enticing pilgrims pilgrims to their hostels. 

I surmised that I was walking on a very old road that had linked these towns since the very first habitation, and millennia before Christians began following it to Santiago. But why did it wind? Modern roads are engineered, but the old roads amble because they follow the old paths. True, they follow the contours in general, but otherwise they wind and wander because they follow tracks where people have walked from the very beginning. And people don't walk in straight lines when they make their own paths. We see the same thing happening today in a municipal park. The council will lay down a concrete walkway, but people will often make their own path across the grass, and it won't be in a straight line. 

And while we walk, we think, and try to understand ourselves, and the world we live in, and whatever lies beyond.

Day 5. March 14, 2017. El Real de la Jara to Monesterio. 20 kms

So all day long the noise of battle rolled

 

I left town along a long and winding street which eventually became a long and winding road. Streets are never straight in the oldest part of an old town because they were not planned. Ancient roads met, and dwellings cropped up along the meeting places. These were replaced by more modern buildings, side by side, fronting the road, straight in themselves, but each at an angle to the one next to it to follow the curve in the street, which itself followed the course of the ancient road.

A few kilometres on I came upon a ruined castle, much more evocative than the restored building I had visited yesterday in town.

This was a wild and romantic place. In the wind I could hear the howls of the marauding infidels, of one stamp or another, for there is some doubt as to who occupied these castles. The only inhabitants now were a pair of nesting storks, perched atop the ruined tower, encircled by a fluttering black bird, looking for their leavings.

I walked on. This has been very different from any Camino I have walked before. Towns are far apart without frequent villages and hamlets in between. I miss the beckoning church spires in the distance which welcome me to the next village where I might find a cup of coffee.

The road dipped from time to time into concrete fords across one or two of which water was flowing and I was thankful for my leather boots.

I am wearing Grisport boots this year, $180 at Costco. They don't seem to have a special name in Canada, other than backpacking boots, but in the UK they are called Crusader boots. Not the most sensitive of names in an ethnically diverse country.

Eventually, after passing an ugly concrete church, and an ugly meat processing plant which offered free water for pilgrims, I arrived at a highway to find a huge petrol station complete with restaurant and cafeteria serving motorists from the adjacent autoroute.

In the cafeteria, a long line of staff, clad in red and black livery, served their clients, two deep at the bar. A deafening noise after the tranquillity of the lonely road where only two cars had passed me all morning. I sought a quiet corner, only to be surrounded by a party of marauding school children. 

After an indifferent tortilla, onto which I managed to spill my coffee, I ventured out into the rain. I doffed my down jacket (a mistake as it turned out), donned my poncho, and walked eight or nine kilometres along a minor road into Monasterio.

Last night at supper after a few glasses of wine and a brandy, one of our group asked each one of us what pissed us off. I was tempted to say, people who can't tell the difference between lying and laying, but refrained out of politeness. Now I can tell you what really pisses me off!

I arrived at Monesterio and looked for the albergue municipal. I had heard it was run by Canadians and wanted to meet them. I followed the signs off the Main Street, left and right and left again, nice new signs, placed at each turn, clearly indicating the way to the hostel. The rain steadily increased and I was bitterly cold. At last I arrived. "Closed since November," said the sign. Now that really pisses me off! Why couldn't the municipality take down the signs or indicate that their albergue was closed?

I suspected that I had been seeking the wrong albergue, but cold, wet, and miserable, I wasn't about to go off on another wild goose chase, and took the nearest option, at the beginning of town, the Hotel Moyà, which offered pilgrims a demi-pension for 25€. Not a bad deal, but that didn't include heat until the evening. It was nine degrees in Monasterio, a drop of 20 degrees from our first day. I was shivering, literally literally, suffering from a touch of hypothermia, I think, so I climbed in a bed heavily laden with blankets, and hugged myself for two hours to get warm.

I complained to the host, who was apologetic, and assured me that the central air system was working. This blew air through a couple of vents high in the wall of the room, enough to keep the pipes from freezing. He explained that at the pilgrim's tariff he simply couldn't afford the electricity for the individual room heater. I accepted this, for it was a fair explanation, but I was still cold. He took pity on me, and turned on my heat two hours earlly, at seven o'clock.

Heat was an issue at another hostel as well, where John and Steffan and two German ladies had checked in. Apparently, the heating system was broken, but the proprietor offered them individual radiators for their rooms, and demanded two euros each! After a minor battle, they managed to get their money back, and eventually found the "Canadian" hostel, where there was no Canadian.

Bathrooms on the Camino have their idiosyncrasies. At the Hotel Moyà, the shower was on its fitting on the wall, so I didn't have to adopt my one-armed gorilla stance, but the water flowed alternately hot and cold, so I was forever adjusting the tap. The toilet leaned alarmingly, and actually moved across the floor, so I proceeded with caution.

Day 4. March 13, 2017. Almaden de la Plata to El Real de la Jara. 14 kms

What private griefs they have I know not of.

 

Breakfast in the morning in a typical Spanish bar, women sitting at the tables, men standing at the bar, all talking loudly, an occasional shout rising above the cacophony below, the woman behind the bar dashing back and forth, taking my order, putting on the toast, serving someone else a glass of grappa while my coffee poured. How different from an English pub with an old bloke sitting quietly in a corner nursing his pint!

Then out of town, up the hill, forgetting my poles and returning 500m later to pick them up, starting off again, striding out past the bull-fighting arena and a bank of solar panels, past a mass of threatening cacti, and then into the park through heavy gates fastened with sturdy steel bolts that even the most intelligent goat could not unfasten, and on to a farm with chooks in a chookhouse, and sheep in a field, and some porkers the size of small elephants in a pen, as happy as pigs in shit.

Very easy going, until a climb that yesterday would have been a brute, but this morning, although two or three times as long, was only a bugger.

Then it was down into the village, where I bypassed the albergue municipal on the left and found a room to myself in a private albergue on the right. Very nice place with wifi and sheets on the beds.

For lunch, Werner cooked us some hamburgers made from the very pigs we had passed along the way. Delicious! Perhaps the finest hamburgers I have ever eaten. 

Our group is consolidating. Jean-Michel le Français has gone ahead, and Frederick the social worker and Tamara have returned to Seville. 

I am sad to see them go. Tamara bore a very heavy burden, perhaps laden with make-up. On one occasion, Paul had offered to exchange his lighter pack for hers, but after a call from Frederick to his boss in France, the decision was no. A strict policy, but a shame if she feels a sense of failure after dropping out.

Paul from Leicester, John from Hamilton, Werner from Austria, and Steffen from Germany remain. Regrettably, I cannot always join them at the bar, for I have to walk the next day.