Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Camino Notes- Today I walked about 23km(14m) from Pontevedra to the thermal-waters town of Caldas de Reis. As I've noted, doing the Portuguese Way to Santiago de Compostela these days is very far from the solitary experience it was 10 years ago. By 8.05, when I met up with group of (North) American ladies at their hotel on the edge of the old quarter, I'd been crossed - in a little more than 5 minutes - by 65 'pilgrims' heading off on the camino. And there were at least another 25 gathering in the hotel.
- Whether you'll find walking when you're never more than 20m behind and in front of another person is enjoyable will depend, I guess, on your definition of 'enjoyment' and what you're used to. Trekking through the beautifully verdant Galician countryside can't be anything but a pleasure but, personally, I'd prefer to feel I was communing with nature, rather than with hundreds of other folk doing the same thing. Hence my great enjoyment of the - rather less patronised - Camino del Invierno earlier this year.
- And don't get me started on the subject of the dozens of thoughtless cyclists, who nearly all ride at speed and shout their imminent arrival when almost on your shoulders. Anyone would think they owned the bloody camino. But at least there was one rider - a woman in a skirt on an old-fashioned bike - who both had and rang a bell. I suspect she was Dutch.
- I'm no longer surprised that most ´pilgrims' - about 95% of them - don't take advantage of the grass strip at the edge of tarmac roads. These are like a cushion and far easier on the feet than even the clay tracks. Even more so than tarmac and greatly more so than gravel.
- Only a few days before the harvest begins, the Galician countryside was awash with vines laden with grapes. Indeed, we passed one family already picking theirs in their large garden. Needless to say, when I started a conversation, they offered us some of their Albariño grapes, which are small and white and look like this.-
- What I didn't get from them was the identity of these equally small but black or purple grapes visible everywhere. Not Mencia, they said, but some other tinto variety.-
- There were also a lot of hórreos but this is the most modern I've ever see:-
- A vignette: An Englishman in his 60s was talking to the young woman behind the counter in a café when a Spanish woman starting talking to the latter about her order. As is always the case, the young woman behind the bar answered her, forcing the English guy to ask if he could possibly continue his conversation. Whereupon the Spanish woman accused him of being rude for interrupting her interruption. I wasn't overly surprised to see her later sitting with a group of 5 large, loud, loutish, cigarette-puffing women on the terrace, whose accent left me wondering where they came from. This turned out to be not some South American country but Madrid . . .
- Along the way, there were a few slogans such as this one, painted on a pylon by Galician nationalists. They put me in mind of my humorously nationalist friend, Fran, who tells me this frequently:-
- Finally, for the benefit of the two Geoffs with whom I did the Camino de Invierno earlier this year, here's confirmation that the toes of my right foot again gave me gyp, until I had recourse to this drastic remedy first tried back then:-
- I'm now planning to buy walking sandals.
- By the way, in contrast to the terrible rains, hailstones and cold of the South East, yesterday was our hottest of the year, at 35 degrees. I've just seen that today was forecast to reach 37 in the Rías Baixas. Spain is different. Including Galiza . . .
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow . . .
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