Day 7

 Almost 1 'o clock and it is 39 degrees in La Pobla de Claramunt. I would have walked from here if there was a doable road in the right direction but all the options are pretty crazy endeavours. I am thinking about joining the Repsol woman who sits in front of Hostal Robert in a uniform on a plastic chair 8 hours a day (for 7 years already, not a bad job she says, she enjoys talking to people and she has a place just around the corner where she goes during the siesta) and see if somebody can take me into the right direction or I will go for plan B and take a bus to Lleida from Igualada and walk in the evening from there. I won’t be able to walk the whole route anyway if I want to arrive at the Foundry in Galicia in time (August 20/21).
When people hear I am walking to Galicia they usually think I am on my way to Santiago de Compostella. In all the years I have been walking I was often asked if I ever walked the Camino with a capital C. I was never tempted, mainly because of the capital C. In a book about the GR1, running from the east to the west of Northern Spain, the writer describes the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrim highway and I don’t like highways. I walked part of the Camino Frances once because it made sense walking from the Netherlands to Southern France but I didn’t encounter many pilgrims or people walking otherwise (on that walk I was often asked if I was a pilgrim, I guess it depends on how you describe the word pilgrim or pilgrimage).

I drew a line from my home in Barcelona to the Foundry in Galicia as a guideline, so as to not wander off too much. A 77 kilometre trail from Balaguer to Huesca almost follows that line so I will walk it, it is the Camino de Santiago par Huesca. But first I will walk from Lleida to Balaguer, slowly and carrying a lot of water.
It frightens me, these temperatures. Not in the first place for myself, now, here. I'll manage today and tomorrow and the days after. But oh man, what did we get ourselves into. I'm one of the many privileged people. I sometimes complain about not being able to drink water from the tap in Barcelona but there is tap water and I can shower and buy water filters. These days I encounter many fountains on the road, in villages and cities. Imagine living in Urugay these days. Or even worse: in one of the many places where there is no water at all, not even polluted water.