Day 21/22

I am incognito today, still wearing my dusty walking boots though. The smelly suit and all my walking gear is in a campsite just outside Puente de Reina, where I am alone on an open field with beautiful views when you sit down and the highway is out of your vision. It is a pilgrim campsite, which means it is cheap but nothing is allowed. You can’t be there after 8.30 in the morning unless you booked another night, you can’t use the bathrooms after 8.30 until midday, you defenitely can’t use the big swimming pool, clean and blue and shiny, and you can’t leave or enter after 11 at night. There is a fence around the field and the owner is hostile, he doesn’t even look at me when I come back after pitchig my tent to ask a question. Maybe he is frustrated because the place (there is a huge hostel building as well) is rather empty, most of the pilgrims stay in one of the albergues in the village.
I am on the pilgrim highway since Monday, when I left Pamplona around 4 and discovered it is impossible to even slightly doubt in what direction to go when walking the Camino de Santiago. At every crossroad, roundabout, sidewalk and wall there are signs, symbols, arrows, traffic signs directing the 2 streams of travellers: the ones on foot and the ones on bikes. I felt lost and stopped at the outskirts of the city, next to big roundabout with cars rushing by, looked to the left where there were some streets crossing a green area and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a deer, following the road for a bit and then disappearing in the trees and bushes. I don’t believe in signs, but sometimes you need something to help you decide, to take away your doubt and sometimes the world throws it in your lap.
The road was easy at first, I filled my pockets with little plums, wondering why the trees were so overloaded when so many people must be passing here on foot. It got steeper and and rockier the further I got though, I didn’t see too many walkers but there were some bikers passing me now and then, wishing me “bon camino”. The fields were yellow, either showing long rows of stalks where wheat had been growing, big stacks of hay bails catching the eye everywhere you looked, and sunflower fields, the seeds slowly maturing in the sun. Some of the flowers looked like faces almost, the dark areas where the seeds were gone resembling eyes and mouths and only when I saw one that had a face that was too designed to be a coincidence did I realise that the passers by had been trying to be funny. I saw an arrow and some names. Where does this need of leaving your name, marking a place, come from? I was here, it says, but in a different way than leaving your invisible footsteps somewhere. I had no aim for the day but when I got close to a village where there was an albergue pelegrino I decided to take my chances. From a distance it looked like a strange place, situated at the foot of a long ridge dominated by an endless row of windmills and at the higher part of the historic settlement, where the best views were, another long row of modern human constructions, big tasteless chalets, all looking exactly the same. The shadows were long by now, it was close to nine already when I walked/rolled into the charming centre of town, mentally prepared for a “sorry, all beds are taken”. I disconnected C. from my body outside the door, walked in and was welcomed by a big applause.
Two bikers had apparently been expecting me, they got me a beer and another one and told me they were from a village close by and often came here to chat with Pilar, the owner, who was sitting at the bar with them, and her son, who served me the beer. It was wonderful to be welcomed like this and when all the pilgrims, seated in the back of the bar, were off to bed already (before 10) we were still talking as if we were old friends. They disliked the chalets as much as I did, but not the windmills since they brought in a lot of money and the villages benefitted from it.

Next morning, when I got up just after 7, everybody was gone already, the beds empty, the 20 pair of walking shoes in the entrance gone. I went to the shop where Pilar was selling coffee and croissants, her son was off buying supplies. Not an easy life, working every day, weekends included, from 6 am to 10 pm. She told me she had tried to hire somebody but it was almost impossible, only through agencies that charge a lot of money. “Young people don`t want to work,” she said. “The rather get unemployment money and live with their parents.” I asked if I could help her out for a few hours, “No tengo prisa” but she shook her head. “I need somebody here every day.” I couldn`t help her with that.

I sat next to the church for a bit and saw at least 50 people walking by before 10 am, entering the church to get a stamp, then into the shop to buy some supplies and then on, to the next village. The local police man was around to offer people help, he fixed a bike, answered questions and when it got quiet we talked for a while. “We call this village little Siberia. We get all the wind and in winter it snows when in Pamplona it is a fine day.” When I asked his name he said: “We go by numbers here, I am 3.”

I left shortly after midday and walked. Somewhere in the middle on the way to Puente la Reina, at the Mount of Forgiveness, I met Lars, who doesn’t have a passport but can cross borders when travelling on foot, Daniel and his magnificent moustache, who had a question for me I didn’t understand at first because it was obvious to me “why there are flowers on weeds” (and when I met him again the next day he showed me a photo of him on the Mount of Forgiveness with a big bag filled with garbage, our chat inspired him to do some cleaning at that special site). And there was Graham, the slowest walker I saw so far, his legs don’t allow him to walk more than 1.5 km. per hour here but still he was faster than the woman with the heavy electric bike, of no use here and impossible to drag up the steep stretches of road on your own. Luckily everybody helps each other so she managed with some extra hands. Graham was walking here for the third time, he had a sad story to tell but at the same time he seemed to be a happy man. I wondered if I would see him again somewhere down the road.