From the highs of international travel in 2016, I also experienced the
lows of the year, as in June my mum fell and fractured her hip and made a
remarkable recovery, only to die unexpectedly in October, just two months after
our lovely family holiday with her in Dumfries & Galloway. It was a tough
time and the Camino had to be reluctantly put on the backburner until 2017.
So, it was with some excitement that I began to
plan my fourth trip on the Camino late in 2016. Thinking about getting back on
the road was an antidote to the sorrow and sense of bereavement I felt, and as
ever, I knew that walking the Camino would help me work through my internal
issues.
As I excitedly began
preparing, I found myself looking forward to the stark, silent beauty of early
mornings on the Meseta and these lines from my favourite Irish poet caught my
eye and summed up for me the inner longings of my heart:
To be first on the road,
up with the ground-mists and
pheasants.
To be older and grateful.
Seamus Heaney
A plan quickly began to take shape. It was soon agreed
that my friends David King and Matthew Watson would again be coming on the
trip, but this time Matthew’s wife Heather, would also accompany us. Although fit
and used to walking dogs every day, Heather has a few problems with her left
foot, and so having never walked on the Camino before, she was nervous as to
whether she would be able to manage walking over such a prolonged distance. However
I promised to bring along a range of Podiatry instruments and dressings to keep
her moving along the road!
It was decided that the four of us would walk the
117.3km from Frómista – León over six days. We would then
have a day off sightseeing together in León. Matthew and Heather would then
travel home and David and I would walk on for a further 74.8km from León –
Rabanal del Camino; a grand total of 192.1km.
I was interested to know how I would cope as I had
never walked such a distance in one go in my life! I was also wondering how my
legs and feet would cope as on previous trips I had the problems with them
discussed above. However I was fairly hopeful as I had been impressed with
David’s Columbia walking shoes and had, on a whim, bought a pair for myself a
few weeks before we were leaving and had found them extremely comfortable. This
was despite the fact that they were considerably cheaper than the Merrill
walking shoes that I had bought in 2016 and with which I had so many problems,
as they had caused blisters in between my toes and on my heels and the moulded
heel cups had also cracked.
On Friday 24th March 2017, we set off;
David came to my house and we drove together to stay in the Premier Inn at Swords
near Dublin Airport. Matthew and Heather travelled up Maynooth to stay with
Heather’s sister Helen and her husband James. Matthew, who didn’t want to pay
to stay in the Premier Inn, had suggested that we could either travel up to
Dublin very early on the Saturday morning or else kip down on an airbed at
Helen’s but I pointed out that David and I are getting too old for that kind of
carry on and wished to have a proper night’s sleep and a decent breakfast
before the flight!
The next morning (after our decent breakfast) the
four of us met at Dublin airport. We were flying with Aer Lingus once again
Dublin – Bilbao and David and I checked in with the automatic scanners and bag
drop without any problems, however just as Matthew and Heather checked in their
baggage the conveyor belt stopped. A very large, backlog of increasingly irate
passengers soon built up and Matthew, understandably, felt he couldn’t leave
his bag until he had seen it go on it’s way. So much for automatic check-ins –
there is something to be said for having a real human at a desk!
The rest of the trip passed uneventfully. The
flight was crammed to the gunnels with excited parties of Spanish
Schoolchildren returning home after trips to Ireland and quite a few Spanish
students going home for the Easter break.
Upon arrival at Bilbao we got the Bizkai bus to the
bus station and after some tapas in our favourite café near the bus station got
the 18.00 ALSA bus to Burgos. The 18.00 doesn’t arrive in Burgos until 21.15,
whereas the 19.00 arrives in Burgos at 21.00. This is because the 18.00 takes a
much more scenic route through the towns and villages of the mountains, whereas
the 19.00 just rips up the motorway. Although it was slower however, we enjoyed
looking at the little towns and villages along the route set in mist wreathed
wooded valleys and when it got dark I read my Kindle.
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| Tapas in Bilbao |
When we arrived in Burgos I was surprised to see
that the Cathedral was in darkness and not illuminated as it normally is; in
addition there were literally dozens and dozens of little moving lights above
the city centre which we soon realised where Chinese Lanterns which had been
released all over the city centre. On the Puente de Santa Maria we watched a
young family releasing a lantern to the delight of their small child. It turned
out that we had arrived in Burgos during Earth Hour – a worldwide event
organised by the World Wild Life Fund for Nature (WWF) where cities were
encouraged to turn off their lights 8.30 – 9.30pm to raise awareness of the
detrimental effects of light pollution on both humans and animals and to help
people learn about the impacts of our energy consumption on climate change. It
is sobering to think that 50% of Europe’s population can no longer see the
Milky Way due to light pollution – a sight I took for granted as a child.
David, being a retired Fire Officer wasn’t impressed however, by the fire risk
of releasing hundreds of the lanterns with their tea lights to rise up into the
sky and ten drop down all over the city centre! David’s fire risk assessments became
a regular feature of our trip as will be described later!
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| Earth Hour |
We found a bar for some drinks and a snack and then
made our way round to Hotel Centro Los Braseros on Avenida del Cid Campeador.
The hotel was clean and comfortable and the breakfast good and I would have
enjoyed my stay there except for a large party of young women who had matching
black, shiny jackets with “Laudio Wellness Crew” emblazoned on their backs in
English. The Laudio Wellness Crew did not promote my own personal wellness as
they spent the night running up and down the corridor outside my room giggling,
talking and slamming doors. I felt very unwell
from lack of sleep by morning and entertained evil thoughts about them when
they entered the dining room for breakfast! Needless to say, David, who sleeps
like a log said he never heard a thing, but then his snoring probably acted
as a blocking form of white noise!
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| Matthew & Heather having a bedtime drink |
After breakfast we dropped off our bags in the
lockers at the bus station and then had a pleasant wander around Burgos showing
Heather the sights. We climbed up to view the city from the Castle and then had
Hot Chocolate and Churros in the Favor Café, before being astonished by just
how loud the cathedral bells are when they start pealing!
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| El Cid |
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| In front of the Arco de Santa Maria |
We decided to stay in the Estrella del Camino
albergue again, but as this didn’t open until 15.30 we were forced to have a
mediocre meal in a café in the plaza and then wander around the town for a
little while before we were able to finally check in. The dormitory room we had
stayed in 2016 was not open as there were less pilgrims than on that occasion,
which was probably a good thing as I knew I wouldn’t have to walk so far to the
loo along the long rooms in the middle of the night! We were soon joined by a friendly,
but very loud (!) group of Australians.
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| Climbing up to Burgos Castle |
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| Time for a hot chocolate testing session to ward off the cold! |
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| Outside the Evolution Museum in Burgos |
In the evening the four of us went for a
non-descript pizza in a local bar where a very strange modern gothic horror
movie was being shown (without sound – probably just as well) on the TV which
seemed to involve various young women in different states of distress either
staring up into the light beaming down through windows in Romanesque churches,
which would then cause them to swoon into the arms of monks or else finding
themselves wading helplessly into the quick sand infested tidal waters around Mont
San Michel, beckoned in by a large dead tree sticking out of the water. Very
strange indeed – though perhaps not as strange as the pizza I consumed; Frómista
is definitely not the culinary capital of the Camino in my experience! However,
it was good to be back and I was itching to get walking again!
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| Back to San Martin |
