Lugo

Day 32
Rain. Even the town sculpture in Castroverde suggests that it rains a lot here and that we need to support each other when everything is grey.

I felt very weary today, and emotional. The old chestnut tree was one of the loveliest encounters this morning. When the churches are all locked, as if we are disapproved of, as if to fend us off, the natural beauty feels all the more sweetly welcoming and wonderful. A tree like this might predate any of these buildings; it might have seen more comings and goings, might have witnessed a huge variety and number of human, animal and plant life-events never usually taken indoors! I still knock on every locked church door, a symbolic act of request and protest: this Camino is for at least some of us - for me, yes, for me - intended to be a spiritual pilgrimage experience: we pilgrims should be able to enter designated religious buildings to pray along the way, or what's the reason for their existence? It seems to me that if I can't do that, then I am better off not wasting my time approaching the church buildings (I passed perhaps 6 locked chapels today, and knocked at each one) but letting nature communicate the presence and strength, the faithfulness and peace that I seek. After all, nature was there proclaiming everything good long before humans created philosophies and structures intended to contain and direct our behaviour.

Still finding new flowers I haven't spotted before, but it takes an eagle eye to spy anything new among the greens and colours of the wayside. Or to notice that this little flower head, whilst being very similar to whatever-it-was the other day, is actually probably a different plant or even species. Spotted rockrose, southern camomile, sweet spurge.

I am enjoying the Galician stone and slate cottages; I could almost be in the Cotswolds! It's a gentle grey, comfortable, homely. The landscape has reduced from mountains and heathland to hills and fields, and again feels familiar from home.

Lugo, a walled city with a wealthy feel, obviously of historic significance (but I'm not going to explore what its story is, either in person or online) is grand, and the Cathedral grander yet. I met with Petra, the pilgrim I've most enjoyed catching up with again and again, and we ate lunch together, before finding a central hostel. Joined in a Pentecost mass. Although the cathedral art is impressive, I find much more pleasure in the quirky bits of decor than the grandiose, like this little cherubic guitar maker (Luca?).Read more