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Oturulan yer: Kimpton, United Kingdom Okumaya devam et🇬🇧Kimpton
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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino

      Monte de Gozo

      22 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

      Day 35
      I'm nearly nearly nearly there ... but I've purposely stalled at the -5km mark so as to arrive early tomorrow morning before the hubbub of city life erupts. I want it to be a quiet entry before the celebrations begin.
      Very mixed emotions.
      Sharing a room with Angie from Ohio, perhaps the person most on a wavelength with me from the whole adventure so far ... a gift of a roommate! Our conversation is a series of 'me too's which is most wonderful.
      So, here I am at the last stage ...      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
      1

      Santa Irene

      21 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

      Day 34
      Joining the French Camino route has been a really interesting experience: we walk in groups, ones, twos, and overtake or are overtaken by others continually. Every cafe has tables filled with detritus from the previous users, and there are queues inside for the toilets. The prices of food and drink have risen, and the cosmopolitan range of food increased significantly. And the quality. There are many many day walkers - not carrying their kit - and more Spanish speakers, more US, UK, Irish, and 'other' nationalities (that I've met fewer of until now, like Danish, or South African, or Argentinian). It's busy busy busy.
      But actually very pleasant.
      It feels like I'm being funnelled gently towards the Big City, where there will likely be a huge hubbub of pilgrims, ordinary tourists, locals and who knows who else? I'm remembering the hilarious TV clip I saw in the breakfast bar this morning. Take a look at the photos: are the nuns who are thronging the Pope thinking they have a chance at winning the offer in the top corner of the screen? (Apologies [2 days later], I just realised not everyone understands Spanish... the ad is for "Who wants to be a millionaire?"!! ... (I think it's funny)).

      Met 4 fun Irish women at lunch, Cliodhna and Máire from Galway, and Michelle and Siobhan from Dublin. Lots of Camino gossip (in the nicest possible way), lots of laughing, a really nice vibe between them; and I walked on with Michelle and Siobhan. At the cafe ours was the only table with flowers: I noticed that the other tables were bare only halfway through the lunch. A pilgrim must have picked them and put them in the table cutlery container, just for anyone lucky enough to follow on. And talking of flowers there were - astonishingly - about 8 new species on today's walk, including a marsh orchid, and two plants I've never seen before (as opposed to not yet identified): grey everlasting, and jersey cudweed. Using an app to identify flowers is amazing! It helps differentiate between similar-looking but actually-different plants in a way I could not have done any other way. It's also very quick.

      A sweet hostel, small, well off the beaten track, and once again I was given the bed around the corner from everyone else and near the window. My perfect space!

      Cat who sat on my feet to get my attention, Gill and Nick from Kent, birthday girl from Denmark, 6 Italians, a morose Norwegian. And a message from Dorien, Netherlands, whom I met on day 15. How lovely lovely lovely is that?

      People are wonderful!      Okumaya devam et

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      Ribadiso

      20 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

      Day 33
      Feeling under pressure for time - I want to arrive in Santiago on Thursday and have a couple of days to rest and enjoy the city before setting off with Luca again at the weekend - and rather threatened at the prospect of therefore having to walk up to 30km a day feeling as weary as I was yesterday, I skipped a day's worth of walking by taking a bus. Happy cheat! It's only me (...and petty, competitive people, you know) who take any interest in the 'purist' completion of the Camino: the unspoken rules of the road include always carrying your own bag, never taking public transport, going completely offline even for finding the way, not taking any days off. Now I have broken them all, hooray! (I call it 'grace'!)

      Hilariously, I missed the intended bus stop and had to wait for another bus to go back 20 minutes so I could start at my intended town at 4-doable-days' distance. We pilgrims collect 'stamps' at every overnight stay and often in restaurants, cafes and churches, did you know? It is part of the Camino culture that every sleepery and eatery has its own logo, so the collection serves as proof of where we have been; at the end, in the Santiago pilgrims' office, the well-stamped 'Credential' enables us to receive the 'Compostela', a rather super certificate of completion. In the last 100km we have to have at least 2 stamps a day over the distance we have walked; that was why I needed to go back and not just double-cheat!

      I managed then to walk over 25km, feeling bright and perky all day ... perhaps I needn't have taken the short cut after all! It was pretty flat terrain today, and the weather was mostly dry and even a little sunny, which of course makes every step feel a little lighter.

      Lugo city centre was much nicer empty and in the bright morning sun than yesterday, when it was full of TOURISTS (those pesky people!), noisy and busy. The other photo subjects just took my eye. The more the days and the distance pass, the less I'm interested in the landscape, it seems. Perhaps it just seems to be 'normal' now; I wonder if I will regret in future taking so few pictures. But I still found several new flowers today! The number of flowers I have identified has is nearing 200: YES IT'S TRUE!

      Ginny and Martin, Orlando. Jenny, Islington. 2 couples from Boston. Dora, Hanover. Laurence, Sandwich.

      It's so good to be here      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino

      Lugo

      19 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

      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 could be 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 (although I have no desire to explore its story), 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?).      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino

      Castroverde

      18 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C

      Day 31
      It rained all day. All day it was either actually raining or just-finished-just-about-to-rain.
      My feet were wet within about an hour of leaving the hostel, but - hey did you know? - merino really does keep you warm even when wet. The goretex shoes impress me less.

      One friend, known for her speedy pace, raced past me with an audiobook on loudspeaker, saying that listening to a distracting story helps her feel the day is going more quickly ... and as she dodged a muddy puddle groaned 'ich hasse es!'. She hates what?! This glorious opportunity to spend all day walking, yet again, in idyllic Spanish countryside, with today's particular views (admittedly limited in distance), these flowers and this birdsong, these companions, this destination? At that moment it felt like I had fireworks going off in my chest, I was so HAPPY: Happy to be here, now, with these conditions, all of them, and happy that somehow I have come to love what some others experience as suffering. Isn't that wonderful?

      Met Anne and Steve, brother and sister from Peckham. I was taking a food break in the porch of a little chapel, and playing my fife, when they came to see if it was open, and her 'ooh' was SO English (a disappointed sort of sound, when she saw it was locked) that I had to comment: "that's definitely an English 'ooh'!" We walked and talked for an hour or so, until we all stopped at a -hosted cafe for coffee, and walked on then separately. I enjoyed a bit of British chat for a change!

      For the last 7km I happily coincided with Steve from Oxford/ now living in Maine. Intriguing how conversation topics develop, and how it's possible to invest trust in a stranger to tell one's personal story in a way perhaps many friends haven't heard it. It seems to me that some of my pilgrim companions are letting their guard down more at this point, and making use of each others' ready ears and open hearts to explore and express important personal issues. I like this dynamic.

      The hostel here is nearly empty, but one friend (actually the mud-hater above) has the bunk next to mine, so we've enjoyed a meal together, gone shopping to prepare breakfast to share, and played a game of dice. She bought a bottle of wine in the last town, but her two Camino buddies gave up today's walk early and haven't shown up here, so she and I glugged some of it down in the early evening. Not bad, not bad.

      Older Italian couple, also from Lake Como! Brazilian couple, very friendly.

      Few pics; it was not a day for stopping.      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino

      O Piñeiral

      17 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

      Day 30
      The hostel common room was busy last night, especially with a group of 8 or so youngsters eating together, and another group of 3 Italian men plus one Dutch guy: Italian men know how to look after themselves, don't you know?! They were cooking a superb spaghetti carbonara together, which made my individual vegetable omelette look measly (but it was delicious, and just as well as I had been schlepping the already cooked vegetables for two days in my rucsac, waiting to find eggs!). Sometimes, I think, it would be nice to be part of a meal group, but somehow I end up eating on my own. Am I too self-sufficient? Or too shy to invite someone to join me? Or too 'something' to be invited by others?

      I then took a walk into the village and sauntered into the Museo Etnografico, just at the same time as Alfonso from the Netherlands. The lady assumed we were together and mentioned the entry price for two, so he paid my ticket; in return I bought him a beer later. These easy get-to-know-you relationships are great, no complications, lots of simple openness and of course lots in common to talk about, even if only about sore feet, or the rain, or 'yes it's my first Camino' (or, '... my 4th' ... or, 'I have been coming every year since 1972'). I'm tending at this point to ask straight up what someone's 'Camino story' is, and mostly people answer something very ordinary like 'it's just a sport holiday', but sometimes I get to hear something more personal, and that is of course what I love. Jason, 23, Netherlands, rubix geek and self-taught/ self-motivated social researcher in their field of expertise, children's mental health services. Awe-inspiring personality and a lovely energy. Alan, US, second wife, downsizing, ' I have come to realise I like my life just as it is, simple, ordinary'. Dieuw, Netherlands, 'I want to be a mum, and I'm considering being a single mum'. Petra, Germany, 'I nearly packed it all in today ... hug?'

      Slept rather restlessly and woke before 6, so decided to walk with the dawn and left the hostel before 7. Not that there was any sun to see; a day of cloud and rain, almost all day. Wet feet. Dry everything else, with my lovely umbrella (hmmm, do I need to give her a name? Suggestions please). Happy everything.

      Entered Galicia! Ate lunch in a restaurant, a super delicious fish soup, with white wine, and shared a Pastel de A Fonsagrada dessert with Frank and Jürgen. Jürgen's dessert, that is to say, with three forks. (I'm gonna try that recipe at home; will you come and share it? Basically butter, eggs and almonds, with a splash of cognac. Soooo good.) AND Jürgen paid for my meal!

      Upgraded to a single room at the hostel/ hotel, so I'm in bliss. I've put the heater on so I can dry my shoes out properly. That's about the level of interest in life for a pilgrim after a month of walking and a day of wetness. Bare necessities!

      I'm very aware that I will arrive in Santiago in under a week. Walking 25km a day is normal, now, and 30 easy enough. My back is strong again. The journalling and painting has not done what I'd hoped, but that's okay. Perhaps another time? I've had no great revelations along the way, but I'm content with what is.
      It's just me. This is it. Easy.

      Just thankful.      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
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      Grandas de Salime

      16 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

      Day 29
      Started in grey and wet bluster with lots of complaints from the walkers but none of them from my mouth! I love weather. I love the changeability of temperature, atmosphere ... of the feel, the challenge of it all. And it really really helps that I have great kit ... I even sang a little song to my super yellow storm umbrella. You are my sunshine ...

      Stumbled across a friendly Italian gent, Eduardo, while he was sheltering from the rain under the decrepit roof of the porch of a tiny chapel, and we walked most of the way together. He's carrying his tent and everything, impressively for a 73 year old, and - can you imagine - even including 'Prince of Wales' tea, which he then brewed up for me in his billy can at a little lunch stop we made. And he granted me a sliver of his precious parmigiano reggiano, brought with him from Italy and obviously the biggest treat of his hike! All I could offer him was black chocolate.
      Yes, he's smelling the moss (see pic). I like weird.

      A short day, 17km, essentially one huge up and one long down, followed by a little up-down. Now you know. All remote. The reservoir is (or was) the biggest in Europe, Eduardo told me, built in 1948, and villages up and down the valley had to be lost to the water. Isn't it a remarkable decision to do this? A bit like the HS2 project, at least for those who lose their homes, but there's something that feels really ancient and archetypal about this, intriguing, haunting, romantic even.

      Joy (China/ London) shared a room with me at the monastery on Day 12; she just turned up at this hostel. Surprise!
      Everyone else seems to be new. I find that also surprising, almost more so: I might meet no-one all day, or, as today, leapfrog many others (Danish, today, for the first time, and Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, don't know what else), but there must be a finite number of people on the trail!
      There's just one week left of the usual 'stages', the last 160km or so before Santiago, and I've been planning accommodation a bit more in advance than before. When we join the Camino Frances a few days before Santiago, there could be several hundred pilgrims in any one town, all simultaneously wanting a bed and food! Some of these will have walked a similar distance to me, from St Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees, but others only 100km, the distance that justifies receiving the Compostela certificate from the Cathedral.

      My application for Italian citizenship has at last at last at laaaaaaaaast been accepted, after months of hassle and anxiety about all the hoops to be jumped through. I've had to deal with additional elements of it several times in the last month, for hours in fact, on the road, when I was wishing I could be paying attention to nature and beauty and la-la-la ... (Thank you Luca for all your patient help). One of these days I shall be accepted as an Italian/and therefore also as a European. That day there will be beers all round, whoever I'm with!      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
      11

      La Mesa

      15 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

      Day 28
      I actually overslept this morning, unbelievable, right, in a dorm, but felt so good when I woke up! The terrain was the hardest yet, with a huge ascent for the first half day, and a rain-wind storm at the top; tough going. But it was familiar mountainous walking, like the Alps perhaps, and I was alone ALL day ... apart from the moment I missed a turning, walked way down a forest path, and heard a voice shouting all sorts of things of which the only thing I understood was 'chica'! It was the forest ranger who had watched me wander off, came after me in his vehicle and gave me a lift back to the road. Rescued! Then I walked with an elderly Australian man for several miles until he stopped off at his accommodation; I sang my way downhill to my hostel. The cows are always intrigued when I sing.

      I was loving the patterns, tones and textures today. Fewer flowers but more lichen, moss and ferns. Loving the cloud, the sudden low visibility, the spit and blast of the changeable weather, the subdued light into the distant hills, the loneliness. Loved the ‘taixu’ tree. 1000 years old. Warm, there, safe.

      Just before bed I experienced a hostel classic. Three friends at one end of the 24 bed dorm opened the window, creating a draught; the two ladies beyond me but 4 beds away from the window area went to close it. Twice, both. Or was it three times. The 'Openers' objected, loudly, in bad English, the 'Closers' responded in similarly bad English, neither listening to the other of course, and no 'please can we... because..'. To and fro, voices raised, shouting, foreign incomprehensible aggression flying over my bed as each expressed their anger; the Closers went to get the Host who marched in and clapped it shut, muttering and tutting. The window-hoggers whose German I understood then worked out that if they lowered the external shutters the draught would be less noticeable, so plotted to open up again later ... which they did, I'm glad to say. Hostel muff is awful.

      It was a cartoon, would have been funny if it were not a really uncomfortable caricature of people's inability to treat each other as humans sharing the planet. Isn't it just like life? Sigh...      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino

      Pola de Allande

      14 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

      Day 27
      Another day without the rucsac, and what a difference it makes to walking a long distance! Today was incredibly changeable in the weather, with no half hour constant: spitty rain followed by glowing warmth, and wonderful wind, then wet rain, gentle breeze, chop and change, and, at the very end, one half of the sky blue and the other covered in raincloud (two photos show this below). No rainbows, but I kept looking for them. Marvellous, all of it.

      It was lovely walking with Simon and Denise/NZ at several points, chatting about random all-sorts, as you do. It's very easy to be together for a short while with another pilgrim, perhaps meeting up at a cafe when you stop for a coffee, and then leaving together, but then to go your separate ways if someone needs to stop and put a coat on, or if your pace is different, or just because you wanna walk alone. Nice to not have to excuse yourself or be embarrassed. Everyone knows we all have to go at our own best speed and take breaks independently.

      I was playing my little fife at one point, wandering down an idyllic woody pathway, and failed to take a critical turning. Found myself way off the route, but at such a simple parallel distance from the right path, I thought, that I decided to brave cutting across the wood/ field/ fence/wall/ undergrowth/ stream ... a bit of a hack, to be honest, but I do like a challenge!

      Took another alternative path (shorter, and on purpose this time) and wandered around an abandoned monastery a little, but it felt a bit creepy so didn't stay long! My practice now with all the churches and chapels we pass is to try the door; mostly they are locked. Then I knock, to show I'm requesting entry! If the door is open - yesterday, unusually, there were three open churches, all explicitly welcoming pilgrims - I go in and kneel to pray briefly, or even lie down on the stone floor. Just a symbolic action of open-handedness, and open-heartedness (a bit dramatic, but no one else sees me so it's only me who finds it weird!). I want to keep reminding myself to welcome whatever offers itself to me on this Camino, without pre-determining what that should see or feel or sound or look like.

      I'm singing a lot when I'm on my own. Easy, fun, la-la-la, unambitious, funny how I can remember words of songs sometimes and not at all at other times. Lots of childhood songs coming up into my memory! When the road is rough and steep, glad that I live am I, I'll sing you one-oh.

      A nice short day tomorrow, 12 miles perhaps, but with a very big ascent at the start. Looking forward to it!      Okumaya devam et

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    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
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      Tineo

      13 Mayıs 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

      Day 26
      My back was really badly in spasm last night, but this morning I felt well enough to walk, slowly, having sent my rucsac on to tonight's hostel by pilgrim taxi. It was tough in places, when I was feeling drained, especially when it was also raining. But remarkably the landscape felt really English today, and therefore kind of homely, with green green fields spreading out gently in every direction, woodland paths, stony and muddy, and almost every flower the same as at home: foxglove, daisy, dandelion, aquilegia, bugle, honeysuckle, bluebell, greater and lesser celandine, campion ... you get the idea.

      I met some great people, the slow ones who saunter along at the back end of the day's flood of pilgrims, like José Luis (apparently the most popular name in Spain, I've met three already) with whom I sheltered from the heaviest rain alongside Isabelle from France and the local magazine delivery lady. He made really nice jokes the whole time, the sort that make you really laugh because they are so silly, in Spanish-plus-hands; we were all made to feel as if we were part of some big warm huggy friendship thing together, in all spontaneity. My conclusion is that this man is simply fluent in communicating - the language being relatively irrelevant. Three weeks ago all I knew in Spanish was hasta la vista (didn't know what it meant) and vamos a la playa (only useful in some locations), but now I'm able to laugh at jokes and understand when someone is talking about the deeper meaning of the Camino. Jose Luis, that is, when we walked together a short distance later in the day; surprising, in a way, after all his joking around.
      Google translate helps when ordering food or wanting to take advantage of a two-for-one offer in the supermarket, otherwise I can now proudly claim to 'get by' in this language, mostly of course because of my Italian.

      I'm sending my bag on tomorrow as well. Hooray.      Okumaya devam et

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