Reset search
anna-being-annaanna-being-anna
Edit route
anna-being-anna

anna-being-anna

Living in: Kimpton, United Kingdom Read more🇬🇧Kimpton
FollowMessageStatistics
    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
      1

      Salas

      May 12, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

      Day 25
      So many more people on the Primitivo, more than the Norte and more than I expected. It seems likely that I'll be able to see someone else for most of the day while walking, although today I stole away to use some other smaller (if perhaps longer) tracks I could see on the map. Took an hour's lunch break under the shade of an oak tree, and could watch other pilgrims in the valley trogging along a horrid hot road, and felt pretty smug. One local lady stopped her car and tried to convince me to go back the other way: she didn't like it all that I insisted on continuing! But another man who was working in his garden and greeted me, to question my path, accepted my halting Spanish explanation that 'este camino es mas bonito': 'this path is more beautiful!'

      But in general this route is much more rural than so far, with proper footpaths and tracks through woods, alongside streams and rivers, through hamlets and villages, as well as the town roads, these being unavoidable as they lead to the hostels. Birdsong all day, frequent river noise and no traffic noise at all. Lots and lots of flowers, with new ones for my collection again and again. Sharp-eyed flower-spotter I am!

      All delightful and charming.

      Today my back went into spasm so I'm feeling fragile. Need to sleep properly again tonight.

      I still have little clarity about the 'why' of this pilgrimage, and I'm going to try a different tack from now on.
      I'm going to open The Noon Meditation Room every day at 12noon and 5pm UK time, if anyone would ever like to join me. It's just a zoom space for 20 minutes of silence, which you can use in any way you wish such as meditation, reading, praying, journalling, painting... Up to you! Let me know if you would like to join in; we have a whatsapp group for the zoom links.

      Love y'all!      Read more

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

      Grado

      May 11, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

      Day 24
      Took three wrong turnings today and walked miles off course ... helped back, in the suburbs of Oviedo, by this ginger Guide-Cat, who walked nonchalantly down the steep hill I was bustling up and looked back at me as if to say 'oh my dear, it's not that way!'.
      ... but what a way to spend an evening! The atmosphere was buzzing, and the ladies got me to join in the dance. Despite my pilgrim foreign-ness and scruffy-ness. One lady, Maria, got me to film her dancing. Hilarious, fabulous!      Read more

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

      Oviedo

      May 10, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

      Day 23
      I've been humming and hahing about tomorrow's decision, a silly amount of energy spent on a simple-doesn't-even-really-matter question, namely whether to continue on the Norte route (which I declared my intention to do a couple of days ago) or to start the Primitivo. Preoccupation gets in the way of really living.

      Most of the issue was to do with how to best use the week that Luca will be here at the end of the month. Inspired by Petra, (German, sharing a twin room tonight) I have chosen to do the 'Camiño dos Faros' with him, which takes 8 days and follows the north west coast of Galicia, southwards, past its many lighthouses (as the name suggests). A perfect path to do in the time we will have together. https://www.caminodosfaros.com/

      So, with so much coastline ahead with Luca, I have now decided-decided to walk the most mountainous, most remote, most natural, and arguably most challenging path. Starting tomorrow. Take a look at the map: I've followed the green route so far, to the tip of the triangle where it meets a yellow and a pink line. The Norte continues northwards (duh) with quite a lot more coast before turning down towards Santiago; the Primitivo, in yellow, goes directly through the hills and joins with the 'Frances' (pink) for a couple of days before Santiago.

      Oviedo is a super city, grand, smart, beautifully laid out, although it was a very long hot horrid trafficky road into the centre. It's a noisy city: how to stay whole, open? The city festival this weekend made exploring the streets all the more interesting, especially the many stalls with artisan foods and crafts, and local music performances. Lots of free cheese and meat samples!
      I didn't pay to enter the cathedral, but the Iglesia de San Isidoro El Real provided enough overblown decorative intricacy, glorified Madonna statuary and dead Jesuses to satisfy me for another long while. Isn't the icon with the three hands sweet?

      I wondered today about how I usually make decisions, and how some things are perhaps best left to routine ... the simplicity of the daily process here is a relief: every day all I have to do is get up and go out, making sure I have enough food and water to keep me healthy. Arrive, wash, eat, sleep, repeat.
      I'm not as routinised in home life; I like spontaneity and flexibility. Very much. But it can become lazy, so that I end up with a slower, easier, more indulgent outcome. Mightn't it help me to be a bit more consistent? To let a daily rhythm carry me? Living alone for most of the last 3 years has really shown up my inertia, and my previous reliance on the comfortable assumptions that develop in shared living. I don't have answers. Just a wish to be simpler, to be content, to be free.      Read more

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

      Pola de Siero

      May 9, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C

      Day 22
      Does it matter whether one has grand or special thoughts, rather than little or ordinary ones? Isn't it often true that trying to think about something ("important") leads more to contortion or stultification than freedom and progress?
      I had kinda thought I would spend a week or two settling in to the rhythm of the Camino days, and then my thoughts might have become quieter, or freer, or I might gain clarity or inspiration. Or something. That's not how it is.
      And I'm loath to force anything different.

      Today was another day of happy walking in gorgeously gorgeous wide broad hills full of unspoilt nature, with villages and farms freckling the view. Found a lemon tree by an abandoned house, picked one and bit into it and discovered it to be an orange! Took several more for juicy moments along the way. That's a sure way to encourage a pilgrim. And came across a funny old fashioned everything-shop in the middle of nowhere, where I had a coffee, and bought salami, coconut biscuits and nuts for snacks. Walked briefly with a German man until he told me he was heading for Gijon and I pointed out that the path we were on was 10km in the wrong direction; there was a critical junction of two Camino routes that he had missed...
      Lay on the chapel floor in Vega, prostrate, cool, peaceful, and felt as if my posture was “just my body” whereas I remained “just me”.

      There was a lot of roadside walking, but that made the woodland track for the last 3km or so seem all the more fabulous. Enchanted. And the gift of a freshly cut rose and a lily from the elderly man who called out to offer me water all the more charming and heartwarming.

      I voice-noted:
      I feel free
      I feel safe
      I feel calm
      I feel content
      I feel excited
      I feel proud
      I feel satisfied
      I feel protected
      I feel thankful
      I feel surrounded

      And was reminded of St Patrick's prayer:
      Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ above me, Christ below be, Christ within me, Christ without me

      Yes.      Read more

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

      Carda

      May 8, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

      Day 21
      Been slipping off the official route as often as possible in order to be closer to the sea, but didn't quite fancy swimming at 8am as I walked across the beach for the last time for a few days. Heading inland now towards Oviedo, before returning to the Norte in Avila. Many people go on to the Primitivo route from Oviedo onwards, instead of continuing along the coastal path, but perhaps I can come back another time (with Luca?) to do the whole Primitivo. It's around 300km.

      My flower count has increased again, with another orchid on the list and a superb so-called 'three bird toadflax'!! Common flower names are so great in English ... I've also seen brass button, tiny shepherd, spotted medick, clustered bellflower, cutleaf cranesbill; what a privilege to see them all (and many more!) in this place.

      Met up with John again at a pilgrims' rest stop, my morning walking buddy a couple of days ago.
      Sandra, Poland; Petra, Germany; Shu, China (but now lives on a narrow boat in Northampton UK!).
      Heather and Dave, Glasgow.

      It's so lovely to find those places where someone has created a welcome bench in a shelter, or is offering food or drinks, or a colourful Camino painting, or even just a cheery 'buen Camino!' sign. We are operating in a sort of undercurrent below normal Spanish life, but we are not unnoticed nor unwelcome. In places we are really appreciated and celebrated.      Read more

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

      Duesos

      May 7, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

      Day 20
      Ahhhh, this place and this weather are exactly what I dreamed of for the camino.
      Coastal paths, some made up and some stony tracks, some roads, little pretty villages surrounded by farmland and nature, mountains in the close distance and sea on the other side. Today I took three sea-dips, one a skinny dip with a friend to fulfil a challenge she'd been set!
      But today I undertook to take no photos, and only cheated for one selfie with the above-mentioned Trix (Netherlands), one video of what I assume is the collection of home towns/countries of all the guests at the accommodation we were passing, and one pic at the skinny dip beach of what looks like naked woman crouched in the surf (but isn't). I also snapped a different euphorbia, perhaps the 'euphorbia euphoria'. Euphoria!

      So much more could have been 'captured' on camera, but how can I be really present to an experience if I'm always putting a machine between my face and the Real World I'm wishing to be present to? On day 14 I took a minute long video of the waves thundering into the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs (which I showed there as a single still) and was rather abashed to realise I had 'got it' on camera before I had actually stood and looked at it/ listened to it breathed it/ felt it/l loved it. That's not how I wish to live. I choose to be HERE, NOW, with THIS and with US. Will you join me?

      Letting people speak and listening in such a way as to hear them rather than interpreting and categorising what they say in terms of my life is also how I want to live, and practice living. I've been observing myself and observing others in our getting-to-know-each-other chats day by day, and wondering why people ask certain questions: is it to understand their conversation partner better or to understand themselves? Both are valid! But a balance feels healthy. Don't you recognise that feeling of being peppered with questions and wishing they would Just Stop? And also that experience of being deflected from a real encounter by someone who hides behind clever quasi-insightful probing?
      And don't you know that quality of true exchange with someone when the conversation flows and resonates and feels mutual, warm, accepting?

      Today took me past the half way mark of my Camino. I have walked around 280 miles. Guess that makes me hardcore!      Read more

    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
      1
      11

      Nueva

      May 6, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

      Day 19
      Today, the fields not only rang with cowbells but – a first for me – a whole herd of horses joined in the clamourous fun! Which brought this poem to mind, written in late 2017 when we were staying in a monastery in Switzerland, awaiting our US visas.

      The Bells of Ralligen

      The clanging of bells filled the air and brought my heart to attention:
      “this is it”, they were singing,
      “this is the moment,
      here you are and we are too:
      be happy with us, praise be! “

      It was early morning,
      no change of lightness yet visible in the cloudy sky over the lake, beyond the mountains,
      but the bells were urging
      the waking of the dawn,
      the bells were calling
      all ears that could hear,
      the bells were summoning life
      out of the noone-nowhere-nothing
      of the long dark night.

      When the church tower fills with the dingdangdong of Sunday beckoning
      there are some few minutes of noise,
      then a sudden return to emptiness.

      But the cows on the hillside persist, persist,
      insist,
      that we attend
      to grace.

      Asturias is much more rural than Basque country and Cantabria, and I was walking on country paths nearly all day. Really fun to leave the hostel with John from Holland (and, fyi Dad, he doesn't call it The Netherlands, because for him it's the same thing; but perhaps that’s because he is actually from Holland), at a cracking pace and with easy conversation all the way to Llanes, the first 7 miles of the day. It's a lovely little town, perhaps my favourite so far.
      I then sent a box of things home from the post office, relieving myself of about 1kg of kit: just an accumulation of little things, my toilet bag, and one fleece. I kept the new jacket I bought last week, and reckon that if I get cold I can now wear everything I have with me, layered up, and feel confident it's enough.
      It feels such a privilege and a freedom to walk though idyllic coastal countryside on a clear and warm day, on my own, mile after mile, just taking in the animals, plants, clouds, winds, paths, villages, occasional people ...

      I'm very happy.

      'Collected' a whole lot more flowers today ... do you remember those 'I spy' books back in the day? Tick off each thing when you see it? I can't imagine there are many more flowers in northern Spain than I've spotted so far!
      Lesley, I have MULTIPLES of 17 flowers on my list. You're the only guesser so far but you're waaaaay off! Can't offer the prize for something so off-beam. Any other guesses?

      I'm not thinking all that much, or at least only occasionally thinking about something particular and pursuing an idea. It's been a lot about how I relate to myself and to the world, and to people, about me, noticing how defendedly I've held my heart, (perhaps like any or all of us), and how I don't need that survival mechanism any more. Perhaps. Not sure I can say much more about that right now, as 20 miles is a lot to walk and I'm pretty worn out. I think you'll have to meet me for coffee once I'm home again to ask me what's been going on.

      Booked a hotel room because I couldn't find a hostel where I wanted to be, and paid a little more for a bathtub: BLISSSSSSSSS!      Read more

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

      Pendueles 2

      May 5, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

      Day 18
      Day off walking; a day of simple pleasures on the beach, writing, going to church (Mass, which was the celebration of Confirmation, with the Bishop! Great friendly feeling in the congregation, standing room only), talking, reorganising my things... and a return to this Best of All hostels. The right decision.

      Something that's unfolding in me is about having an empty heart, which is not the negative opposite of a full heart (full of joy or love, or overflowing), but a state of being, where the edges of my existence are coming to be less relevant, as if they didn't really even matter in the first place. Dissolving, like soap sheets for laundry. And that “I” find myself simply part of the Whole, the Other, the Rest. I’ve feared not knowing where my heart is, feeling its hardness, blockedness, nothingness; but somehow where I thought it should be doesn't matter anymore; it feels more just “me”. More belly-ish less chest-ish. More “essence”, less “element”. Reminiscent of TS Eliot’s “know the place for the first time” and Augustine's “you were within me but I was outside myself”. “Invite Jesus into your heart” proves to be a falseness. I understand there is a “letting”, but to me now it’s so much more discovering what already was. All the hiddenness of myself, the shame (and maybe also the joy?), the thoughts and feelings, unexpressed or only given the smallest chance to show: were you there all along? Do you know all my shamefulness, my anxieties, my “me-ness”, deep dark down there?

      Amused to find my flute-y stone twin in church

      Erna, and Dieuwertje, and John, Netherlands, wonderfully deep, personal conversations.
      Ernesta, Lithuania.
      Josh and Katelyn, Washington, US.      Read more

    • anna-being-annaanna-being-annaanna on the camino
      1
      2

      Pendueles

      May 4, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

      Day 17 The day of flowers.
      I have had a wonderfully happy day stopping at every new flower I spotted, taking a note and/or a photo, (and using Google lens when I didn't already know what it was). I learned a lot! Guess how many ...

      The BEST OF ALL was the bee orchid. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?! Finding it today took me back to around 1974 when on a church walk one Sunday afternoon, and I (by anecdote) nearly sat on a bee orchid on Swifts Hill, near Stroud (where I grew up). We have the photo to prove my find ( ... for some reason it makes me feel a bit Winnie the Pooh-ish, but I can't remember why).
      And then ... at the end of the day, where I took the extra long route to be close the coast at last again ... unexpected-breathtaking-perfect green-swathed headland, rocky-difficult-glorious, fresh spring dipping pool by the waterfall into the roaring rock tunnel, cliff blow hole... oh my ....
      I did dip in the little pool, all birthday suit and pepperminty feeling.
      Sooooo happy.      Read more

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

      Comillas

      May 3, 2024 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

      Day 16
      Today I made a voice note as I began to walk in the morning, just describing what I saw around me. I've transcribed it here, to give you a taste of what it's like to walk. Imagine this spoken. (I reckon I sound like Clare Balding in Radio 4's Ramblings).

      Cantabria is really REALLY green, and it's so ... so pleasant, it's just a wide open spread.
      Way over to the left in a huge long chain are mountains, with snow on the top of the mountains
      ... and closer to me here is just a bowl of green ... and gently rolling hills
      ... rolling is a good word for it ... it's a depth of rolling like the undulating ocean
      ... some of the fields are cut for hay already, which seems to me ever so early in the year ... there are smaller and bigger houses dotted about, which all seen to be cared for, improved ... although there are some that are fallen down, dilapitated.

      And this morning the sky is blue ... blue blue blue , pale, bright, deep, blue, with gentle clouds ... although they are more grey in the distance ... it's gonna be a scorcher of a day.
      It's blissful really.
      Walking round the other side of the flat mountain over there yesterday, with the industrial area and boatyards, and the estuary, was dry, and barren, quite ugly ... and arriving at Santa Ana was just .. just lovely ... it felt kind. The two ladies at the desk were polite, but the man was really kind, the one who spoke hesitant German ... that was really warm and pleasant, and all the people that worked there were attentive and sweet; that really helped make it a restful thing.
      I'm going through cow land, it smells of cow,
      ... and it's vibrant and verdant in the hedgerows ... speedwell, wild garlic, speedwell, red dead nettle, buttercups, dandelion, mint, fennel, little-robin ... so, farmland, but soooo pretty, the birds singing as well

      ... it feels simple ... simple and comfortable.

      (*AND, I later added: red, white and pink clover, dog daisy, sorrel, plantain, daisy, vetch, knapweed, horsetail, catsear, spurge, rape, hedge bedstraw, lesser trefoil, rockrose, stinging nettle, spearwort, aquilegia, curly dock, white borage, and occasionally blue borage, lords' and ladies' slippers)      Read more

    Get your own travel profile

    Free

    QR code

    FindPenguins for iOSFindPenguins for Android

    • 2025© FindPenguins
    • Home
    • About us
    • Group Tracking
    • Press
    • Terms
    • Privacy Policy & Cookies
    • Help Center
    • Legal notice