Salamanca - Calzada de Valdunciel 17 km

The day started in the most ordinary of ways as life-changing days often do.

I got up later than usual because I couldn't start walking on the camino until I had been to the post office and the bank, neither of which opened until 0830. So I went down to the dining room and had another great cooked breakfast, then set off to the post office about 15 minutes walk away. Tasks done, I settled my bill at the hotel and checked out.

The stage from Salamanca to Zamora is quite long and is normally broken into two or three sections, I didn't want to be walking over 30 km so I chose to walk it in three sections which meant the first section was only about 17 km. It would turn out to be a very good decision, I just didn't know it yet.

The first 7 km is all road as you walk out of the city and follow alongside the motorway to Aldeaseca de la Almuña where you leave the road and walk on country paths. Even with the late start I arrived in Calzada de Valdunciel quite early, in fact the only person in the Albergue La Casa del Molinero was the cleaner. She phoned the owner and I was told to pick a bed and he would come along later. The town is small and is really just a stopping point for the camino so it doesn't have much more than a shop and a couple of albergues and cafe's. There's nothing to see, and nothing to do, so I had thought it was going to be another dull, boring stopover, how wrong I was.

After a couple of hours the owner had still not arrived but it's Spain so I figured he would get here when he got here. Just then there was a banging at the main door, and it turned out to be an Sicilian cyclist called Rosario, and I opened up the gate so he could get his bike in, gave him the spiel re the owner, and he went and picked his bed. Just then there was another knock at the door it was a peregrina wondering if a tall Italian peregrino had stopped here. He hadn't and so after chatting for a few moments, she continued on the camino. A short while later there was another knock at the door - it was turning into the scene from The Hobbit where Bilbo has to keep answering the door at Bag End as more and more dwarves arrive. However, it wasn't a dwarf at the door, quite the opposite, it was a tall Australian lady called Anita, and a young woman from Hungary called Mirjam.

I welcomed them in and gave them the same spiel I had given Rosario. Not long after this the owner arrived and all the financial essentials were dealt with, he told us that there was nowhere to get dinner that night so Rosario insisted that he would cook our dinner. We all went to the shop and bought some pasta etc. and a bottle of wine.

While dinner was cooking Rosario went to open up the wine only to discover that there was no corkscrew in the albergue, and watching him trying to remove the cork with long thin sharp knives and tools from his bike was as hilarious as it was nerve wracking. I was sure we were going to have to call for an ambulance as he stabbed himself or cut off a finger or three. However, he got the cork out without any medical emergency ensuing, and the pasta was delicious, with plenty of leftovers to bag up for tomorrow. (It turned out to be a good idea to bring a selection of IKEA ziplock bags)

Throughout the evening I got to know Anita and Mirjam a little. Anita had that frank, forward, no-nonsense friendliness common to Australians, she was semi-retired after a successful career as a medical scientist. In the mid 1980's she had hitch-hiked through Africa and volunteered in medical clinics as she went along, and was now a self-employed consultant. She was smart, funny, and very easy to get on with and within a short time it felt like we had known each other since forever.

Mirjam was quieter, I wrote in my journal that night that she was quiet but lovely and that I felt it would be good to get to know her better. As RickyTarr said in Tinker Tailor, "there was gold in her Mr Smiley...", she was like a secret waiting to be discovered. She had a warmth and a quiet joy about her, and when she smiled, the sun and the moon and the stars were put to shame. Over the next few weeks I would discover that she was also smart, funny, resilient, brave, kind, caring, generous and one of the loveliest humans on the planet. Gold indeed.

The next day Anita, Mirjam and I were all heading to El Cubo de Tierra del Vino, of course that was no guarantee that I would see them again, but I knew that I definitely wanted to. The camino brings many unexpected gifts, and meeting Anita and Mirjam was one of them.

So, dear reader, you might be wondering how today changed everything, well, long story short, meeting Anita and Mirjam set off a chain of events that became the unfolding story of my camino and beyond.Læs mere