Monastic Life

Before starting my journey today I had a walk through the Monastery of Santa Maria in Najera. While communal dinners and growing your own veges sounds idyllic, all these cathedrals and monasteries are dark cold places and I think the beauty of their architecture would wear off pretty quickly. Especially with the decorations of endless crypts, paintings of Jesus on the cross, etc, etc that make them extra cheery.

The claim to fame of this mornings monestary was that it was built backing right into the cliff where an earlier statue of the Virgin Mary had been located so the statue remains in the cave which is now part of the cathedral.

I then headed off along country roads, first through more vineyards, but then into the next valley where the countryside changed to harvested fields. There was no shade and it was about 25 degrees Celsius. A month ago it would have been 40 degrees here for pilgrims and 25 with no shade was bad enough.

My body is taking it's time adjusting to walking every day and being three days since I had a rest day there was a fair bit of protesting going on. We (me, my body and mind) made it the 15km as planned but it was pretty slow going with lots of long rest stops required when some shade could be found. Given this is a Catholic Pilgrimage I should have been aware that significant suffering would be required.

I have a pilgrim dinner at the hostel tonight with a completely different bunch of pilgrims and have planned a very short walk tomorrow.Read more