Samos

Oh dear. Yesterday’s conversations about bed bugs exacted a bit of a toll last night. I went to sleep easily but woke up at midnight fretting that I was being bitten, despite sleeping in crisp clean sheets. At one stage I got up and went to the bathroom to check how bad my bites were but couldn’t see any evidence of a single incursion. A night of imagined infestation resulted in lots of tossing and turning and meant I wasn’t on top form as we set off.
To be fair, it was a lovely clear morning and the early views were beautiful. We were heading downhill for several kilometres and my left ankle was feeling the strain. It’s been a little bit unhappy since Ponferrado, particularly on the descent though it seems perfectly happy going uphill.
As we walked downwards we were fascinated by the clouds - misty and mysterious to start with, and then appearing as a straight white line that looked like a shard of snowy ice cutting off an otherwise clear view of the hills. Before long we were walking in that cloud and our world became murky though we could see enough to be charmed by the handsome and serene cows who stared at us tolerantly as we passed by and offered overtures of friendship.
There were some local novelties on the route. A thatched elevated grain store (Fiona knew about these from her trip to Galicia last year - the elevation is to prevent rats from entering the store). We also passed a 100-year old chestnut tree as well as medieval crucifix which, unusually, portrayed the virgin and child on the back. The second half of today’s walk was flat and mostly ran alongside a river so we enjoyed a lot of gurgling though we also heard a bit of traffic noise.
Our destination was Samos, the site of a monastery for the last 1500 years. We went for a tour, conducted entirely in Spanish, by one of the 11 resident monks. I found the monastery rather strange and didn’t love it as I expected to. It has suffered two major fires over the years and much of what remains is baroque, though there was a lovely Romanesque portal. I was slightly surprised to see the monks were still displaying a picture of Franco’s visit to the monastery in 1943 and reminded myself that George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia observed that the church was seen as thoroughly aligned with the Fascists in the civil war.
After our tour, I was ravenous but there was little food to be had in Samos; apparently Tuesday is a day of rest for restauranteurs, so we settled for a cheese sandwich and beer. Fiona’s stomach is unsettled and she did not eat hers but I needed crisps and a magnum to fill me up.
We went to a rather flat mass at the monastery at 7.30. Something is really not working for me here. However, we were intrigued by Callie, our young friend from Arizona, who greeted us silently this evening and showed us on Google translate that she is observing a day of silence. We wondered whether we could manage one before we left. Intriguing idea.Read more