Thursday, 17 November, 2005

The watch alarm alerts me it’s time to get up. I slide out of my sleeping bag. Catherine, sleeping opposite, slips out from under hers; Jaime, the Spaniard, rests on. With stealth, Catherine and I pack up and move downstairs.

She sets off at 7:30 with a man (her boy-friend?). I have a light breakfast. I move quietly out of the warm albergue at 7:45 into the cool of the pre-dawn. Negreira, in the valley to my right,
is hidden by mist.

I climb by the light of the silvery moon, “the silvery moon, moon, moon, by the light of the silvery moon….”

I espy the cemetery off to one side, dark crosses above a wall
silhouetted against the moonlit sky. I search for the yellow arrows to direct me along the Camino, my torch helpful because the arrows are not well defined here, and it’s important to get through the labyrinth of little streets in the village without wasting time. Thirty-three kilometres to do today.

I walk on through eucalyptus woods, and come out into the open to see the hills cloaked in cloud and some valleys shrouded in mist in the early light.

Half past eight is sunrise but I don’t see the sun on the tops of the trees for another ten or fifteen minutes. The Camino meanders through woods, the path often running with water, up hill and down dale. It’s getting warmer now in the sun; the low-lying clouds have lifted. My shoulders tell me it’s time for a break.

I see a sign and arrow for a bar, so I stop, order a small, black coffee and the dueña offers me olojo (a sort of eau de vie) to put in it—Germans like this, she tells me—so I try it. Not too bad, but I think it necessary to acquire the taste. Clearly I shall need more practice at this!

The dueña has lived and worked in England, I gather, so she helps correct some of my Spanish. A bocadillo (sandwich) of chorizo and cheese is on the menu: that will do well for my lunch, I think.

On I go, in the warm sun, along a road, down tracks, then back to the road with its fine commanding views, and its hilltops crowned with windmills.

The clump, clump, clump of boots is all I hear. Absolute stillness; no wind, no sound but the boots … but no! A distant note catches my ear.

A carillon? Surely not. Listen. No, a bell, a church bell ringing: ’tis twelve noon.
The silence resumes. I turn onto a track, and a post tells me it is 49.730 kilometres to Muxia. I follow the track, gently upwards, straight. I see a figure some distance up front, speckled in the sun and shade of pine trees. I hear a dog yelping off to the right beyond the thick gorse.

“What are you hunting?” I ask.

“Rabbits,” the hunter replies.

“And your shotgun: is it a twelve bore?”

“Yes. It’s difficult here, because of the thick country.” He gestures towards the gorse.

I leave the hunter in his jumper with its red and white diamonds, shotgun slung over his shoulder, and continue, now downward, along the track. Another hunter is off to the right along another track, some 150 metres away.

Two noisy tractors pass me, disturbing the peace. I spot some boulders ahead: an ideal place to have lunch, look at the view, admire the high vapour trails, windmills on a distant crest, and listen to the hunters shouting at each other or their dogs … not a shot fired, yet.

Two German pilgrims (brothers) from the albergue last night pass me as I sit. One stops for a short chat, and asks if I am writing a book. A few minutes later a young Italian girl, also from the albergue, passes by.

Lunch over, I walk on, some 200m behind the girl. I pass through fields, there are views….

The girl reaches a T-junction, and I see her turn right. I arrive: a complication. Which way? Left or right? No arrows.

Exactly opposite is a kilometre post with the Camino emblem, a yellow shell on a blue background. The “spikes” of the shell point left.

Way back, 700 kilometres ago in Roncevalles, the tourist office gave me a brochure which said that the Camino sign did not necessarily point in the direction of travel. This has proven quite correct.

However, since Santiago I have noticed that the “spikes” have always pointed the way to go; therefore I should go left, and do so.

I spend the next 500 metres wondering, even worrying, whether this is right (because I hate going back!). I check the direction from the sun. I should be going WNW so it looks good. The next village shows a yellow arrow; good, I chose the right way.

Onwards. I notice on all the hilltops around me there are windmills. My mind drifts….

… Unlike Don Quijote I will not be tilting at windmills—there are too many, and they outnumber me some 200 to one. They are like Gideon’s men on the hilltops, ranged like an army—Primero y Segundo Regimiento de Eolicos (has a certain ring to it: First and Second Regiment of Windmills), but all are almost unmoving in the still air. They must be deployed to stop pilgrims, but I should be able to slip through them unnoticed into the next valley. The two or three that are turning are facing the wrong way to see me, so that’s okay; I’ll get through.

Over a crest and in front of me there is a large lake, with more hills all around, more windmills. What a view! I have another problem with the direction of travel but it’s soon resolved.

As I walk along a track, a small dog runs to attack but as soon as he gets close he stops, retreats into hiding in the village. Ah, a village … it’s the season of muck-spreading and each village has its street covered with cow crap or muck—what an odour! And, believe me, there is a difference between crap and muck. This one is muck.

To my left drawers, jeans, shirts, vests, slippers are draped along a fence to dry. On the right outside a house a rug is thrown on a stone table in the sun, cats all around.

But wait a moment. That’s no rug. It’s a dog, curled up and snoozing. Further on, cows are corralled in a yard, mooing to be let out, three with heads over a wall, munching the neighbour’s prize bushes.

In a field, there’s an elderly woman, clothed in black cardigan, blue dress and boots, with a wide-brimmed hat, sombrero-like. She’s wielding sickle and stave in a field of cows. Lord, am I to see her let blood, blood on the grass?

She scurries across the field, waves her stave, shouts at the animals. She wants them to go where they do not necessarily want to be.

I walk on to let the drama unfold. And there’s another woman in another field, dressed all in black and a long peaked cap, armed with a sickle, and this time using it to cut the bramble hedge.

You’ll have to wield it more rapidly than that, or else you’ll still be here at Christmas, with all that hedge to do, I think.

I emerge from a wooded road into the open and suddenly I see crosses from a cemetery limned against the sky once more. The cemetery is on the side of a hill. It has a calvary in front of it, a chapel in the middle, a wall surmounted by two bells, and tombs on three sides.

A car draws up, out struggle two old ladies in black, and a slightly younger man. He tolls the larger bell once. It is four p.m. exactly, so I say, “You need another three strikes.”

“It’s for somebody sleeping,” he answers. He tolls the larger bell once more, then the smaller once.

“You mean someone has died?” I say. He agrees. We talk. A little later, I establish I have three kilometres to walk to Olveiroa.

The man claps me on the shoulder. “Buena suerte,” he says. “Buen viaje.”

At last the sign, hidden in the pampas grass at the side of the road: Olveiroa. Shortly afterwards, I reach a road junction where an old lady sits on the wall; she sits such that I cannot see in which direction the arrow points (vital information for a tired pilgrim!).

“The pilgrims’ albergue?” I say.

“??!!??!!,” she answers in Galician.

“Straight on?” I try again.

“!!!???!!! left,” I hear, as she hunches over in a fit of coughing.

I hasten away, not wishing to be responsible for her collapse.

The legs are protesting; it’s time to stop. The albergue comes into view.

I haven’t seen a single shop all day, no food at the inn, and little at the local bar—but all this was expected. Could be a long night on the wine in the bar!

But the innkeeper comes up trumps: soup with noodles and vegetables in copious quantity for the seven pilgrims wanting it, bread, fruit and wine.

This is la ultima cena—the last supper—on the Camino.

It’s been a good day in Galicia.

* * *

Graeme Bennett walked from Le Puy-en-Velay, France to Finisterre/Fisterra, Spain in 2005. You can read all about his journey on his blog, In the Shadow of Pilgrims: A Walk to Santiago.