31/05/2024 – Walking the walk 9

Day 16 – Today started with a leisurely breakfast, a gentle stroll out of town and then a sign that said 12% incline for the next 1.05km! Fortunately, that was the bulk of the day’s climbing. After that, as we “walked down” the slower groups who had started early to avoid the heat, we fell in with them for friendly chats. We have several people to meet for a beer in Frómista, which is today’s rest stop.

There is no getting away from it. We are old. We both collapsed onto the bed when we hit the hotel – sore feet, sore joints, hot, dry and TIRED. 26km and we were spent. However, a shower, a lie down, a shared clothes wash (Carey uses his fancy travel washer-bag. I wring like a fishwife!), and we are now in the hotel bar, enjoying a crisp, cold beer and greeting familiar faces as they walk in. It’s not the pain that’s changing: it’s the recovery rate.

It was a good day today. Beyond the sense of achievement (which is very real) and the elation that comes with being too tired to worry about anything and so happy that the slog has stopped, we heard cuckoos calling; we stopped to video a snail doing its own camino; I was mesmerized by the rainbows refracting from an irrigation robot crawling across a field. We saw soooo many storks and, wheeling high overhead, what I believe to be 3 griffon vultures. In a very green, frog-filled village pond, I was saddened to see a downed, drowned barn owl.

Day 17 – We took the Camino less traveled. The main route shadows the road for 20km, which was really quite tedious (we joined up for the last 5km). Forewarned, we struck out on an alternate route, through farmland, along a river, shaded with aspen, birch and goat willow, full of birdsong.

A cool/cold wind blustered in from the north all day, keeping things brisk, very welcome after the last few flat, baking days. The overgrown river made barely a sound, but the wind in the trees was like water roaring over a weir. The sound was constant, punctuated by the odd frog chorus and, in both small villages, the greetings of storks, clacking their beaks together like castanets. It’s a remarkable noise.

We are still walking with the red of poppies. Today, we saw our first yellow field. The rapeseed is beginning to colour up. As it is a brassica, it gets a bit “boiled cabbage” across the land after harvesting, but the bright yellow fields are gorgeous. The wind kept the crops in motion. I tried to find adequate words for the effect: “A pelt” of barley, like wind-ruffled fur? “An excitation” of wheat, like thousands of tiny maracas? “A glitter” of grass? In any event, another mesmerizing spectacle.

We are privileged to be staying in a (former) monastery tonight. Our room overlooks the old cloisters - very peaceful after all that noise!