Chapter 1: May 2, 2004

Here we are in the South of France, recuperating from the long flight and getting ready for the big walk. We arrived in one piece, sort of, and my fiddle is fine, which is a great relief to me. We are staying with friends about a half hour from Marseille, in a beautiful and quiet little town. Yesterday we went for a sightseeing jaunt - drove to Monaco for coffee and then on to San Remo in Italy for an Italian lunch and a bit of window shopping. Today we went to the farmers market; otherwise, we are repacking and laying low, to try to beat Elena’s horrible sinus infection that made the plane trip so hellish.

Tomorrow we are off to Entrayques sure Truyere ­ that is where we will meet our friends Peter and Diane to start the walk. We have talked to so many people and it seems that blisters are the big enemy. We certainly hope that our shoes are sufficiently broken in. We have also heard that tape is a good thing to bind your feet with in case of forming blisters. I am sure we will develop a whole new and profound understanding of how to make our feet happy.

The walk we are undertaking is called the Camino de Santiago. It is an old medieval pilgrim trail that takes us right across southern France and Northern Spain, ending up in a town called Santiago de Compostela. We are walking for 7 weeks and though I have brought my fiddle and a bit of recording gear, the main plan is really to walk a huge amount and to concentrate on that. I may do some playing or some recording of things along the way, but the focus is most definitely the walk.

So here we are on a rainy day, getting ready. It seems strange that in a few weeks we will be immersed in a whole different way of life and the culture of the road. Elena and I are both looking forward to this tremendously. I will try to keep up with reports from the road whenever I can. I am sure the first few weeks will see us sorting out the fine points of routine on the road and exactly how to pack things in the most efficient way, and how to keep our feet the happiest they can be.

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FIRST ROAD CHAPTER Saturday May 15, 2004

Well, the adventure has started. We are in a remote part of France on day ten of the big walk, the Camino de Santiago, known as the Chemin St. Jacques here in France. I have been surprised how remote this area feels. There are many villages, but most consist of a few houses, some adjacent farms, and no stores. Lots of cows (I talk to them.) Most definitely no internet cafes! I had had the naïve idea that I would be sending daily reports from the road. Right! It is day ten, and this is the first opportunity I have had to email anything.

The alternate name of this walk could be The Phenomenology of Pain. Every day, something else hurts terribly. The most critical thing is of course the feet and the knees. You could say, this is two months of showing your legs who is the boss (turns out they are!). In any case, we have got into a routine of getting up around 6 or 7 in the morning and walking about 20 km or so before we find a pilgrims hostel (called a gite), and collapse for a wee rest. Our packs and boots have come off, we have showered, and, at least for the first few days, our main concern at this point is drying off our wet clothing and gear. Often we pass out at this point in the bunk beds. We are just not used to all of that fresh air and exertion, not to mention the pain. Sometime later in the afternoon, someone from the establishment comes by to collect our money and stamp our pilgrims’ passports. We obtained our passports after a bit of a tussle with some snitty nuns at Conques, but these passports can be obtained in advance as well. They contain some official business about conduct and comportment, a stamp from the place you start, and many empty spots for subsequent stamps.

If we are lucky, there is a pilgrims’ meal. Always at 7:30 pm. Seems you can set your watch by it in France. They know that pilgrims get incredibly hungry and so these meals are a deal. Usually they are 5 course affairs… soup, appetizers, main course, cheese and dessert, with a bottle of wine included, for 10 euros. Believe me, at that point in the day we have worked for it and we dig in heartily, even the girls, who had it in the back of their minds to walk hard and lose a little weight. Oh well…

We started our trip in a beautiful little place called Entrayques on the Truyere River. The friendly host at the hotel told us which way to walk to get to our first destination of Espeyrac. Unfortunately, he confidently told us the wrong way. It was supposed to be a short first day of 10 km. After we had walked straight up a hill for 9 km and got rained and hailed on numerous times, we found that we were now 11 km away from our destination. In other words, the morning’s efforts had resulted in a distance of negative 1 km. Call it training!

It has been one of the coldest years on record here in France. For a week before we arrived, there had been flooding – on the train trip down from Toulouse, we saw many washed out roads. Now we are mostly freezing. The weather changes 20 or 30 times a day. You can sometimes just stand in one spot and change your clothes for a half hour or so. As the hot sun came out you peel off things. By the time you are done it starts pouring again, so you get out the rain gear. Ahhhh, nice and dry. Whoa - here comes the sun again… You get the picture. Everywhere is drenched. Paths have become burbling streams. Most of the first six days, we were walking through heavy slime, usually up and down large hills. It is actually surprising that no one slipped and broke their neck. But it would not be a pilgrimage if there were not some measure of suffering involved, I suppose.

We came into the medieval town of Conques in a brief bout of sunshine after a couple of days of rain. Wow, what a place. My friend Peter has been raving about it for years, and he was right… it is spectacular. In the evening we went in for an advertised organ concert; suddenly, a large group of French school children walked in. (I knew there had to be locusts; there was every other kind of tribulation after all!) The kids lined up and started singing prepared pieces. It got quite surreal when the music they sang was “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”! Rather than being a proper concert it was the funky friar who is part of the monastic order there giving a demonstration for the kids. He was obviously enjoying himself, laying on a bit of “Whiter Shade of Pale” and “The House of the Rising Sun”. After people started leaving, we decided to get my fiddle and the recording gear and to try to sneak in. Remarkably, the doors were open and no one was there It was ten pm. I set up the recording gear and I played for an hour in the candlelit church. The audience was my three travel companions and many dimly lit saints. It was pure magic. I was not just playing my violin in this church; I was playing the church itself with my violin. It felt like the largest instrument I had ever played. Playing a note was like sounding a gong. The sound bloomed out of the first attack, and then subsided only slowly. My violin filled that place remarkably.

The next morning, we actually met the funky friar Frere Jean Daniel who had been entertaining the children the night before. I had also played in the church in the morning; he heard about it, and was very disappointed to have missed it. As we were leaving the square, he intercepted us, white robes flapping in the breeze, a pile of sheet music in his hands. He said “So – you are the violinist… I brought some music we could play together.” I told him my thing was more improvisation, and he jumped right on that - “Let’s improvise!” Wow – an improvising liturgical organist. What a rare beast! So in we went again and had us a jam session… fiddle and organ, him upstairs, and me downstairs. We improvised for about 25 minutes. I walked around the whole space while Frere Jean Daniel was standing at the organ above, leaning into it.

One of the people in the church at the time was an old fellow, who got out his cell and started checking messages and intently operating his phone. I thought “How rude. There is obviously music going on, and this is a church, and do you HAVE to do your phone thing right here?” Then I realized that the man was following me around with the phone held in the air. Turns out he had called his relatives in Portugal and was excitedly sharing our music with them. He was forgiven, although it was still pretty weird to be followed by somebody pointing a cell phone at me like a space beam from planet 9.

The next good playing session I had was in a much smaller place called Faycelles. We got there about noon, and had a bread, cheese and chocolate kind of lunch in front of the church. The church was modest but looked acoustically promising, and we decided to stay for a playing session. This was not as spontaneous and easy as it sounded. My violin was deep in my rucksack, and to play, I had to empty out my pack entirely – which meant of course repacking from scratch every time when I had finished. I got really good at packing. The violin was inside the sleeping bag, inside a plastic bag, surrounded by clothes and gear, all in more plastic bags. That meant that unpacking was not a slick operation – it was messy, the rustling of gear and bags was noisy, and I was prone to strewing underwear or socks in the general area if I was not careful.

Afterwards, the parish priest came and invited us to his place for a drink. Pere Alain Delbos loved an appreciative audience, and that day, we were lucky enough to be it. He was the most amazing Renaissance man. His place was more of an estate than a house, properly speaking. It was perched in the prime spot over looking the beautiful Cele valley. I half expected knights on caparisoned horses to ride up. The place included a restored 15th century manor house, a tower and the house where he had been born and raised, with its balcony looking over the valley. He showed us all of that, and his fossils, and the medieval manor he had restored, and his family wine cellar… and on and on and on. He kept thinking of another thing he could show us.

Terrific! I’m sure we could have stayed with him that night, but we had it in our heads that we had to press on and get to Beduer, which we thought was a good 10km away (In fact it was only 2!) So we hobbled the last few miles that day and slept in a very rustic gite – basically a converted horse barn. Swallows flew in and out, you could smell the horses… I think they removed the manure, washed the floor and put in bunk beds – that was about it. One of the other pilgrims wore battle fatigues, many gold chains, and did a lot of pushups. We secretly called him Rambo. He left the next morning at about 4am, turned all the lights on, and generally made a ruckus. Oh, what the long-suffering pilgrim has to put up with! Peter got into bed that night, and no sooner were the lights out, when Peter came crashing through his bed to the floor. He actually tried to repair his bed by flashlight; when he crashed through the frame the second time, everybody in the hostel was giggling, even Rambo! When Peter complained the next morning, the proprietor just told him he was too big! No mercy for the pilgrim!

The next day, we had a real problem because there was no food to be had. On Mondays and certain holidays French stores are simply CLOSED. For love or money you cannot buy anything after noon, food included. We optimistically stopped in a hamlet called Corn, but there was no corn in Corn. So we gnawed on our last scrap of bread and chocolate and limped on, convincing ourselves that we were not hungry. At a certain point, the path was unclear and we asked a local. WELL! He invited us in and gave us the best lunch ever. He was a friendly Belgian called Eric, retired from the Christian Metalworkers Union. He kept thinking of more food he could bring out. It was heaven. Then he provided us with baseball caps and ponchos from the Christian Metalworkers Union and even got a rustic walking stick for Peter. I ended up playing the fiddle after lunch as well. Unexpected things really do happen here all the time.

Life is very basic in a lot of ways. You just want to survive until the next destination. Then you want food. A lot of food. And you want not to have blisters, and you want a good nights sleep so you can do it all over again in the morning. But the scenery is spectacular and incredibly varied. They sure pack a lot into this little country. That is why the French are so proud of it, I guess!

That is all for now, folks. Wish us luck, and dry feet, and lots of flat stretches…

More later,

Oliver

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Chapter 3: Oliver’s Camino report, May 28th

Well, many more kilometers under our belts, and almost a month on the road, so it is time for another chapter of the great walk chronicle. The Camino (Chemin St. Jacques in France), is indicated by little red and white stripes, on poles, on the side of the road, anywhere. One gets good at spotting those little marks. On maps it appears as GR65. GR stands for Grand Randonee, which means Big Hike.

Let me mention a few things. First of all, even when I can get to a internet cafe, which are few and far between, the French keyboards are different than the North American ones. So I have to type by feel and then replace all of the wrong letters. But of course, now I am getting somewhat used to the French keyboards, so everything tends to be a dog’s breakfast when I am finished typing.

There are two subjects that pilgrims spend a great deal of time talking about. Feet and food. Feet, because that is the part of your body that actually touches the country, repeatedly, many thousands of times in fact. Food, because after all we are in France and food is a big deal here. And I have to say, after all of that walking we are all building up a healthy appetite.

One thing about the lovely food we are getting.... vegetables are not part of the French concept. All least in the hearty country fare we are eating. So whenever we can get a vegetable or a salad, we are delighted. And the other thing about vegetables is, when we eat all of those French baguettes and cheese and heavy stuff like that, you get, how do I say it delicately – bunged up! So veggies are a welcome relief in many ways. Another thing about the French food experience is that the French ALWAYS eat at 7: 30 PM. Always. You can set your watch by it. The other thing I want to mention is French breakfasts. They just don’t have the concept here. For supper, if you are lucky, you get a huge five course meal with wine for about 10 Euros. Then the next morning breakfast, which consists of a bowl of coffee and a few slices of stale bread and a bit of jam – for 5 Euros; What’s wrong with this picture? I have figured out that if you want to really do well in Europe, food-wise, you need to have breakfast in England, 4pm cake and coffee in Germany, and supper in France!

Sometimes we are in a place with a kitchen where we cook our own food. The first time we were in a place like that, we went to a food store and went crazy on the vegetables. We were about to pay at the checkout, when I went back for a luxury – balsamic vinegar. I know backpackers are not supposed to carry glass bottles, but I simply could not resist the thought of fresh tomatoes with garlic and vinegar. Ahhhh. So then I was carrying that bottle.

FRED’S BRAIN

The other thing we got that day was pasta. We made WAY too much. (In fact, one of the amusing situations that came up again and again on this walk is watching Elena try to cook a small amount of food, just enough for four of us for one meal. Almost an impossible feat for her. Those of you who know her will appreciate the humour in this). The next morning, there was this mountain of left over pasta. I could not bear to throw it out, and I also happen to love fried noodles. My mom used to make them (hint: it is a BDS... a Butter Delivery System. Use lots of butter!) So I put the noodles in a plastic bag; Peter said, that looks like somebody’s brain. Almost immediately, a legend grew about Fred, and how although Fred had died, we were carrying Fred’s brain on the Camino. So into the backpack it went. Fred, the story goes, had bequeathed all of his chocolate to us if we would carry his brain on the pilgrimage. (Because chocolate is another staple food for us. We try to make sure always to have at least 4 or 5 bars on hand. Just in case... of virtually anything!)

So we set out, me carrying the balsamic vinegar and Fred’s brain. We had just finished a variant of the Camino along the valley of the Cele River. Spectacular gorges, steep cliffs, houses built right into the rock... all in all a fabulous few days. Gorges mean steep uphill climbs, which I was doing with Fred’s brain securely weighing down my backpack. We arrived that day at a preserved medieval fortress town called St Cyr Lapopie. It was beautiful but quite touristy. The gite we were staying in had a kitchen and – lo and behold, some BUTTER someone had left in the fridge. How good does it get! So the next morning we went to fry Fred’s brain. THE KITCHEN WAS LOCKED!!! Foiled!! But then I found someone with a key, and we were able to make this delicacy. My travel companions were skeptical, but everyone enjoyed dead Fred’s fried head! But we vowed never to carry cooked pasta around again.

The balsamic vinegar had a long life. In another town, I found a small bottle of olive oil, another luxury. Then Elena had the brilliant idea of putting the left over oil in the vinegar bottle. When you wanted salad dressing, you shook the bottle. Otherwise, you let them separate and just poured off the oil for frying. A little later, I added a whole bunch of left over garlic into the bottle. With the slow shaking and baking action of our daily walk, the garlic diffused its marvelous flavour into the bottle. A little later yet, I found some wild rosemary. I put some of that in the bottle as well. In the last few days, the bottle finally got sacrificed into some very tasty salads.

Around here, they eat huge quantities of duck. Foie Gras, roast duck, pate... These are ducks that have been force fed to fatten them up. It seems that almost every restaurant menu includes some duck. This appears to be a specialty of the Southwest.

HEAL HEEL !

I thought that somebody could make a tourist attraction called CAMINO! It would be a theme ride in the tradition of Disney. On the ride you would be on a treadmill, with a 360° movie of beautiful landscape playing all around you. Fans would blow the most amazing medley of smells in your direction, while somebody repeatedly hit your feet with a 2x4. You would be under heat lamps the whole time, but every once in a while, someone would throw a bucket of cold water on you. CAMINO! EXPERIENCE THE WONDER! FEEL THE PAIN!

Peter said the other day “Actually, the Camino is really easy, apart from the walking and carrying your pack!” That about sums it up.

Pilgrims are constantly talking about and obsessing over their feet. You could say, we have sore feet. But that does not do justice to the almost infinite variety of foot pains we humans can actually experience. It seems like EVERY PART of our feet is capable of feeling a large variety of intense pain. So you start trying to figure out if there is anything you can buy to ease those pains even a little bit. Elena suffered massive blisters from her orthotics. She laughed at me for getting two different kinds of shock absorbing insoles in a place called Cahors. Now she is a preferred customer of ‘The Pharmacies of France’! I am sure that pharmacists call ahead to the next village to give the pharmacists there a heads up about this pilgrim who will gladly pay a king’s ransom for a little foot relief. “Ahhhh oui, Madame, you arrrr zee customeure about vee haff hearrrrd!!! Entrez, entrez!”

Thankfully, some of the purchases have paid off in terms of blister relief.

IT’S CHAUD TIME!

At the beginning, we complained a lot about the cold, the rain, the hail, etc. Then suddenly, it got hot - very hot; but it was not as hot as last summer, thankfully. Last summer the temperatures got up to the high 50’s. That is life threatening, and many older people did die. But it is hot enough for pilgrims with blisters. Now we try to get up at about 6am, to be on the road by 7. If it gets warmer, which it probably will in Spain, we will make that earlier. I love to sleep in as much as the next guy, but it is just much harder to walk in the heat of the day. If we start early, we can more or less get to where we are going by not much after lunch. Then we can put our feet up, tend to our blisters, do our laundry, and attend to other details before 7:30 (suppertime) rolls around.

MUSIC, MOISSAC

I have managed to get into quite a few larger or smaller churches to play. There was St. Sernin du Bosc, a tiny chapel in a forest clearing... very basic, with no closed windows. So there the sound included the many birds and insects of the neighbourhood. Occasionally, there is an acoustically beautiful church, but they have piped in recorded music – that is always a great frustration for me. It feels as though the space by itself was not sufficient – they had to pep it up with a soundtrack. I have found this very bothersome… At the grand end of things, there was the Cathedral in Moissac, a fantastic grand space with an echo time of about 4 seconds. It was there that this whole adventure started, actually. Years ago, Peter and Diane were at Moissac, when they heard someone playing his flute in the church. They listened, and later met this man eating his pilgrim lunch by the cathedral steps. They talked, and it turned out he was on the Camino de Santiago, and was trying to play in as many places as he could. Peter came back from that trip and told me about the experience. He said “Wouldn’t it be great if you could do something like that with your fiddle one day.” And the plan was born. So it seemed particularly important and appropriate to play in Moissac. We had the name of a Father high in the church hierarchy there. I got to see him, but I also happened to wake him up from his afternoon nap. He was grumpy. But he suggested that the morning would be the best time to play (We were hoping of course that he would let us in after closing at night!). So the next morning, it was into the cathedral for an impromptu concert. The sun streamed through the windows as I played, and the whole experience was magic.

Later that day, we were eating a celebratory supper in a restaurant that had been recommended to us by a local butcher (it seems that he had lived and worked in Montreal for a while, and knew Guy LaFleur!) The menu in this restaurant sadly was not enough to feed hungry pilgrims, let alone Guy LaFleur. It was a namby-pamby nouvelle French cuisine place; that basically means that the plates are HUGE and the portions are TINY. This is so that there is a lot of place left over on the plate for the chef to do groovy garnish and sauce paintings. Jackson Pollock, look out! In case you chefs are listening, I say “Bring on the piles of food, and do your painting at home, ok?”

The evening’s excitement was provided by a fantastic thunderstorm, which continued throughout all of the meal and our walk back to our hotel. When we got home, we found - OOOPS - we had left the window open! When we stepped on the broadloom carpet, it actually splashed up like a puddle. And everybody except me had left their shoes out on the balcony to air out. Much mopping, drying, wringing out, and toweling went on that night!

Right now, we are taking a rest day in a place called Aire sur l’Adour. The hateful thing about this place is that they have the whole town wired up with speakers; all day long they blast Celine Dion and Euro dance mixes at you. You simply cannot get away from it. It is like being surrounded by a cloud of poisonous gas. Give me the blisters and the foot pain any old day!

In parting, the pilgrim’s toast: ULTREIA It means something like, you can go on, you can go farther... you can make it. And this is what I will now attempt to do.

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Chapter 4: Camino report June 7

Well, I wouldn’t have believed it a few weeks ago, but here we actually are in St. Jean Pied de Port, the last town on the French side. That means we have walked about 560 km so far... not bad, when you consider the shape our legs were in after the first day. Tomorrow we cross over into Spain, via the pass up through the Pyrenees. That is the big Kahuna on this walk. Actually it is not so big, when you consider really high hills...lots of stuff in BC is higher. But it is still the climb that makes most pilgrims knees quake just thinking about it.

After a month of walking you get into a rhythm each day. We get up at 6am with the birds quite often, or if we are staying in a gite with a lot of other pilgrims, with the sound of rustling plastic and creaking limbs as the other earlybirds try to quietly get up. When so many people are sleeping in close quarters, getting up quietly is futile. Maybe one person can do it, but by the time the second person starts to get up and organized, everybody basically wakes up. There is a herd thing that naturally kicks in. You go to bed when the group does. You get up with the group.

If we have demi-pension, then breakfast is included, and we have told the hosts the night before what time we want to eat... coffee, the more the better (it comes in big bowls) and bread and jam. If we are in a more rustic gite, we get our own breakfast, usually a yogurt purchased the night before and a bit of bread. Then we go looking for coffee. Lately we have been starting earlier and earlier, to beat the heat that is settling in here. Bars and cafes do not open before 7am, so sometimes we have to go without the coffee, always a sad occurrence. We had a string of days where we could not get our morning coffee. Elena and I began hallucinating coffee mirages. “Oh LOOK! A café!” It would turn out to be a few umbrellas on somebodies’ deck.

We fill our water bottles, and start out on the way in the coolness of the morning. We look for the red and white stripes that mark the way. By about 10:30, we are usually hungry and have a bite of something, maybe bread and chocolate. We try to get to where we are going not too late in he day. So lunch ends up being about 12:30 - bread, chorizo, cheese (getting into the Basque brebis cheese lately!) and our staple of staples, chocolate. Our favourites are the dark chocolate with orange peel, and the milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts (what Elena calls the chocolate with the big nuts!)

When we get into the town where we are going, hopefully not much later than 2pm, we go to find our gite, or accommodations, and then tear off our shoes as fast as we humanly can. The last few km, the shoes usually become instruments of torture. The other day, we had lunch by a mountain stream. I took my shoes and socks off and put my feet in the water, which was bone-chillingly cold. I got an ice-cream headache in my feet! But the next few km of walking sure were easier, cooled down that way. I couldn’t even feel my feet! In any case, the next thing that happens for us is laundry and showers. We wash socks and stuff... we have so few clothes that we cannot leave it even for a day. Then we usually bazzz out for a while. Lying down at that point is pure heaven.

If there is a good church in the town we are in, I might go to play and record. It is an extra effort, but it is invigorating as well. When I am in a sacred space, I let the place dictate the music I will play. I am doing a bunch of improvising, and a few of my older melodies, like the Lord’s Prayer, which sounds perfect in a lot of these churches. New pieces are also evolving... very prayerful and meditative. It will be strange playing another kind of music after this. When I play, we are often alone in the church. It is hard to record when many people are moving in and out of the space. The other day, we stumbled upon a wonderful Romanesque abbey called Sauvelade, and the acoustics were perfect. There was nobody there, so I set up and started to play. FANTASTIC sound. Then a few pilgrims came and went, and a few more. I played a bit for the ones who stayed and enjoyed it, and then had a long stretch of quiet. I had just started playing “A Million Stars”, when a large troupe of pilgrims walked into the church. They were older, about 25 of them, and I guess the last thing they were expecting was music. In any case, they quietly filed into the church and sat down in the pews, as if they were there for the concert. So I kept playing for them, and segued into “How Heart Came Into the World”. The singing bits sounded terrific, and for the final part, when it fades away, I slowly walked out of the church and closed the door behind me. Spontaneous applause! I hadn’t meant to give a concert, but there it was, spontaneous mini-concert in the middle of the woods in a Romanesque abbey somewhere in Southwestern France! There have been a few friendly playing opportunities like that, among small groups in gites, or restaurants. I never know when it will happen. One lovely evening was in a place called Montreal du Gers. We just had to stay there because of the name. The proprietor of the place, Marie Pierre, was the epitome of warm and welcoming hospitality. And with the good food, and the mix of people there that night, it seemed a perfect time to play. The dog also loved it. He sang along on everything!

A lot of the journey is marked by the people we meet along the way. We tend to see many of the same pilgrims again and again, all threading their way to Santiago. We generally move the same speed, when you average it out. Some days more, and some days less. And you learn that just because someone says they walk 30 km a day, does not mean they really do! Many people were talking that talk, but we would see them again and again. Of course there are the hardcore 35-40km walkers. You see them once and they are gone. But even then, they sometimes take a day off, and then you do run into them again.

An odd thing is that with many of the people you meet and talk to here, even if you have a long and involved conversations in the evening around the supper table, you do not exchange names. It is as though people doing this pilgrimage are leaving part of themselves behind – the part that had status, identity in society, etc. They are becoming purely pilgrims. It should be said that a lot of those pilgrims are older men, recently retired, who are walking their office blues away.

Some pilgrims, for better or for worse, you see only once. There was Leon, the snore bore. He came into a gite right after us on a rainy day, and made a huge fuss about getting a private room, or if not that, being assured that nobody would snore! Well, the Camino was obviously the wrong place for him. He actually kicked up such a fuss that a much older gentleman (who had walked 45 km that day!!) offered to sleep in the kitchen on a mattress, because he knew he snored. Well, when Leon went to the washroom at night, he turned on all the lights in the kitchen, kicked over chairs, etc and made the hugest noise imaginable. And he coughed all night long and kept everybody awake. The older gentleman had a sense of humour about it the next morning, but swore revenge if he ever met Leon in a gite again. The funny thing is, although we only met Leon once, we bumped into about a half dozen people who had had snoring related encounters with him. He was not making a lot of friends on the Camino! (Talking about snoring, I am building up quite a collection of recordings of people snoring. There are some pretty outrageous snorers out there...but of course not me! Never!)

There is Michel, a very charming retired French doctor, who is doing the Camino because he figures he has had such a charmed and happy life, that he wants to reflect on it and give thanks. I am sure that his life was stress, beepers, emergencies, etc. But now, he has a very Zen attitude. He walks every day, not booking accommodations, living simply and in the moment. We have shared some good walking time with Michel. He always says “Now, I am living!”

One of our favourite personalities is Pascal le Routard... Pascal the road dog. We met him, lean and cocky, with a rooster painted on the Coquille hanging from his pack. He was little confused about the way, and as we had a map and he didn’t, we set him straight and then shared a bit of road. Turns out that had Pascal lost his wife and kid in an accident, then his mother died, then he got fired. He decided to walk to Santiago to pray for everybody. Then he was going to walk home. Then he was going to walk to Rome, and somewhere else... I forget where! So he set out in the true spirit of pilgrimage, with not a penny in his pocket, walking every day, praying, living on the kindness of strangers. He would ask for alms at a Sunday mass to get a bit more money, and do odd jobs for people or pick a bit of fruit or seasonal vegetables for food when he could. In fact, it was during our walk with Pascal that we found (and enjoyed) our first of several wild cherry trees! He had very high ethical standards, and said he never stole anything, but would always ask. People were kind to him... people were also mean. In one village, a priest turned him away when he asked for a bit of bread and water. But Pascal kept going. We gave him food and money. Then we had some doubts as to the veracity of his hard luck tale – was he a smooth talking scoundrel with a gift of the gab. But later we saw him in the grocery store, buying good nourishing food and razors for himself. The next day we caught up to a freshly shaven Pascal who couldn’t stop talking about the fantastic feed he had had the night before. Pascal obviously had not eaten in some time! Now, whenever it looks like we may miss a meal, or go without something, we raise a toast (of water) to Pascal and wish him well. He passed us on the road some time ago, but he is fond of writing little notes to all the pilgrims and to the world in general. So we can keep track of his progress as we walk. I am sure he is cheering himself up. We found one friendly invitation written on a stump, inviting pilgrims to sit down and rest. Then, in another church, there was a rather desperate note from Pascal, who was not doing well. After that – nothing for days. We were worried about him. But just the other day, there was a more chipper note, and we figure he is eating again. Wish him well, wherever he may be! An interesting thing about Pascal was that from one perspective he could be seen as a homeless bum. But in fact he was a man with a plan – not only one but three pilgrimages to keep him going. And he had rigorous ethical standards that he applied to himself and others. I would say that in many ways he probably was more together and mentally healthy than a fair few who have houses and jobs and families. I think that is why he was so fascinating to us. The superficial picture and the deeper reality were at odds.

Then there were the cult guys in Uzan. Uzan was by far the most rustic accommodation we had on the entire trip. Uzan was tiny – just a few houses. But the large sign “You are entering Uzan” was about 4 km before the village. It was like Timmins! We had called ahead to reserve spots in this gite that was listed as ‘spartan’. Well, when we showed up, it turned out to be some floor space at the town hall, and a few foamies to sleep on. No shower. No food. The mayor let us in, gave us the key, and told us to shove it in the flower box the next morning! There were two bearded and somewhat hyper men in sackcloth shirts who were just getting their picture taken as we arrived. They invited us in for a picture. They told us they were doing the camino, but in reverse. When the mayor gave us the key, she said “Look out for those guys – they are from a cult twenty miles down the road. They have been chatting up all of the young girls in town (all three of them) and handing out pamphlets. Les cochons!” We thought that it might be good not to share our humble accom’s with the cult guys from Navvarenx. So we decided to scare them off. Peter and I got the blue ponchos, and put them around our heads like Babushka scarves. We told them we were from the cult of the blue cow. Then we started mooing, and I began doing Mongolian throat singing. The cult guys pretty much high tailed it out of there. They did try to give us pamphlets, though. To celebrate their departure, Peter and I played a messy game of floor hockey on the enormous town hall floor with an empty pate tin.

Now wish us luck, as we do the knee-crunching mountain stage tomorrow. We will probably get up at 4:30 AM, so that we don’t have to deal with the baking heat. Next time I write, we will be in Spain, where the accommodations are said to be much more simple, and the snorers are louder, and where we will be probably looking back on France as the lap of luxury!

ULTREIA!

Oliver

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Chapter 5: Camino report June 9

Let me say first off, that we are over the mountains. As with so many mountains, metaphorical or otherwise, they were not half as big as people made them out to be. Part of the problem was that they had printed up these profile charts that showed you on a graph how much each day’s climb would be. There were big days and smaller days, and then there was the stage over the Pyrenees, which involved six times as much climbing as the worst day before that. Without articulating it, we all assumed that would mean six times as much foot pain. But in fact it was not so.

We had reserved an apartment in St. Jean Pied de Port, which is the last French stop on the Camino before the Pyrenees. We took a day off and celebrated Diane’s birthday, which conveniently fell on that day. The apartment was an old place right on the Rue de a la Citadelle in the old town; we had all sorts of space, two kitchens and a balcony, so needless to say, Elena cooked up a storm. A friend came to visit from Spain, and brought a barbeque, four kilos of steak, and a case of Basque cider – so we had a real feast. The apartment balcony was perfect for barbequing and sunsets. From the front (where our bedroom was) we got a fantastic view of the street below. That also meant that when anybody walked down the street we sat bolt upright in bed because it sounded like people were right in the room with us. Not much sleep that night. My knee had been really acting up, so I decided after a fair bit of humming and hawing that I should be prudent and do the easier way up the mountain, via the road. Peter and Diane chose to do the Route Napoleon, which was the scenic but athletic route up over the mountain trails.

Elena wanted to get up very early to beat the heat on the mountain - also, we really did not know how it would go. Everybody had said it was killingly difficult. So we got up at 4:45 and were on the road by 5:30, in the dark.

The gates of the city were lit up by many fairy lights, which seemed a fitting sign for the departure to Compostela – field of stars. Almost right away was the point where we had to take the alternate road route... we were unsure of the markings, and it was pitch dark. At the point where we had to separate from the Camino proper, we saw another pilgrim making his way toward us. As we got closer in the crepuscular light, we realized that we recognized him. He was an older guy, very fastidious, very friendly and absolutely elfin. The elf told us that he had tried walking part of the road route the previous day (he had also taken a rest day) and had decided it was not well enough marked. Well, what the heck, I thought.... it seemed like a sign to meet him like that. And so we set out on the Route Napoleon, following the elf. Then just like that, the dawn was upon us, and we climbed and climbed and climbed.

It was a spectacular morning. We had the world to ourselves – with the elf, of course. Then, as we got higher, the wind began. It got windier and windier. The wind blew the thoughts right out of your head! I remembered reading something about force 9 gales up there during bad weather, and our climb was on a good day! It was probably the mightiest ongoing wind I have ever experienced. It was very much like standing up in a convertible driving about 90km/hr. Mostly, the wind was in our faces, and from the side. It buffeted our packs and knocked us about. I’m sure that anybody watching us would have thought we were drunk. At a certain point, the wind came up from behind. It was so strong, all we had to do was lift our feet – the wind did the rest, pushing us forward. We noticed at one point that Elena had lost her water bottle – the wind had carried it away (it was full). The noise from the wind was such that we didn’t even hear it go! But on we went. We were certainly thankful that we had done so much walking already. Many started the Camino at St. Jean Pied de Port, and I’m sure many of those were hurting, as we would have been if it had been us. We passed many folks on the road. Suddenly, we recognized the hat and dapper striped shirt of Michel, our French doctor friend. He had done part of the walk the night before, and so we caught up with him, and shouted back and forth across the howling wind.

I’m not sure if it was the early hour, or the day of rest we had had, or the fact that it really was not quite as brutal as we had been led to believe, but we just scooted up that mountain. We passed the fountain of Roland, and then there was a big rock sign NAVARRA – and just like that we were in Spain. Some folks had warned us that the border police were searching everybody, but there was not a one in sight. This was the point where the Navarese of old would hold up and rob pilgrims, and then ride them like mules before they killed them. Pretty different story now. Just beautiful fields, hills and trees. And a howling wind. At the point at which the descent began, we saw a little rock on a signpost – it was a hello note from Pascal the Routard. So we know he survived at least into Spain. We did the last stretch down the mountain through the most spectacular pine forest – a veritable Narnia. We walked into Roncesvalles at 1:30 PM, happy, hot, and not the complete wrecks we had expected to be. We signed into the hostel there – eventually other pilgrims we knew pulled into town, and Peter and Diane arrived as well. That evening, I played during a pilgrim’s mass in the church there. I had hoped to also play for myself, a little later, but the friendly but firm priest kicked us out of the church. We realized afterwards he had not yet had his supper!

That evening, just before supper, there was a spectacular cleansing downpour and hailstorm which left the courtyard covered in ice crystals.

Peter told me a couple of tales about their ascent as well.... The Italian guy, obviously green to the Camino, wearing tight hip hugging blue jeans, with his water bottle buried deep in his knapsack. Or the California girl who had read the Shirley MacLaine account of the Camino, and had decided that she was going to walk the Camino in 3 weeks (usually takes 5). She told Peter “All you need is faith.” Well, a little common sense wouldn’t hurt! When Peter and Diane met her, she was wearing flip-flops and smoking. Yup. You guessed it. She had a tough time. She was so late in crossing that she got caught in the hailstorm and eventually showed up looking like a drowned rat.

The next day we walked to a town called Larrasoaña. The red and white signs of the French Camino were starting to be replaced by the yellow Coquille-star symbol on a blue background that marks the way in Spain. Right away, there was a different vibe here in Spain than in France.

Gone is the pristine beauty and the pastoral charm, the idea of having a gite to ourselves, the quiet. First of all, the Camino often goes along large roads ­ if not on the road than on paths not far from the road so you can always hear the traffic. Then there is the fact that MANY people start the Camino from here. So suddenly the trail is packed ­ it began to dawn on us that we were now part of a growing crowd moving toward Santiago ­ it is very much a group experience here, and not an individual kind of thing.

In Larrasoaña we got ourselves space in the refugio, and washed a lot of clothes, which dried almost instantly in the hot Spanish sun. I was thinking it would be great to play in the village church. Turns out the mayor of the town runs the refugio (his name is Santiago), and he knew who had the key, and was very willing to help us get in there. At 3 PM we tried to get the key – “Oh no, the man who has the key is 97, and likes a long siesta!” So we tried again at 4 PM, and then at 6 PM. The old guy was still taking his siesta. We finally decided to go for supper and to play afterwards. When we got back from supper at 8pm, we tried once again to get the key. “Oh no,” Santiago said. “The old guy was up for a while, but now he has gone to bed again!“

You win some, you lose some.

At 8:30(!), it was communal bedtime. The beds are spaced very tightly in the Spanish refugios, so maneuvering around is quite a challenge. Everybody finally got installed, and soon after it started. The symphony of snoring pilgrims. At least 5 people in the room snored a lot ­ some had solo parts and arias, and others had more background chorus parts. It was quite something: I managed to sleep, but I know that many others did not. At about 6 AM everybody woke up together. It is almost impossible for one person to get up without waking the others, so the whole thing becomes very much a group event.

That day, we were only walking 16 km to Pamplona. We shared our walk with the ever-charming Michel, and many of the pilgrims from the night before. The plan was to take a bus or train to Burgos, stay the night, and then again to Leon, to restart the walk for the last 300km. We simply did not have enough time to do it all.

We left luggage at the bus station, got train tickets and did a bit of sightseeing in Pamplona. Then we tried to take a taxi from the bus station to the train station. Well, it was very difficult to say the least to get cabbies at the taxi stand to pick us up. The first one saw the backpacks, and then just took off and picked up another fare. I decided it was time for a more aggressive strategy. When the next taxi pulled up, I climbed into the back seat right away with my pack, and started muttering in a made-up language. Well, I had not anticipated Spanish machismo. The cabby, to put it mildly, freaked out. He started yelling at me to get out of the cab, and then jumped open, pulled open my door, and yelling and gesticulating wildly, made very aggressive motions in my general direction. Elena was trying to calm him down, and Peter was standing by, ready to thrash him with his sturdy cane: I can just see it: FOUR CANADIAN PILGRIMS IN JAIL IN PAMPLONA. I managed to escape the cab, and we thankfully got the next taxi to the train station. In my life thus far, the problem has been generally to dissuade overzealous cabbies that INSIST on picking up a fare. Never have I been aggressively chased from a taxi like that! Different places, different strategies.

Now we are in Leon, having spent the night in beautiful Burgos, and experienced the strange wonder of riding at high speed in a train, covering more ground in half an hour than we would in a day’s walk!

In the morning we went to Burgos cathedral, where they charge admission, and as it turns out, make you check in your knapsack. On the suggestion of the friendly ticket attendant, I took my violin into the church just like that, under my arm without a case, but it turns out they had canned music playing and crowds of camera toting tourists. I think the days of pristine recording in churches are over. I carried the violin around under my arm and marveled at the splendor in this cathedral – so opulent and over the top compared to churches in France. Then we found a chapel off to the back and when I realized that I could not hear the canned music there, I set up my gear quickly and managed to play for 25 minutes until I was busted. Turns out to do that sort of thing, you need a letter of permission from the bishop. Even though a small and appreciative audience had gathered, and was begging the church official to let me play, I wasn’t hurting anyone, etc, he did not relent. Rules are rules! So apparently playing prayerful music is not allowed in Spanish churches, but of course, tour guides can take large groups of rude tourists around the place any time to give guided tours. I guess they don’t make much money from the likes of me, and therein lies the rub. But I can’t complain too loudly this time, for I did get to play, even for a short while. It is strange when a thing you take for granted (playing) is suddenly so difficult to do. You have to make it count. It sure feels good to play, in any case.

Tomorrow we start walking again – hardened Camino veterans at last. But that does not mean it will be easy. There are always hills, and sore feet, and snorers at night. And the brutal sun, which will fry you if you start too late. But this is the home stretch. We should be in Santiago in about two weeks.

ULTREIA

Oliver

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Chapter 6: Camino report June 15

Well here I am in Villafranca, more in the less in the middle of Spain on the edge of Galicia. We are working our way into the Spanish part of the Camino. It has been quite different from the French portion.

Before starting our Spanish walk to finish the Camino, we stayed the night in Leon. It was a threatening sky when we got into the city, and we were looking for a pensione to spend a restful night before our walk started. Turned out that was a little difficult. The town was crawling with tourists and pilgrims, and we wandered around, looking and being sent hither and thither in search of the pensione. Lucky for Elena's Spanish! Some time into our search, she asked an older local gentleman out for a stroll. She mentioned we were from Canada and were looking for a pensione. He stopped dead in his tracks. CANADA? He said. YOU COME FROM CANADA? Turned out he had lived and worked in Hamilton for many years, and was now retired. He was pleased as punch to try out his English, and led us around until we found a pensione, on the Plaza Mayor, a large square covered in marble.

Our room was the 'noisy' one, looking out on the square. Peter and Diane had a room a little toward the back of the apartment. When it was bedtime, Elena put in her earplugs, all 5 pairs, and slept soundly. The sound on the square started off as a roar, a human waterfall of noise, as all the restaurants on the plaza were serving dinner and people were enjoying their Friday night. I slept because of the sheer roar of the noise. Later on I woke up. It was 2:30 AM. Respectable patrons were starting to go home, leaving the drunken youth of Leon to sing loutish songs, scream at the top of their lungs, throw bottles against the wall, and engage in teenage testosterone and mating rituals. They did this until 5:15 AM. It was like New Years Eve. Except I was not at the party and I had to get up at 5:30 at the morning! So I dozed for 15 minutes before starting out on our day of walking. I talked to an Irishman a few days later and he had his own story of the strange confluence of daytime and nighttime schedules. He had been leaving a town at 6am. He found himself walking up a street where there was a nightclub still in full swing. Somebody outside the club handed him a beer and dragged him inside. Being Irish, of course he had the beer, and then someone gave him another for the road. The club patrons slapped him on the back, wished him “Buen Camino!” and got back to finishing their party. He started his walking day on the Camino.

Apart from the sleep issues, the Spanish walking part started off quite difficult. We were walking out of Leon, a rather largish city, and it really took forever to get our of the urban sprawl. Urban sprawl! That was not ever a part of the French Chemin. Here, walking out of Leon, we were leaving the Meseta, the long flat middle part of the Camino. Most of the time, the path led along straight roads with a lot of traffic, the hot Spanish sun, trucks and busses roaring by.... it was a little like walking out of Burlington, or Burnaby... lots of concrete, desolation, and not a hint of the beautiful countryside we had left behind. So we grasped at little things to give us a lift. At one point, we saw a long line of ants crawling along, each carrying a grain of wheat that looked for all the world like a little Coquille St. Jacques. The ant Camino!! Then we started seeing the storks. Turns out this part of the world is home to an extraordinary number of storks, which like to nest on bell towers and hydro towers, and are not particularly shy about doing their thing.... flying in and out, throwing their necks back, and clacking their bills to say hello. The first time we saw them was exciting... so were all the other times, actually!

The straight flat bit went on for a few days. We were getting quite disheartened about the Spanish Camino, because we were used to the pristine French countryside, and this was definitely not it. We just wanted to get our day's walk over. After the first day out of Leon, we ended up in St Martin del Camino. We took a look into the dormitory. 140 beds in one room. Not only double bunks. Triple bunks! It was a veritable sleep factory. It looked like cell block #9! Scary! We opted for a more gentle sleeping arrangement in a house attached to the refugio.

The next day - more straight roads, more heat, more highway, more crowds of pilgrims on foot and on bicycle. We ended up in the absolutely charming town of Astorga. On the hill overlooking Astorga, we talked to some German chaps, who mentioned that they had had to help an ailing Dutch pilgrim who had collapsed and needed to be taken to hospital. On a hunch I asked his name. Gert, they said, from Utrecht. Well, I'll be darned. We had met Gert on our 4th day of walking back in Livignac (living muck) in France. We had had supper together... Gert was in much better shape than us, and liked to walk far every day... So of all the coincidences in the world, there was Gert on the road, sick. We had missed him because we had taken an alternate route for a few km.

In the refugio in Astorga, they actually had salt-water footbaths and all sorts of other cool amenities. The cathedral was right around the corner. I was sure looking forward to playing, but first - lunch. We were just ordering food when Gert walked in. He was staying at the hotel, having survived his hospital experience. He was in good spirits and happy to see us. Elena took him in hand, and fixed him up at the local pharmacy with electrolytes, etc. She also ended up looking after another Dutch couple whom she took to the hospital for treatment. You can take the nurse out of the hospital, but.....!

When the cathedral opened, we went there to play music. I set up my tape machine, and began playing. I played 2 phrases, about a total of 33 seconds, when the church police came and busted me. HOW FRUSTRATING. Elena talked to then, and they said, "Well, playing is not allowed. There have been a lot of things stolen in the church lately!" All by tall fiddle players, no doubt. This has been one of my little lessons on the Camino. How much it actually means to me to play music. How important it really is. At home, I can play any time, but when I can't it bottles up inside me and I become very sad... it is a deep hunger that needs to be fed.

After Astorga, the way became much more beautiful. We started going up into the foothills of another Sierra range, and were surrounded by broom, gorse, lavender, heather, wild mountain thyme, oregano, poppies, and all sorts of beautiful shrubs. The smell was astounding. And the scenery got quite spectacular. We found a small shop in a mountain village where they sold Mars bars and knee braces at the same counter. These folks were definitely prepared for pilgrims! We ended up in a town called Foncebandon. Back in the middle ages, it had been an important pilgrim stop, with a hospital and a population of 5,000. But in modern times, or at least until a couple of years ago, it had two inhabitants. Now it is building up again with ex-pilgrims and people wanting to cash in on the Camino. We were too late to get a place in the refugio, but they do not turn anybody away, so we were told we could sleep in the church on mattresses. A church which was open. I locked myself in there just after lunch during siesta time, and played my heart out. AHHHHH. Que Bueno! A little later I played for some fellow pilgrims. The playing here, when I can do it, will be more about sharing with other pilgrims, and less about me doing my solo solitary thing. And that is as it should be.

Good sleep in the church. We started out at the crack of dawn, and after two km of a gorgeous sunrise, reached a cross at the high part of the mountain we were crossing. The tradition there is to carry a stone from home, some little rock from a special person, or special prayer, and to throw it behind yourself at the cross. Peter had told my mother about it, and she had sent him her little stone, which turned out to be a part of our old farmhouse. Our friend Tasha had also sent him a stone. Peter and I stood side by side at the top of the heap, and after a very moving prayer by Peter, and a bit of Peter’s writing read by Diane, we threw the stones. It was a key moment of the trip. The sun was just coming up over the mountain and we were standing there on top of the world, connected to those we love, and those that had come there in the past.

The Camino now is turning into a sea of people moving toward Santiago. It is developing a human intensity that I never imagined. I am interviewing a lot of people about their stories and perspectives about the Camino. Everybody has a unique tale, and they all ring true with what I am experiencing. Santiago is like a huge electromagnet, drawing us in. I can only imagine the intensity in about a weeks time, when we are within hailing distance.

Just a quick food story to finish up. We had walked into a town called Molinaseca, and had sat down for a quick coffee and break. The bar owner served us up a plate of local delicacy. It was a rather strange looking food. Something like squid and pork mixed – a suspiciously high Goodyear factor, and it tasted a little like burnt rubber. Elena finally asked what it was, after we had exercised our jaws on this resistant mass. "Pigs ears - local specialty of the house. They make them really good here.” You learn something new every day. So, if anybody ever offers you pigs ears… RUN. Just turn around and run!

THE PEPPERS OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

It is surprising what you will find on a can in Spain. In the most nondescript supermarket, we found a row of deliciously gaudy icons to rococo Catholic imagery; jars of hot paprika names The Peppers of the Immaculate Conception. The strange food we actually became very fond of in Spain was octopus – boiled, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with coarse salt and paprika. That’s it. And served with fresh bread. We ate it every day in Galicia, it was just so good. They served it to you on a round wooden board. It is tender and sweet, and covered in weird purple suckers and curling tentacles – yum!

Tomorrow, another mountain before the green hills of Galicia. Now we are only about 190 km away from our destination. The excitement is rising. And our feet are just never as sore as they were in the beginning. I guess you do get toughened up

ULTREIA!

Oliver

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Chapter 7: Camino Report June 24

IT WAS ALL GOING SO WELL UNTIL...

Let’s see now... where did I leave off? I believe I left you in Villafranca, where we were staying at the refugio of a man called Jato. It was a very funky place, and crammed full of folks of every nationality.

Among them, there were several Japanese pilgrims. Akihiro was a young guy who had the air of a floppy eared dog ­ long curly hair, all gangly limbs and a big smile. Well, Elena saw his feet, and they were the very worst we had seen on the Camino. She worked on him for quite a while to fix him up ­ the remarkable thing was that he was covering basically the same distance as us ­ we saw him numerous times over the next days ­ but he must have been in incredible pain the whole time. Who knows what drove him on to walk. At this point, he is ahead of us ­ we are sure he has made Santiago already.

Along the way Elena was able to care for his feet several more times to fix him up. The other unusual Japanese pilgrim we met was Lika, who was doing the pilgrimage for the 4th time. She was like a small puppet, all dressed in pink, with little floral gloves. She had a voice straight out of a cartoon ­ the highest squeakiest little voice. Someone said she weighed 33kg, but she was carrying an 11kg pack. She would discretely disappear behind a bush on occasions and smoke about a cm of a cigarette before she threw it away. She was utterly fascinating. At Jato’s place that night, Jato performed a Queimada, a ritual involving copious amounts of burning alcohol, and strange incantations wishing well to pilgrims, and poking fun at them at the same time. By the failing light, I played my fiddle to accompany the Queimada. At Jato’s place, as at Foncebandon a little earlier, we started meeting more folks ­ our new Camino family. There was a much wider spread in ages and nationalities than there had been in France.

After Villafranca, there were a couple of mountains to cross before we got into Galicia. Mountains. HA! I laugh out loud at those puny hills! Actually, this was when we felt our good form from walking so much. Big hills were simply not an issue any more. It was great to charge up a hill, enjoy a fantastic vista, fresh air, sheep and cows with bells walking up the road, the smell of flowering herbs and broom. Often walking those hills, there was a smell of beeswax from the combinations of flowers we encountered. The second of the big hills, up to O Cebreiro, did tire me out somewhat. Coming down from the hill, there was a lot of tarmac (the enemy of hikers) and the sun was getting hot. It was a longish stage for us. At a certain point, a little old lady came running out into our path with a plate of crepes. “I make these for the pilgrims” she said. “Please take some!” We did, and were about to thank her and continue on our way when she said, “This is by donation ­ any amount will do...” The sly fox had let us eat the crepes and then wanted us to pay. Elena did pay, but Peter and Diane had not seen this, so the lady tried to hit them up for money a second time. Later on, we found out she had gotten into trouble with the police over this. She had a little Bunsen burner in the barn and was running quite the racket! That night we stayed in a tiny hamlet called Biduedo, in a fabulous farm B&B that had been suggested to us by another hospitalero (old pilgrim running a refugio). We were fed fresh white cheese, and a mountain of steak, which we could not even finish! How about that!

The next day was my birthday, and it started off with a spectacular sunrise over the hills. We were walking down into a town called Sarria (like Sarnia, only prettier), and the path down snaked through forest groves of giant chestnut trees, past quaint hamlets and alongside rivers ­ the beauty reminded us of the Camino in France. At a lunch stop, we ran into Martin, whom we had met before in Villafranca. He bought a birthday round of Ribiera wine, and then we set off for the final stretch to Sarria. And then...

And then, just like that, I fell. I went all that way through France, up and down mountains of mud, over the most treacherous trails, and now, walking along a straight dry road, I tripped over a pebble the size of a walnut. The weight of my pack threw me forward, and I fell down hard on the gravel. After the initial adrenaline rush, I brushed myself off, and checked various moving parts. Wrist and arm -ok...so I could still play. Knee - a bit bruised, but hopefully that would pass. Ankle - quite sore. I had twisted it, and it did feel uncomfortable. I finished the walk into Sarria without apparent ill effects, and we checked into a very new and clean refugio. Siesta, and then, seafood tapas for dinner, with an emphasis on octopus and squid. Very delicious - much better than the pig’s ears!

The next day, we got an early start and headed for Portomarin. We arrived early, and waited for about three hours for the refugio to open. You leave your packs in the line against the wall... by just before opening time (1 PM) the line stretched all the way around the corner and up the street!

What a mad scramble for beds when the place finally opened!! But we got decent beds. Later that afternoon I even got the chance to play in the very large and fortress-like church in town. The sound was quite spectacular in that church, but was slightly compromised by the swallow which had flown in that morning and was making distressed sounds throughout my playing.

In the middle of the night, I had to go to the washroom. I left the sleeping dorm, and got the shock of my life when I saw about a dozen people packing up to get an early start. It was 4:30am. Apparently, the first ones had left at about 2am with headlamps to get to the next refugio and be first in line. I am sure they saw a lot of the Camino, walking in the middle of the night like that! There was nothing to do but get started ourselves. We were on the road by about 5:20 AM, in the pitch black dark before dawn. After a few hours of walking, my foot started to really hurt. It was the ankle that I had twisted. It got progressively worse, and I was convinced by my travelling companions to call it a day after about 15 km. Elena found ice for my foot, and started to negotiate early access for me to the small refugio, when our Japanese friend Akihiro and his friend Norio came limping up. Norio had developed tendonitis in his shin. We did get into the refugio early, and had a rest day.

The next day ­ rain, and pain, in Spain! The only thing missing was the plain, which would have been a welcome sight, because Galicia is all up and down. Walking was becoming more difficult. At this point there were maybe 75 km to go to Santiago. And they proved to be the toughest of the whole trip. At night ­ ice, anti-inflammatories, and lots of rest. By day, pain that made every kilometer a victory. I would have good spells, and then really bad spells. I will spare you the gory details, but we have kept slugging on. I say we, though the rest of the gang spend a lot of time waiting for hobblin’ Oli...

The next day had me limping along slowly and stubbornly. We met an American doctor and her husband on their honeymoon with two Canadian nurse friends. She did acupuncture on my sore foot at one point. There we were sitting in a café in the middle of nowhere, me with 3 needles sticking out of my foot. Ya do what ya gotta do! I think it did help. That night we arrived in Santa Irene. I had a good feeling about the place because Irene is my Mother’s name. Also, the previous night, we had met some Spaniards who had the phone number of a private refugio in Sta. Irene, one that could be booked ahead. This is not common in Spain, but times are changing. So we arrived in Sta Irene, and found a lovely refugio, one of the best we had had in Spain. There were sheets on the bed, towels, and they did laundry for a very little sum. And to top it off, we remet Marie and Josephine, two Camino friends we thought had passed us long ago. So there was much rejoicing. After we cleaned up and had a snack, we decided to go to try to play in the tiny chapel that was only a hundred yards away (for me, half an hours walk!) Apparently, the man next door had the key. Elena talked to him, and he didn’t really want to be bothered with the whole thing. He finally relented, but said “OK, he can play, but only for half an hour. I have work to do, not like some people around here!” Then he was surprised to see a whole group of us, for it seemed that everybody in the refugio had come along to hear the music. One Spanish fellow, Jose, chatted the old man up, and convinced him we were honest and trustworthy. Reluctantly, the old man let us in, and then began noisily cleaning the church. He was soon joined by two very chatty local church ladies, and the three of them began talking loudly to each other, about five feet from where I was trying to play something ´sensitive´. It was quite ridiculous. I could not exactly ask them to shut up, because it was their church. But they did not ‘get’ music in the slightest degree. For them it was an occasion to be social. Jose jumped in to the rescue, and went up and said some magic words to them, upon which they shut up and sat down and were very attentive, if sulky. At a certain point, another local came in with a camera, and one of the church ladies jumped up and began preening in front of the altar, so that she could look good for the picture. But she was quiet! It was all quite surreal. It turns out that Jose had said to the three: “Listen, have some respect, he is playing religious music!” It worked. They were finally quiet, but not because they figured it out themselves. Someone had to tell them.

The next day was absolutely pathetic for walking. I was so rusty in the morning. I thought it would take me three weeks to do the 20 km we had to cover that day. But finally I got into the swing. Things got better. Things got worse. They got better again. I made the most of it. The end bit was the hardest. (Usually is!) Had a brutal time getting past the Santiago airport at Lavacolla, which basically means ‘wash your privates’. In the old days, that might have been the very first place pilgrims washed on the entire pilgrimage. Apparently, Christians used to laugh at Jews and Muslims because they washed so much! I hate to think of the stench. I myself am bad enough after one day. In any case, our book had said that this last stretch was 6 km, but it turns out it was more like 10 km. It seems that there is this funny thing a lot of the time with the last 4 km – they just do not finish. I was labouring up a hill, and a Costa Rican woman behind be began to sing a beautiful Spanish song. It actually lifted my feet and helped me make it. Now we are in Monte del Gozo, a large refugio a mere 5 km from Santiago. It looks like a university campus built in around 1978 – soul-suckingly bleak, a huge pilgrim factory with 800 beds, but we knew that it would be like that. It’s hard to believe that we are only 5km away from the end of our 1,000 trip. I cannot believe I made the last few, that is for sure.

The landscape here in Galicia is totally different from the previous heat. It is basically the Spanish equivalent of BC ­ temperate rain forest, intensely moist with fragrant groves of towering eucalyptus trees that actually ooze foamy sap and oils. The air constantly smells of it, especially when it rains, which is almost always. The Basques have a word for this finest kind of mist that penetrates everything ­ xiri miri (sheery meery). Tomorrow ­ Santiago. I will say more of my perceptions of the human and spiritual side of the last few kilometers. But until then, I have to run. (well, ok… Hop) The ice on my leg is melting, and the word is that there is a doctor here who has special painkillers. Got to hobble!

ULTREIA!

Oliver

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Chapter 8 : Final Camino report June 26

WE DID IT!
WE ARE IN SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELLA

I wrote the last report from Monto de Gozo, the evening of the 24th, just a few km away from Santiago. It seemed to be clearing up a bit as well, so we thought we might have a better view as we walked into the city. We had been talking to many people and strategizing on how to maximize the chances of me playing in the Cathedral, given the general difficulty of doing that in Spain. Some folks that had done the Camino several times said that the thing to do was to stay in Monto de Gozo, in order to arrive at the cathedral at opening time. Things were not so ridiculously crowded then, and we could perhaps find a priest to talk to in order to get permission to play. Well, the last day, my foot felt quite a bit better, aided by lengthy icing sessions the day before (we never did see that doctor. Apparently they like to prescribe whacking doses of morphine-based pain killers, and we thought the cure might be worse than the condition). We got into Santiago, walked through the urban sprawl, and arrived at the Cathedral at 7:45 in the morning. Mass was being said in many of the side chapels. We were finally at the destination we had been walking toward for such a long time. We looked around, wandered through the huge sacred space… Elena found a sacristy door, and talked to someone going in about seeing a priest. He asked what this was about, and she explained. He said “I am the head sacristan, and I am the one who gives permission for this sort of thing. You don’t talk to a priest about this. Come back at 2:30 tomorrow, and he can play!” Well, it seems that of all the people we needed to talk to, Elena had chosen the exact one. Guided by the hand once again! I could not believe it.

We wandered around in a bit of a daze, and met several people from the Camino, some who had arrived a few days before us. Joyful exchanges of greetings all around! Then we got our Compostelas, the actual certificates that say you have completed this pilgrimage. Suddenly, the official part, the striving, the walking, the getting up early, the 25 km a day were over, and we were tourists. Well… sort of tourists. You could tell there were in fact busloads of tourists in town, and then there were the pilgrims. Just as we were waiting in line for the Compostelas, Gert, our Dutch friend walked up with a big smile. He had stuck around, and was looking much healthier than the last time I had seen him.

One of my big regrets at having the foot injury close to the end, and going so slow was that the people we had befriended walking from Leon now passed us. As I sat there, when I first realized that I was going to have to cut a stage short and rest, I saw familiar face after familiar face pass by, and I felt sad that our second Camino family was now leaving us behind because our pace was dramatically dropping. But in fact, we did see many of these friends again, either en route or in Santiago. Santiago has its own logic for meeting people. You run into people in the oddest ways, and just wandering around the old city, you keep seeing another fellow pilgrim. Once you are in Santiago, the whole mood also changes. The fact that a pilgrim used a support car to cheat on carrying their own pack, or that they snored loudly at night in the refugios and kept you awake, is now forgotten. Now, they are just fellow pilgrims who are also finished, and everybody is happy to see each other. I had people who had not met me, but who had just passed me when I was at my worst on the last days of walking come up and congratulate me on making it. We even saw Rambo at the pilgrim’s mass (remember Rambo?).

What a change from the last 100 km of the Camino. I am not talking of my foot here either, although that did colour the experience. I am talking of the change in mood from the earlier walking. To get a Compostela, one has to walk the last 100 km. That means people are jumping in right at the end and doing the last bit in five or six days – not enough time to forge Camino friendships. There is an absolutely enormous influx of pilgrims, quasi pilgrims, tourists, all walking, all competing for inadequate accommodation at the refugios. That is why some folks got up in the middle of the night to walk. It had become a rat race, and many people we talked to were struggling with this – the spiritual aspect of quietly walking, thinking, or perhaps talking to a fellow pilgrim, were replaced with a headlong rush to be first in line at the next refugio. It became quite a dog eat dog scenario. People had to come to their own terms with this, by choosing not to let it bother them, or choosing not to compete, i.e., finding some peace with the last part of the road, which one thinks should be a sort of summing up, a special focusing on arriving. Instead, it had become a circus. For us, my foot was a factor that made us slow down, made us walk that last part without rushing. So, pain or no pain, it was a bit of a blessing. Although just a the point I had injured myself I was sure looking forward to stretching out those legs and seeing what they could do. Not being able to do that, and slowing down the others, was hard.

A MILLION STEPS

I will have so many thoughts and perspectives about the Camino in the upcoming weeks and months, I am sure. I will sort out the final analysis of what I think and feel about much of this as the whole experience grows and matures inside of myself. The funny thing is, you experience cold, pain, blisters, heat, more pain, fatigue, frustration… and you forget most of that and remember other things instead. I had so many memories, so many hours of walking. I know I will be drawing on those memories for years. We walked about 1,000 km on this pilgrimage – a million steps! It took forever, and it took no time at all. So many times, I did not think I was going to finish. It just seemed too far, too long. And then it was not even about finishing. There is a saying many pilgrims liked to quote “The path is the destination…” Yes, I wanted to finish, but a million details weave the fabric of this journey, and make it rich and complex.

Playing my violin in all of those churches was definitely a positive and invigorating experience. One of the fun things was the living and growing story that took shape along the Camino of the tall and nameless pilgrim who shows up and pulls a violin out of his knapsack and plays. It was collective story, passed back and forth between the various people that heard me play on different occasions. Sometimes (besides my own walking party of course) there was an audience of just one; sometimes there were quite a number of people. Some pilgrims kept pace with us, and so heard us several times. Some talked to me about the music, and although they expressed an interest to hear it, we were just never at the right place at the right time. There was a very spontaneous element to the music I played on the Camino. I did not want to make it a trip about recording and ‘getting a take’. I wanted to play in various churches in as unselfconscious a way as possible. And I believe that did happen. I can’t wait to listen to all of the tapes. I sent most of the tapes on ahead to Canada because I was worried about their safely. Now my trusty engineer Andrew is busy backing them up and complaining to me on my answering machine about recording levels! At least the music is safe. How many memories that will bring back.

JUNE 26

Today, we slept in (all the way to 8 am) and took a taxi into town from our hotel on the outskirts. Last night, we rambled and ambled about town… what a crazy nightlife. People are just up all night here. It is the end of the pilgrimage, and it is a busy city with a university, and a rich life quite apart from the pilgrimage. So the hordes were out, and we actually stayed up until about 1:30 am – insanely past our bedtimes for the past few months! Street theatre, cafes, bars, friends talking and milling about…. Apparently it goes on ‘til about 7 in the morning. That night there was an dance company that set up a show in one of the cathedral squares – these are performers paid by the junta of Galicia to put on special shows for the Jacobeo, the holy year. Unfortunately, it was the very worst of modern dance. Pretentious, juvenile, artless, embarrassing. I was sitting on the cathedral steps, and I knew right away I would have to get out of there fast. There were so many people, and my leg was bad, which made getting out of there a dicey proposition. But I remembered I had the cane. So I did instinctively what old guys do. Whacked younger folk aside with my cane to clear a way out for myself! After that, we were very skeptical when there was another modern dance show a few nights later. But this time, it was the very best of modern dance – breathtakingly spectacular.

I am getting ahead of myself, however. On this day, we wanted to be at the cathedral for the 12:00 pilgrim’s mass, the real end of the journey. It was a very moving ritual, connecting us with 1,000 years of pilgrims doing this journey in one way or another. The end of the mass is marked by the swinging of a huge censor as tall as a man, filled with burning incense. In the old days, they used it to fumigate the stinky pilgrims. It is suspended from a long rope from the ceiling, and they start it swinging. Then 8 men haul on the ropes to make it go higher and higher, kind of like swinging on a swing and making it go really high. The effect of this HUGE object hurtling directly overhead was astounding. At the apex of its swing, it almost touched the ceiling of this very large cathedral on either side. When it came overhead, it barely missed us. It was dramatically cathartic, releasing all of this kinetic energy along with the incense. It was like a joyful leap into the air, the end of the journey.

We came back at 2:30, and Pepe the sacristan made good on his word. He led me up to a space in front of the altar, and I played for about half an hour. There were many people milling about. It was noisy. But many pilgrim friends were there, people who had heard me play along the way. I played for them. I played for our safe arrival. I played for all of the pilgrims still walking. All those who would walk some day. It was a very emotional end to the pilgrimage. And I played for Myra, the sister of John.

There are so many Camino stories out there, thousands of them…a thousand years of them, in fact. But I am going to share just one more with you as I sign off. A few weeks ago, I had met an Irishman called John. John was quite a jolly chap, and I could often see him hanging out and hoisting a pint with some of the other Camino travellers. We said hello off and on, but I never heard John’s story. Yesterday, I saw John again. I asked him if he would do an interview with me, and he became thoughtful, and declined the interview, but asked if I had heard his story. No, I answered. He then told me that his sister Myra had walked the Camino twice, and that he was walking for her. She had liked it so much the first time, that she decided to do it again (many do) and so last year, she walked from St. Jean Pied de Port. She finished her Camino, went to pilgrims’ mass, spent a pleasant evening, lay down to sleep and never woke up. A tumour she never knew she had exploded that night, ending her life. So John was walking, day for day, stage for stage a year later… he had his sister’s diary, and so he knew where she had been on every day. He stayed in the same refugios. He would read her entries into the guest books. Now he had completed his/his sister’s trip, arriving on June 23rd, just as his sister had. Life really is so mysterious, and the layers peel back in such unexpected ways.

So now, dear armchair pilgrims, I leave you… I am flying back to Canada in a few days. It will be strange to be inside for a whole day at a time… not to wake with the birds, not to walk and walk and walk. Our second last night of pilgrimage, in Monto de Gozo, Elena spotted some graffiti on the bottom of the bunk above her.

“On the Camino, your best friends will be blisters, heat, pain, and snoring travellers – if this is for you, then you will really enjoy your pilgrimage.”

All this is true, and yet… and yet I am at a loss for words to describe this incredible adventure that has become part of the fabric of my life. Peter said this morning after the mass “I took 2 months, and gained 100 years of experience.” It really is a lot like that.

Oliver Schroer, Santiago, June 26, 2004

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