Camino bore, day 24: Changes afoot.

O Cebreiro to Triacastela.
Back home from my triangular travels, Barton - Dublin - London - Barton in 2011. Back in 2010, it was the day of the foot (one of them), and the day of the pancake (provided by a little woman who stepped out from her house when she saw a group of pilgrims passing, and was the very spit of an MU/WI kind of person; she charged, mind, 1 euro per pancake, and D allowed me two, as the first one had such a reviving effect on me.)

There was a lot of downhill work to do - descending from 1330m to Triacastela at 670m, and it became hotter and hotter; we had to book ahead, as there was no way I'd be able to go on further if there was no room at Triacastela, and in fact some Spanish chums, 'the lads' as we called Francisco and Carlos, had to phone their wives and get them to find them somewhere to stay on the internet, and this meant a taxi ride away from the camino and back again. I arrived in a state of absolute weariness, the albergue was hard to find, and the little town was heaving with pilgrims, very hot, and an outdoor party mood. But I couldn't party, and had to go and lie down feeling quite poorly; I struggled to get to the nearby church where D went on ahead of me, had to give up and go back to the albergue, as the foot was too painful after its day of walking even to totter 50 yards; also the noise from inside the church was amplified to a painful level, loud and reminiscent of a bingo hall. D reported that it was yet another pilgrim mass for those just starting out. Yes, some were just starting from here! And we felt to be in the last stage of our pilgrimage (nothing like a bit of one-up-pilgrimship, eh?) The requirement to qualify for the Compostela is 100km of walking to Santiago, and in Triacastela we had just 137 km to go. Not a lot compared with the 'Santiago 790 km' sign at Roncesvalles.

It was a low point, and here I quote from the Caminella (as I now call my journal) written the day after the stay in Triacastela:

"VERY WEARY - was hot - & had slept poorly at O Cebreiro.
THE OPERATION. Late that night I looked at my foot and thought - this can't go on. Nasty inflamed area under sole of foot not getting any better, seemed a bit full of creamy gunge at the edge, so I decided to cut off the big heel blister & hope for the best. Did this between 10-11 pm by light of headlamp, & called D down from his bunk for his agreement & moral support. Cut it off, & cleaned under as much surrounding area as I could with a surgical wipe, & taped a dry dressing on.
Next morning - today - at 7 am felt I would not be able to complete camino, so shed a few tears, changed the slightly gungy dressing, & walking seemed difficult, as if I had taped a hedgehog under my sole. But on arrival at bar next door at 7.30 am, my mood changed, as the foot seemed MUCH BETTER & I had orange juice - fresh - coffee, toast & Ibuprofen. Good night's sleep too, short but good quality. WE ARE ON THE ROAD!"

I'm singing on the train!

You won't see this in the film 'The Way', which disappointingly only showed in Hull for a few days; in Ireland of course, it is hot stuff, over there they know all about the camino, and one was entered into a prize draw to win a trip to do the camino. The blister skin in its dried form now stuck in the Caminella measures 5 cm in diameter, so you might get some idea of what I was up against.

From R to L, days 22, 23 (Miro's washing line), 24.

Back home in 2011, there was an air of celebration on one of the trains I travelled on, from Holyhead to Chester; a bunch of lads with guitars, so I moved to be nearer to them as I do like a party. It was, as I say occasionally, 'Just Like The Camino', and those lads would have enjoyed doing it. Perhaps I need to make a flyer to hand out to suitable looking victims.


I caught up with some paper camino painting last night, and so here is a bit of it. Having been to the Miro exhibition at Tate Modern, I couldn't resist doing the washing-line-with-a-view at O Cebreiro in-the-style-of; I was inspired by his 'Constellations' paintings to which I give a link in an earlier blog post. On the right is the path that goes alongside the road for a while, and on the left a depiction of 'the operation' described in gory detail above. I look forward to spreading out the paper camino and seeing what interesting juxtapositions arise; this is just like being on the camino itself and reflecting a year on: interesting juxtapositions occur, and I end here with a clever logo of the St. James cockle shell/pilgrim silhouette from Dublin's St. James' Hospital. St. James keeps cropping up in unexpected places. Oh, and look... I've found another one, a collage by the very Joan Miro including a cockle shell, which he did just 80 years ago in 1931, which I have photographed fuzzily from a book lent to us, 'The Scallop: Studies of a shell and its influences on humankind', ed. Ian Cox, London, Shell transport 1957. (I think he would have approved of my collaged blister, don't you?)