Camino bore: Mind games

Meseta hovels: people live HERE, like THIS?

Camino bore: Thursday 3rd June 2010. Corpus Christi. This was planned as the day we went to Poitiers to celebrate Corpus Christi there; but the Caminella had other plans, and it reads, 'The inevitable sleeping day to follow!' David's sister lives in a lovely old place in Cherves Chatelars, a hamlet between Angouleme and Limoges in the Charente region of France, and our loft room is spacious, and sunlight - lots of it - drifts in through small apertures in a way that doesn't happen at home in our large-windowed house facing south. You get gently bathed in a special form of soft sleep-promoting light; at home it seems like a mere hand-splash by comparison. 

Meseta tree

Also resting in 2011 at the end of the second of the 'Ladies who Launch' windsurfing training days, I leaf through the 'Camino Pevsner' cultural handbook to the camino by Gitlitz & Davidson. p. 235 describes the stretch from Sahagun thus: 'In 1974 and 1979 we found this stretch to be utterly desolate. Walking for many hours on the ancient pilgrim Road with no terrestrial points of reference except the wind in the thistles and the distant tinkling of sheep bells had a strong impact on us... in 1987 we found this section had been "improved" by  bulldozing and gravelling a pilgrim path... planting trees every 10 metres...concrete benches and picnic tables. The changes made it impossible to lose perspective, and the mystic effect of the Castillian plain seemed to have been lost.' This was a bit we didn't actually walk, but got a train to speed us over some of it. However, it seemed to us that there was still some pristine featureless meseta to be experienced; having done a good chunk of it, D found this kind of terrain very difficult. He's a walking satnav, constantly calculating our speed, amount of water consumed, time we reach the next landmark etc etc; without recognisable features to compare with the map, he went into inner melt-down. And him a native of Lincolnshire; perhaps that is why.

 Mind in free fall.

It would be hard to go along the camino and not do the sight-seeing bit; the artists and architects of the past would rightly be insulted if one didn't. But a big part of it for me was the discovery of the camino as creating or reflecting a big blank space in the head, which must be 'the mystic effect' referred to above. This was unexpected. I'd found the first couple of days a bit boring, until slight disaster struck, then there was the pleasure of 'things to be overcome', and mountains are always exciting. For those of us who eschew mind-altering drugs except alcohol, an alternative if laborious way of 'altering' must be traversing the meseta, and so the paper camino has an entry 'Mind in free fall' which documents the effect. If I want to go back, it is not to see the sights better, though that would happen and not be unwelcome; it is really to have that big, BIG sheet of paper to fill with blobs.

Camino bore: Swimming against the tide.

 St Jean Pied de Port

Wed 2nd June: Espinal to Cherves Chatelars. (That's in France). Oh dearrrrr! We had to cross the border from Spain into France soon after leaving our campsite at Espinal near Roncesvalles. Hopped over a Pyrennee or two and stopped in St Jean Pied de Port, where we would like to have started (a good day's walk to Roncesvalles) but couldn't, as we were in our car and needed somewhere good to park it, and Roncesvalles was the better choice. But I'd like to start in St Jean next time. Charming little place. They really do care about their pilgrims, some of whom obviously turn up having read about the wonderful fuentes along the way where water comes out on tap free to pilgrims, but without common sense, as you can see from the warning notice on the pic here.

 In case of gullible pilgrims....

Oh to be back in Spain, filling our water bottles from one of them.... some were just a simple tap in a village square, others were highly decorated like this one somewhere between Sarria and Portomarin on 25th May, almost at the end. But we passed them every day, and wonderful they were.

 Fuente

 Trying to get to church on time for Ascension Day.

Back in 2011, Ascension Day, and one of two days on the lake windsurfing, practising the equivalent of the motorist's 3-point turn. The great thing about any kind of sailing is that you get to understand that when it says in the NT 'The wind and waves obeyed him', that it is a double miracle; sometimes one obeys and the other doesn't. Today the wind didn't obey and didn't really turn up in quantity. And somehow at the end of the day it sort of turned up, but going the wrong way when I'd committed myself to be downwind, and I just couldn't get back to shore as there seemed to be a current flowing against me. Thus self-rescue was the only things to do (= lie down and paddle); and this was slow progress with arms already having done their bit for the dayI thought I was doing really well, I seemed to be zooming along, but then in a moment of enlightenment I noticed it wasn't me zooming ahead at all, rather the current against which I was swimming was going fast in the opposite direction, and I was going rather more slowly than a couple of people strolling along the bank, and I didn't get to shore until they came back (perhaps from Barrow Haven)! Not really moving at all! And yet such an illusion of progress! So I had to measure progress against bushes, and redouble effort to avoid going backwards as part of a body of water going where I didn't want to go (the waves weren't obeying me either).  This meant jumping in and swimming and using the legs, which had a little bit more oomph left in them than the arms. It was much like running up a down escalator, but took me much longer.

This seemed to be really good metaphor material, but I couldn't quite think what for.  I think it said something about self-knowledge and choosing the correct standard against which to measure progress. A very stern preacher could point to the necessity of measuring oneself against eternal values and not against the spirit of the age. I'm quite surprised Jesus didn't make more of such happenings, given he made those little boat trips now and again. The parables that come to mind seem to be about housework quite a lot, mending, searching for things etc. What made him choose one subject-matter over another? Did he just go to sleep when the going got rough in a boat? I'm intrigued. I must read the New Testament sometime......

but today I also thought how hard it is to go home against the tide of pilgrims going the other way.

Camino bore: running with the bulls.

Oh no - is D going to imitate these statues as well?

Scribbling in bus queue at Pamplona bus station. Many new starting pilgrims.

Tuesday 1st June. Travelled most of the night and day on our journey Santiago to Roncesvalles, apart from a couple of hours in Pamplona where with difficulty we managed to find a traditional bar of the kind we liked; the place was dusty and Americanised. It seemed a long time since we'd gone through there on the day we had to do the extra 8 miles to get a bed; that was Sat 1st May.

Bus queue at Pamplona waiting for bus to Roncesvalles, all except us were pilgrims starting out; WE were going there to retrieve our (very new) car, which had been sitting in the monastery car park for 4 weeks. The bus was packed with pilgrims, and it also swallowed a huge number of bikes. We met a man who'd done the camino 19 times (note that! I want to do it once more!) and was into writing about it. We all have to start somewhere, and I'm in the bus queue getting going, writing in the little book again. Whilst we felt pleased to be returning 'successful' pilgrims, our main feeling was of pure envy.

 Viv a Espana!

 Well-appointed albergue for two.

Then to Roncesvalles, and to the campsite just a couple of miles west at Espinal, which we'd passed through on the camino. Our little tent looks very lonely there, and we continued to miss sleeping 40 to a room; there didn't seem to be many people camping at all, only a bunch of UK motorcyclists with NOT A WORD of Spanish between them; at least I had learned how to ask for 7 m of ric-rac! In trepidation and tiredness, we went to the campsite restaurant, and were surprised and delighted to have one of the good Spanish cheap pilgrim meals. Our last meal in Spain, a fitting finale.

Camino bore: Paper ultreia!

We never had late nights on the camino! Well maybe once, at O Cebreiro, and many wakeful nights, but not actually staying up. Last night, I stayed up till 2 am, as I felt compelled to complete the paper camino, and here it is. It will be flattened out in a day or so for further pics, to see what it looks like. The idea is that its spiral formation makes new links between days; themes and preoccupations begin to show up. The last 2 squares were especially hard to fill in. They illustrate the railway that took us on our way from Santiago, with gold leaf splodged all over the colours of the Spanish countryside as we experienced it; there's a marked absence of deep flamey colours in that cold spring! The last one, on the left, depicts the colours of the Lincolnshire countryside; this has a little wavey line of the pure gold too which we hope to find on our home ground; and my new scarf marching on, symbolizing friends who are fellow-pilgrims even if they were not physically with us on Spanish soil. Ultreia!

Camino bore: The stork also rises

'A year ago' must stop - move on, Viv! Oh, just a bit more... we were on a train whizzing back to our starting point on the Spanish/French border. It showed us just how far we'd come, the fact that it took us 3 train journeys and a bus trip to get back to Roncesvalles, from 10 pm until 6 pm the following day. The night train involved one of my worst moments. Propelled into a pitch-black women-only carriage by D who then went off to his men-only place, I stood in there for about 10 minutes wondering what to do while an invisible woman in bed fired off rapid irate-sounding Spanish at me, and I had no idea how to turn on a light without accidentally activating some emergency-stop kind of thing; I didn't know which bed-shelf I was supposed to go on, and no idea how I was going to know when we had reached the place we had to get off, and so I felt stymied. I stood there going 'Er - um', and in the end had to go and find D and ask what to do. It transpired that an attendant would come and wake you about half an hour before you reached your get-off point; all very clever, but you need to know about it before you can drop off. In fact, we both had a few hours of good quality sleep on that train until 4 am, after I managed to slide into an unoccupied slot by the light of the brief opening of the door.

I'm not sure if I've turned into a stork that is able to fly out of the camino nest yet; I had a conversation with myself about the ease with which I think in metaphor. Like this:

"I must fly the camino nest now I've passed the year mark, like a young stork leaving one of those precarious nests in N Spain"

"But Viv, what if you are not a stork, and you plummet"

"Don't be silly, you should abandon the metaphor"

"I know; I can't help it; I think far too much in metaphors, I wish I didn't; it's so corny"

"But the Bible uses them all the time"

"I know, but it can't be right to begin every sentence with, 'That's just like a fried egg when...' or whatever, and sometimes I even mix metaphors in the middle of a sentence"

"But Viv, you are a visual person; you can't help it".

"This is drivel, isn't it David?"

David: "Well, it's you being YOU. Mmm, I see what you mean!"

And so I will present a little show of  Pilgrim Paraphernalia. Ric-rac came from Santo Domingo; it is yet to go on a 'Spanishviv skirt'. The hat was what I grabbed when I packed hastily. It stood me in good stead to help keep me warm in the coldest spring for 137 years. The fuzzy brooch was made the day we set off; it was used for pricking blisters most nights. Pink scarf (1) from Najera, my day of shopping on the market. Shell from Scheveningen almost at the end of our journey home. (Many pilgrims sported the scallop on the journey towards Santiago; medieaeval pilgrims only wore it on the way home.) Scarf (2) made during this year-ago month by my friend Sheila who was the recipient of my 'press releases' along the way and understood what we were going through; it's in my Pink Pilgrim colours of course, as is Bagpuss, who sneaked into the pic, being camouflaged. (Perhaps he ought to come on the next pilgrimage if my grandson will let him.)

Paper botafumeiro

Sometimes a light surprises, and this pic of the botafumeiro and a mobile phone seemed to sum up the spectacle. I love the bright glow of the screen of the phone, such a contrast to the antique kind of light and colour that is everywhere else. Thus a neon felt tip pen had to be used for this rather than some combination involving Hooker's green or whatever. Then there's a bit of genuyne 23.5 carat gold leaf on the botafumeiro. The paper camino attempt is a design 'based on', rather than being an exact representation, of course. A bit of artistic licence (that's my excuse anyway). Like gun licences, perhaps these should only be given out to well-vetted individuals.

PS A friend sees an angel in the paper one.....

Camino bore. The last day.

Oh DEARRRRR! All good things come to an end, and we had to leave Santiago on the Monday night at 10pm, having arrived on the Saturday morning. Another day with the botafumeiro, our fourth experience of it. We were very lucky - some have been to Santiago and not seen it in action at all. Our luck was down to it being a Holy Year, with increased numbers of pilgrims, and being there on a Sunday helped too - two swingings that day. Perhaps it seems childish to take pleasure in such a thing, but it IS a spectacle, and I never tire of it, watching repeats on the laptop ad infinitum.

So on Monday we mopped up all the things we wanted to do, shopping for a pressie for our new deacon, a few souvenirs, some Liquor de Herbas, books of pictures, CDs, the obligatory T shirts (been there) (mine reads "You'll never walk alone" - so true!) We didn't have a lot of carrying capacity, being rather laden with our rucksacks and preparing to travel by train and probably not a lot of luggage space. And we had some good eating that day.

And a year on? Nothing is predictable about the camino. I feel to be in a kind of shock that it came to an end, even now. Perhaps tomorrow I'll come to terms with it. I didn't think it would be like this. I think we all hope that by doing it we'll find the things we do back at home will be easier, we'll be purged of all the things that make us less efficient, we'll be streamlined human beings..... I think of all the people we met, with problems to solve, decisions to make, past lives to move on from.  I'll have to post the pic of the station and go to bed, because I can't seem to bear the loss. It seems harder now than it did in real life, so to speak. But tomorrow is another day, and who can tell what work the camino will do? Tomorrow, I'm on my own from here: like the stork that has to jump off the nest, the feeling is that one is about to jump off the camino. I hope I learn to fly.