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?)

Camino bore, Day 23. Reaching for the stars.

Saturday 22nd May, Vega de Valcarce to O Cebreiro.
A great day! Went from 640m to 1330 m above sea level, but not a long walk - 11 km - so that we could have a look round this small touristy place and have a bit of a rest.
http://discoveringalicia.blogspot.com/2005/10/o-cebreiro.html

Oh no - she's showing off that foot again!

My foot was photographed by a New Zealand couple 'so that people back home could see what pilgrims put up with', and this was the first time I realised that my foot could be a star. We were waiting in the queue outside the albergue, and I had taken off all boots and dressings to give it a bit of an airing in the sun, and on its first showing it was especially tripey - tripe foot - until the sun ripened it to a bit of a crisper texture. Do I need to say more? I think not. (Find out about tripe yourself if you don't know already; I don't see it on the menu these days. A former delicacy boiled up in huge panfuls.)

We witnessed the strange sight of hordes of people in normal shoes; we are far more accustomed to people in boots or sandals, and the idea of little trim shiny things is very alien.

Going up into Galicia

...and up.....

Had dinner (including 'Santiago tart') with Mark the Belgian, who has been on the camino a week, having got on at Leon (think of it as a constantly moving roundabout going back a thousand years) reported that 'the camino is doing its work'. Crikey - it's 22nd May 2011 and I'm still waiting for it to work on me! But I feel I might be moving out of my 'Test every bouncy castle to the utmost' phase and into something else, so maybe... but it is too early to tell.

Not from an aeroplane.

We are now in Galicia, in which region falls Santiago itself, and a so feeling of celebration. Modern albergue, but no doors on the showers which looked out onto verandah through clear glass windows. But pilgrims seem not to be fussed by such things, and we weren't. Couldn't sleep, so got out of bed at midnight and went for a walk to a high point above the albergue to view the stars; a Spanish bloke appeared out of the shadows and said 'Hola!' at which point I fled back inside. D couldn't sleep either, so we both then went out for a little walk together.

Quick someone, find me a profound thought! We had the washing line and boot rack with the best view in the world, and that is probably all we thought about - the view. See it in the film 'The Way', the very high-up bit somewhere in the middle. So we just enjoyed the view.

Camino bore, day 22. Falling over sideways.

Friday 21st May. Cacabelos to Vega de Valcarce.

Ummmmm! Not the best of days. One of those gruelling days, bad night's sleep, then a long, hot, weary day of 23 km, clever people will tell me what that is in miles, but it seemed a lot. The first part of the route was wonderful, a lot of uphill with lots of hedgerows reminiscent of Dorset, but then it was rather spoilt by running alongside a fast road through mountains, but curiously we seemed to walk on a level for most of this way, feeling very hemmed in as we never got a view that looked out from the mountains. (The paper camino for today picks this up.)  No wonder there was an alternative route for fine weather that went higher; but it was a bit longer, and we were weary and so took the low track by the side of the road.

We arrived, worn out, at an albergue in Vega de Valcarce that was run by a Brazilian couple. Despite the hot day, I was so energy depleted that I became very cold and had to wear my duvet and be propped up until I got some food inside me. Our Brazilian host had us wait for dinner until all of us round the table had answered the question of what for us summed up the camino; David answered 'kindness', then we had a lecture on how we had to be thankful - it was at least a sermon-length session - and I hoped the chap would be so kind as to notice that one of us at the table had lost the power of speech and was falling over sideways through lack of everything.

But the morrow seems enticing - a short walk of 11 km to O Cebreiro, but forecast to be 30 degrees F!

Back in 2011, I attended a lovely civil partnership ceremony in sunny Chelsea, punctuating the event by whizzing off to spend 5-8pm at the Tate Modern exhibition of Joan Miro. I saw his pic series called 'Constellations'
http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=miro+%2B+constellations
and thought of how this would make a great basis for my illustration of O Cebreiro tomorrow in the paper camino, which has one of the best views in the world of the Milky Way and is 3/4 mile above sea level. But I mused on how the work of this great man through many decades changed, from his depiction of Mont-roig, the rural place he lived in as a young man, through the constellation stuff, to some burnt and splodged canvasses in his old age that had to do with protest at the Franco regime. I wouldn't want that stuff on my wall, I think, but I suppose we just have to accept that art is for many purposes, not always for visual delight in living rooms; as Miro himself says:

"The painting must be fecund. It has to give birth to a new world. It doesn't matter if you see flowers, people, horses, nothing matters as long as it reveals a world, something living... the painting must release the imagination"

We felt hemmed in today.....

and

"I understand that the artist is someone who in the midst of others' silence, uses his own voice to say something and who makes sure that what he says is not useless, but something that is useful to mankind."

Back at the ranch; young Eric, (who says he is no longer 4, but is now 4 1/2), normally stops to reflect on his day on a particular bench under trees by the park (I expect he'll be a blogger one day, in fact he IS already on Twitter). He was asked what was the best bit about his day. 'I ate my bottom!' he said seriously, and elaborated still further on this topic; the kind of thing he gets into trouble for at nursery, and perhaps they'd want to tell Grandma off too for laughing. I hope he never loses this ability to surprise with his original thinking. May his tongue remain forever in his cheek.

On the way, Villafranca del Bierzo provided interesting graffitti and other art. (Incidentally, Wiki says: súcubo [soo’-coo-bo]

noun

1. Succubus, a pretended demon, which, in intercourse with men, took the form of a woman. (m).)  Did the chap who did the sculpture get into trouble at nursery, I wonder?

Camino bore, day 21. Returning home.

Thursday 20th May. Molinaseca to Cacabelos.

Hoarding in the middle of field: Luxury on offer - at a price!

Stork on a stalk

Sometimes it's hard to remember anything about a particular day except some very odd little daft things, like the fact that on this day, the staff at the very excellent albergue at Molinaseca seemed to forget to replace the loo paper, and so the already-wise tore off a bit of the disposable table-cloth at breakfast. There were angry comments in the guest book, as though everything good about the place had been forgotten, and very good it was, even if the most exciting bit of conversation at the evening meal there WAS about 'what is the German for 'garlic'?' And there was toast and jam for breakfast, breakfast being a very optional meal, and we did once have to walk for about 5 miles before even our first cup of coffee. What we went through!

Another ordinary thing on this day was buying a new pair of walking socks for 22 euro, which seems a lot, I know. But they were 'sock heaven' for my feet, and I would always set off on a 450 mile walk in future with a completely new set of socks, if I could afford it; they do lose some sponginess with many washes.

A bunch of little school-kiddies was in Ponferrada as we went through, and they all chorussed 'Buen camino!', having been well-trained. These provided me with material for today's little paper-camino pic.

In 2011, another journeying 20th May; a trek by ferry and several trains from Dublin to London. I painted paper-camino pics throughout the ferry crossing, and then enjoyed a bunch of high-spirited young men singing along to guitars on the 2 hour trip to Chester. I moved to be near them, and did a bit of a hip-gran thing of applauding them while sprawling about  crocheting a lace mat, wearing what I think of as my cowboy hat, and thinking that there was a good camino-like atmosphere, and wanting always to be on a camino. Sometimes it happens that bits of life do in fact seem just as exciting as spending a day walking 17 miles along a straight path through fields!

It just looks like a wall around the church...

But look inside...

and there is room for all under the shelters, no-one is turned away from this albergue

Like beach huts with smoking pilgrim (not me!)

Cacabelos, 20th May 2010! This was the famous albergue which is a series of beach-hut-like rooms-for-two built into the wall surrounding the church. It was a great place in which to suppress screams of pain in the night due to feeling that something was gnawing away my flesh from inside my toes. Also the place we had a good meal with Tim the Englishman now living in Canada, who wrote up the camino as he went along in his blog

www.healingonthedanforth.com

which is still there. Small world, he had been at school with Lincs MP Edward Leigh. Tim was one of the many 'lapsed Catholics' doing the camino that you will encounter if you see the film. Many such seem to search for whatever-it-is in other religions, and some are not aware of the rich resources in the religion they are lapsing from, which I find very, very sad; let's hope that in these days of too-much-information that some will return home and find something good in the attic.

Camino bore: The Movie

Oh wow! I see that I now have TWO followers! Thanks, Em!
Been to see the film 'The Way'. Mmmm. MMMMM. Don't want to spoil it for anyone. What do I think? Well, a good adjective I have heard used of it here is 'clunky', and that fits. But it has many good aspects, and it has given me the chance to become a Camino Bore Supreme Class 1 by being able to say with a sad shake of the head 'They got that wrong, you know! Orisson is between St Jean Pied de Port and Roncesvalles, and NOT somewhere near Pamplona'. This shows that I have ascended a steeeeeeeeeep learning curve from when we set off and I said to D, 'Is Santiago a village?' Of course, the film is 'blister-lite', and seasoned pilgrims will be shaking their heads and boasting about their own, fisherman-style. (This will come in a fuutre episode of the CBB).

Oh, and that bit where they stand on Monte de Gozo and see that view of Santiago cathedral, which isn't actually visible in real life, as it is hidden by some trees that look like a row of Leylandii. Yes, I know: trees are really important. BUT NOT THE ONES OBSCURING SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL FROM THE VIEW OF PILGRIMS WHO'VE WALKED 780 KM OR MORE! OR FOR THAT MATTER THE ONES OBSCURING THE VIEW OF ST PETER'S IN BARTON-ON-HUMBER FROM VIEW FROM THE PORCH OF ST MARY'S! HOW MANY LITTLE TOWNS HAVE TWO MEDIAEVAL CHURCHES??

Oh dear, I'm shouting, and I know that is very naughty. I wish I could say in a low, soft and breathy voice, 'Since I did the camino, I've changed. You know, I'm so much calmer, and I haven't got that dreadful ANGER in me any more.' Sorry folks. I'm even more angry, especially when the health people refused to come out 100 yards and attend to my friend when he felt very ill, and they told me to tell him both to lie down with his feet above his head AND to walk to the medical centre. Yet more shaking of head sadly. I'm still in Ireland, by the way.

So while I have been here I have been learning things. Such as I don't really care very much that the queen has been here this week too. And I do not like Irish news broadcasting; gimme that 5-minute slot on Radio 3 any day, and get back to the music.  (Other ways to know about what goes on in modern life are  http://theweek.com/ and http://www.thetablet.co.uk/ and the Rule of Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/text/toc.html)

And that Seamus is Irish (or Gaelic) for James, as in 'Ospideal Naomh Seamus' where I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday, and without any book to read or crocheting to get on with. It was 'Just Like The Camino', that field-hospital air. But at least an Irishman in a wheelchair gave me a bit of verbal delight when he said to me as I passed on the way to the sandwich machine, 'That's a noice hat you're wearing, now'. And the people running the place were good to my friends, and when I laid my head down to attempt a nap, a smiley nurse out to me to see if I was OK. (Just like the camino).

And I got this idea today for the paper camino while at the film: today I was trying to depict the flower bushes cascading down the 1000 m drop into Molinaseca, lavender and cistus, and I didn't have any good pic of them to work from, so it looked very rubbishy, and then after the film I thought - 'Sprinkle my ashes along the camino!' and so I splurged a lot of pink blobs onto the pic, and it improved it no end. At the film too, there was a slip of paper to fill in to win a free trip to the camino! For two! (Jez! What about it? A walk with Mummy?) And tomorrow I sail back to Engeland - ENGELAND! on the Stenaline HSS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EWg9RnOat8

And today I saw it do a funny twirl in the sea, for no apparent reason! It went round and round in a circle going nowhere for a bit! Just like me!

And then on Saturday I'll be at a gay gay gay gay GAY 'do' in Chelsea which I hope will have me dancing on the table. (Yes, the wine I'm drinking now is Spanish. Riojan.) But first I will be a Good and Sensible Grandma for a night. And in between the champagne-and-Lincolnshire-sausage reception and the evening 'do', I'll be going to the Miro exhibition at Tate Modern:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/joanmiro/default.shtm

and there is this Spanish connection of course:

"Working in Barcelona and Paris, Miró tracked the mood of the Spanish Civil War and the first months of the Second World War in France. Under the political restrictions of Franco's Spain, Miró remained a symbol of international culture, and his grand abstract paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s became a mark of resistance and integrity in the dying years of the regime."

Gosh! It makes me feel so trivial. I only ever wanted to depict Proverbs 25:11 - 'A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver'. You will say I would do well to learn it too.

Camino bore, days 19 & 20 From Hospital to hospital.

Tuesday May 18th Hospital de Orbigo to Rabanal.

Terracotta 1

Terracotta 2

Oh dear - miss-spelled! But Irish seems to have so MANY letters in it, no wonder I went wrong.......

Yet another 'long straight road ahead', thankfully mountains in the distance.

Phew! I was worried that I was running out of visual images to include in the 'paper camino', but I needn't have worried! Today in 2011 I was rescued by having to sit in front of a nice little St James terracotta-coloured shell-cum-pilgrim cape logo, that of St James' Hospital, Dublin, the A & E dept. Mine Host had a bit of a funny turn, and that's where we spent around half of a 24 hour stretch, hence I had time to do a little sketch. The terracotta of the image was JUST the same colour as the terracotta jug holding the sangria that I'm drinking in the pic I would put here if I were not away from home. That was at Rabanal. The weather in 2010 has taken a turn for the better, and we were able to sit outside while I wrote my blog, (oops I mean my journal! - a happy slip-up of terminology there, and in fact, isn't a pilgrim journal, however ancient, a kind of blog?), looking very happy. We were very disappointed not to be able to get into the English albergue run by the Confraternity of St James; and this year they contacted us about something, and when they heard that, they were disappointed too, as I think they quite like it if the relatively few English folk manage to call in there. So we were not able to experience the taste of Old England and join a Queue at 5 pm for a cup of tea. The English albergue is in a building of Maragatos heritage. My memory of having read about them in the camino Pevsner-equivalent told me that they went about a lot on donkeys, and wore dangly earrings. (There'll be more on earrings in a future day's Bore Blog; the bit about it being a pity that I bought some just when I was in my phase of leaving no bouncey castle un-bounced on). See Wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maragater%C3%ADa and yes, I see dangly earrings.

At lunchtime in Dublin, I was able to meet up with a new camino friend, pilgrim Ruth. It was great to hear her experiences of doing the camino many, many times (get that folks!) and I gained a lot of useful information about the camino we have already done, and the one(s) to come. Thus my hope, my plan to do the camino with the book of psalms divided up into 40 portions for 40 days' walking did not seem at all far-fetched or self-indulgent, and so as soon as I get home I'm going to produce a printed copy of the psalms so divided which will be the one I'll take.

I note in the journal that D stands out in my mind as a kind of walking human sat-nav; he's constantly reciting a list of facts and figures, thus 'It is now X km between this stream and the last village we passed through, so  we are now walking at about 5 km per mile, and we are drinking water at 2 litres per day, and it is Y km to the next fuente so we'll fill our bottles up to half-full.....'

May 19th Day 20. Rabanal to Molinaseca.
This was a hot day. This would not seem worth remarking on in Spain, but this year it was, due to rotten weather so far. Pilgrim Ruth tells me that even into June, the weather was generally atrocious, so we were lucky to end up with a couple of decent-ish days at the end of May in Santiago. But we were never free of the need to carry winter woolies everywhere. But today, it was HOT, and the mountain we walked over was the scene of a mountain rescue operation, as some Spanish bloke had had too much (wine) to drink the night before, and didn't carry enough (water) to drink today, and so was dehydrated. We didn't see any of this happen, but news travels along the pilgrim grapevine.

Morning shadow pilgrims

Cistus on descent from El Acebo

Mountain rockery, cistus & lavender

The long straight road into Molinaseca.

We did a descent of about 1000 m, which was quite something, and this was down  a great hillside covered with cistus and lavender, like a ginormous rock garden. Pilgrim Ruth tells me that in many years of doing the camino, she has only seen it in flower like this twice, so we were obviously very lucky to do so.

Absolute luxury.

The refugio at Molinaseca was one of the best, like an airy Swiss chalet, with beds well-spaced out, not bunks, and notices forbidding attending to blisters in the dorms. My chief memory is of D spark out in the afternoon on a bed covered in nought but his white silk sleeping bag liner, snoring loudly. A couple of women in the opposite corner were having a good giggle at this, and I was torn between wanting to leave sleeping dogs lying, and wanting to make the place sleepable in for others. I think he got a reputation along the camino of being one of the principal snorers. Our other labels being 'The English' and 'The Laughing Pilgrims'; crikey, what does that say about the rest?

But now I have to go and get myself ready to go out to the film 'The Way'. I'm hoping to recognise many places along the way. It's great to be seeing it in Ireland, as we met many Irish pilgrims. There'll be more on this anon....

But crikey, I can't stand this picture-less blog; I'll have to come back to these pages and replace the missing pics. [I have!]

Camino bore, day 18. Trout and carping: a multi-faith creed.

The long, straight road ahead.

La Virgen del Camino to Hospital de Orbigo.

T'owd man.

29 km day today, and I set off NOT wearing my duvet jacket, so, now we are into the second half of the camino, the weather might be a little less icy; it IS mid-May after all and it IS Spain! The coldest spring here for 137 years, just our luck. The journal reports treading some very long straight roads. There seemed to be a little bird accompanying us all the time, until we realised that the constant chirrupping was the sound of crickets. Actually, it could drive you mad. We rarely seemed to be free of this sound after this, and if you ever wondered what tinnitus is like, I suppose this must be it, and it is very wearing, I tell 'ee.

I found this you-tube of the albergue we stayed in; it's what I call 'slow' and of interest to those who've been there and can say 'THAT'S WHERE WE SLEPT!' etc etc, but to everyone else I think it will be very boring, but it does give a good view of the inside of one of the nicest little albergues, and the opening shows the very long bridge - the longest pilgrim bridge - by which you enter the village.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srg62PITifU

Bridge into Hospital de Orbigo.

The journal records 'Too many meals alone' and 'we are missing Juan Pablo (the priest)'. Somehow there doesn't seem to be the same communal spirit that we encountered earlier on; perhaps it is just accidental, the way things have fallen. But it is strange how we can regard some people we have only known for a few days as 'old friends', and we missed them.

The long bridge is over a river, and perhaps that is where the trout came from that we had that night. Journal records being in a restaurant run by 'normal men in shirts', and finding this very reassuring. The reason is that we have been to the occasional place where the meal is served by some bloke wanting to look very 'Spanish' and flamenco-ish, and in my experience these are to be avoided, especially if there is a plastic menu (as mentioned before). The normalman who served me trout soup had the look of someone who knew about food, and he explained exactly what to do: the soup had a big chunk of trout nestling in bread ready-dropped into the soup (I was always told off for that as a child), and he showed me how to grab it with fork and spoon and mash it all in - again, the kind of thing I used to get into trouble for. Nice to know it is the done thing somewhere else.

Lovely courtyard in the albergue at Hospital de Orbigo.

You might think that the camino journal is just a record of food eaten and blisters pricked, and you could be right. Reading it a year on is making me wonder just what makes me tick. I'm obviously deeply interested in how warm the croissants are, the texture of the bread, whether jam comes from a jar or a minute plastic pack etc etc. The sound of crickets and flat countryside that goes on and on really makes the mind go into a kind of free-fall. I wonder whether some pilgrims resolve to organise their thoughts according to a strict plan? I didn't, and just watched my brain turn to mush, just like the soup. Choosing dinner from a menu was the most intellectually demanding thing I did, that and deciding in what order to have a beer, a nap and a shower. No wonder when we got home we didn't know what a house was for nor how to live in one.

Journal records 'Mountains visible today - cheering!' We are going to go up and up in the not-too distant....

I'm in Ireland just now, and I find a yellowing scrap of newspaper I've had for some years, marking my place in the journal. It reads:

"Godliness, by contrast, was the subject of Julia Neuberger's piece in The Independent Magazine on Saturday. Nowadays, she wrote, the condition had been reduced to a puritanical carping about the way other people enjoyed themselves. 'Religion is not about lack of fun; but godliness, as once expressed by the Puritans and now by the born-again Christian Evangelicals, the newly-enthusiastic Chassidim in Judaism, the strongly orthodox Haredi in Israel, the growing fundamentalist groupings in Islam [see - I told you it was old!], makes it seem as if it is.'

'But', she wrote wistfully, 'It could be what it once was -

an awareness of the divine in everyday life,
a certainty that there are things God wants us to do in life,
and a desire to improve the lot of those around us'."

No wonder I cut this out and preserved it. It seems to me that that last paragraph would make a good multi-faith creed, something on which we could all agree. Actually, Rabbi Julia strikes me a s a really Good Thing, no wonder she is now a Baroness, and you can see some stuff about her here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/julia-neuberger

A bit like the normalman in the restaurant, you feel that you are in good hands with her; she'd make a great person to spend a couple of hours walking with on the camino. Some people are just so right for the place they occupy in life. Many on the camino are searchng for just that for themselves - that place where we ought to be so as to be able to live in the way Julia  recommends in that little piece I quote above.

(I tried to find the Jewish albergue online - we did see one - failed, but found this 'virtual albergue' which I'll have to return to when I want to wallow in memories:
 http://albergue.caminodesantiago.me/video/video )