Walked another 40 kilometres today, from Navarrete to Santa Domingo de la Calzada. Making a total of 869 kilometres.
Rain, cold, quite horrible really. That is today. It started raining at about the time I left the camper, and it was still raining when I arrived at the camper, first having to search around Santa Domingo for the obscure place where Julie had parked Merlin. ‘It’s near an old port, a new housing estate and some P-signs.’ Santa Domingo offers many of each of those things I found out.
It could be worse. The mountains North and South of where we’re walking both show snow on the higher parts. In fact they’re predicting snow for tomorrow and the temperature gets to just above freezing. I long for the strech of easy sunny days again, the temperature doesn’t even have to be as perfect as it has been for almost two weeks, just before I headed into Spain.
During the first part of cold rain I put myself to the task of remembering all the different courses we had at dinner last night. I wasn’t straightforward, because there were at least ten of them. After an hour or so I thought I had mastered the menu. Then I started imagining what my friend Bendert would have said about each course. He doesn’t like the fancy creations in small portions that some restaurants come up with. And that was exactly what the chef in the Marques de Ristral restaurant had done. I had Bendert fulminating against each and every creation. That kept me going even longer than reimaging the menu.
But then there was still a lot of day left. Luckily I bumped into Elodie, a woman from Paris who’s walking the Camino for the 9th time. The first time she walked was in 2009, so that means she basically walks the Camino twice a year. I asked her if it was addictive, because then I should be concerned. ‘Maybe it’s like a drug’, she said after contemplating my question. ‘When I arrived the first time in Santiago I was happy it was finished. I was crying for the hardship I endured and thankful for the wonderful stories I shared with many people. But I did not imagine I would want to do it another time. But when I was home I started to forget about the hardship and started to remember the fond things. And then I wanted to do it again. I ma not religious, I go to church with Christmas, but I find this a very spiritual experience. Therefor you have to walk it by yourself. You have to be with your own thoughts. It’s okay to walk with someone else for a little bit. It’s nice to talk and share experiences. But the special thoughts come when walking alone, at the end of a long day, when you’re tired and you know you have been stretching yourself.’
I thought it was a wonderful story. I recognize that the best moments are those when it is hard. And I do reckognize that you forget about the suffering and remember the clarity of thoughts. Call it spiritual if you want to. But I cannot imagine walking this Camino nine times. Maybe one other time, with the full auberge experience, and walking with someone who would be able to reckognize birdsong.
Elodie is a real veteran. With a different level of endurance. Although I started a day earlier than her in SJPDP, and although I walk faster, she’s ahead of me. She walks steady and makes extremely long days. Averaging more than 40 kilometres (25 miles) a day. With a real backpack. That’s impressive. While I am writing this she’s proabably passing Santa Domingo. Her plan was to go and stay in the next town. Chapeau!
Arriving in Santo Domingo de la Calzada was fun. This is where I first got infected with the Camino bug. We were vacationing in this area and I saw the stretch of Camino walkers and read the folklore stories that are part of the experience. Like the story of a German guy who went on the Camino with his parents. Unfortunately in Santa Domingo he rejected the advances of the daughter of the local aubergue. She was so irritated by this, that she hid a silver bowl in his backpack so he’d be arrested for stealing it. He was found guilty and hung. His sad parentys went to Santiago anyway and on the way back discovered that their son was still alive, still hanging at his pole. They went to tell the local ruler that their son was still alive. He was just starting to have his chicken dinner and said, ‘That guy’s as much dead as these chickens are’. After which the two chickens jumped off his plate and started cuckle-doing. Because of this goofy story Santa Domingo still has two live chickens (replaced every month) in the church.
What I didn’t like about the Camino then, was that the pilgrims had to walk next to the road. This has been changed recently. Most of the tracks are off the road, which is lovely, except when those off roads become mud, like they did today at several stretches. That’s no fun. But the good thing about today was that tomorrow is going to be worse, according to the weather forecast of one pelegrino who seemed to be almost knocked out by today’s weather.
We’ll see. The good thing about walking, even in bad weather, is that with every hour you walk you’re an hour closer to the end of the day. That’s a comforting thought. A lot more comforting than the posts of some tourism office that marks at every kilometre how far it still is to Santiago. 581, 580, 579 … all the way to 563. 
That doesn’t help one bit. These are amounts beyond imagination. If they would have said; 20,19,18 kilometres to Santa Domingo, okay, but those high numbers are somehow demoralizing. Also because the numbers were higher than my accounting rules indicate. They say it is still 558 kilometres to go, but I do not think about it that way. Tomorrow 35 kilometres. That’s manageable.
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