31 mar

Walked another 39 kilometres today, from Carrion de los Condes to Sahagun, making a total of 1069 kilometres. After five weeks of walking I have moved the average above 30 kilometres a day again. Quite satisfying.
It rained this morning when I woke up. A perfect companion it seemed to me for the long kilometres through the Meseta, the Spanish Plains, that were awaiting me today. I was looking forward to a day of walking by myself. Felt like I needed that for a change. Don’t know why really. Time goes faster when walking with someone else. But then again, time doesn’t always have to go fast.
Fully geared up with all the rainwear I possess I started of walking. I was not 100 yards away from Merlin when the rain stopped. And within a kilometre outside of Carrion I passed a Norwegian guy I had met the day before at a Camino souvenir shop where I was looking for something to put at the end of my walking stick that was splitting apart. The same walking stick that I forgot at a French Intermarche and that Julie went to go and pick up a day later. The walking stick that I have gotten attached too as my trustworthy companion, showing me the way by providing a reliable rhythm of walking.
That was just too much of a coincidence. We started talking. His name is Dag and he turned out to be maybe not as reliable a companion than my walking stick, but a much more interesting one. Dag’s a few years younger than me, a priest at the Church of Norway (Lutheran) in Brussels, soon to move to Hamburg and pretty soon proved to be the kind of guy I could talk with for weeks without getting bored. Religion, Cluny, Bernard, Romanesque churches, Messi, armydays, fathers, sins, fairy tales and what else passed in the four or five hours we walked together. The time flew by. Food for lots of later thoughts.
Dag is also writing a book. A novel. He’s walking to Finisterre in 40 days from SJPDP, having two years ago walked the northern route of the Camino. He’s spending time in the larger cities to really explore them. He wants to leave Santiago at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Good Friday, to arrive in the early hours of Easter Sunday at Finisterre, which makes a steep walk, but is possible I suppose, and makes the whole experience very symbolical of course.
Spent most of the late afternoon trying to fix my stick. I had bought a new walking stick with a steel point, just for the steel point. It was fixed to the pole with a nail that I could not pull out, although I tried hard, under increasingly incredulous grins from Julie. So I sawed of the end of the pole, drilled out the wood, then was able to push out the nail, whittled of the end of my stick, hammered on the steel point and put in a new nail. Me and my good friend the stick are ready for the last 363 kilometres that are awaiting us to Santiago, having crossed the halfway point between SJPDP and Santiago today.