The Big Walk » To Be A Pilgrim

The Frying Pan – Day 23

Paul — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:15:53 +0000

I’ve always wanted to watch the sun rise on midsummer’s day from somewhere special but a couple of miles outside Sahagún will have to do. We’ve watched so many sunrises lately. Luckily the countryside is a little less flat than yesterday and the winding route means you can’t see it for miles in advance. There’s a colourful profusion of wild flowers growing in the verges of the track which in turn have attracted hundreds of butterflies. They are everywhere; it’s almost like being in a tropical glasshouse. We manage fifteen miles before the heat strikes again, at the one bar village of Calzadilla de la Cueva. An old lady is sitting on a wooden chair outside her door watching passers by in the dusty, broken street. It seems crushingly poor here, and with no cars to drive past and the all the shutters tight against the windows, it feels like a ghost town. There’s a refugio in the old schoolhouse at the end of the village, and it’s so hot that our clothes are dry within a few minutes of us washing them.
It’s a long afternoon to kill in this god-forsaken place, playing dominoes and dreaming that we’re in the beautiful and verdant Pyrenees rather than the middle of this dust bowl, or at least reaching Pamplona which has become a major landmark in our mind. Pilgrims coming the other way (who seem much fitter hereabouts than those who were just walking the last few days to Santiago) have continued to shout and point ‘Santiago!’ at us. But recently the Spaniards amongst them have followed this with a pause, and then, with a look at the date on their watch, have exclaimed ‘San Fermin!’ This is the most famous fiesta in Spain, where the bulls run amongst the crowds in the streets, and we’re hoping to make it to Pamplona in time.

Sahagun and the Moors – Day 22

Paul — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:47:04 +0000

The stars outside the tent last night were amazing. There were no lights within sight, no hills to block the view, just an enormous half sphere of sky with more and brighter stars than I’ve ever known. The walking is less inspiring, continuing endlessly on a ruler-straight purpose built cycle track, across a frying pan of a landscape. Trees have been planted along one side but it will be years before they are big enough to provide shade. The fields here are enormous and have no hedges; presumably because water is so scarce, and there are huge tractors harvesting the wheat before transporting it into the huge silos that dominate the villages. No working the land by hand here.

We reach Sahagún just as the heat becomes more intense, and head into the refugio which is built in the loft of a church – perfect for collecting the heat rising from below, trapping it beneath the tiled roof. After lunch and a quick siesta, we venture out into a furnace. We explore the town by dashing from one shaded area to another, whilst in the plaza a temperature gauge reads 40⁰C. This was once an important pilgrim town but is much decayed from its heyday. Today most of the houses are modern and only a huge arch remains of the great monastery that once stood here. There are a couple of fascinating churches though, San Tirso and San Lorenzo. These were built in the twelfth century by Moors descended from Christian Mozarabic monks who fled here from persecution in Cordoba, seeking refuge in the monastery. Beautifully constructed in red brickwork with relief panels and corbelling, these are the only examples of the Mudejar style on the whole length of the camino. Everywhere are horseshoe shaped arches, a distinctive feature of Moorish architecture. We finish the day with a beer sitting under the arcade on the plaza, watching the kids playing in the street. I’m still sweating even just sitting here.

Onto the plains – Day 21

Paul — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:17:14 +0000

An exit from the city along another giant main road brings us back to our own version of reality. We follow the road for four and a half hours but time seems to go quickly in the cool morning, and the beautiful light when looking back over the city provides compensation. We leave the road and reach the quiet town of Mansilla de los Mulas, as its name suggests still completely enclosed in huge, crumbling thirteenth century walls. Surrounded by a endlessly flat landscape, we’ve reached somewhere of a different character again. The narrow, battered streets and dusty plazas give something of the feel of a Wild West frontier town, an impression enhanced by the array of rifles on display in the local ironmongers. The older houses have projecting stories standing on rustic wooden stilts, rather than the balconies familiar from Galicia. The few people around seem to have darker skin and are wearing completely black clothing. Is this where the Maragato people now live? We lie down on a bench in one of the plazas, occasionally cooling our heads in the fountain, until a bar opens for the most enormous lunch, which we eat with a Dutch pilgrim who is planning to stay in the town tonight. He certainly likes his food, as he claims he’s going to have the whole three courses again in the evening. It’s still too hot to walk, so we go for a paddle in the shallow river outside the walls, and a siesta under the beech trees, before we finally set off again at six o’clock. We’re testing our new theory that a long siesta would mean we could add many more miles in the evening, but it proves a fallacy as it’s still anything but cool. Luckily for us, a tiny breeze enables us to continue.

The next village of Rereidos seems very poor, with many of the houses built of adobe, timber framed with mud smeared over wicker to form the walls. The sun here bakes it to the hardness of concrete. There are also many bodegas, underground storage chambers with ventilation chimneys and rounded doors at the top of the steep stairs leading in. They look just like hobbit holes; the director of Lord of the Rings could have saved a fortune on sets by filming here. The flat landscape still extends as far as we can see, with golden wheat fields interspersed with the bare brown soil. Everything is brown or yellow except the very occasional tree. The camino is dead straight and we end up playing ‘I spy’ in an attempt to relieve the monotony, but in such empty countryside it’s possible to guess almost instantly what each letter could be.

We set up camp at a pilgrims’ picnic area of stone tables and benches. It seemed deserted but as I write the journal many groups of local people keep walking by on the camino. I don’t think many of the villagers have cars. Only our second camp of the trip but it should be fine – I don’t think I’ve seen a cloud for a week.

Cathedral and Tripe – Day 20

Paul — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:05:17 +0000

The shop below our room happens to be a bakery, so we start the day with huge napoletanas, the Spanish version of pain au chocolat. It makes a change from our usual breakfast fare of tortilla. First up has to be the great Cathedral. There’s a huge open plaza extending round the side as well as the front, which gives a wonderful view of the whole building. Constructed in the Gothic style, it’s tall and graceful, reaching towards heaven, supported with row upon row of flying buttresses. But the real marvel here is within, where the reason for the supporting buttresses becomes immediately clear. The interior walls are almost continuous stained glass. The brilliant sunshine outside means the Spanish browns, yellows and reds brilliantly combine to colour everything inside like a giant kaleidoscope. York Minster near my home may have the greatest amount of medieval stained glass in the world, but it cannot begin to match the way in which glass overwhelms in the cathedral of Leon.

The rest of the day gives us a chance to explore the shops and sip coffees out on the busy streets, watching everyone go about their everyday lives. Again that feeling of our detachment from the normal realities of existence lulls us into a complete state of relaxation. We go to the covered market to secure some lunch, but baulk at the sight of the offal stall. Piles of trotters and giant tongues are almost obscured by the great, heavy hanging curtains of tripe. After staring agog, I quickly sidestep to adjacent cheese stall, and head out to the park. Today it feels like we’re on a holiday, not an expedition.

To Leon – Day 19

Paul — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:01:49 +0000

The road walk continue once again, and at one point we have to walk on the hard shoulder only inches from speeding trucks, and cut across motorway slip roads. Further on, we realise we’d missed a new part of the camino that headed through a series of tunnels. Luckily we haven’t far to go, and on the outskirts of Leon we reach a striking modern church with a lofty spire. High on the wall are huge bronze sculptures of the twelve apostles, with St James reaching out to point the way for pilgrims. A friendly nun accosts us and shows us round the church, before directing us on towards Santiago. We haven’t the heart to say we’re going the other way, so we have to wait until she’s looking the other way before dashing past, heading towards the huge blocks of redbrick flats which surround the city. We reach a delightful park with fountains and a stone footbridge over a river, leading to a plaza in front of the Hostal San Marcos. This was once the headquarters of another chivalric order, the Order of St James, and formerly gave accommodation to pilgrims. Today it’s a luxury five star parador with medieval rooms built around grand cloisters. The building was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and the hundred metre wide façade is covered with panels with stone carvings depicting religious events. Sadly it’s well beyond our budget, though perhaps our hiking clothes wouldn’t be quite the thing in any case, so instead we find a homely pension above a shop.

It feels like cheating so soon after Astorga, but we’ve got to have another rest day here. It seems a wonderful city, more contemporary and lively than Santiago with hundreds of cafes and trendy boutiques, but still boasting a whole host of historic buildings. During the afternoon we visit the Basilica of San Isidoro, going on a tour of the early Romanesque Royal Pantheon within. This was built to house the sarcophagi of the kings of Leon, from the days when it was the capital of Christian Spain in the early days of the conquest. Its vaulted ceiling is supported by columns boasting capitals which look like they were carved yesterday, but are in fact the earliest biblical sculpture surviving in the Iberian peninsular. More stunning are the paintings on the vault itself, almost perfectly preserved from the twelfth century, showing both biblical scenes and vivid representations of the four seasons. They are the oldest paintings I’ve ever seen.