The Stone Site

As usually up early and out in the night to go and today we have to do a bit over 30 km – that’s the punishment for only doing just 16 km yesterday. But it’s a bit tricky cutting everything into fine 20 km pieces.

So the first 20 km is going fine, then the sun sets in and you start to look around – everything is flat and there is no shadow anywhere.

There is nothing to do but walking and walking you must! Sometimes there are a few threes with minimal shadow, but if you look at the picture below; no road signs! It could be mentally encouraging to see that you only have 10, 8, 6 km to your destination. Of course you can see it on your phone – but it’s not the same.

If you find some more trees, a green spot it, there will absolutely be some tombstone telling about dead people. Did they die there on that spot? If you have some energy left you may consider to think about it, otherwise you just accept it.

Walking there, “Satan” will start tempting you – there are Taxi offerings here and there … just pick up the phone … it’s so easy…. a few click …

There could even be a bit shadow offered with taxi information all over the construction. Just saying; Give up my friend and take a nice cool cab to the next KAS Naranja BAR with jello!!!!!

Well if you manage to resist all these temptations, then finally you will reach your destination around 14.30 (starting around 4.30), just to find that everything than the hostel is closed!

And on top of that you feet feels like someone has cut them into pieces and your knees are double their normal size and hurts like h….!

That’s my friends is walking the Spanish meseta in the summer!

Walking the Camino you see a lot of different signs, so let take a closer look at them here.

First we have the informative and welcomed Camino sign, just follow the arrow and you are safe.

The we have the signs with a double message. Looking below, at the right side of this picture, you may think that right is the right way. But looking at the left side you find the painted yellow arrow, so it should be left – but it also happens that people would like to help you to their hostel painting such an arrow so you can’t be 100% sure.

Then there are a very, very, very few signs that express some kind of wish to get rid off the pilgrim. But as you can see it’s just to put up a new sign!

Then we have my favourite sign. The sign that tells the fast moving car drivers to watch up for idiots, “pilgrims are crossing the road”-sign! It’s a bit like the duck signs, unpredictable creatures like a pilgrim crossing roads is a walking danger!

Well, walking the Camino you have more than plenty of time to look and study signs. However as mentioned before walking in the dark and also Mother Nature can make it a bit tricky to find them. And so you get lost – it’s not a big deal, it’s just tag you may feel a bit stupid walking and wasting energy without getting closer to your beloved Compostela, the City where you foot-pain will end!

The idea behind the walking is to proceed, meter by meter and town by town. Between the towns there is an awful lot of meters, but finally you see the light in the tunnel. The small towns are spotted by their church but could be hidden away, you don’t see them until there is a sharp left or right turn and there they are!

This part of the walking could be the hardest, you just want to get to your sleeping place – but normally there are some kilometres left.

Then you arrive to the outskirts and I may say that I have seen more impressive areas. Quite often it’s an industrial area or like this a bit old houses and you start to reconsider your selection of town, are we going to stay in such a house?

Since non Camino people aren’t out before nine in the evening the town looks totally abandoned.

Then you have to spot the hostel, here we find it at the right. And now you hope that it’s open – sometimes there is just a door bell and if unlucky you have to wait for some action.

After some smaller confusion you get in contact with the receptionist, in 85% of the cases it is a lady. Often very kind, cheerful and helpful but a few times, like in Burgos, so absolutely unengaged that you feel sorry for them. Having a name like Sten Söderberg is also just to ask for trouble – so I often have to help them browsing through their own paper based notes to follow nd this very strange name.

And then, you get to your room;

And as you can see they are often very nice and fine, especially in the smaller cities. At this moment you only focus on the bed and “drop dead” is quite a good description of what you do (together with your burning feet).

Part II – The afterlife

About five you wake up to see the town. It’s still a bit empty

The stork has moved out from the town

And the traffic jam is a bit absent

The good side is that it’s very peaceful and tranquil – in a way you feel part of a Checkov play. Well, we don’t expect Onkel Vanja to appear, but at least one car would be nice to see! But if not today, then tomorrow or some other day!

It’s nothing you think about at first but it suddenly struck me, during the Camino there has been a lot of roads to walk. And it’s not just the distance or the environment around, I’m thinking about the road itself! Isn’t it super interesting? Eh… perhaps is this one of these kinds of “Camino things”, things that you never should consider at home but now walking, you have plenty of time to think about it.

So what’s it all about? Well, a road can be very different, some are hard, some covered with stones, some are muddy, some are very narrow and some quite wide. And then there are roads of asphalt – they are so ugly and hard to walk, but in the same time quite fast. Walking the Camino you should have a pair of boots for every kind of road or being able to change the road. But you can’t! So what can you do then? Not much!

It’s perhaps a lesson learned that many have done a long time ago – but if you can’t change the path (road) or the tools/methods (shoes) is there any idea to be upset about it or isn’t it just to walk the walk? Or is that to simple solution, just to give in? Whatever happening to you, you accept it – is that a successful strategy? But again, you can’t change the road or the shoes?

I don’t have any answers – yet! But it’s lot of opportunities along the Camino to think about these kind of things. At least in the beginning of your walk, then after three, four hours of walking you just want to finish it and get some food and Sangrias!

We have brought a women with us during the Camino! She is put in my right pocket and every kilometre she clearly state her mind. Every morning my wife reminds me; have you put on the woman? Without her, we are not walking!

And yes it’s Runkeeper that i’m talking about.

Whatever time of the day she is always alert and precise. I’m not very good in all the settings, but we have configured her for distance. So for every km walked we hear her energetic voice! And it’s always welcomed – to know what you have achieved instead of knowing how much time you wasted/spend! So therefore we are always happy to hear her voice – one step closer to our goal! Perhaps there should be a life achievement app, you just put in your target and the app cheerfully announces your progress!

Today we did more or less a full working day, walking 25 km and burned about 2.000 calories. Feels like an awful lot of calories – until you start googling on calories, it’s a descent candy bag or a four chocolate cakes! Well, it will not stop me or me wife from eating candy but now we really know how much walking we have to do if we don’t want to gain some weight!

Doing some calculations on the total Camino, it should be about 87 liter of red wine in calories. And the good news is that we found such a bottle back in Rioja – an all you need bottle for the whole Camino!

However here in Frómista it’s easy to loose weight since it’s almost impossible to buy something! And that’s because the shops are so full with goods, like this one. Lucky for us, water and drinks was outside so that we could buy! But being quite hungry we where tempted to buy some more, and I did see Candy, cheese, ham and a lot of other goodies, but again the shop was so full of things so you could not get in!

What’s lessons learned from that? Could it be so that we fill our lives with so much stuff that we can’t actually live our lives of all the stuff? Less stuff – better chance to live the life? Scary thoughts, isn’t life about the things you have around you? More things – better life?