This morning the trail passed through respectably pleasant countryside and farmland. The path was lined with a bank of pussywillows, their nascent blossoms looking like thousands of tiny silvery rabbits feet, or like velvety opalescent pearls in the morning sun.
And for 12 curious kilometers the trail was on a section of the Via Trajana, the Trajan Way, a section of Roman road that connected France with Astorga (a city which seems weeks away on my journey). The road is astoundingly straight for a 2000 year old highway, and I can easily imagine horses and carts trundling down this road, roman soldiers marching, or pilgrims clad in wool cloaks making their way to Santiago.
Rain was coming; I could see it in the distance. The sky had turned that telltale color of slate. I am always enchanted by storms, except when I am walking in them, that is. But the coalescing clouds and changing light fascinate me.
I stopped on the road side for a drink and a pee and to put on my rain pants, which was smart because the soaking commenced just minutes after I had done this. And this little fit of weather brought rain and hail. And the wind gusted like it had a point to make and wasn´t going to stop until you knew what it was. I have noticed that since I am hiking from east to west, and weather generally moves from west to east, there is always, always damnit, a headwind.
But I really am a schmoe for complaining. Other than the snow in Navarette and Najera, the hail storm slogging into Burgos, and this, the weather has been abnormally and mercifully mild this winter (or so I am constantly told), so I am thinking global warming may not be soooo horrific. Okay, yes it is, but I am still enjoying whatever respite from typically frosty winters northern Spain is currently having and I hope on Budda´s belly that it continues.
It was just enough wet and cold to make me think twice about going all the way to Terradillos, though. I decided I would wimp out and stop in Ledigos once I got there. And then the rain decided it was finished with it´s little hissy, and the sun decided to come out and play a little, and that´s when I was overtaken on the trail by Pablo.
Pablo is from near Burgos, and his English is just good enough to tell jokes, which was all good. So for the last few km into the little wayside town of Caldadilla de la Cueza, we just talked bullshit. Pablo taught me to cuss in Spanish, an essential skill if ever there was one. Merda, by the way, is shit. And joder is fuck. Pablo told me he didn´t understand the difference between ¨fuck you,¨ and ¨fuck off¨ in English. I did my best to explain the subtle but crucial difference.
Pablo is a gambler. He pulled out his card with his soccer picks for this season with the zeal and fervor only a European football fan can have (but, he assured me, he was not one of those lunatic fans. Um. Ok.) If his team, Atletico Sociedad wins tomorrow, he´ll be 1,000,000 € richer! (He announced this with such hope and supplication I had to laugh). He was horrified to learn that betting on sports was illegal in the U.S. He was relieved when I told him people do it anyway.
I lamented that I had yet to try any Spanish beer on this trip, that so far my debauchery has only extended to copious amounts of red wine and pacharan. He was the right person to rectify this travesty and in Caldadilla he bought me a Mahau, my new favorite beer. But it is a total bummer that in Spain they pour your beer in an itty bitty wine glass. What the hell is that? Irish Charlie would´ve drank it and then said to the bar keep, ¨yeah, I´ll have some of that.¨ So I ordered another.
And one painkiller and two beers later, I was feeling fortified enough to make it all the way to Terradillos de Templarios (but not before we stopped in Ledigos to sample a glass of San Miguel).
I am glad I finished the day´s stage. The albergue has barrels of hot water to shower with, the dining room is charmingly decorated with the cross of the Knights Templar, the town´s namesake), I´ve run into Yentz, the German from Lake Konstance, again, and for dinner I got a whole plate of vegetables cooked in bacon fat! And tonight, at dinner, Pablo and Yentz and I toasted having achieved the official halfway point to Santiago de Compostela.
Only 396.1km (246.1 miles) to go!
1 comment:
That is so funny—I was once involved in a French theater workshop when I was in school that was run by some well-known French director of crazy, whacked-out French theater. The script we were reading had been translated from French into English, and we all (famous French dude, brilliant and noted professors, and desperate-to-sound-intelligent students) got into a heated discussion about whether a line should be as written—“Fuck it, he’s escaped!” (Do the prison guards really care? Maybe they are fed up with their miserable lives and would rather just continue the existential French conversation they were having about their respective raisons d’etre) or “Fuck, he’s escaped!” (Their raisons d’etre would mean very little without their jobs, which were now most decidedly called into question). It got so heated we became divided into what famous French dude called the “Fuck Camp” and the “Fuck It Camp”. Hilarity always ensues when translating profanity between languages!
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