Day 3: San Sebastián to Orio (sin escalas) (19,6k)

I wake up itching and with a headache. Sunstroke, sunburn, dehydration, new bites – hopefully mosquitoes, rather than bedbugs.

It’s 07:37 by the time I finish my morning pages. Outside, the sun is rising. It’s the first sunrise I miss since arriving. But Jesus, I tell myself: I have six weeks of this. That’s another forty sunrises. I pledge to give myself a break from socialising, to not plan my stages according to whom I want to (or don’t want to) hang out with. I’m here to walk and think. Friends, accomplishment, future momentum – those things are all secondary.

I lie in bed and tell myself to get up. Get a baguette and walk on. Eat on the trail. That’s where I want to be, that’s where I’m meant to be. I’m wishing I had shorts but life be like that sometimes. Woman up, I shout at myself, silently. Woman up and go get your fucking laundry.

Eventually, I do. I get up, I walk, and in the afternoon, everything is better. It’s been a hard day walking with my anxiety and sore shoulders but I arrive in Orio and the albergue is amazing and the British-Canadian couple are there, as is Gertrude, whose name is not Gertrude but I’ve decided to give everyone fake names so let’s call her that. Gertrude is an Austrian woman who slept on the floor in the albergue in Pasajes and whom I’m liking more and more, she’s in her fifties and has flaming red hair and a deep husky smoker’s voice and might be crazy, but if so, we are probably the same kind of crazy. Anyway she’s here, and we’re making dinner! Under the leadership of the CanBrit couple, whom we’ll just call CanBrit, which sounds like an Austrian lady if I’ve ever met one, we are cooking a communal meal with wine for everyone. €5 for salad, pasta, bread, wine.

It’s really an amazing albergue. They’ve thought of everything. A spinner drier, a basket of toiletries, views of the hills, a kitchen, clothes lines inside and out, and the girl charging us is the nicest. French people really only speak French. Now I’m gonna have a nap.

Addendum

Dinner was fucking great. I love everyone. CanBrit has given me a book recommendation that I feel will change my life. There’s a cute French guy. I did yoga. Gertrude is gently snoring on the bunk underneath me. I spoke a bunch of Spanish to the albergue owner. I’ve made a Portuguese friend. We even went into town for ice cream after dinner, and I did not pass out! What anxiety!?

#CaminodelNorte #travel #anxiety #BasqueCountry #hiking #CaminodeSantiago