Day 39: As Seixas to Arzúa (29,6k)

Day 39 is a piss-up. No two ways about it. I get to Arzúa and all my faves are there. Aya Babe with posse, Waffles, even Fake Vegan and German Carpenter – whom I haven’t seen in over two weeks! So after the customary refuel-shower-nap, we go get some beers. Then some more. We drink an impressive amount of beer in a very short time. Unfortunately. Then we have some pasta. Some wine. We have to run back to the albergue with the last wine in plastic cups to make it in before the 10pm curfew. Lock and key! Someone gets a guitar, more drinking ensues, it’s a rowdy night. Fake Vegan still has not made his bed (bunk above me) and also we’ve put all our laundry in a pile next to his still-in-its-bag sleeping bag. He simply crashes among all these things, and for the whole night, I do not hear a thing. Not a snore, not a toss, not a turn. Fake Vegan out.

His name will henceforth be Fizzy Mucus, by the way. Due to his incessant talk about bodily fluids, it was always a toss-up. (His mucus is fizzy, apparently.) But there was a time where I thought Fizzy Mucus sounded too gross. That time has now passed. German Carpenter has also been rechristened to the more appropriate Lil’ Trump due to her unorthodox views on climate change. TLDR: squad improved.

Before that I walk and stuff, but according to Waffles, “nobody wants to read long posts.” So y’all just have to imagine it. It was the usual, although spent two hours walking BEFORE DAWN with my new dramaturg bestie and instead of lapsing into my usual attachment schpiel (which, trust me, even I get tired of at times) I get to learn about indigenous resistance theatre in South America, the troublesome roots of Quechuan patriarchy and how new migrant populations are to be involved in the Munich art scene. Drama Angel spent three months in Cuba in 2007 researching her thesis on – I forget what it was on – but she’s a dramaturg who knows about all of the above so you can imagine it was magical. She wasn’t allowed to buy food. Damn I’ve heard about some good theses on this walk.

Also of note today, we pass Melide, where the Camino Primitivo, Norte and Francés all converge. It’s a whole different ball game. Pilgrims everywhere. Groups. School trips! At one point, I walk past 94 Irish 15 year-olds. They all ask me politely about my walk. When I say I’ve been walking 39 days, they’re impressed. I get that. I’m pretty cool.

When I stopped at As Seixas yesterday I think part of me was thinking it would be a good thing to end the Camino as I’d started it – alone. But fuck it. How could I abandon these perfectly normal, well-adjusted humans?

#endings #drinking #Galicia #CaminodelNorte #homecoming #travel #travelfriends #hiking #CaminodeSantiago

Day 38: San Roman to As Seixas (13,7k)

Day 38 is another Female Energy Day.

Waffles and Beard Braid walk ahead in the morning. My plan is to go sola but I start chatting to an Italian woman over breakfast and the parallels are too many to leave alone, so we walk together for eight kilometres talking about Ecuador and Vietnam and anxious attachment and aggressive boyfriends and being an empath and so on and so forth. Then we stop for a buffet breakfast in Ferreira where the brilliant waitress tells us to stuff our pockets as there will be no services for 20k.

So loaded with muffins and galletas and spongy croissants I walk on, but only eventually, so eventually that a mere five kilometres later it’s already one o’clock and I decide to check into the albergue in front of me. After all I’ve got a week until my flight, and only three days’ walking left. What’s the rush?

Only problem is there is no food and they take no cards and all I have to my name is €7,13. The albergue alone is €8. As for food, all I’ve got is aforementioned galletas, muffins and croissants. But I really want to stay. Maybe a cash-loaded, Monzo-using Brit will show up?

They do not, but I find something better: an angel disguised as a German yoga- and South America-loving dramaturg, who offers to lend me a euro and share her couscous and vegetables with me. Yay. I find some stolen single-serve packs of olive oil in my backpack top lid (thanks Waffles you delinquent youth), and then God sends another miracle in the form of a vegetable truck. The girl at reception confirms it’s never before come on a Thursday. My new sugarmama gets us two bananas and a bag of padrón peppers.

We cook up a storm in the albergue kitchen, which, like all Xunta de Galicia albergues, has no pots or pans or knives or forks or cups or cutting boards. But not to worry. German Drama Angel has a pot, I have a knife, and as for the rest… we improvise.

Afterwards I sit in the chilly garden meditating as the chestnuts tumble down around me. German Drama Angel had done the same previously, and was approached by an old man as she sat re-reading the reviews of the place from her apps and guidebook. They all raved about the woman working at the albergue, and though the girl who told us about the vegetable truck had been very nice and helpful, German Drama Angel had been surprised to find her so young. The hospitalera described in the reviews had sounded like an old woman.

Well. Old Man starts talking to her. Within minutes, he starts crying. Turns out, he was married to the previous hospitalera, who, indeed, had been a rather old lady, and who died – two months ago! Ow my heart. Now the Old Man lives alone with his sick mother in this village of three. No wife. She sounded like she’d been the most amazing woman, too.

German Drama Angel ended up translating to him from German the things people had been saying about his wife online. Just imagine that for a second.

I think about this woman as I sit among the ancient trees, next to a broken stone wall. I imagine it’s her spirit throwing chestnuts down from the tree tops, so loud, like she really wants my attention. PAY ATTENTION. THIS WILL ALL BE GONE ONE DAY. YOU TOO.

Maybe it was. Or maybe it was just squirrels.

Later, I get a message from Waffles in Milede – he’s read the blog, and thinks “this Waffles character sounds lovely.” Aww. Well, he is. You are, Wafflepops. Suck it up and take it back home to your whole waffle-loving country.

#albergues #CaminoPrimitivo #death #beherenow #CaminodelNorte #travel #mindfulness #travelfriends #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #earthangels

Day 37: Lugo to San Roman (19,6k)

Day 37 is about food, wine, music, wine, friends, lying in the grass, and wine, with some extra time for lying in hammocks. Singing songs. And drinking wine.

But also, we book our flights home. Oh my heart. It’s time. Waffles and I had both kind of assumed that after reaching Santiago we’d continue to Finisterre, aka the end of the world, where pilgrims traditionally burn their clothes while staring at the roaring Atlantic Ocean below. But then Waffles and I had both kind of been lost. Had both kind of not known what the hell else we were going to do after the Camino.

And now we do. Both of us. Our service to each other is over. We barely even discussed it; we both just started looking at flights, and very naturally, they became booked for Wednesday. We will walk into town Saturday and then have three days to decompress. Catch up with Fake Vegan, who’s arriving Sunday. The Polish model, who is planning to arrive Saturday, too. And probably a bunch of other people we haven’t seen since passing them, or being passed by them, or leaving them as we departed from the Norte.

Aaah. So that’s it. The journey has an end date.

It feels good. I feel ready. I am so glad I feel ready. I thought for a while (ok, the first four weeks basically) that I might freak out 30k before Santiago, feeling I was not ready to no longer be on the road.

I suppose I might still. But the way I feel, on day 37, is thankful, but getting towards done. Getting towards not wanting to walk 25k a day every day anymore, or share a room with twenty-one strangers, or wear the same completely misshaped t-shirt and fake wool trousers and stained snowboarding fleece every evening. Those are going in the Santiago de Comostela bin, trust my words.

Unless, of course, we decide to throw our own pagan burning fest by a fountain.

Anyway. Here’s breakfast. We had it in a beautiful old bar with high ceilings at seven thirty in a still-dark Lugo, sharing the space with three policemen, two dozen pilgrims and about ten bedraggled teenagers who still hadn’t gone to bed after enjoying San Frolán 2022 to the max. It reminded me hard of my Barcelona days. Oh, youth.

Also, oh, Spain.

Even though today was a comparatively short 19k, we were so hungry when we got to the albergue that we did what I haven’t done since rookie day one and ordered a whole ass menú del día. Look at Waffles’ fucking starter. Haven’t wanted to eat pig so bad since Madre Ayahuasca told me not to in 2019.

Yes, that’s me, Waffles and Beard Braid having had a bottle of wine each. Since I’m from Sweden, where a bottle of wine costs about a day’s salary, I can’t not finish one that’s given to me. Hence avoidance of daytime menús. Cause good luck getting me to do a thing for the rest of the day.

After this, I unsurprisingly napped for about three hours. In a hammock, under these trees. Listening to Waffles play his own half-finished songs on the guitar, reminding me of Pete Doherty’s demos from way before The Libertines were formed, such as the beauty that is Love Reign O’er Me… oh wow I can’t figure out how to link text in WordPress. Sleek. Well here it is, go hear it because it is more important than anything Pete did afterwards (including Kate Moss): https://youtu.be/X1od_z5iqFw.

#CaminoPrimitivo #KateMoss #endings #demos #music #faith #ayahuasca #homecoming #travel #poetry #PeteDoherty #CaminodeSantiago #Babyshambles