In Santiago

It was a good day not to be on the camino, as it was sheeting down with rain and very cold.

Went to the pilgrims’ high mass at noon and was surprised to find the service being taken by the cardinal archbishop and the cathedral packed - it was St Andrew’s Day.  At the start he read out the number of pilgrims who had claimed their compostela in the previous 24 hours – me, an Austrian, 30-odd Spaniards.  The responses and credo and so on were led by a nun with a lovely voice.  Of the 1000+ people at the service, over half must have taken communion, but they had five or six people giving out the wafers, so it didn’t take long.

Afterwards made my abrazo and saw the ancient tomb.

There are three distinct types of people in Santiago: mostly locals, who scurry about apparently oblivious to the beauty surrounding them, “ordinary” tourists taking pictures and the few pilgrims, mostly fairly scruffy and glancing furtively at each other’s walking shoes to check we’re right in guessing that we’ve both been on the camino.  It’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be a greeting one can use once we’re here that is the equivalent of the “Buen Camino” for getting here.

All the restaurants and bars in the evening were much emptier with no "classico" match, and I enjoyed navajas and an excellent fish soup in relative quiet.

On to Santiago

Left the final albergue with Venus high in the sky and the half moon also bright.  Venus was still visible until 8.30am – the mornings have drawn in remarkably since the beginning of November: sunrise was at 7.46am on November 1^st and wasn’t until 8.38 this morning, while in the evenings sunset has only been 24 minutes earlier.

It was just about daylight when I passed the Pico Sacro, where the Wolf Queen conned Santiago’s pallbearers into burying him at Compostella, hoping the wild bulls would kill them - they didn't, of course, they turned into tame milk cows: Wolf Queens seldom seem to get it right.  The walk was through pleasant woodland paths until Susana, where it became drearily suburban, and then past a lot of road and rail-building sites so it was a delightful surprise suddenly to turn a corner and see the towers of the cathedral for the first time only a mile or so ahead.

Went along to pick up my compostela and check into the hotel and was able to put my feet up by late lunchtime.

In the evening I went to a restaurant for some scallops & razor clams and watched Barcelona thoroughly thump Real Madrid at football –  in every paper, in every bar and on every tv station I’ve seen for the last week they’ve been talking of little else, so it was good to take part in a real national event.

Wandered back to the hotel past the floodlit cathedral.  It was astonishingly beautiful and very moving.

a snowy start to Sunday

After my cold shivery night it wasn’t too much of a surprise to find a couple of inches of snow lying on the paths and fields outside.  At first light the clouds seemed very snow-grey and likely to dump themselves on me again, but I decided to risk starting out, and was lucky and it fairly soon brightened up a bit and I was able to get to a croissant and coffee in Silleda.

It was then on past Ponte Ulla and through a wooded path ending up at the Capilla de Santaguiña, near the albergue of Vedra which, thank goodness, provided bed covers and where, thank goodness, the heating stayed on all night.

Last few days

The foggy route out of Ourense took me over a Romanesque bridge into a lengthy suburb before joining the Camino Real where I was accosted by an old man who pumped my hand several times while talking volubly.  Unfortunately he spoke thick Galician and appeared to have no roof to his mouth, so I was only able to understand one word in ten, but that didn’t seem to bother him as long as I nodded at intervals and shook his hand back.

After quite a long climb I suddenly emerged from the cloud into a glorious bright autumn day, with the path going through beautiful woods and enough villages to stop occasionally for coffee or a drink.  It was sad that the way-marking bollards had almost all been vandalised – I first spotted one shortly after A Gudina and noticed as well as a scallop, it showed the distance to Santiago in metres, so the first ones I saw were in the 230,000s or thereabouts.  It would have been encouraging to see them now they must be well under 100,000, but the distance had invariably been chiselled off, and the scallop frequently smashed as well.  It’s far from the first vandalism I’ve seen en route – several of the large stone information panels in Extremadura had had their information pulled off.  On one somebody had written “dinero inutil” which may have been a valid point, not least as the un-vandalised ones were often bleached unreadable by the sun.  And on a couple of “Albergues de pelegrinos” signs the “pelegrinos” has been crossed out and replaced by “putanos”.  May just be mindless vandalism, or possibly anti-religious, or just possibly a comment on the relatively small benefit we bring: on a night when I sleep at an albergue at €5-10, have a menu del dia at €8-10, a couple of cups of coffee here and there and a bocadillo and a caña for lunch, it’s quite easy not to spend more than €20 in a whole day, which is hardly a great contribution to the local economy (obviously on the Camino Frances, with 100s a day passing through spending that or more, it will make a difference, but on this route I’m often the only, or virtually the only, pilgrim in 10 miles in any direction).  But I’ve never encountered any hostility – bemusement, yes, amusement, sometimes, total indifference, lots of times, but never hostility.  Usually it’s friendly curiosity – somebody in a bar wanting to know how far I’ve walked, where I come from and so on, or a farmer waving from a tractor, or just somebody shouting “buen camino” from across the road.

Got to Cea in time for a late lunch – it’s famous for its bread, with some 20 bakeries.  Then stopped in the albergue, where I was joined by Sassie, the Italian pelegrina who I last saw in Mombuey, over a week ago (she'd travelled from Puebla by the northern route).  She made my walk from Seville seem very modest – two years ago she’d walked from Sienna to Santiago, via Nice, Montpellier, Toulouse and the Camino Frances, 2700km in all.  That really would stretch the legs, and mine feel quite stretched already.

On Saturday morning I left just before dawn and carried on over the occasional pass mostly through lovely undulating wooded countryside.  The half moon was high in the sky at starting, and still visible at 1pm when a few clouds starting to obscure it.  Briefly saw the back end of a large bushy tailed dun-coloured cat-like animal.  Assume it can’t have been a lynx in these parts, but it was miles from any houses and too big to be a domestic cat anyway, and certainly not the right shape and movement for a fox (or colour – although I did see a very pale-coloured fox in Sardinia last summer).

Had been planning to sleep in Lalin, but it appeared to be a bit of a dump, and a barman told me the albergue at A Laxe was very good and only 5 km further on, so I went there instead.  Once again I had the place to myself, but hearing the rain crashing down on the roof a couple of feet above my bunk bed wasn’t pleasant (one always wonders if it means the whole of tomorrow will be like that).  Also they turned the heating off at 10, so it was quickly really uncomfortably cold.

To Ourense

Left Verin to the light of a waning gibbous moon.  Got the bus back to Xinzo de Limia and carried on in freezing fog for most of the morning.  It brightened up by the time I got to Allariz, a handsome town with two fine bridges over the Rio Arnoia and a huge convent of Santa Clara.

Romanesque bridge at Allariz

Unfortunately the fog came back as I left town on the road up to Santa Mariňa de Augas Fortes, and mostly stayed with me until the outskirts of Ourense.
 
Ourense seemed bustling and mostly rather ugly.  I was able to have some delicious puplo gallego for supper, which was a plus. 

Past Verin

At dawn there was a quite thick mist down in the valley below Monterrei, although it was bright sunshine above.  Had to go down into the chilly mist but it had mostly been burned off by 10am-ish.  At Enfesta I was accosted by a chatty old gadgie pruning his vines.  He was hoping to practice his rusty German on me, as he’d spent three years there as a gastarbeiter working on construction sites in the 70s, and was disappointed that I could only answer in O-level standard.  He advised me to go back onto the N525 rather than carry on on the official camino.  I took his advice, but slightly regretted it as it meant just following the road all the way up to the alto das Estibadas at 2800’, which I hope will be my final high point on the journey.  But it wasn’t that bad as the road was quiet and the views at the top fantastic.

As I couldn’t work out the buses, got a taxi back to Verin (at €1 per km, which was much less than I’d feared).  The driver was chatty, if slightly depressed by the news from the rescate of Ireland and the general strike in Portugal.  He said Galicia and Extremadura were the worst regions of Spain for unemployment and the recession, which slightly surprised me as both seemed quite busy and prosperous from what I’d seen: but presumably you can’t judge a place just by walking through it – and I’ve worked in both Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

Into Galicia

At 6.30am was back at the station to take the train to A Gudina and pick up the path.  This train ride is probably pretty spectacular, so it’s a pity I’ve only been able t do it both ways in the pitch dark.  Left A Gudina (having been the only person on the train until then) and decided to take the southern route to Ourense, via Verin, with the moon to my right and a rosy-fingered sunrise to my left.

If I had thought it would be gently downhill from here all to way to Santiago, I was soon put right by three fairly strenuous mountain passes, the first two over 3000’, and the final, Alto de Fumaces, around 2900’.  It then was downhill all the way to Verin (at about 1200’).  The views had been amazing – back to the snow around Padornelo, and southwards into the hills of northern Portugal.  There was heather in flower on the outskirts of Verin, not something you expect to see in late November, and a few yellow gorse flowers.

Verin is a farily non-descript place with the huge border fortress of Monterrei on the hill above it.