Stage Eighteen –Carrion de los Condes to Terradillos de los Templarios

26.6 km

October 25, 2011

Don’t Stop Me Now!

Don’t you love the names of these towns? Half the time I didn’t know where I was, where I was going and where I had been. But it didn’t matter. That is the beauty of the Camino! Just keep following the arrows.

I only took three pictures today and wrote very few notes. This was another long day of walking in the wind and rain and we had to dig out our gloves to keep our hands warm. Today it was, put your head down and plod forward. The sign said it all perfectly!

The albergue was nice with attached restaurant to have our pilgrim’s menu. The restaurant had an old stone fireplace in it, which was a nice way to warm up. I tried to have a nap this afternoon but the group of Koreans were in the next room and every time someone came into or left the room, the door would slam behind them. The walls were just ¾ walls so one could hear everything including their incessant chatter. At one point I sprung up in my bottom bunk and said quite loudly, “Do you really slam doors in your own house?” Kim and a fellow peregrino, who was tending to his blistered feet, looked at me and wondered what my next move might be. Ok... I was now getting frustrated with my fellow pilgrims. All the books talk about it and how it is one of the lessons of the Camino.

Kim, on the other hand, was getting frustrated with the snobby French pilgrims who got up and actually left our table and went to a table of French speaking pilgrims. It was difficult to cultivate any kind of rapport with the French, including the French Canadians along The Way. Seemed when I would say I was from western Canada, they would say “ oh” and turn away. Strange. However, a very nice German couple joined us tonight at the table and they could speak English. So there was a table speaking French, a table speaking English, and a table speaking Korean, with the family in the kitchen speaking Spanish. The giggling young Koreans were the noisiest but I recall hearing the family downstairs at about 1:30 in the morning, still talking and socializing. The Spanish keep different hours. 

I tried to use the internet tonight but the connection was so slow that it ate all my time before I could send anything. I also had a difficult time getting clothes dry in this albergue as it was raining outside and most of the rads were turned off.

The fellow pilgrim, with the blistered feet, we learned, had had no problems for the first 700 km he had already walked and suddenly he was developing huge, painful blisters under his toes. He had to change from boots to just trail shoes. That was a reality check which worried me a little.  Lesson: Your feet can change at any time, so be aware.

It is kind of fun to watch pilgrims, when they take their boots off. Everyone does some kind of limp, or shuffle and they walk very gingerly. I dubbed it  "The Pilgrim's Shuffle". Sometimes there is groaning and grimacing . No one can walk normally at the end of the day, with the exception of the bike riders who usually fly in later than the rest of us walking pilgrims. They are usually the last to leave the albergues in the mornings.  Then they end up passing you at some point down the road. Most would say “Buen Camino” as you moved aside to let them pass. (If I had a euro for everytime I heard Buen Camino, I could probably have paid for my trip.) I kind of envied the bike riders if I was plodding along a downhill or straight stretch and they could just breeze on by and be out of site in no time. Most of the time, the bikers would be on the same trail as the walkers but sometimes it was too hard to take the bike and they would have an alternate route. Some cyclists (a better term perhaps) however, endured and pushed their bikes up the steep parts, so that wasn’t easy. The Spanish seem to prefer to bike the Camino; at least that was my observation, and because they can travel further distances in a day, you never saw the bike riders again.

Kim continues to be in pain with her shin splints. My feet and legs continue to be very sore at the end of the day and aching during the night. Kim introduced me to Ibuprofen 600 mg tabs and Ibuprofen gel, available without prescription in Spanish pharmacias. The 600mg tabs were much more effective than my 400 mgs. I would have to pick some up in Leon, three days from now.