Day 12, June 19th, 2023
I am in no hurry this morning as I have to wait for the shops and the post office to open. So I sit down at a table by the window in a small café to have breakfast. Then the waiter comes over and tells me I can't sit here because that table seats four. What? The whole café is completely empty and there are other tables for four, and yet another one is piled high with dirty dishes and leftover food. And I am blocking a table for four? I am furious. Finally, I sit down at a single table behind my current one and simply turn my chair around towards the window. So with doing that, I am still sort of sitting at the four-person table, except that my back is now turned towards my plate on the single table. The waiter doesn't say anything more.
I spot the perfect sandals in the window of a show shop. Like a poor homeless person, I stand there in my patched-up sandals, gazing at them in adoration. But since the shop is still closed, I go to the post office first. Next to the counters are several parcel boxes in different sizes. As I am fiddling around, unsure which size to chose, the postal clerk snaps at me. I don't understand a word, but she probably doesn't want me touching all the boxes with my dirty pilgrim's fingers.
I opt for a large box and pay for it, then pack my shoes, sleeping bag and pot inside and rejoin the queue. The postal worker doesn't speak a word of English but asks me a thousand questions in Spanish. There is only one solution: my translation app! So I open the app and hold out my phone to the woman behind the counter, asking her to type in her questions. As I do this, the woman literally freezes, then looks at her colleague at the next counter, clearly concerned. This colleague also looks at my phone, then stares at me helplessly, says something, looks back at her colleague, then at me again, and keeps touching her forehead. What is happening? Well, it takes me a moment for me to understand: The translation app displays all previous entries below the input field, and there it says in bold letters:
»Disculpe, ¿puede ayudarme por favor? Tengo diarrea severa y fiebre …«
In English: »Excuse me, can you please help me? I have severe diarrhoea and a fever...«
Oh dear, how embarrassing! I can't wave my hand as fast as I want and keep saying »No, no, no, I’m good, I‘m good! Muy bien…!«
I want to sink into the ground.
My visit to the post office then lasts almost a full hour. In the end I sent my package for almost fifty-nine euros. I assume this is insured then.
How light my rucksack is as I head off to the shoe store, I hardly feel it anymore. It is incredible how light-footed I can walk now!
Unfortunately, the sandals I want aren not available in my size. Luckily, the shopkeeper owns two other shops nearby and promises to get the right size for me after serving the three other pilgrims who are now also standing in the shop with sore feet. One of them is a young Englishman from Oxford, named Roland, called Roly. A handsome young man of twenty-one with short, dark, curly hair, rather quiet and very polite. I first saw Roly at the hostel in Los Arcos, where he was sitting at a table in the garden with Flo and a few other people. We bumped into each other a few more times after that. Here he is now mistaken for my son, probably because of his curly hair and the way I am helping him choose the right shoes. Roly ends up buying the same sandals as me, and since his size is available, he is now happily walking up and down the aisle in his new sandals. It is rather funny how many pilgrims keep bumping into each other, either in shoe shops or pharmacies.
I sit outside on the steps in front of the shop and wait for the salesman to return with my new sandals. He comes back about twenty minutes later, and soon my feet are adorned with brand-new sports sandals, alongside my old wool socks. My old broken sandals are accepted with pitying glances and disposed of right there on the spot.
I see no other pilgrims for miles around as I hike through the vineyards. It is simply too late in the day, most have long since left and probably even arrived in Santo Domingo. But I am moving fast, it almost feels like I am traveling without a backpack at all, and nothing hurts!
It is an incredibly long stretch, mostly straight. That is roughly how I imagine the dreaded Meseta that awaits me beyond the city of Burgos.
In Azofra I pass a mini-supermarket where I buy a quick lunch which consists of an apple, crisps, a chocolate bar and a bottle of Aquarius. The latter is an isotonic drink and has become one of my favourites. It provides valuable electrolytes and minerals and is the tastiest and most refreshing thing in the world, especially in hot weather.
I turn into the next vineyard. Storks circle overhead, frogs croak to my left, everything is very idyllic. Then I come to a spot so muddy that I can't go any further. The cornfields around me are also flooded, and there are no branches or larger stones I could use as footholds. Should I go through it barefoot? Or at least take off my socks? Or take off my sandals and just leave my socks on? The problem is, I don't have enough water to clean my feet afterward, and I can hardly put my socks back on over my muddy feet. And I don't want to go through it in just my socks either, in case there's something sharp in the mud I could step on. These are my thoughts as I, without overthinking it, simply leave everything on and wade right through. My beautiful new sandals look anything but new afterward. In fact, they don't even look like sandals anymore. My socks along with the sandals are one big red mud clump. How did everyone else manage? Does everyone have muddy feet from here on?
The ditches to the left and right of the path are mostly dried up, and where there is water in them, it is exactly as reddish-brown as my muddy feet.
Only five kilometres further on, shortly after a long climb before the town of Cirueña, I come across a fountain in a kind of mini-park in the corner of a field. There are also a few stone tables and deck chairs under shady pine trees. A sign is stuck to the tree behind the fountain, stating that the water is only for drinking and not for washing shoes or bicycle tires, as the mud clogs the drain and floods the meadow. It seems the mud hole and its consequences are a well-known problem here. I refill my water bottle several times and clean my socks and shoes as best I can a little bit further away from the fountain. Afterward, I hang everything in a tree to dry, take a lunch break on one of the chairs in the sun, and eat my apple and the crisps. An extremely strong wind is blowing, yet my socks are still wet after about an hour when I put them back on. In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't use my collapsible bowl. What else would I have the bowl for if not for this? I simply didn't think of it.
I am coming through the new housing development in Cirueña and can't believe what I am seeing. The place is deserted, a labyrinth of empty apartment blocks, and all the houses have their shutters down. There is not a soul on the streets, not a car in sight. New playgrounds, parks and a huge golf course are completely unused. »For Sale« signs are everywhere on the land overgrown with weeds. A complete ghost town, the result of real estate speculation combined with the 2008 financial crisis. I feel like the bloke in the film 28 days later, who awakens from a coma and then wanders through a city wiped out by zombies. Eerie.
I reach Santo Domingo de la Calzada in the late afternoon. The small town is especially known for a legend closely linked to the Camino de Santiago, namely the so-called The miracle of the rooster and the hen, which goes like this:
The miracle of the rooster and the hen
A young pilgrim was walking the Camino de Santiago with his parents. At an inn, the innkeeper's daughter tried to seduce him. When he refused, she falsely accused him of stealing silver. The authorities believed her, and the innocent boy was unjustly convicted and hanged.
When the parents later returned, they found their son still alive, supported by Saint Dominic. They rushed to the judge who was about to eat a roast rooster and a hen. Skeptically, he said,
"Your son is as alive as these birds on my plate."
At that very moment, the roast rooster and hen came back to life and crowed. The judge rushed to the gallows, confirmed the miracle, and the boy was saved.
I want to buy a lightweight sleeping bag liner at a sports shop since I don't have anything to cover myself with now. Unfortunately they only have an overpriced thin cotton sack. But I need something for the night, and since this thing weighs a good 400 grams less than my sleeping bag did, I buy it and look for a hostel. As long as the weather is so unsettled, I won't be setting up my tent.
I find a 130-bed hostel with several dormitories that even has a room just for snorers. I get a nice lower bunk in the far corner of a clean and bright room, of which only two other beds are occupied so far. One of them belongs to Angela, a woman my age. We chat in English for quite a while until we realise that we are both German. But Angelas English is good, because she also lives in England, in Devon to be precise. She has already walked all over France and has been on the road for quite some time. I mention her here because she will soon be a significant part of my journey, and I don't want our first meeting to go unnoticed.
In the evening I then come across Julia, who had a motorcycle accident, Flo, the man in the robe, and my son Roly, and we spent a pleasant evening together at an outdoor restaurant by the road. Roly, by the way, got away with the mud quite easily in his new sandals by simply walking around it. Everyone else seemed to have found a way around it, except me. But that's typical for me - just grit my teeth and get on with it. I often find myself running through all sorts of scenarios in my head in a short amount of time, wondering what would happen if I did this or that, but then it quickly my thoughts become too complicated and I end up acting on instinct. Often not the wisest thing to do, but the easiest for me in that particular moment. If I had been more introspective and thought things through calmly and without tunnel vision, my sandals wouldn't be rusty red now!
At ten p.m., it's lights out, like in any other hostel. When the hostel manager makes his final rounds, he lets me sit at the table while I am on the phone with David, probably because he notices I am being very, very quiet. When I go to my dormitory, the door squeaks dramatically loud, and I think I have woken everyone in the room again. And as I lie in my bed, lightning flashes one after another, and it starts pouring with rain. I can't fall asleep at all, and also Angela tosses and turns. The thought of sleeping in a tent tonight gives me goosebumps.
Distance: 22,8 km / Steps: 39763