Two weeks since I waved goodbye to my beautiful people...
What a day. Right now I am in a little restaurant, just had a cup of tea and one of the cakes I am addicted to... Might have been my 5th for the day (they are small, I promise!).
I remember talking to Rebecca (the beautiful woman who first told me about the Camino), asking her how much weight she lost when she walked it. She laughed and said, "No, not with all the food and red wine you have each evening!" - and she is right! I usually only have one wine each evening, (keeping with the advice from Bernard!) but food - such big meals! But I guess we don't really eat breakfast or lunch so the appetite is roaring by dinner!
Last night, Sylvia and I decided that we would only walk 25km today. We had earned ourselves an easy day after yesterday, and even though I was on my antibiotics, I was still feeling a little average.
Back to Burgos for a minute... For dinner last night, we thought we would look around Burgos and find a nice restaurant. We encountered a small problem... The Spanish don't eat until about 9pm, so most restaurants were simply people drinking wine or beer. Socialising of an evening is something that the Spanish do well! It is not uncommon for adults to be out until 1030pm chatting away while their children play. We walked and walked (because 41km wasnt enough for us that day!) and ended up at a greasy kebab shop! Was good though - although, maybe anything would have been good at the time after the day we had had!
After dinner we went back to the hotel to sleep soundly in our big, clean, crisp white beds! We had a sleep in (till 7am) then packed and headed to reception. It had been raining the night before and was going to continue throughout the day. We made our way out of Burgos all coated up and decided to grab an early tea before we started the hard yards. We studied the maps and then made the decision to walk a bit extra and pull in 30km. By this stage, we had only walked about 3km and I feel our optimism was a little above reality!
We walked with a head wind, had a climb and a (!) descent with rain. We stopped at a town, 10km from our destination. We had a cup of tea here and I really could have settled in for the day. But this stage I was feeling exhausted, tired, cold and hungry. But I knew Sylvia wanted to go on, and even though it was 10km, it would be 10km less I had to do the next day. We packed back up, and left the warmth of the cafe and hit the road again. "This is the great thing about walking with another person", Sylvia said,"I would have stopped back there, but having two people means you egg each other on!" I smiled to myself knowing that had I been alone, I would have stopped there as well!
We are currently walking in the Meseta. This is an extremely flat piece of land and most of the little towns are in valleys, so you can not see them until you are about 500m away from them! It was the toughest 10km I have walked so far. My body was so tired, emotionally I was feeling drained after not being well, so the last 5km, while I as walking ahead of Sylvia, I let the tears flow. Lots of things flowed through my mind throughout that 5km and I let it all flow freely... From friends to family to missing warmth and comfort and predictability and lots of other things.
I have come across a group of great Dutch women. One of them said to me, that the flat bits were where you exercise your mind. This certainly does happen.
I bumped in to 3 Australians today, a solo girl and a married couple. Both of them told me separately of another Tasmania woman walking the camino only just behind them. Jill is her name and it would be great to meet her! But then there are rumors that she had to leave early!
Unbeknownst to me, I passed a natural spring today where it is said that if a pilgrim washes their feet in it, they will no longer have foot problems from here until Santiago! If I had come across it, I would have dived right in!
It is forecast to rain for 2 more days, so just 20km tomorrow and pull in early. Will be good to get some trip planning done in my time off tomorrow afternoon to ensure I make it to Santiago on time!
Am going to call it a night and finally have an early one!
mmmmmmmmmm kebabs!!!
ReplyDelete