23rd of August I woke up at 2:30 and tried to find sleep again. As my pillow was on the bunkbed right by the door I was woken up each time someone needed to go to the toilet. Mostly they left the door open with the light coming in plus the draft in my face. There I was lying in my sleeping bag and following my mind like in the “Logical Song” by Supertramp.
I was thinking about what I had focused on lately and what remains of all the things we were seeing on our way. Is it only the facades we see of which we even don’t have an idea of what is going on behind them? I observe myself preferring to take photos of the beautiful things and leave the ugly things outside. But isn’t it exactly this what makes the world complete? Where there’s light we also have to accept the darkness.
I questioned myself if I am also not only tempted to impress with superficial “Insta” posts pretending everything is beautiful? Are we not just our own filter through which we see the world not even talking about using any AI filter on top? In my mind I began to criticize myself for blending out the backyards, the waste deposits or even the smell of pig farms without any windows or seeing trucks rolling by with a full load of these living animals just charged like any material not able to move in the boiling heat of 40°C. It’s all part of our lifestyle and we are perfect in denial of what is really going on once it’s well packed in the supermarket shelves. Remembering from our experience of the Camino in France Robert and I had a running gag for finding the bike path because it was always at the border of the towns where we had to follow the sign “déchèterie” (=recycling centre) to be back on track.
Once we left the city behind us with the last car dumps we were back in nature experiencing a great freedom. The difference of riding a bike to walking the Way of Saint James is the advantage of nearly being able to fly through the landscape. Sometimes birds are just playing with you and fly ahead of you and land to take off and repeat the game for several more times, or they glide parallel to you in the air. It’s very playful and brings you back to the gratitude of being able to experience all of this. Probably following one of these thoughts I fell asleep again and woke up when the bunk bed below me was already empty. We had to leave the room by 8:00 in the morning.
Breakfast had to be taken at a bakery in the village and we still wanted to see the churches of Frómista. One having a museum with an altar by a Flemish master which was once stolen and most of the parts were found again. The other church of San Martín was one of the best examples of Romanic architecture of the 11th century in Spain. By coincidence we also met Angelie and André on their bikes again.
Today the heat was building up again quickly and we tried to keep moving. In Carrión de los Condes we stopped by a convent to get a stamp and entering the town we realized we had missed last night a huge LGBTQ Techno party, which had left broken glass on the Plaza Mayor in front of the stage. I was hoping that we didn’t punch a hole in our tires. We got one more stamp at the Espiritu Santo Carrión de los Condes where they thought we would stay at their place but we had to continue and left the party town over the Roman road of the Via Aquitana. There were hardly any villages anymore and those we saw were simply built with clay walls with several buildings in ruin. Before Sahagún there were still two points of interest which we crossed: the border with the province of León and the “Ecuador del Camino Frances” which represents half way of the Way of Saint James since Roncesvalles.
We asked a young lady from Slovakia to take a picture of us. She had hardly any voice due to a soar throat, but was still walking very strongly.
Robert didn’t want me to make any more photo stops, because he tried to arrive in time at the monastery of Santa Cruz. At the reception Joseph the seminarian explained us everything, where to put the bikes, where to enter in the list what we would contribute for dinner, and where we could find our room. Until we had parked our bikes in the courtyard and the luggage up in the room the young lady from Slovakia had arrived too. Her name is Jana. I gave her one of my Isla throat pills to relieve her hoarseness. Some of the locals blamed it due to the smoke from the forest fires, but I guessed it was a laryngitis.
By 5:00 o’clock we had the opportunity to meet for coffee to get to know each other better. Everyone was supposed to take a card with a symbol which would represent what the Camino represented for them until now. I chose the Ying and Yang like in my “Less-is-More-Tour”-Logo. Robert had chosen a window. At first we introduced ourselves to each other and the group was mainly French speaking with one Taiwanese who spoke only English.
I somehow happened to be the interpreter between English and French. Most of the group from France were doctors in the army and one clergywoman from the army who was organizing this trip. Later a priest and a bishop from Montreal, Canada joined us.
It was very touching to hear the personal stories with the different reasons for which each one had taken the decision to walk the Way of Saint James and through my interpretation it even intensified my perception because it made me listening to each detail.
As each person was opening up to the others in this small group I felt a lot of empathy, respect and responsibility of translating their personal experiences and emotions.
At the end we took a photo of us all together and joined again in the pilgrims’ mass which was held spontaneously by Lionel Gendron the bishop of Montréal in the church of the Benedictine monastery.
After the blessing of the pilgrims we still had to go to do shopping and cooking to contribute our part. We had a half hour to make salad and cook spaghetti. The salad was cut but the water had not even started a sound of boiling a little bit. The priest Mathew looked into the kitchen and said it was not our mistake, but we should have used the water boiler to get quicker hot water. So we cancelled the Spaghetti and joined the dinner with our hot pasta sauce and cut onions, tomatoes, peppers and salad. The long table was full with enough to eat and I was sitting next to Mathew and Robert to Jana and Joseph. Everyone was sharing his contributions for dinner with everyone. At the end I finished the sweet melon pieces which were so juicy like you never would get them back in Germany.
What a wonderful enriching experience of solidarity and team spirit.
