WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 48

Getaria to Deba: 20km

I am missing the simplicity of being alone a little.

By the time I’m up, it’s mainly the people who are taking a day off who are still having breakfast. I chat with Michael, a young Austrian, visiting friends today, and receive a message from Alberto, who is just entering town. As I leave, he’s approaching along the long road from Zarautz.

I drag him along to see the church, and when a woman chases us in to make sure we appreciate it properly his presence is valuable. Not that I can’t understand most of what is said, but because she does not retreat on being confronted with bad Spanish. She tells us that the church’s grand monument is to the first man to circumnavigate the world. This is not the person I’ve learned about, but this one is Basque. And in Basque country, Basque history wins.

Like the church in Orio, the church at Getaria has been built to follow the formation of the ground. But this one with an extraordinary sloping floor. We walk uphill to the altar, and there’s even a high altar built a full storey above the main one. I watch my step as I descend to exit, then go to buy fruit, safe in the knowledge that Alberto has additional breakfast pastries.

Alberto is also very useful when we walk past the municipal albergue on the way out of town and see a large group of men sitting outside. He chats to one slightly apart from the rest and finds out they are day workers here to pick the grapes. It’s a fine crop this year, 80 euros a day.

Splendid walk with mountain sea views into the next town of Zubea, which is perfectly placed for morning coffee. It is also, as Alberto points out, the perfect time of day to meet people. Everyone’s still fresh and excited, not tired or worried about laundry or getting a bed yet. Here there is a fine crop of Americans, a lovely young woman from California, soon to move to Bristol, Chris from Idaho, Susan from Seattle. These are not albergue pilgrims. They are only spotted in day time at places like this.

I hear my name called out. It is breakfast Michael in a pair of Crocs and a bum bag. I have no idea who he is at first. I no longer know people in normal clothes. But when I realise, I am disproportionately excited. I shall almost certainly never see him again.

After coffee, I part from Alberto. I want to do the coast route and take a bit longer. Just as I announce this, two Scottish ladies he knows from his albergue turn up, so I suggest he upgrades.

The cliffs are beautiful. I do like a nice rock formation, and on this walk, the formations I’ve been seeing for the last few days, take centre stage.

I watch the surfers. I’m starting to understand it, the language of surf. And when I see, finally, one of the bobbing characters stand up and catch a wave all the way to the shore, I think I’ve seen something good. And when he raises both hands in celebration as his ride ends, still standing in the surf, I realise I read the language right, but it will always remain a passive knowledge.

However, as a long-term afficionado of the Permian mass extinction, the next part of the walk is possibly the most exciting part of any walk I’ve done.

Out at the Flicht, where the perpendicular rock formations are impressive in themselves, I take the time to read the information board, and I’m pointed to the thin black line of heavy iridium in the rock, after which 75% of sea creature fossils cease to appear. Iridium in this quantity can only have come to earth when a meteor hit the Yucatan. I can’t quite believe I’m getting to see an original recording of the Permian mass extinction.

I give a little bow of reverence to the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of creatures who didn’t make it through. And a bow of recognition to the 25 percent who did. And then, so excited by all this geology, or maybe it’s the bowing, I almost extinct myself with a very hard fall on the path.

Apart from a scuffed knee, I think I’ve bruised a rib, which is the last thing I’d expect to injure on a walk. But it’s not so bad. Later on I see many people lying by the roadside, legs akimbo. They seem to have tripped into a local cider producer, selling bottles in a bucket of iced water by the road.

At the 56-person hostel in Deba, I go full-on introvert and although it’s lovely to see everyone, beyond the initial greetings I have an overwhelming urge to sit in my bed and read. I walk to the beach. I join the others in the square for a small cider, but decline the invitation to eat. I like small talk, in short doses.

Back in the room, I see my downstairs neighbour, Mr Lee, who I met earlier. He is just who I want to be with right now.

He bowed to me in a church on the way in. He was in front of me in the queue at the tourist office, where the woman despaired at the fact he spoke no Spanish or no English, and still they come. The girl behind him says, “Yes, but he has a lovely smile,” and I’m with her.

At the hostel, I make an effort to get to know him, partly because I am hoping he is Japanese and could help me learn some useful phrases, but I didn’t make the mistake of asking that question. I introduce myself. He has no hope of saying my name.

When I ask him his name, I’m in a similar quandary. But then he comes to me with his phone, and he has typed in, “My name is,” with his full name. And I write in my name, “Rachel. You can call me Rachel.” He practises again and again until he’s nearly there. And then he says, “You can call me Mr Lee.”

This is when I find out he is Korean, and I use my only Korean vocabulary, “Anyong haseyo,” at which point we both bow and become quiet friends.

From now on, we always exchange the few words we can: Hello Rachel, Hello Mr Lee. I think the others are slightly confused that I’m so respectful to this one pilgrim, but I don’t care.