WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 57

Santander to Santillana del Mar: 37km

I leave the albergue while it’s still dark and head for the first café, where, as the door is open, I’m let in, along with a guy waiting for the fruit machines and a woman ready for her first beer of the day, or at least her first beer from a bar today. The café owner refuses to serve her, but lets her sit there.

And then it’s an out-of-city walk, always pleasantly efficient.

In one of the villages just out of town, a woman walks past me and wishes me a buen camino. I say thank you. But then I spend the next twenty minutes walking not a long distance behind her, trying to work out if she might actually be a pilgrim. She has a small rucksack, but there’s water in it. She’s holding a little bag in her hand. That doesn’t seem right. But she stops to fill her water bottle at a tap, and she’s definitely following the arrows.

So, as we cross some railway tracks and she’s not sure where to go, we start talking, and yes, Maria is a pilgrim for the day. She’s also super nice from the get-go, and when I spot the café opposite, without a thought, she invites me to have breakfast with her.

My Spanish is getting worse and worse, but then it turns out we both speak a similar level of French, and the conversation continues in a mix of every language that comes to hand. She tells me she is from Cordoba, living in Bilbao. She works as a civil servant, requisitioning goods after court cases. I couldn’t think of a less likely person to be doing this.

“Do you like your job?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she says. “The office is on the second floor, and I can look out the windows to the mountains.”

This is a good reason for liking your job.

We say goodbye, as I need time to get sun proofed. Then twenty minutes later, as I rejoin the path after a detour by the river, Maria appears behind me. From this point on we are bad-French-speaking buddies for the day. I never thought my newly rediscovered French would repay me so well in Spain.

I stop for a pee; she waits nearby. We meet two Romanian girls who speak Spanish; she let’s them walk on. I stop for a drink; she has one too. I give her every opportunity to escape; but she sticks by me to the end. It is not the prettiest path today and quite a long one. Company is good and Maria is good company.

A couple of hours from the end, there is a little gathering at a bus stop by a main road. Miguel, an exhausted Peruvian pilgrim is taking a rest and talking to a young German. We stop to say hello, and Joon, last seen at the monastery a,week ago joins us.

We end up walking with Miguel, who needs frequent rests, and likes to speak German with me, which makes a change. We walk up a hill that seems to last forever, before reaching the top and getting Miguel to rest by the side of a busy roundabout. It is a relief to get him into Santillana del Mar.

When we part, I swap numbers with Maria. I feel this will not be end. She goes to her hotel, me too Albergue El Convento.

I meet Ilke at the reception, while poor old Miguel is turned away. The place is full and I’m not surprised. The place is marvellous.

The rooms each contain just one bunk bed, and my bunk buddy, Yvonne from Arizona, has chosen the top one. I love her.

Next, still filthy from the road, I attend the “encounter” in the oratoria, hosted by a couple of plain-clothes carmelite nuns. We sit in a circle and introduce ourselves with an interesting fact. I am happy to be reunited with Javier and Grace in the circle. Grace has taken the bus to look at cave paintings today. She is walking her own Camino.

Everyone has meaningful things to say about the camino, but all are outdone by a twelve-year-old Irish boy, travelling with his dad and aunt. “I really like that it gives me time off school”. That’s probably the real truth for all of us. We do a little service, get a little blessing, and are let out for dinner. The punishment for non-attenders is they have had to wait for us

Dinner is fabulous and the dining hall is packed: all the familiar faces. I briefly join them for drinks in the lounge, but make my excuses early. My longer stages will be starting now, as I walk to reach Santiago by 10th October.

I realise too late, I will not see most of these familiar faces again.