WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 75

Baamonde to Miraz: 15km

This morning is so relaxed for everyone that I even get to say good morning to Iván, who is normally long gone before I get up. He sleeps in a little single bed across the way. I am in a little compartment of six beds, with just me and Bernard.

When we leave, it’s past the official closing time, and we just cross the road for a leisurely breakfast in the café on the roundabout. This feels like an interlude, I think, for all of us.

The Galician woods are particularly beautiful this morning, especially once we leave the main road: moss, dripping trees, abandoned churches, rocky paths, and the comings and goings of relaxed short-stage pilgrims. Bernard is in raptures.

I walk on ahead for a while with Iván. We sort out bookings for the next couple of days. It looks like the three of us will be staying in the same places, before we all find our own resting points in Santiago.

A couple of kilometres before our destination, there is the handy bar where we can get the necessary extra stamp. It’s the last hundred kilometres now, so two stamps for every stage if you want the Compostela.

And slowly there is a gathering here. Iván is here first, of course. Then Bernard arrives, extraordinarily happy as he has just met a mami-papi, Austrian couple who speak perfect French. We are then joined by the Austrian couple themselves, and I get to practise my German before finally a Dutch couple come along, followed by Italian Asia and Italian-Argentinian, Mateo. There is a fine table of languages going on.

But the big part of today, unlike other days, is the arrival in . This is a short stage with a big end.Because in Miraz is the British Confraternity of Saint James albergue.

There are six of us waiting outside the door at 2pm, an excellently selected six: me, Bernard, Iván, Margo, Asia and Mateo.Even before entering, while sitting in the porch in the drizzle, Mateo and Asia start talking about their love of naming capital cities. I already know I am going to be in heaven this evening.

We throw a few at each other. We try the tricky ones: Central African states, the ‘stans. We all agree that the Caribbean island states are the hardest. But she’s as good as me. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m very impressed.

And once we’re checked in and have taken our turns in the , Bernard has the excellent idea of finding a 1,000-piece jigsaw of London and tipping it out on the table.hat’s it, really. The rest of the day is sorted.

Mateo has promised to cook carbonara later, but we almost don’t get round to eating it, so excited are we by working on this jigsaw and getting it done.

At first it’s me, Asia and Mateo. Eventually the others join in one by one. The hospitaleros even start having a go. Ann, he English one puts together the office where she used to work in London. Poor Iván tries for hours and hours and hours to find the one last piece of the London Eye.

When the time comes to go for the church visit, we all go: 100% attendance, because we are functioning as a group at this point. We tear ourselves away from the jigsaw. here outside the church, the pilgrims from the other albergue, the private albergue, are waiting for the church to be opened.

It feels like a dangerous standoff. I don’t recognise a single face amongst them. How easily we develop group loyalty. However, we’re very friendly to them after we leave the church. We challenge them to a game of football, which is laughed off in the rain.

And then back to the puzzle.

At nine o’clock carbonara is served. No one has helped Mateo. We’re all too busy. But we drag ourselves away to , and Asia pronounces: “The carbonara is good.”

After the carbonara, I’ve had a thought to bring a huge Santiago cake with me from the last town, and we share it out between all of us and the hospitaleros. Again, every single person takes a slice. There’s nothing that hasn’t been done as a full group today.

And of course, after everything has been eaten, and already past bedtime, we return to finish our main work: all six pilgrims and the three hospitaleros around the table.

The hospitaleros take pictures of the completed puzzle to send back to the association. No one’s ever completed the jigsaw in one day before, in one afternoon. But there are two pieces missing. One of them, of course, is Iván’s piece of the London Eye.

But we’re all happy.

“What can we do to commemorate this?” Ivan asks.

I suggest we take a piece of jigsaw each as a souvenir.