Day 11

Day 11 and I'm slowly but surely getting into the camino routine. My body is accustoming to waking up at the crack of dawn to about 20 different alarms. The blisters on my feet are gradually turning into callices and I am trying to accept my knee pain. I have learnt not to look at the map because whether the route is uphill and 30 km or downhill and only 20km  i will be walking it anyway. Surprisingly i have realised that downhills are actually worse than uphills.

Yesterday we stayed in Belorado a beautiful little town with a great big church and a plaza. Martin Sheen s footprints are in the town s main street. We stayed in a small but beautiful paroquail hostel run by two German volunteers. They were so nice and made us feel very at home with hot tea and biscuits and breakfast in the morning. They also ran a meditation session which Zach and Adam and the two American sisters found very useful.
Katie and I didnt go instead we searched for wifi. Belorado also had a beautiful church with about four giant stork s nests in it s bell tower.

I am amazed by the generosity of the people running the hostels. Most of them are volunteers yet  they really care about the physical and mental well being of all pilgrims.

Today was a long and tough day walking wise. It was 30km through the mountains and the weather was rainy. At the start we went through three Spanish villages and then the route changed into rolling hills. They reminded me of the mountains in Ireland except for the lack of sheep. The scenery all around us is wonderful.

During the walk Katie and I invented a game called Slug count. For every slug you saw you git one slug point, for every beetle the oter person was minused a slug point. A dead slug or beetle was plus or minus 3 points and a slug eating a worm or a slug giving birth was 100 points. We can t remember who won.

Every village we walk through has a giant churvh. Each church is beautiful and different. Some look like the churches you find in Florence or Rome. I often wonder how such a small village managed to fill such a big church.

When you are walking through the villages you often get the impression that no body lives there even though the houses and architecture is so beautiful. At one point Katie and I were taking a break in a village square when a van pulled up beeping like crazy. It was the bread man. Suddenly old ladies and men came out of the seemingly abandoned houses in their dresing gowns to buy bread and listen to the village gossip. It was very funny to watch.

The evening of day 11 was spent in Arges. It was hear that we experienced the worst dinner of our lives. The waiter had a humorous approach to service. He pretended to be angry at all our requests and made a big deal of being unable to speech English. If it wasnt or his humour we may nkt have sat through the meal as what we were served was not food. For the main course Katie and I ordered ratatouille. What we got was cold tomato sauce with an egg in the middle. Every chose different options for desert yet we all got plain natural lumpy yoghurt. It was very funny.

After this 'meal' with our stomachs not full we walked back to the hostel to find a street party happening outside our hostel. Since we new many of the pilgrims involved and the meal had been so dissapointing we naturally joined in. It was very fun as people sang and chatted and showed of their talents. Indeed Katie sang some opera for everyonr. We stayed up past the usual curfew of 10pm but were all in bed by midnight.

Even though logically we are walking forwards, according to the signs th every step we take we are going further away from Santiago. Yesterday the sign said 530 and this morning 570. Nevertheles we will continue to walk (backwards)  about 20km to Burgos today.