The Camino: A Peaceful Unpredictability.Part 5. Estella to Los Arcos

Walking part of the Camino de Santiago in 2016 I arrived  on a Sunday to  Estella to  of the towns on the camino. Mentally I had reached that stage of the camino where the newness of it all had worn off a bit and a more day to day aspect was creeping in. Some annoyances and irritability rising up. However the walk into town was very pleasant alongside the river Eba. The area between the river and road had been landscaped with walks and benches placed in scenic spots along the river. The albergue was situated at the beginning of Estella which is an airy town surrounded by mountains with the wide fast flowing river flowing right through the town. It was a hot day and the albergue had a courtyard which many of us sat in. I definitely felt in holiday mode with the upturn in the weather and sat luxuriating in the sun. Inside my head I was purring like a cat lying contentedly in a sunny corner. I had fallen in a little with a group of Americans and Australians and it was good to chat and joke around. That afternoon some of us went into town and as usual were afflicted by the siesta phenomenon. A siesta is a short nap taken in the early afternoon, often after the midday meal. Such a period of sleep is a common tradition in some countries, particularly those where the weather is warm. It is common throughout the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. The word siesta of the Spanish language derives originally from the Latin word hora sexta or sixth hour (counting from dawn, hence midday rest).

Usually by the time one has walked from the last destination (if you leave early) and arrived at the next albergue and settled in and got yourself organised etc. – it is usually mid-afternoon.  I was usually ravenous after eating only a bit of breakfast or desayuno as it is called in Spanish. Unfortunately by the time I get out on the town and look for somewhere to eat – many places are closed for siesta, especially in the smaller towns and this is worse at the weekends. I would be more supportive of the siesta if they did what it said on the tin so to speak. I accept the need for a rest during the hottest part of the day, suspending work and then starting again in the late afternoon/evening. However as I discovered when I naively approached a post office during the week late one day around 5pm expecting it to open again after the siesta. This does not happen. The post office closed at 2pm in time for siesta and did not open again. 

This time, wandering around Estella I was with the American lady again and another American woman. We trailed our hungry selves  around the town becoming progressively more disconsolate as we realised there was nowhere open or even if they were – were not yet serving food. Eventually we arrived back to the  street of our albergue. Opposite the albergue there was a restaurant that probably received a huge amount of custom due to its fortuitous position near the albergue.  We had noted it on our way out but thought it would be worthy to make the effort and explore the town a bit. The restaurant was just beginning to open but despite valiant pleadings on our part the waiter would not let us eat earlier. We sat in a rather utilitarian room out the back, ostensibly fronting the river but blocked by what looked like panels of tarpaulin at the front of the balcony flapping around carelessly in the wind. The waiter looked   tired and was brusque with us rolling his eyes and sighing when we could not pronounce the names of the dishes. At the last stammering meal request from our group, he whipped the menus out of our hands as if in the next instant he was going to beat us around the head with them.  I noted that he was the only person managing what was turning out to be a busy evening in the restaurant. I had noticed that many of the bars and restaurants along the way in northern Spain seemed very short staffed. This may be the reason why I had found that people in this part were not frankly, particularly friendly even though many spoke some English so a language barrier did not seem a reason for the surliness. Maybe it was Navarre province – people seemed marginally friendlier the further west we went on towards Rioja province.  I was spoilt with living in Ireland. There, every encounter in a shop, bank, café etc. is a brief, friendly exchange that lifts the spirits and puts a spring in the step as you walk out of the shop etc.  It is just as if you had eaten a huge bowl of porridge on a cold morning – gets you glowing inside. I was not wholly sympathetic to the waiter. I worked as the only very busy nurse on a 32 bedded nursing home and would not get very far if I was as curt and dismissive as this guy.

Next morning I walked resolutely past the restaurant despite it serving breakfast, determined not to frequent it again. My body was not pleased with my defiance. I could feel every cell crying out for carbohydrates. However it was a sunny morning the colour of sunflowers. 

Early morning on the camino

 I set my face to it begging in my heart that at the next village 7km way there would be an open café given that it was Bank Holiday weekend. I saw mountains in the distance and as if to prepare us for them one popped up immediately ahead – Montjardin. Thankfully one only had to skirt around the shoulder. In the far distance, an escarpment, part of the mountains of Cantabria signalled the separation of Navarre and Rioja from the Basque lands.

I arrived to Azqueta village. There was a sign for a café but was it open was the question that had my heart in my mouth as I trogged up the hill?  My body was creaking with ominous aches and pains like a car chugging along with its tank nearly empty of petrol. So I almost punched my fist in the air when I saw that it was indeed open. I sat in the sun at a table looking at the distant mountains and stuffed down a slice of tortilla (a sort of Spanish omelette) and pain au chocolat (a croissant like bread that oozes chocolate) and the first decent cup of tea since I had arrived to Spain. I was observed by a wee ballerina of a cat or “gato” in Spanish. It was one of those truly heavenly moments.

I was going to stop for the night in Los Arcos. It was a quiet, sleepy village and before entering it, I sat down by a barn and had a breather and a slug of water, regarded quizzically by a couple of busy, plump brown hens. I needed to collect my thoughts a bit as this was the first time that I was not going to be staying in a municipal albergue. I was going to be staying in a private one of which there were usually several. So I needed to choose one.  

 I was not using the camino guide books that most of those doing the camino that I had met seemed to be using.  I had a bit of a gripe in that people seemed to be following their itineraries slavishly and ending up racing through the camino and becoming quite distressed if they were not achieving their itinerary. They seemed to be treating their experience of the camino as if it was a work project to be completed with aims, objectives and outcomes and all the stress associated with that.    I was using a book I had read before doing the camino, written by a father and his daughter called “Buen Camino. AFather – Daughter Journey from Croagh Patrick to Santiago de Compostela” byNatasha and Peter Murtagh. It is written in diary form and tracks their journey along the camino. It is a mixture of reflections, history, and day to day occurrences and is also an itinerary as it is divided up by the places they pass through and the distances between them. So I found this very useful and had planned my part of the camino (from St Jean Pied de Port to Logrono – about 1/3 of the camino) based on their book.

Actually I had looked forward to the unpredictability of the camino - not knowing where I was staying from night to night, not being sure of the road ahead. Passing through different towns, villages and landscapes every day, carrying my present life on my back. It reminded me of my time working overseas. My life over the last 2 years had been more sedentary and although it had it's own joys, my more adventurous Dora the Explorer side of me missed the unpredictability I was now once more experiencing on the camino. However this was a different sort of unpredictability as compared to my work overseas in humanitarian aid which was often very stressful and fast paced. I enjoyed sitting by the barn wondering where I was going to stay that night. I was coming to the end of Navarre province and entering Rioja - a new land, a new set of adventures - heading into the last half of my journey. So I sat and relished the anticipation of a hot shower, interesting conversation and a delicious meal ahead of me that evening. Life had zoned down to those essential pleasures and the camino was teaching me the true meaning of living in the moment. It was hard to describe it - this contentment ...... except maybe to call it a feeling of peaceful unpredictability. 

   

The Camino: A Peaceful Unpredictability. Part 4. Pamplona to Estella

In 2016 I was walking part of the Camino de Santiago. I had started at St Jean Pied de Port at the start and after a few days I had reached Pamplona, one of the major cities/towns on the camino. Pamplona was a walled, cobbled city with a lively bar scene. I met the American lady that I had met in Zubiri and we walked together through the suburbs and into the city. We arrived  all of a sudden at the  majestic Puenta de la Magdalena, a medieval arched bridge over  a  sun sparkled  river , the Rio Arga. The camino then wound its way through a gap in the 16^th century fortifications up a cobbled stoned street and into the cathedral area. 

The walled city of Pamplona

The municipal albergue was near the cathedral and  set within a refurbished early 17^th century church, the Church of Jesus and Mary which belonged to the Jesuits. It held over 100 beds and was arranged in similar fashion to Roncesvalles in pods of four bunks each. The upstairs part was divided from below by a glass floor. I was staying below and was always aware of the glass floor above and would have liked to have stayed upstairs closer to the ceiling of the church.

Pamplona was the setting of Ernest Hemingway’s book “The Sun Also Rises” where he wrote about the running of the bulls in Pamplona. As well as the American lady, I had also met the Frenchman whom I had originally met way back in St Jean Pied de Port.  Later we all went to eat tapas and drink red wine in one of the many bars in Pamplona. It was a convivial evening. I ended up translating a bit from English to French. It felt good to be speaking French again – as if that part of my brain that used to speak and write in French was a dusty old room that I had opened up and was letting the sun and air in once again. It transpired that the Frenchman had been walking for months along various ancient pilgrimage routes in Europe. I had noticed on the few times I had met him while walking that he seemed to walk with great fervour – almost desperately striding off into the distance, a tall lanky figure. Making small talk I asked him if he would be doing this camino again. He looked sideways for a second as if collecting his thoughts and then facing us replied rather bleakly that it would be the last camino for him. We were all silent for a few seconds. I was unsure what to say and he seemed reluctant to expand . Then before all conviviality fled, he gave a watery smile, made an expansive gesture with his hands towards the various tapas crowding the table and encouraged us to eat up. We left soon after. I saw him later as I was strolling around the town and Pamplona cathedral. He was sitting in one of the alcoves in the cavernous cathedral head bent in an absorbed fashion. I did not disturb him. 

My next stop on the camino coming into the weekend was a village called Puenta la Reina. We were entering flatter country now, still in Navarro province. Arable fields dominated with small rolling hills and I could spot the odd field of vines and some knarled old olive trees along the side of the road. 

Poppies and olive trees

The village of Puenta de la Reina or Queen’s Bridge was small enough considering its geographic prestige. Just before the village one of the other camino routes from France, one that included several other routes that crossed the Pyrenees in the centre of the mountain range met the main camino route from St Jean and Pamplona and merged with it.  Thus Puenta de la Reina has been a place of some importance since the development of the camino in the 11^th and 12^th centuries – the first significant stop on the expanded camino. The river was wide at this point and the bridge was huge, surrounded by a grassy expanse. 

Disproportionately huge bridge entering small village of Puenta la Reina

In contrast the village was more or less one cobbled street. The albergue was small and very simple – dormitory fashion. Again I struck luck and got the bottom bunk. However I ended up swapping for a pair of French women who seemed stricken on entering the room to find only the top bunks free.   In the shower room the toilets had a chain that you pulled with old ceramic cisterns. I had the unexpected pleasure of being alone when I had my evening shower and sang out loud revelling in the echo that enhanced my voice. On the downside I left a load of toiletries behind that I only discovered the next day. I was mildly wondering why my rucksack seemed easier to do up early that morning only to have a sudden realisation later on the camino making me stop in my tracks – a flashback to having left my wash bag under a sink.

Back in Puenta de la Reina, maybe because it was Saturday or Pentecost or something, there was a rather festive air with many people milling on the street and clustered around the bars. I had expected a sleepy quiet village and was pleased to feel this lively, expectant air about the place.   A procession started up from the bridge end of the village and a band of young adults dressed in blue with instruments fronted by a huge trombone marched, singing and playing down the street. Everyone sashayed along behind them and the American lady and I got caught up in it all. A merry end to the day and we enjoyed it enormously. 

A few days into the camino and the weather was better – a little sunnier. I seemed to be escaping the blisters that were inflicting the other pilgrims/walkers like an outbreak of foot smallpox. I had various aches and pains but no worse than when I was doing a twelve hour shift in the nursing home where I worked. I was familiar with the shrieking agony of acknowledging aching feet and legs in my head, while at the same time performing various nursing tasks, generally on my feet. Yes I knew well how to ignore that all-encompassing weariness of being on your feet for hours at a time while trying to respond in the middle of the night to someone who needs emergency transfer to hospital or some such like event.  I was finding that on the camino I had the same aches and pains in my legs, back and feet but instead of having to shovel it all aside in my head in order to deal with the workings of being the only nurse on   a busy shift in a thirty two bedded nursing home, I could pause and look out over rolling pasture, rest my gaze on cypress trees on the horizon and distract myself from the pain that way – a much better option altogether. Again it made me realise what a hard slog frontline nursing was. Those bulls of Ernest Hemingway’s running in Pamplona, the Frenchman striding away from whatever troubles he was carrying. We all carry pain one way or the other and can end up running or trying to walk it away.