Reverted to "classic Blogger" and now photos work

Hello, everyone.

I tried again with the new Blogger setup. The photo upload was still not working. How these people managed to tangle up photo upload with google docs is beyond me. Maybe they should try proofreading their work.

I reverted the blog to the older format, which worked.

Now I can upload the photo of the two new Camino walking guides. They contain maps, suggestions for lodgings, brief descriptions of towns and areas of the path.

In this case, the path is the Camino Frances, which is the second-oldest of routes taken by pilgrims that begin roughly near the western Pyrenees. We walked it in 2014, going over the high route in the Pyrenees, called the Route Napoleon. (Blog posts from 2014 discuss this walk.) We would like to return to it and walk the lower route through the Pyrenees, called the Valcarlos route.

The very oldest Camino route to Santiago is the Primitivo, first taken as  royal progress/pilgrimage by the court of one of the Kings Pelayo when the relics were first rediscovered. It began in Oviedo, where his court was, and took a mountainous route to Santiago. We have not walked this route, but would like to in the future.

The oldest route from the Pyrenees (at least I think it is the oldest!) would be the Camino del Norte, which runs along the edge of the ocean. The villages are in little fjords and the path goes up and down a lot. Steeply up and down! (We walked this in 2017 and 2018, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.) The older routing connects to the French route at Arzua, and that is the way we walked.

I am not sure of the age of the Camino Portugues--interested readers can chime in their advice in the comments--but it used to run from Porto north to Santiago. Lately quite a number of people have been starting out in Lisbon. Like the Spanish routes, there are various walking options that allow one to either go inland or along the sea. We walked this in 2015, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.

Another old route is the Via de la Plata, the way of the platted road. (These days everyone remembers that "plata" means silver in Spanish and some call it the Silver Road.) This one is longer. We hope to walk it in the future.

As y'all can see, the go-slow retreat/pilgrimage on foot becomes an addiction. Also I have been privileged to visit Our Lady of Covadonga, the cathedral at Oviedo, and many other edifying churches.

It is not too much to say that I long for the days when we can walk the Camino again.

Israel pilgrimage: Fifteenth in series

Hello, everyone.

By now, we were close to the end of our visiting in the Holy Land. It was the day after the Stations of the Cross, which had been a lot of standing and a fair amount of walking on pavement. On this day we began by visiting the last surviving wall of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem.

(Herod's temple was I believe an enlargement of the second temple that was built by returnees during the Persians' rule. I think we're talking about the book of Nehemiah here, but am not completely sure. At any rate, later after the Maccabees pushed the imperialist Greek colonizers--who insisted that the occupants of this area become Greek pagans like themselves instead of letting them live their own lives with their own religion--there was unrest and much turnover in the kingship of the area. The Romans having come along by then, they grew impatient with the fighting over the king's seat and put in place the family of Herod as kings. One of the Herods decided to make the temple in Jerusalem really impressive and added on to it.)

The western wall foundation is the last remnant of Herod's temple. The rest was torn down during the rebellion of about 100 AD when the Romans rolled through in force and sacked the city.

Pigeons in a niche in the wall.

Ladies praying at the wall. (The local custom is for the ladies to have a section that is theirs and the gentlemen to have a section that is theirs.) It is the strictly observed custom for all the ladies to wear hats or scarves and all the gentlemen to wear a kippah, the Jewish mens' cap, while visiting the Western Wall.

Ruins in the vicinity of the wall.

There were a lot of people there. We saw a number of groups processing in to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of their young man, carrying canopies and singing and being accompanied by drummers and other musicians. Some of them were dancing as they went. (To respect the privacy of the various people in these groups, I am not putting those pictures up.)

After that visit, we went by bus over to the church of St Peter in Gallicante, St Peter of the Crowing Rooster. (So named because here St. Peter was called out by various persons as part of Jesus' party and in an attempt to remain low profile he denied that he knew Jesus. And the third time he did so, the rooster crowed.)

A good look at the front of the church of Gethsemane, which is too close to the sidewalk for a view of the mosaic above the entrance, but from across the Kidron valley shows beautifully.

St Peter in Gallicante is built over the ruins of the house of Caiaphas the High Priest, who as y'all will remember was the one who interrogated Jesus after His arrest and convened a (kangaroo-style) court to judge Him. After the group of elders they had on hand condemned Jesus to death, they stored Him in an old grain cellar, lowering Him by rope, until morning. Then they dragged Him over to Pilate to convince the Romans to permit the death penalty.

These days there are stairs down to the grain cellar. Groups take turns paying respects to the site.

After this visit, we went to Ein Kerem, which is not pronounced in the German fashion like I expected but instead as if the I in Ein isn't actually there, and visited the Church of the Visitation. (The Visitation is the second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, it is when Mary visited her cousin St. Elizabeth and is described briefly in the Gospel of Luke.)

Ein Kerem is in the hills and we had a very respectable walk uphill to the church. It was the longest continuous walk in our visit to the Holy Land.

There was a very peaceful outdoor chapel there where our pastor offered Mass.

When we returned to the parking area at the bottom we discovered that there is a walk in the hills around the area. The trail mark was oval and two-colored; it looked to me like the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings

but I'm sure the people who picked it out were probably unaware that a movie would pick that shape for the eye years later.

This was the last stop of another full day.

From Santillana del Mar to Comillas

Hello, everyone. The last post talked a little about the thirteenth day of walking. Today's post will go on from there--is it the fourteenth day of walking if it begins two mornings after arriving in Santillana? I can't remember any more if I counted days when we rested in Bilbao.

First, a picture of the little map the ladies at the Turismo gave us.

The top right is where the Camino path enters the village on a tiny road. The village is a very popular spot to visit, and especially on weekends and holidays many local folks drive over to visit the picturesque village and also the museum about Altamira Cavern.

When we walked on, we returned to a more coastal area. We also entered the area that many people had emigrated to Latin America from, and some of them made their fortunes there and then returned to their home towns and villages. They were nicknamed Indianos after they returned, all of this being in the late 19th century I believe, and they had a distinctive style of building.

This church showed two of the very common marks of the Indiano building style: the painted walls of the building, with the gingerbread accents, and the palm tree. It is said that the Indianos, when they returned to their homes, planted palms to remember their years in the Americas. Regarding the paint, most of the Indiano painted buildings that we saw had brighter paint colors than this. Red-orange was popular.

 In Ruiloba, we saw another style of very painted building. These folks have painted murals on both of the street facing sides of their place.

At the end of the day, waiting on the front patio--or sidewalk--of the Comillas old jail for the hospitalera to return and open for pilgrims, we saw some people working (painting? cleaning?) on an old house. I want to call it an old Victorian type house. They have brought in the power lift and the men on the basket are probably 40 or 50 feet up. The sight reminded us of the time we rented the Genie TZ50 for house painting of our own.

Training report (walk report)

Hello, everyone.

We were out of pocket for a few days, and didn't get as much walking in as we would have liked. We did, however, get a chance to visit Government Canyon State Natural Area outside of San Antonio, Texas. This park is really neat! And if you have gotten, and brought along, your Texas State Parks annual pass (plus photo ID) you get in free, too.

It's a little bit hard to find--there is only one entrance and it's near but not directly accessible from Loop 1604. Use your map skills to find the 90 degree bend in Galm Road, the spot with a traffic circle, and you're there.

We found a walking trail that was really excellent for walk training for the Camino: some slopes, plenty of rocks to step on or around, some flat surfaces, shade and sun mixed. (Estimated distance, round trip to the tracks, about 5 miles, give or take.) And, completely unexpectedly, the trail we walked goes to some fossilized dinosaur tracks.

 A small sample of the trail surface. It might look a little bit intimidating, but the rocks, even when loose, are not sliding shale pieces. They're relatively settled in their places. Just pick your feet up! Bike riders also use this trail--walking their bikes over the rougher rocky bits I think. Dogs are not allowed on the back side trails, but there are some flatter trails at the front, marked on the park map that are open to leashed pets to walk. Those trails are recommended for the younger set, too, being shorter and possibly easier for their little legs.

Some of the dinosaur tracks. I confess, I never in my life thought I would see this. There are at least three sets of tracks at the place they were found. These are the tracks from some kind of big four-legged creature that once walked on a silty beach. There are also some three-toed tracks that are described as "therapod tracks." The man we talked to at REI the next morning told us that the tracks were a complete surprise to everyone. The flash floods a year or two back exposed the bedrock where the tracks lie and gave park visitors a reason to walk a little farther than they might have. (It's not the shortest trail at the park.) There are cute little signs along the path telling the walker where to go and interpretive signage to assist the non-geologist to understand the sight.

One bit of warning about this park: if you depart at the time of the evening rush hour, when most people are leaving work and heading to their homes, you will be in a traffic jam. Just stay calm, match speed with the rest of the vehicles, and abide by the traffic signals. We turned right on Galm when leaving, crept along for a while, and then turned left at Culebra Road to get to Loop 1604. (Culebra is under construction, a project that looks to be adding another lane going each way, so the traffic jam at rush hour may ease somewhat by next year.) It's possible that going farther  around the traffic circle and retracing our earlier route on Galm to head back to Loop 1604 would have been easier, but it seemed like the traffic was almost equally busy both ways. Evening rush generally takes up about an hour or an hour and a half around the 5 pm to 6:30 pm time period, if one is wanting to plan the trip to avoid it.

The hours stated on the park entrance sign were Friday through Monday only, 7 am to 10 pm. If you choose to be there after the sunset time hits, you will certainly want a good flashlight. It is, after all, a natural trail only slightly improved for the visitors.

Visit report: Laguna Atascosa NWR

Hello, everyone.

As promised, a few notes about Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

This fascinating place is in Cameron County, Texas, and is reached by way of Route 100 (the highway that goes to Padre Island) or possibly by cutting off at San Benito from the expressway and winding around cross country. Either way it's a fair bit of tiny farm roads through flat country and you should really use a map. If you have Google Maps on your phone that will do fine. Part of the way is on roads that--well, they're paved, but there are some chuck holes and a bit of road construction is in the area. You should keep going anyway. It is worth it.

The visitor's center has maps which are marked with trails. (Also a nice little gift shop with books and things. They use it to fund research into ocelots.) There are quite a few routes that can be walked. There is also, at some times of the year, a tram tour of the loop around Pelican Lake and along the Laguna Madre, which takes 3 hours. It's 15 miles long, which if you were going to take snacks and water and walk it would make a good day's hike. No shade to speak of, but there is a tiny toilet hut at the halfway point. (Bring hand sanitizer!) We took the tram tour as it was just loading up when we got there.

The Laguna is beautiful and the place is loaded with various birds. We also saw a good amount of deer and more nilgai than I thought I'd ever see. Great and Lesser Blue Herons, Red Egrets (can you tell the tram was largely populated with birders checking off their lists?) and Ospreys and so on and so forth.

Pelican Lake, unusually dry at this time. The tree is a mesquite.

Walk report: Yturria Brush

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday we took advantage of the cool front's arrival and drove west to do some walking around.

We passed our destination in order to go to the McDonald's in Rio Grande City and eat. They served us probably the best breakfast burrito ever--fresh, tender tortilla with egg and so on wrapped up inside, and coffee.

Then we drove back the way we'd come and found the wildlife refuge area.

Sign in the small parking area.
Bottom edge of mapped tract is on US 83.

A view of the walking surface.
Brush is too close to path for wheel chair use to be practical.
Bikes, etc. are not allowed.

There were a lot of skippers around that day.

This native hibiscus is called Tulipan.

The cool front had brought rain with it the evening before, so there was no dust on the paths, and the parts of the trail that were on dirt road were too muddy to mess around with.

We saw: silvery leafed cenizo in bloom, the naked twigs of ephedra shrubs all over the place, ebano, the above-pictured tulipan, some yellow lantana, Mexican oregano with its tiny white blossoms, ojo de vibora with its translucent white berries and black seeds, a few tunnels that could have been from ground squirrels or tarantulas, and a lot of nervous green caterpillars that threw themselves down silken threads when their branches were disturbed. Also there was one noisy bird on a branch, whose calls seemed to be keeping almost all of the wildlife in hiding. We weren't able to identify the bird but it looked bigger than a dove and smaller than a turkey vulture. (For what that's worth!)

We hope to go back again when the ground is a bit drier and we can proceed farther into the brush. It's beautiful.

Happy New Year

Hello, everyone.

This old picture, and recent news accounts about Mississippi flooding, brought memories to mind:

Piasa bird (early 2000's renewal)

This is the Piasa bird. The people of the Alton, Illinois area put this local sight onto tee shirts and other things--and when the paint fades out, someone crawls up there to renew the picture.

The Piasa bird has been on the cliffs overlooking the mighty Mississippi since Pere Marquette came through in his little flotilla of canoes. Likely it was quite old even then. The local folks are so attached to it that, when the original cliffside was wrecked in building a riverside road, they restored the bird to another, nearby, cliffside. Occasionally someone will get silly about the risk of falling and put up a wooden billboard with the Piasa bird in the area. It is neither worthy of the local people nor of the Piasa bird art to do this, in my opinion.

The Victorian/Edwardian enthusiasm for lovely stories about things of interest--think of George Washington's thrown quarter here--also has affected the Piasa bird. A local paper in the very early years of the 20th century, or the late years of the 19th century, published a long article about Chief
Quatoga, the self sacrificing Indian chief who died saving the Illini from the Piasa bird. (Well, I think it was the Illini tribe--but it's been years since I read the article.) Apparently the local Indians had engaged war, bloody warfare without end or mercy, and the Piasa bird had become an eater of the fallen warriors (and noncombatant villagers) to the extent that Quatoga had to hunt the Piasa bird down. The brave warrior Quatoga died in his successful attempt to rid the area of the man-eating menace. It would be really interesting if we could find out the folkloric roots behind this tale, and get some idea of the actual age of the Piasa bird on the cliffs of southern Illinois.

There is an old--very old--map of the Mississippi which shows the Piasa bird in approximately where it is now. I think that this map is either one made by Marquette or copied from his notes. But I don't have any image of it, nor any further information about it.

If you should go to the southern Illinois-eastern Missouri area of the United States, you should drive down the Great River Road past Alton and the other towns along the Mississippi area and see the Piasa bird for yourself.

New developments on the framing and hanging

Hello, everyone.

The map of the Camino de Santiago came in the mail. And today I got it out of the tube, laid it on the table under a whole lot of books and CD cases to flatten it and keep the cat from napping on it, and trawled the store room for a frame. We had one! It had a poster of "modern military aircraft" in it, but the child who had it hanging has moved out some time back and the poster was just sitting there, taking up the frame. So I took it out and put the map into the 2 foot by 3 foot frame. Added matboard in back of the map, and also used the cardboard the frame came with and the clips.

This isn't the best picture, and I need to get the hammer out and move one of the nails on the side frames, but here it is:

AD 1445 map of the Camino de Santiago. (Please ignore the flash reflection!)

Also today I made it rain! (Well, unless somebody washed their car, that is.) I hung the clothes out on the line, so of course it rained right after the clothes got dry. And I was not home! But arrived home from the store before it progressed beyond sprinkling, grabbed the clothes on the way into the house, and watched the rain quit falling.

I would have been fine with a good soaking after I took the clothes in, really. The garden is dry and I find that the patience to stand there drizzling a good soak onto each pepper and tomato and eggplant and bean and cucumber and the corn patch just isn't there.

But the pecan trees in back have fruited big time this year, and every time I go outside there are a bunch of nuts on the ground. Only a few of them have been invaded by ants. (I so dislike the ants coming out of the nut in my hand and biting me.)

On another note, I've got the birdies taking an afternoon "constitutional" almost every day, so Mr. Guinea isn't nearly as grumpy to the hens. Especially when I put their morning food out in three distinct, separated piles that each is thick enough to be opaque, so he isn't worried that Mrs. Guinea won't have enough to eat. And I include a scoop of kitty chow in with the layer feed, to increase the protein in their diets.

The other day he found a caterpillar on the ground while I was feeding them. She was happily pecking away at the bird food, and he was picking up the caterpillar and calling her. Over and over. Finally she decided she'd had enough of the Layer Feed and wandered over to see what he was all excited about. He's really devoted to her, but she acts like she goes to sleep wondering why it was her fate that her One True Love is such a jerk and won't let her be friends with the other birdies. Meanwhile, he's very protective of her and concerned that she gets all of any food she likes. And when she goes to lay an egg, he stands nearby and guards her.

If he hadn't killed a couple of cockerels, and wasn't so determined to run the hens off whenever he thinks the food pile is too thin, it would be completely sweet and romantic. Instead it's one of those mixed-bag things. I go from thinking what a sweet mate he is to needing to go into the pen and chase him around so he'll understand that the hens are under my protection. Meanwhile, the Barred Rock hen (Princess Stripey) can't decide if she can hang with the gray guineas or not. Sometime Mr. Guinea lets her, sometimes he chases her away. I guess he isn't sure if Princess Stripey is a guinea or a chicken!

Just a few thoughts

Hello, everyone.

I will have an update on the shell beading project soon--have scanned the interwebs and discovered ways to do fringe. Also, expanding on the fringe for the Autumn Leaf amulet pouch on a web site (slips my memory just now) I have sketched a design for the fringe at the bottom of this square pendant with a scallop shell. Bonus points: I can use some of the blue enameled crosses that I have lying around in my (large) bead stash.

And one more thing--
When my sweetie and I first felt the pull of the Camino de Santiago, we didn't know what it would be like. What it would involve. And the depth of the roots that is would grow into our souls. Every day I think about the Camino--what it was like. What I wish I'd done a bit differently. What I'd do now if we were doing it again. (Not quite the same as the previous.) What routes I'd like to walk if we are so blessed as to go again.

Not only do I miss the good foods we discovered in Spain--ham cones! Pulpo a gallega with pan! Gambon al ajillo with pan! etc. etc.--but I have begun to make my own baguette bread so we can eat some of the wonderful foods we ate one the Camino, and during the days at the end when we were exploring and waiting for the date of our return reservation home. (No, I'm not recreating the airport food from the 1 day flight series that turned into a 3 day flight series.)

And periodically, like a growing crystal that is discovered by a gem hunter, I find a new lesson that the Camino has taught me.

It's not only the urge to have shells everywhere. The urge to create jewelry of shells and Crosses of Santiago. The every-morning feeling that it's time to walk, even before the alarm goes off.

The Camino de Santiago takes root in a pilgrim. I'm still a pilgrim. I don't think I'll ever stop being a pilgrim. And that itself is probably one of the lessons of the Camino.

Just after the stairs at the entry to the city of Santiago, studying the map of the city. I never felt sorry for the bicycle pilgrims until tha tlast day, when I witnessed them toting their bikes down the stairs alongside us. But at the bottom, they got to ride again. We walked the couple-three miles from those stairs to the center of the city on our feet.

This was another of the approximately 2200 pictures we took on our pilgrimage trip. :-) Enjoy.

Lesson Absorption is Gradual

Hello, everyone.

I am coming to the conclusion that the Pilgrimage to Compostela doesn't really end when you get on the plane to go home. (Even if you don't have to try again to get out of Spain!)

I find myself trying to process it by, for example, making quilt squares with scallop shells on them.

The first draft of the scallop applique, with color mates. A second draft has been pieced, but not appliqued. I intend to make photos of the assembly of that version, as the angles problem has been worked out now.

(Yes, the scallop square is necessarily applique. I don't even want to think about how tricky it would be to piece that many odd and curved seams. The square would probably outright refuse to lie flat at the end of it, too.)

And trying to make a beading pattern of a scallop shell--the peyote stitch one I started with is presently being "unwoven" back to where I should have bent lines more--but it's a learning process.

Early pic of the beaded scallop picture, right about when I think the design went all wonky. On sheet in background, the pencil sketches for Cross of Santiago, the yellow waymarker arrow, and the scallop shell.

This morning I am thinking that I should just toss over the weaving in progress and start again. Since there are three different threads in it, and at some point one finds it impossible to continue unstringing the threads because of the add-ins and the finishing-offs.

We learned to go with the flow a lot more than once would have been possible. It started on the very first day, when we arrived in Biarritz. There had been a plan for that day--a plan that had involved a lot of looking on the web and considering maps and so on--that involved staying the night in Bayonne, then moving the 20 miles down the way to St. Jean, then the following day (decompressed from plane travel) beginning to walk. This all went by the wayside when we encountered a lady pilgrim from Scotland, who suggested we share a cab to St. Jean. And we did.

I think the pony in St. Jean knew more about what I was doing than I did.

Now I look back and consider what I heard about the weather that hit on the day we would have been starting to walk, and I'm grateful that the plan went by the wayside. Because on May 19 the weather was pretty good. Give or take an evil headwind. Way better than the rainstorms and snow and much stronger winds that hit the next two days, which I heard about from other pilgrims. (I haven't been talking much about the other pilgrims we met on the trail. That's because I don't feel really comfortable spilling whatever they told me, and I overheard, and I guessed without any evidence, without any permission from them nor any expectation that there would be a blog post in the future. It just feels too much like a peeping tom putting up a videocam next to somebody's fence aimed at their uncurtained bathroom window.) On May 20, I heard, the snow was so bad that people were calling cabs to drive up the mountain and get them--one man said that he saw a long string of headlights through the storm, collecting stranded pilgrims to carry them down to start over again. He told of his start when we met him in Santo Domingo de Calzada--he'd decided that he'd freeze to death before a cab could come to him, and kept going. I could not have done that day on that unsheltered trail up the mountside.

I am firmly of the belief that when one goes on pilgrimage, God watches. And now I see that the evidence of His guiding hand was there even on our very first day in France. I look back over the walk and see many more things like that than I realized at the time, too. Directions--unsought--from strangers, more than once. Lodging when we couldn't find it. Encouragement from a passing pilgrim. Too many times to count, really.

Before I close this post, a feet picture set:

They look a lot better two months after returning than they did in Pamplona, don't they? (I will let you go back to that post if you want to see something really scary.) The purple toes are coming right along, the athlete's foot is gone, the blisters are gone. So, if you go and find yourself covered in blisters early on, just go to the pharmacy and get the bandages and use the antiseptic--hand sanitizer if that's what you have on you--every day and change bandages a lot. Wear your shower sandals in the evening so the feet will air out a lot.

Final note on feet: life is not fair. My sweetie only had one blister the entire 500 miles. But he had a new plantar fasciitis develop--the second one--which bothered him a lot. And the Roman roads with their pokey rocks were very hard for him--made his feet more sensitive to other pokey rocks later on. Ibuprofen gel, yes! Ibuprofen at bedtime, yes! And foot rubs.

I encourage anyone reading to make the pilgrimage. And accept that once you do, it will take root inside you.

We are now reading Mr. Kelly's Kindle book about the Via de la Plata, and Mr. Brierly's book about the Camino Portuges. Who can know whether we will be blessed to make another pilgrimage in the future? Or even to repeat the Camino Frances, the route we walked this summer?

Not just another day on the trail

Hello, everyone.

When we left off with the Camino, we had stopped for the night at Paloma Y Lerma, a wonderful albergue some 6 km. short of Sarria.

Sarria is a decent-sized town. According to the Brierly map book, it has more residents than Astorga. Sarria is livelier, though. It's also a key point on the Camino route: it is just outside of the 100 kilometer distance circle from Santiago.

Cool shells in the railing along the river

It was around 8 in the morning. Not a lot of folks were in the old town area at that time.

Mosaic pavement at entrance to the Mercedarian (or Trinitarian?) monastery in Sarria

Why does that matter? Because a walking pilgrim must walk the last 100 km into Santiago to get a certificate from the Pilgrims' Office in Santiago. (Obviously, many people walk farther than that!)

People start walking the Camino Frances in different places. We started in St. Jean, in the French Pyrenees. Some people start from Roncesvalles, the monastery just on the Spanish side of the border along the trail. Others start in Leon, or Pamplona. And a great collection of folks with not very much time to invest in the pilgrimage start out in Sarria.

This produces a change in the atmosphere along the trail, as student groups on their school break and older ladies' caffeeklatsches join up, full of energy and talk, and enjoy their healthful walk in the countryside. Sometimes they leave their luggage on a bus and walk for an hour or so, to experience the path, then after their meal break they get back on the bus and go on. The pilgrim who has been walking for weeks finds himself tempted to resent this--he begins to think that these other folks aren't really pilgrims, because they're not quiet, they're not working as hard, and basically they aren't approaching it the same way he does.

We don't own the Camino. (I refuse to speculate about the inverse.)

We are where we are on the Camino because it's where we, personally, need to be. Presumably the noisy kids who are calling back and forth and blocking the path and spreading out all over the road (when the path is on the road) are where they personally need to be also. But I confess that I found it very tiring to be enveloped by the teenagers--we started calling them the Children's Brigade--who acted like teenagers on school break always do.

 After we passed through Sarria, we passed through many villages, and along many, many cow paths, and eventually reached the town of Portomarin. (27 km for the day) This town is on a hill, overlooking a wide river and a bridge. We stopped in Portomarin at our usual time--about 2:30 pm--and were glad to call it a day. We did see other folks, later in the day, who hadn't stopped until almost 6 in the afternoon, and they were having a lot of trouble finding a place to sleep. The influx of new pilgrims at the final part of the Camino means that there is a lot more competition for the available beds.

The church in Portomarin. If I remember correctly, it was moved uphill to keep it from being flooded when they built a dam on the river, and reassembled in its new site.

During our walk that day, we had gone up and down many hills, and through many woodlots, and over many rocky spots on the trails. The slopes didn't bother us nearly as much any more. And since we'd passed Sarria that day, we knew we were close to the end.

Crossing the bridge to Portomarin.

I didn't even know how close we were getting

After sleeping in the state-run alberge at Hospital de la Condesa we got back on the trail again. The first thing we discovered was that no, we weren't through with steep climbs. In fact, we had one before breakfast! The path just before Alto do Poio is just as steep as the path up to O Cebreiro. It's not as long, thank heavens, but it's certainly just as steep. And at the top of it was a bar and an albergue. All I could think of was that I was so glad we had stopped at Hospital instead of continuing on to this, the very next albergue on the trail.

After eating toast (huge pieces freshly sliced when I asked for it, and then toasted in the oven) and cafe leche, we continued on. At the far side of Triascastela, we went right toward San Xil, wanting the shorter route. (Triacastela is a lovely village. There are some little stores. They don't want you to bring your pack inside the door.)

It was a good thing that we had stopped at the very last grocery in Triacastela to pick up some sardines and some bread. We walked through a whole lotta scenic nothing for a long time after that. San Xil wasn't even a wide spot in the road. It was just a building that had nothing to do with serving food or anything like that. We did find a picnic table out in the middle of nowhere--it even had a soda machine, but it didn't sound like it was working--and we put sardines onto the bread and drank water from our bottles to wash it down and kept on going. We did see some people who had turned that way expecting to find a bar or restaurant with tables and food and drinks--poor souls. If I had had enough to give everyone a morsel I would have. The moral of the story here is to be prepared. This is about the only time we wished we had brought food along that we actually had brought food along. Not everything that is a "thing" in the map books is a place you can get food. Sometimes it's just a name so you know you're still on the right trail.

We stopped for the night at San Mamed del Camino, which may or may not qualify as a wide spot in the road, but it certainly was not a really built-up area. Among the scattered farms and houses was the Paloma y Lerma Albergue. More vegetarian food--very tasty!--very relaxing patio and yard, chickens to watch, and friendly hospitaleros. It was refreshing.

At the Alto San Roque, a statue of St. Roch--minus his dog.

View of the valley in the morning, before the early fog had lifted.

Capilla de San Pedro, a wayside chapel along the trail past San Xil.

The morning after sleeping at Paloma Y Lerma, we walked through Sarria, and the atmosphere of the Camino changed. This post is long enough, so I'll leave that for tomorrow.

Ponferrada

Hello, everyone.

We had slept in Acebo and did a very short (16 km) day into Ponferrada. This put us in town before noon--but there are things to see in Ponferrada.

One of the regional costumes on display at the museum in Ponferrada.

We went to a museum there, before the Albergue San Nicolas de Flue opened, and then sat around at the albergue courtyard resting.

This albergue is a parish one, run by the local church. It had a big patio with shade and tables, and another patio that was paved with tile, a collection of round tables, and a square water pool. Oops, it wasn't just a pool. A number of people were sitting around and putting their feet in the pool and otherwise relaxing when, apparently, a hospitalero with a sense of humor walked by and turned on the fountain jets for a minute. You should have seen them all jump! And about a half an hour later, the hospitaleros were ready and set up their table for registration. (All the backpacks had been placed in something like a line, and when they came out, people went and stood with their packs.) As usual, the bathroom/shower space was "mixto" but this one came with two additional wrinkles: the one inside the main building--where the dorms were--had urinals outside of the shower cubicle doors (ick--these were in addition to the toilet stalls with doors on them) and there were additional showers in another building on the other side of the patio area. The patio was also decorated, besides the trellis and vine over the picnic tables, with a wooden sculpture. Think "totem pole" here and you'll get the idea. I think it was a Camino themed totem pole, but I kept thinking of Washington state Indian tribal poles.

Totem pole scuplture at Albergue San Nicolas de la Flue

Patio area at the albergue. On the wall is a tile mural of St. Nicolas de Flue.

Ponferrada has a nicely restored Templar castle, with explanatory signs. There was a diorama on display, too.

Looking out at Ponferrada from the Templar castle walls

We went grocery shopping for our dinner--we didn't want to try and find a bar to eat in, we just wanted to eat something--and found tomato juice! (I don't know why, but Spanish groceries almost never had any tomato juice for sale.) We got that, and also some meat empanada and olives to eat with it for dinner, and had a half bottle of the juice left to drink in the morning. We also bought another empanada package to eat for lunch the next day, plus some napoleons with ham and cheese inside for breakfast. No coffee, but we didn have the rest of the tomato juice, which we had put into the fridge overnight.

The internet provider for the albergue was the paintballnavarra one, which I could never figure out how to access the blog with, so I didn't do any update. Just sent email to family.

We went through Villafranco del Bierzo at midday. It is a lovely village with a pretty river, park, and a bridge.

We walked to Perejes that day. In Perejes the albergue (another government one, I think) had no bunks. Just rows of beds. The building was ancient, but in good repair. No washer--just faucet with rubbing board, and a line strung along the fence to hang clothes on. Perejes itself was basically a wide spot in the road, reached by a short side road and with no side streets that we noticed. We did find a bar patio to relax at.

The next day we hoped to reach O Cebreiro, which is a high point on the path. We went to bed at a good time, and then somebody got the bright idea to flip on the lights in the room at 5:15 in the morning. (No, it wasn't the first one up. They'd already left the building. It was some other inconsiderate person.) We left a little earlier than usual. Only about 23 km to reach O Cebreiro.

According to the map book, that meant we had 179 km to go to Santiago.

Leon: Wow

Hello, everyone.

As you remember from my last post, we got to Leon pretty early. If we hadn't had something we needed to do, we would have kept on going. We did, however, have something we needed to do: mail home unneeded stuff.

Ancient walls of the city, which we passed through at the Money Gate.

Cathedral of Leon. Right hand door is for tourist entry only--pay admission, hours restricted to when it doesn't conflict with Mass. Left hand door is for worshippers; it opens 5 minutes before Mass begins.

 

Main center door of the Cathedral. Beautiful carvings, both the stone lintel and the wooden door. Statue in center is the Virgen Blanca, Our Lady holding the Christ Child.

 

Sign explaining the archeological digs. (See below.)

The archeological dig, showing a Roman encampment. The dig was later covered with glass tiles so people can see it.

We stayed at the Benedictine hostel in Leon. This is not only in the old city, it's next to a plaza full of ancient cobblestoned pavement. But we walked carefully and survived our approach to the front door. The dorms are upstairs here, and as usual we had an up and a down--my sweetie really preferred the top bunks. And I preferred the bottom ones. As we had arrived early on a Sunday, we left our stuff at the hostel and went back to the Cathedral for the 11 o'clock Mass. When we got there, we read the sign again, wandered in circles, and eventually found an old man who was telling everyone that wanted to goto Mass to just be patient and wait near the left hand door. Promptly at five minutes before the time, that door opened and all of us scooted inside to pray.


After Mass we  wandered Leon taking in the sights. We visited San Isidoro church, which was beautiful.  We found outside the church doors both a gypsy market (souvenirs and cheeses) and an archeological excavation of the ancient Roman VII Legion camp.

We kept hearing a BOOM! that sounded like cannon shots. We figured it was some kind of fiesta cannon-firing and started hunting for the post office and the library. (Post office to mail a box, library to try and post an update here.) After much wandering, and much map checking, we discovered a park area in the center of the city. The park was across the street from the post office--which would be open at 8:30 in the morning. We discovered the Zumba class there, all gathered in a crowd with the dance leader on a stage at the front. And as we were looking around at the scenery we heard a Whoosh! that sounded very unexpected and really scary. My sweetie said it sounded rather a lot like an RPG. I thought it sounded like a bottle rocket. At 1 in the afternoon on a Sunday in the park full of people and trees. Then we happened to see where it came from: an old man standing on the sidewalk with a wooden holder in one hand and a really big bottle rocket in the other. He lit off the rocket and it Whooshed! up into the air and then it exploded with the loud boom that we had been hearing. All around him, everybody else was just carrying on like nothing was happening. We decided that the locals probably knew what to do and copied them as well as we could.

The next morning we stayed around, eating Ham Toast at a little restaurant and generally twiddling our thumbs until the post office opened.

The post office had numbers for service, one set for mailing and another for picking up. We took our number and waited around with our little red bag of clothes, first aid kit, and so on, then mailed it. The package was 2.3 kilos--about 5 pounds. Then we found the Camino trail markers and got on the move. It was about 9:00.

Parador Hotel at San Marcos Square.

Santiago Matamoros--detail of front of Convento de San Marcos.

On the way out of the city we passed through the Plaza San Marcos. The present-day Parador is in the restored building of the Convento de San Marcos, the former headquarters of the Order of the Knights of Santiago. The plateresque facade on the building is amazing.

Villarente

Hello, everyone.

We left El Burgo Ranero bright and early as usual, leaving the key to the room in the door as requested. I hd been afraid that the day would be stormy and wet, but aside from a few sprinkles there was no rain. By late morning the san came out. It was not yet noon when we hit Mansilla de las Mulas, so we kept on to Villarente.
This town is not an end-point on the Brierly map set, but it seemed to us to be more active economically than Mansilla. (I can't tell the relative population, because the map doesn't give a figure for Villarente.) There we stayed at the Albergue San Pelayo, which isn't on the main drag, but on the street behind. Follow the yellow arrow on the side street, bend left and go uphill a ways. Ignore the perfume of the barn that must be behind one of the walls--it doesn't carry on to the albergue anyway. Pretty, grassy garden area with clotheslines in the sun (not  under a roof) and also an eating place. Friendly hospitalera, too!

Pretty irrigation canal (maybe just a controlled stream? But it's awfully straight) en route. In the background, another one of the many planted woodlots we saw everywhere.

A family wine cellar, dug into a hill. There are many of these along the Camino.

Prices of fuel by the liter (basically a quart). These were typical. Ouch.

The next morning, we left at our usual time and walked the 13 km to Leon. About 8 or 8:30 we heard a pounding, penetrating bass beat: DUM  DUM  DUM. As it was a Sunday, we were surprised and didn't know what it might be. As we hit the city, though, it faded from our awareness. Imagine our surprise, later in the day, to find that across the street from the post office, in the middle of everything, the ladies were having Zumba In The Park. Apparently it had started early, too.

Zumba! In Leon, Spain, on Sunday