Category: The Trip

Doris drove me to St Pancras.  Took a couple of photos that I’ll no doubt regret.  Kissed me.  Smiled and shrugged her shoulders.  You’re on your own, fella.

The Eurostar left on time at 0755, a lyrical French voice imploring us to use all available luggage space and keep seats free as it’s going to be busy – which it wasn’t.  French chap seated beside me in our “duo”.  Well-dressed and “scentless” – a good start, particularly in Summer because I have a very sensitive nose when it comes to body odor….and I am after all, going to the Mecca of body odor (France just beats Belgium by a nose, pun intended).  He moved seats.  Maybe read my mind.

I responded to a friend’s email, apologising for my recent hermit-like behaviour. I’m sharing it because it’s relevant: “I’m in this curious mental state of being increasingly relaxed but seeking a bit more structure, finding it liberating to be out but equally, missing the analytical work and knowing that I have to and want to go back to work but not knowing what the hell I want to do, or where.  Screwed up, huh?  If you hit a mid-life crisis, aren’t you supposed to buy a Maserati or a boat, get hair plugs or cheat on your wife?  So, I do wonder what this is all about…and I’m becoming increasingly certain that walking alone in hot weather with a heavy pack on my back isn’t going to tell me, but it seemed like a good idea six weeks ago”. And that really says it all.  We are where we are.

Right now, that’s Paris.

Taxi from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse was €25 including tip.  My little treat to myself .  Very polite lady driver in a very clean, hybrid something-or-other. Traffic not too bad.  Clear skies.  Hot.  Parisienne women dressing as Parisienne women do.  Yummmm.  Espressos and ciggies under canopy in street cafés….  Shouldn’t these people be at work?  Place de Madelaine and Eres, where Doris once bought a swimsuit. Oh how I love Paris!!  Quite definitely my favorite city.  Nowhere like it.  Annoying!  Sustained the first damage though – somewhere between taxi and train, I lost the basket to one of my walking poles.  Bummer.  Won’t be the last loss.  Oh, the mood swings…

1252 and we’re off on time.  Again.

The TGV is the dog’s bollocks.  I’d forgotten how cool.  Leaving Gare de Montparnasse for Biarritz en route via the new rail line that the taxpayers recently built for the Socialistas.  Jeremy Corbyn, eat your heart out.  These trains are delightful.  New.  Clean.  Smell nice.  Big display in French, English and Spanish – no German, oddly.  Speedo too – currently 262km/h and winding up rapidement.  Looks like we top-ticked at 300 km/h (186mph) as I scribble.  I’m on the upper level with a seat to myself.  These solo seats have a vanity mirror built in so one can do one’s makeup.  A 5W USB port, a spot light in the arm and a dimmer wash light and a mains-power plug point in the desk.  The tray-come-desktop comes down in two parts, there’s space for book/paper storage and there’s a foldaway cup holder.  Lastly a pop-out coat hook and seats that recline as if they’re on gliders.  You connect to the internet via tgvconnect.com and you get all the instructions in English, complete a with moving map and a “Diploma for 300km/h“.  This is what taxes are for.

You’ve probably heard that Britain/Rosbif suffers from poor productivity but no one can figure out why for sure.  The French/Hexagones are more productive yet their labor laws are more stringent and they work less.  Arrogantly, I ask myself, how can Hexagone productivity be superior to Rosbif productivity?  Maybe because of the Scots?  More on that bottomless pit another time.  If investment in infrastructure and capital goods has anything to do with it (it won’t take a week by road to get your goods to an airport, by which time they’ve perished), the Hexagones had the right idea, and the Rosbif are doomed.  It’s not clear how we get back in the game being so far behind, and worse, at a time when our government is in tatters and the cabinet feuding like spoiled children.

As I bemoan our barren future, I console myself by trying to buy some cheap wine in a plastic bottle, and I proffer Mr MasterCard.  “TGV Bar” man looks at me.

“Carte étranger…?” he asks

“Oui.”

“Ne-marche-pas!” he says.  Won’t even let me try.

So cash it is.  No tip.

Luddite to say the least, and a vivid counterpoint to the pinnacle of TGV technology.  It is oddly-comforting (to a Rosbif bridling at the corn-holing he’s about to receive from a smug, unelected EU apparatchik) to see Europe remain dysfunctional despite all the guff and chops-licking over “Botchit”.  Thesis intact.  Europe can never be a proper, functioning “union”.  Something as basic as cross-border credit card payment restrictions in the 21st Century highlights the hurdles still out there.  It’s a sign.  As much as the Hexagones get some of it right, it’s more the stuff that stays within l’Hexagone, domestic bliss – the ‘infra’ in infrastructure.  It’s not that mine was a Rosbif card that they where instructed to decline to be punitive;  Spanish or Bosch cards would be just the same.  “Étranger”.  Which my iPad auto-correct unwittingly changes to “stranger”.

Yay!  Another (small) victory.  We’ve arrived at Bordeaux St Jean.  LATE.  The big, flashy, tax-payer-funded monitor reads “Dax 16:15 16:20”.  So, only the Swiss run on time, and they’re not in the EU.  Money can’t buy taste, as they say.  Nor can it ensure punctuality.

The Camino really is quite chummy.  I was approached by a chap at Bayonne station as I waited for the local to St Jean Pied de Port, my jumping off point.  We had the same backpacks and were waiting from the same train

“English or Espagnol?”

“English” I replied, as we shook hands.

“Figured we might be doing the same thing…”

This was Maurice –  a burned-out physician turned private equity executive from Sacramento.  His motherboard was fried by trying to juggle a hideous travel schedule, two young kids and an understanding (physician) wife.  He’d resigned but unexpectedly secured another job, so the Camino was squeezed in at short notice.  He only had 3 weeks, so he was going to omit chunks.  We registered at the pilgrim office, wandered around the town, had a pilgrim dinner, bid goodbye and I have no doubt I’ll see him somewhere along the trail.  Delightful.

Tonight I sleep with strangers in a shared room that costs €30.  Livin’ the high life.  Tomorrow, I walk 27km from St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles.  Supposedly the hardest leg of the lot because of the changes in elevation – start at 200m above sea level, climbing to 1400m then ascending back down to 900m.  Apparently there is no warm-up.

I should have known.  The buzz saw in the bed beside me foretold of discomfort.  I just didn’t realize the degree.

I’m utterly spent.

“Drained” does not even begin to describe the day.

A full rucksack and severe changes in elevation have a compound effect, not to mention that ALL of the uphill work is at the beginning and just when you thought you’d be ok on the flat with jelly legs that wont respond to command, ALL of the downhill work is at the end.  They didn’t mention that in the guidebooks.  My legs are in shock.  Tomorrow will be interesting.

The day began at 7am in dank gloom, moved to warm fog, changed to windy, out came the sun, and as I peck away here, we’re about to get heavily rained on.  The foggy phase was the uphill work and I was astonished at just how much I sweated.  It wasn’t hot but it was clammy and it was strenuous.  Everyone was panting vigorously.  There was no age-descrimination.

Pays Basque turns into Navarre as you cross a non-descript “border”, that is poorly sign-posted and preceded by a cattle grid.  It evokes memories of the French Resistance moving surreptitiously in WW2 and more recently ETA and the separatists moving without trace as they plied their own modern-day “resistance”.  Freedom fighter or terrorist and all that gubbins…

The landscape is stark and foreboding.  It has an angry, jagged quality to it – rather like the staccato service in the cafes and restaurants.  Sharp mountains rise out of nowhere.  Deep, deep valleys and crevasses are cleft between them.  You don’t want to trip and fall down one of those things.  Game over.  Quite amazing.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

I arrived at Roncesvalles at 3pm.  8 hours with stops is about the middle of the guidance they supply in the books.  At my age (42), I’m ok with that, and as my mate Paddy Dempsey reminded me, it’s not a race.

“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser”.  Yogi Berra.

I checked into the Albergue (€12 ka-ching, thank you), showered, moisturized (yup), did my laundry by hand and decided I couldn’t wait until 7pm, which was the earliest sitting for the €10 pilgrim dinner.  Paella Mariscos at Casa Sabina was calling.

No sign of Maurice.

Sleeping arrangements are in mixed dormitories sub-divided into four bunk-bed “rooms” without a door.  Everyone has a locker big enough for the pack though whether the bunks are big enough for the body will be determined. When I arrived, a cheerful but quite smelly Spanish cyclist was in my bunk. I knew he was Spanish because he spoke Spanish to me before I could utter a syllable.  I knew he was in my bunk because his smelly shit was strewn all over it.  I knew he was illiterate because there was a very clear, simple diagram showing bunks and numbers, and he had a ticket with 218 on it which did not match my bunk (219) with his shit strewn all over.  Little things.  Not rocket science. I agreed to swap bunks for obvious sanitary reasons.

I warned earlier about a sensitive nose and no doubt this will be a recurrent theme because it really pisses me off.  Personal hygiene is so straightforward to get right but so nasty when not attended to – clearly a subject not taught in many European schools.  I’ve travelled around a bit, and while the British, Americans and Asians are not without the occasional fugue, I am struck by how often I come across this condition more severely no with greater frequency in Europe.  I just sticks in my mind – as well as my olfactory channels.  Easy ditty for school kids.:

a dab here 

a dab there

means you are clean

and I enjoy fresh air

Addendum: Don’t order the Paella at Casa Sabine if you ever go.  It was horrible, over-cooked crisp rice with two anemic shrivels of squid, one half of mussel and two shrimp that had grey, dried-out meat in them.  I paid because I don’t have the language skills to adequately express my displeasure and eloquently tell them to fuck off.  No tip, not that that’s punitive in Europe.

Tomorrow is a 22km leg from Roncesvalles to Zubiri, with two distinct downhill segments, the latter at the end, descending from 900m to 500m.  Weather not looking so great. There’s a sign outside: 798km to Santiago de Compostela.

I was actually in two minds to go to Zubiri or to Larrasoana, a further 5.3km.  A wet pack, a pressing blog and a sense of trying to understand time-management around this trek (my intentions to read fiction, learn Python, correspond with Ayaz have not proven plausible) made me take the shorter of the two.  So, I’m sitting here at a very basic cafe surrounded by the Bosch on the left and Spanish on the right.  It’s rather nice.  No smells other than fragrant, inexpensive food and the sounds of heavy road traffic over my right shoulder.

This morning started with rain which turned into drizzle but not before it had permeated my pack (don’t believe that a pack cover works; in my case it did not).

The morning also started with American inanity.  Everyone gets up, does their ablutions, goes downstairs, checks the weather, quietly gears up and goes.  Quietly.  Not Thelma and Sherm.  I don’t know what it is, and I am HUGE a fan of the ‘Land of the Free, Home of the Brave’, but Americans JUST HAVE TO TALK.  It doesn’t need to be to anyone in particular.  There’s just a need, at a primal, cellular level, to bump their gums.  Superiority complex?  Be the center of attention?  Inferiority complex?  Practicing dormant social skills?  Unable to deal with quiet?  Unclear.  These two were projecting their own, redundant, internal monologue, husband in particular…

“Hey hun, it’s raining so we’re gonna get wet, so we need to dress to keep dry”

“Yuh gotta tie them boots tight enough to keep the rain out, but not to cut off circulation”

“And these packs, yuh gonna have to put the rain cover on, real tight.  Like this….”

“And, yuh know,  we’re gonna have to cinch the stuff ties real tight.  Real tight.…”

“Really” is the adverb.  “Really tight”.  Twat.  Not “real”.  Ugh.

Everyone is looking at them – sideways in that indirect, judgmental fashion that Europeans are  great at.  Please, please, STFU.  It’s 0615 and we don’t need to hear it.  Even James Naughtie, preaching and railing on Radio Four is preferable at that time of day.  Almost.  His pristine articulation and sentence construction at least buys him some forbearance.

Captain and Mrs Oblivious got their hands on a matching, last-season odd lot from REI: matching beige caps, matching Ex Officio slate blue shirts, matching Ex Officio beige shorts and matching Salomon shoes.  So pretty.  So stereotyped.  That was the last I saw of them until I sat down here and they cruised by our eclectic European gathering of mid-afternoon diners.  The man, still clearly dumber of the two saying:

“Gee hun, I’m worried. I dunno where we can eat now….”

“How about this cafe here; it’s open”

“Aw yeah.  So it is.”

They walked by as if the observation was lost on both.  Ships passing.

Thankfully they didn’t sit down.

The informality of the Camino is wonderful.  You can amble up to someone, have a conversation, not exchange names/email/phone/star-sign etc, drop back or move up, see them later, smile and re-engage.  Or not.  No pressure.  People want and get their space, but equally they can engage.  It’s akin to anonymous speed-dating with no intent. It feels like most people want their space but don’t want to be unpleasant.  Unwritten rules?  Don’t know.  Too early.

Today I, met a Scottish language teacher living in Donostia (young lady going home soon). I mean to say, she was Scottish, I assume she was teaching a language other than “Scottish”. I met a German industrial designer (unemployed male who designed machines to extract coal but the Chinese do it more cheaply – so he’s unemployed), a female German student transferring from medical biology to medicine and studying in Holland (she doesn’t like The Fatherland), a Danish mother and daughter duo doing the Camino for a week (no back story but wish there was – both blond and slim), a mature Japanese student who’s studying religion in Paris (that man takes a photo every 30 seconds and was wearing a Chelsea football top – go figure), and of course, indirectly, Thelma and Sherm, an American couple who’d find a conversation about gravel to be enthralling.  There were a couple of other passing platitudes but for the most part, I kept myself to myself as it was as much as I could do to communicate with my legs let alone with other humans.  Other than the Septics, I don’t know any names.  And so it goes…

I left about 0630 and the journey was about 7 hours which seemed longer than it should but I am probably still acclimatising. I checked into the local Albergue for €8, not because it’s dirt cheap (really, honestly), but because it’s part of the experience.  It is a shit hole.  A clean one, but a shit hole nonetheless.  See photos.  I got a lower bunk, so did a cigarette-puffing, noisy, cheerful, crusty Italian to my right. We’ll see what the night brings – I’m off to the pharmacist for air freshener.  Fortune favors the prepared.  So I hope……

Legs are tired though I think they will recover relatively quickly.  Calves tight, hip flexors tight – need to work on that.  My back is complaining (moderately) about the pack, as are my hips (more so) where the thick waist strap applies downward pressure (because that, more than the shoulder straps, supports the weight).  My hips are very sensitive to the touch with small welts developing, caused by a large mass relentlessly and insensitively pushing down on a small area.  I know how Melania Trump must feel.

I bumped in to Maurice in the hiking store in Zubiri.  He was energised though his visceral reaction was the same as mine.  WTF have I done and WTF will I be normal.  His jet-lag did some of that to him.  He was up at 0345, raring to go, so he went. OMG!

Tomorrow, it’s about 22km to Pamplona.  Weather looks broadly cooperative after 10am with early showers beforehand.  I plan an early departure so I can spend some time exploring the first large city we come across.

I don’t know where the day goes (pun).  I’d kill for a Thai massage (fat chance).

Lastly, a non-sequitur.  Today is the 49th anniversary of the first moon landing.  Nobody gives a shit anymore, which is sad. SnapChat stock price is more important than celebrating human endeavour.  Pop quiz (no wiki-cheating, please): we all know Armstrong and Alrdin, but who was the third crew member of Apollo 11?

Early start at 0615.  I was first up and out – yes Doris, it’s not a race, but I wanted time at the destination so early was appropriate.  Surprisingly good night’s sleep, punctuated by limited snoring.  Crusty Italian chap was quite the raconteur.  Apparently, this was his 7th Camino.  That’s all I absorbed, but before I hit the hay, he talked for another 20 minutes, all grins and waving arms.  I smiled and nodded and tried to maintain eye contact.  Lovely fellah.  Never got his name.

As I travel and I’m asked about my nationality (a natural ice-breaker), I say “Scottish” (Zimbabwe would require too much explanation and historical perspective, though occupation “gynaecologist” is a sure-fire conversation-stopper.  I give you this for free….).  It’s a cop out.  In Scots Law, Scotland is my “domicile of origin” and that is inescapable and the plank on which I accurately base my statement.  But, it is neither my “domicile of choice” nor my “domicile of dependence” – Family Law, Professor Bill Wilson (RIP), circa quite some time ago – we have a number of domiciles in Scotland.  This is wholly-disingenuous because I consider myself more American than anything else.  I’ve never really liked the English – they always beat us at sport.  My recent dislike of my homelands has slowly metastasised into embarrassed revulsion, courtesy of Nicola Sturgeon and her grinding, whining, nasal delivery and never happy with this, wanting more of that, always demanding more handouts…. yada yada….  Enough!  She and Donald Trump deserve the same conclusion. As Lou Reed said “Stick a fork in their ass.  They’re done”. (Last Great American Whale).

Most of the day, passage was through unremarkable scenery, mostly woodland and some of it tracking the main road so there was always noise as the guide.  Few pictures today as a consequence.  I’m learning that in hiking, as economics, there is no free lunch.  When you walk on tarmac, it’s easy on your legs but hell on your feet.  When you walk on uneven surfaces, it’s easy on your feet, hell on your legs.  There is no respite, only discomfort and gradual acclimatisation.  Then, I suspect, you go home.

I checked into a private Albergue – Casa Ibarolla – just inside the city walls, south of the Portal de Francia.  It opened 1130.  I got there 1132 and petted the dog.  In like Flynn!  This was a tactical choice.  There are 20 beds.  The price point is €15 (including desunayo) vs the municipal albergue at €10.  Why choose?  Because 114 beds at 2/3 of the cost of my crib means lower probability of noisy kids, for which there is a higher probability in cities like Pamplona (pop 200,000).  The place is very IKEA (see photos) but very clean and well-organized.  The showers are hot and strong (like my Doris….) and it is in the heart of the old town.  Suhweet!

I’m not going to try to provide a commentary on Pamplona.  It’s a bastion of sheer insanity what with the “running of the bulls” thing – San Fermin.  Dumb.  Dumb.  Dumb.  Darwinian but apparently in insufficient measure – if it was, they’d not have 25%+ youth unemployment in Paella.  It is also very beautiful but my legs wont let me explore its grandeur.  I’ve taken a couple of photos that I hope capture the essence of the place.  As an aside, apparently Ernest Hemingway was a regular here for an extended period (read “The Sun Also Rises”), and was a great supporter of the Navarre region – I can understand that, as well as their desire for independence from the Paella-mothership.  This region is special and has a different culture – unlike Scotland.  Sorry.  There is a montage somewhere that summarizes the bars he frequented (subtle marketing, non?).  I’ll try and find it and get a snap.

Tomorrow, 24km from Pamplona to Puente la Reina, characterized by a steep climb and steep descent. More fun.

Yesterday’s pop quiz answer: Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot, and quoted as saying that during the 48 minutes of each orbit that he was out of radio contact with Earth, the feeling he reported was not loneliness, but rather an “awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation”.  Quite apropos as it relates to the current pursuit.  He’s 86 and apparently, now lives in Rome.  Wish I had his pension.

Stop press: Salvador Dali’s exhumed body has a wholly-intact mustache!!  WTF?

Factoid: one of my fellow hikers (Paolo, bunk above me, Italian, frequent, staccato conversations over the last 3 days) told me that the reason it is so dark here in the morning is that General Franco demanded that Madrid be in the same time zone as Rome and not London, despite the proximity to the latter.  And so it was, and that is why, this morning, my labours began with my donning a head-torch and looking like a complete tool.  You play the hand you’re dealt….

Confession: I scored a 30 minute leg massage at 2000 (begging was involved), and I’m taking it!

Good night.

Departure was 0615, arrival 1230. In the dark once again.  Mixed terrain.  Mixed elevation.  Shin splits is today’s ailment.  ‘Piscine municipale’ is the cure.  I felt somewhat self-conscious and vulnerable though.  There I was, a single, bald-headed man in a wife-beater, farmer tan, walking with a limp into a public pool (for 0-6 year olds) festooned with small children and wary (tattooed) parents. Anyway, I think my natural indifference to rug-rats bled through and all’s well that ends well.

Pamplona to Puente la Reina takes you out through the city (which is the capital of the Navarre autonomous region), through the University of Navarre (nice campus), then past a couple of small towns, Cizur Menor, Zariquiegui, Uterga, Muruzabal, Obans and finally, Puente la Reina.  In the middle, you traverse a wind farm at Alto del Perdon – and it gets a bit chilly.  By the way, these windmills make a LOT of noise (whup, whup, whup) so when the bleeding hearts tell you they are a danger to birds, they are NOT.  How can they be?  Anyone can hear these things, not to mention see them…unless birds are deaf.  Not an argument I’ll enter into right now as I am data-impaired.

The landscape is arable.  Field upon field of hay and some vegetables.  Unlike 2 days ago, no livestock.  No cows with horns and bells, or sheep with bells.  Lots of large (modern) farm machinery baling hay into bundles.  Impressive.  The mountains and their serrated edges continue to cut their way out of the earth.  It’s stark and vivid.  I was inundated by field after field of sunflowers, standing to attention, with sad faces like tired soldiers.  The photos are a bit samy, so please bear with me.

For parts of the day, I tracked a large freeway from a distance to my right.  I could see that the traffic volumes were remarkably subdued.  Admittedly it is Saturday, but I had noticed this phenomenon over the past couple of days too.  In contrast to the UK where the infrastructure is underinvested and inadequate, here in Spain it is outsized versus needs.  To drill the point home further, almost without exception, in each of these podunk towns I walk through, there is a large, pristine, new municipal office and a couple of bank branches.  Europe’s structural excesses have not been fixed and have merely been swept under the mat for another time.  Ulcer waiting to burst?  Dunno.  But I ask myself, what is worse:  this excess or the UK’s under-investment?  Five years ago, I’d have said the former.  Not so sure now.

Day 5 Photo Gallery