Slog-Blog

Seven and a half hours of a long, boring, slow grind through nothing but grapevines where the mind wandered into places it shouldn’t go, such as questioning why I was doing this.

Vanity or stupidity?

Vanity is being voluntarily unemployed and driving a Porsche when a Mini will do.  We now have only the Mini, so it must be stupidity.

But, as I closed in on the outskirts of my destination, Najera, I was joined by a delightful Spanish woman with a ski-jump beezer that would have made J Caesar himself proud.  She echoed my thoughts about this leg….as she sloped off to her pre-booked hotel.  Maybe not vanity, maybe just part of the cost of doing Camino?

I asked why she booked a hotel instead of schlepping in an Albergue with the rest of us gringos.  Well, this was her holiday after all, and creature comforts mattered on holiday.  Simple.

She and Doris would have bonded instantly.

I haven’t decided on tomorrow’s routing yet, so it will be as much of a surprise to you as it will be to me.

Later.

Day 9 Photo Gallery

I fear I may run out of material. Today was more of the same. 0530 departure, first hour by head torch, arrival 1045, covering 21km of…..dirt and grape vines and hills and dirt and grape vines and hills and….. a ghost town.

First stop was Azofra, just 6km out of Najera. I wouldn’t normally stop, but I’m getting sensitized to the mantra “if it’s there, take it”. In this case “it” was coffee. A cafe was just opening and I had my coffee. Just as well.

Ciruena was supposed to have several cafes and with its extra 9km of distance it looked like the ideal stopping point. I felt guilty for stopping in Azofra after only 6km. What a pussy! Stopping after 15km is more manly. Ciruena, however, was an abject disappointment and the guidebook(s) got it wrong. No cafe. Closed Albergues. Nada. Nothing. Quite the shithole. If this town had a personality, it would be a cadaver.

The kicker though, was as you approached the outskirts via a fairly tough uphill stretch, you could see blocks of unoccupied terraced housing and some unfinished apartment blocks. It looked lovely from a distance. All well-maintained, nice park facilities, playgrounds for the kids, few cars but no people. “For Sale” signs everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And a golf club, replete with active sprinkler system…..and people. Old, fat people. With cars. Quite expensive ones.  Clearly not locals but sufficiently local to use the facilities.

Looking at the quality of the grass and turf, the limited sun damage to the wood (lovely driving range), the modern glazing, the healthy paint job, the condition of the cladding on the exterior of the (expansive) clubhouse, this was pretty recent. The sprinklers were doing their bit with gusto. What’s the point? Who pays for this? What happened? Answer: the Spanish economic miracle that “central planning” anticipated, that Germany paid for but did not materialize. And so in some places, Spain still has these ghost towns. Wrong idea. Wrong place. Wrong time. That’s not to take away from the broader improvement in Spanish prosperity over the last 5 years, but these ghost-towns seem destined to be a hallmark of a failed experiment.

I’m surprised POTUS Trump isn’t involved somehow. He’s good at failed projects, harvesting tax concessions, paying off objectors and declaring victory. What a cock. He’s such an affront. I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his throat was on fire. And….concluding on this fleeting, inadvertently aggressive, presidential/scatological theme, LBJ’s words are more apropos now than ever as it relates to our POTUS:

“[He] couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.”

BTW, if you re-arrange Donald Trump, you get “Lord Damp Nut”. Yours for free…..

Let’s rewind to the Azofra to Ciruena leg as I left something out – and sequencing is difficult when you’re operating on stream of consciousness typing.

I’d just left Azofra, replete with caffeine hit (OK, I confess to there also being a croissant incident too), and I hear a loud and closing ‘crunch, crunch, crunch’ behind me that becomes a more muted padding. I turn round with my “Buen Camino” greeting hoping the owner of the sounds will overtake me, but he does not. Meet Jean. He wants to talk and walk. He’s apparently retired. He has a genuine smile. If he was a dog, he’d be a Jack Russell: short, fit, wiry and spritely.

We shared the next 8km together at a complementary pace. Jean is French and doesn’t speak anything else. He was very upfront. So, we had a delightful trek with me embarrassing myself with broken French, and he personifying the superior being that is the French-speaking European. Actually, it was surprising and very pleasant. My schoolboy vocabulary is dormant and a lot comes back. We discussed Trump, Macron, BREXIT, Scots vs English, the weather, the countryside, Macron’s wife, the TGV (no linkage, those two) and hiking sticks. He was a delight. I stopped to find coffee at Ciruena (futile, disappointing exercise as you already know), and he marched on. Hope I see him again. Great conversation, and we both mastered the art of the ‘vacant smile and hollow laugh’ when we didn’t understand WTF the other was saying. Europe at its best. Copacetic. Democratic. No invasions. No dictatorships. Just a mammoth German trade surplus.

So, I’m berthed in Santo Domingo (Spain, not Dominican Republic) overnight.

It’s hot. VERY. I’m under cover but the locals seem to have quietly crept inside, leaving me outside. They remind me of the center-fanged, pallid vampires in Nosferatu, cowering from the sunlight and scurrying for cover with strangled squeaks as they retreat. Who’s smarter, gringo or gremlin?

I’ll post some snaps – Santo Domingo, not Nosferatu critters.

I have and will continue to eschew a historical commentary because that’s all available online and in the books – but mostly because I have the square root of bugger all interest in trolling around churches and mausoleums when the sun’s out. Sorry. Shallow as a soap dish, that’s me.

As I tap, my laundry is drying and I need to fetch it before some Greek steals it to try and settle the national debt with the Bosch. Who knew Nike was so valuable and universal?

Recovery times are improving noticeably. I don’t fall asleep as soon as I get to the Albergue.  The body is adapting, albeit slowly, but what do you expect at 2×21? Also, the pain moves around, inhabiting different places on different days. It’s almost like a formal curriculum: Lesson 1: back, neck, calves, shins, knees, feet. Repeat.  Lesson 2. I’ve seen some old faces along the way today, though not Maurice or Bill. I suspect they’re making ground faster than I. But, as Paddy Dempsey says, it’s not a race…..

Manaña.

Post script: This Albergue really is a whopper. Nice paint job on the outside gives no clue to the innards. A bona fide warehouse for supplicants, true-believers and free-loaders (like moi). Looks like three levels, ceramic tile floors, space for about 140 transients/guests, a chapel, a couple of other religious spots that mean nothing to me (what is an oratorio?), a massage chair (€1.50/5mins), a garden with seating and laundry facilities, a terrace, external quarters for the employees, bespoke seashell metal railings and safety-guards, multiple his/her loos and showers (in need of some repair, but clean), obligatory smattering of crucifixes, standard IKEA bunk bed set up.

It’s 1600 local. I’m on Floor 2, Room 1, Bed 15. This room has 30 beds – 15×2 bunks. Most of the occupants are younger than I am. Only 7 beds are vacant as I tap, the rest filled with bodies in need of rest in the middle of the day, some wrapped in sleeping bags – it’s 31 celsius outside!! Weird. Maybe warming those frigid Catholic souls….

Day 10 Photo Gallery