Everything went really well this morning. I was on the road before 9:00. My feet really did feel pretty good. No undue pain or discomfort. I guess that nurse at the Hospital de la Reina knew what she was doing. I think the compression socks were helping too. I still was shaking my head about the fact that the local hospital provides free medical care for any medical issue pilgrims suffer on the Camino. The Hospital de la Reina is the largest hospital in this city of over 65,000 people. I just walked up to the admission desk, told them I was on the Camino and had a problem with blisters. Five minutes later I was on an examining table and the nurse was messing with my feet. They didn’t even ask me to sign anything or ask for my passport. The only thing they asked to see was my Credencial del Peregrino.
Yesterday I said Ponferrada was a town but really it’s a pretty big city. The second largest city in the province of Leon so you have to walk a couple of miles through the city outskirts before getting to the country.
The Camino takes you north for a couple of miles through some older parts of the city. Old parks, churches, old plazas and public areas that looked sort of abandoned but more likely just currently underused. I was having a good time taking pictures and not pushing it. The weather was cool and after about an hour I was out of the city and walking through small vineyards which began to pop up everywhere along the way.
It was really beautiful and I was walking comfortably at a reasonable pace. After a mile or two, comes the first small town and I made the conscious decision to stop, have some water and relax my feet. There was a nice town every couple of miles and I made myself stop at just about all of them determined to take it easy and protect my feet. I was having an unexpectedly great morning. Here are some pictures of the morning which are going to save me thousands of words.
A little before 1:00, I arrived in the last town before Bierzo called Cacabelas and was feeling great because I thought I was less than a half hour away from the Parador. I had gone almost 11 miles and thought the total for the day was about 12. I don’t know how I got it wrong but when I stopped at the last place in Cacabelas and asked the waiter he told me it was 8 or 9 more kilometers. I looked at the book and sure enough he was right. Somehow I had misread the map and rather than having a half hour to go I probably had closer to 3 hours and it was getting hot fast.
And not only that but the Camino starts to climb outside of Cacabelas. First a steep asphalt road leading out of the town and then dusty isolated dirt roads rising higher and higher up through larger and larger vineyards
After 15 minutes, I was soaked through with sweat. Although, I tried to concentrate on the beauty of the vineyards, my feet started to burn because my compression socks were also soaked with sweat.
My feet were really hurting and I was starting to feel pretty tired. On my left foot I could feel several distinct areas that were burning, on my right foot I couldn’t distinguish any particular areas of burning or discomfort it seemed to be the whole foot.
I was walking up higher and higher in the hills through these beautiful vineyards but it was incredibly hot. I hadn’t seen another person for a long time and I was getting tired.
I had to focus on something other than the heat and how far I still had to go so I started thinking about this photograph of Cary that had been haunting me.
This wouldn’t be the first time I had been to Santiago. Cary and I had been there once before in the fall of 1992.
I found myself remembering that holiday.
We started with a few days in Lisbon and then had a rental car and went exploring to the north. First Coimbra, the Bucsco Forest, Lamego, Viana do Castello, the Douro Valley and Porto and then we took a train from
Portugal to Santiago.
Before I came on this trip I went through boxes of photographs that Cary had indexed and catalogued and I found these pictures that I took in Santiago almost exactly 25 years ago.
First one is a picture of the Cathedral in Santiago which is the finishing point of the Camino
The second one (and this is the one that really haunts me) is a picture of Cary standing in the doorway of the Parador Hotel de los Reyes Catolicos which sits next to the Cathedral.
As I walked along, hot and sweaty, feet burning, so tired, I found myself daydreaming about this 25 year old photograph of Cary.
I so want to her to be standing in that doorway when I get to Santiago. You can’t see enough detail in the photo to see if she’s smiling but I know she will be. She had a beautiful smile.
I was so tired and hot, walking like in a trance and thinking only about how nice it would be if she were waiting for me in Santiago. And then I began to cry because I know how sad and disappointed I am going to be.
I cried the last half hour or so as I walked into Bierzo.
At first, I felt better when I got to the town.
It was so beautiful and I thought of how much Cary and I loved visiting these small medieval towns together with their old castles, walls. fortifications and plazas. We had been to many of them. This one was particularly picturesque and then I thought “but Cary has never been here” and the last lines of Edna St Vincent Milay’s, Time does not bring relief;you have lied, were floating in my head:
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell (her) foot or shown (her) face
I say, “There is no memory of (her) here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering (her)
And I was stricken and began crying all over again. It was almost 4:00 when I got to the Parador. I had walked almost 16.5 miles.
I was hungry so I sat down for lunch before going to my room. I felt a lot better when they brought me two cute delicious snacks and a great lunch (again this isn’t the typical pilgrimage experience)
I had the steak and potatoes. Criticize me if you will but I thought I could use the protein. The baked pears and sorbet they served for dessert really lifted my spirits. They were like amazing
I felt even better when I got to my room and saw it had a big competent bath tub. I took the dressings off and inspected my feet and was glad to find that they weren’t as much of a war zone as I thought (at least not the left one).
Tomorrow’s is my last day of walking. Tomorrow the Camino crosses from Leon into Galicia. I’m booked to stay in Ocebreiro tomorrow night and join a group to head on horseback to Santiago starting on Monday.
It’s a tough 20 miles to Ocebreiro. Here are the details from Brierly
Brierly lays out three options but one of them Dragonte isn’t a serious option unless you are an English guy named Matthew who told me earlier this evening that he was opting for the Dragonte. I was told it’s poorly marked so I hope he doesn’t get lost.
The other two are both challenging and finish up with the most difficult ascent of the entire Camino Frances. My feet are definitely better but what shape are they going to be in after 20 miles or maybe a bit more? And of course there’s the taxi option.
Really it’s too late to think about it any more tonight. Best to think about it tomorrow. As Scarlet O’Hara said “tomorrow is another day”
I think I’ll hit the publish button and post a morning update once I make a plan.
Buen Camino