Camino Odyssey 4

July 14th, a Wednesday. I like Wednesdays though I don´t know why.

Sue Kenney likes breakfast. I am more of a midnight snack sort of person myself, but Sue has found a café which serves coffee, toast or croissants with butter,cheese and mermelada, and orange juice for only 3 euros so I decide to join her at the 25 de Julio Café which turns out to live up to its reputation, especially the cheese. We meet Danish Michael and his girlfriend who is from Venezuela. Michael is an economist and he has just spent 3 months in South America “giving something back” to the people. “Their destiny was decided for them 300 years ago,” he says. He speaks articulately and convincingly and he leaves an impression on both Sue and me.

Later I decide to spend some time looking around the Corticela. This little chapel at the north east corner of the cathedral often goes unnoticed and I have never really given it much time. For some reason I feel obliged to sit in the back corner. I tell myself that it is because there is a Visigothic tomb there, but it seems more than that. I take a few pictures and one rather sneaky one of a pilgrim who has sat with his head in his hands since I came in. Then for some reason I decide to examine the bench I am sitting on more closely and I see that there is something tucked down inside the back. It is wrapped in a plastic file folder. It is a picture of an elderly man and it clearly wasn’t meant to be found. I wonder about him: who is he and why has his photo been placed here? I wonder what his name is and decide to call him Benito because it is a Gallego name and it suits him. I light a candle for him and then carefully put his photo back where I found it making sure that it is no more visible than it was before. This whole incident touches me very deeply.

They are putting a new rope on the Botefumeiro. I spent ages watching the workers balanced high above the nave and felt a vicarious vertigo. They must have been a hundred feet in the air!

I love this cathedral!

I decided to go shopping for a few little gifts to take back with me and a silver medallion to add to my collection (Sue Kenney has one of these necklaces too!) And so I met with Marcelino. He sees me looking at the novel La Casa de Troya which was written at the turn of the 20th century and is set in Santiago. “You should buy it,” he says. “It is the second most read book in the whole of Spanish literature.” I tell him that I have never finished Don Quixote and he tut tuts. He is in his 70´s I would guess and has an incredible head full of curly grey hair; laughter lines decorate his bright eyes and he has a little goatee. I find him quite attractive and tell him he must be a ladies man. He denies this vociferously: “I am un hombre sincero,” he explains, “very formal and serious. I have been married to the same woman for 53 years.” I ask him his secret. He doesn’t hesitate. “Mutual respect,” he tells me.

Later I stopped in at the Hostal Suso for some of their excellent pimientos de Padron and got “home” to the Alameda quite late.

At some point in the night I woke up to the sound of doves outside my open window, but I couldn’t see them. Then it dawned on me it was a gentle snoring from the room next door! Well, I guess that’s one way to deal with it…
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Camino Odyssey 3

My day begins within the forbidden sanctuary. I have prearranged a meeting with Xose who is the Medieval archivist at the Cathedral. I walk past the long line up outside the Platerias door and soon am shown throught the vestuary into the cathedral cloisters. In the archives, I am welcomed with great enthusiasm and it is appreciated. The last time I was here I got fobbed off with unlikely answers. But Xose is very keen to work with me, and his English is appreciated as my questions are technical ones. I find out that I can't go out the way I came in so I get to wander around the museum for free. The "guides" there are no more knowledgable than they were last year. Oh well, at least in our 20% unemployment rate they still have a job.

It turns out that Lopez Ferreiro, one of the most important investigators and the bishop at the time of the rediscovery of the tomb, is quite wrong about his conjecture that Diego Gelmirez is buried in the cloister. This is a new cloister and not of Gelmirez' time and subsequent researches have not unearthed (sic) any remains which might be the archbishop, or anyone else for that matter. As for where Diego might be buried, Xose has no more foggiest than I do. We part with him agreeing to answer the rest of my questions ("un monton") by e-mail or the next time I am in town.I leave him a copy of Pilgrimage to Heresy and tell him to hide it. He grins complicitantly. He is delighted.

Tito at Casa Manolo remembers me. He points a finger: "You!" I love this. Monica and Antonio are serving downstairs and I miss them but I leave bookmarks for all. The menu stays the same price and I've never tasted better chiperones - not even at the now defunct Restaurant at the End of the Universe in Finisterre.

And speaking of universes, I booked a tour of the University of S de C for noon today. Since I have one of my main protagonists in Compostela spending a fair bit of time in the uni and especially at the library, I thought I should get a bit of a feel for the place.

I didn't want to leave! I even found what would no doubt be MY seat at MY desk with MY view. Perhaps in another life - or Laura's. As it was I almost didn't have a cho0uce but to stay. I was so enthralled with the History departmnent that it took two professors (one well beyond his sell-by date whom I couldn't understand at all) to explain to me that the university closed at 2:00 p.m. and that if I didn't leave with them I would be locked in overnight!


On my way back, I met with Tomas from Germany. He has just picked up his Compostela and is gazing at it in wrapt fascination. I poke a bookmark under his nose and we get into conversation. Tomas says that walking pilgrims have gained an unfair advantage. Bicycle pilgrims, he says, have their own problems (where to soak those blisters for example?) and are denied access to any albergue until 8:00. Even then, if any foot pilgrims arrive afterwards, they,the BP's, are mercilessly thrown out! Tomas claims that bicycle pilgrims cover twice the distance but they also do 100% of the work that foot pilgrims do, and I am sympathetic to his plight. Maybe there should be specific facilities for BP's as FP's often think they are a breed apart anyway.


I meet up with Cristofer from Cologne whom I met on the cathedral roof yesterday. He is studying Spanish in Valladolid and I comment that if he really wanted to challenge himself he should try it in Malaga. Cristofer doesn't get the joke. You probably won't either. You don't have to decode my son-in-law's Spanish, bless his sweet heart.


On my way round to the Museo das Peregrinos (a monster new building under construction. I guess they will start to ask for money but then the Cathedral Museum have been doing that for years) I overhear someone pontificating much as I do. He is saying that St. James never preached in Spain (I concede that as a possibility that he did) and that he is not buried in the Cathedral (no way). Needless to say I invite myself into the conversation. His name is Manuel, he is a Spanish literature teacher from Madrid and he has read Peregrinos de la Herejia, but says that my book only confirmed what "the majority of Spaniards" already know. I find this gratifying and tell him that, alas, many foreign pilgrims accept only what their guidebooks tell them and that theylike their myths intact. He is non-committal. Most Spaniards are born diplomats.


Tonight is my booksigning at Follas Novas. If you wish you can check out my encounters with the manager Jose Luis and the owner Rafael Silva - an expert on the Portico de Gloria - from last July. I think I felt a little bit in love with Rafael with his long silver locks and his cravat swept over his shoulders. Alas he isn't there and I tell Jose Luis to tell him he has broken my heart.


Sue Kenney appears and decides to re-arrange the books and the massive poster board and thank goodness she does as I am feeling like a right pillock. Sue says she loves booksignings. I approach them with the same spirit as I do tooth extractions. Anyway, thanks to my new exposure I generate a modicum of interest and we all go home - um to the Parador for that $5 glass of wine with the Million Dollar View and there we meet up with a group of American conventioners who were, by that time, well into the Albariño. One of them has taken a copper bowl down off tyhe mantelpiece and is playing it like a sort of percussion instrument. Fellow guests are asking for a modicum of decorum. I want to slink off to a quieter part of the planet, but Sue gets into the fun and says that he( Frank) is a Master Bowl Player. We are invited to join the fun. They are noisy. I don't do that. So I suggest to Sue that the cafe is a better choice. (Yes, I am sure you are saying what a bore I must be. I'm not, really.) At the end of the night our drinks and tapas are found to be paid for.

God bless Americans!
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2010: A Camino Odyssey

"She knows not where she's going
For the Camino will decide
because it was not the destination
But the glory of the ride"

And glory it was!



These comments from the pilgrims' guest book at Bar O Xardin in Muxia from "Joyce, Holland, 9th October 2008" are the best way I can sum up these past three weeks.

From having written optimistically "More tomorrow", more than two full weeks have passed. Two weeks in which I drove 4,789 kilometers (point 5), had five radio interviews- one of which was conducted by telephone while parked a bus stop - , was on TV three times (terrifying), and 20 newspaper write-ups, and in which I met many friends I didn't even know I had. I have spoken with scores of pilgrims, hospitaleros/as, people in churches, museums and tourist offices. I have screamed with joy with the owners of my favourite Pension in Santiago when Iniesta scored that oh so anticipated goal. I have been to a romeria in a tiny pueblo where I was treated like visiting royalty; I have shared several very expensive glasses of wine with a Canadian author and fellow pilgrim at the Parador Cafe with the "Million Dollar View"; I have almost learned a lesson about roads one should not go down (or up) in a two-wheel drive car. I have sat at the back of a church and listened to black-robed Benedictine monks sing at 7 in the morning as the mist rose up through the valley - and no-one even knew I was there. I have slept in the car in the middle of one of the most dramatic thunderstorms I have ever seen. I have been a resident heretic in the house of Christian journalists and their animals in a tiny pueblo and eaten some of the best burritos in my life. I have had my feet washed in a pilgrim ceremony and visited the mountain spring of an abbot who disappeared one day while meditating on the psalms only to reappear a hundred years later! I have been a guest at the house of a friend of Paolo Coelho,and who never takes off his trademark black baseball cap. I have met a Spanish lady in a dusty village who gave me her book and I found my favourite poet quoted on the back. And I have attended mass in Toledo two days running but still haven't heard that Mozarabic Rite because of ecclestical jealousy and red tape.

And I have stood in the wind and morning chill on top of the mountains in Somport to celebrate 10 years since I last walked downhill from there with the Camino to the west.

It was quite the ride! For the next couple of weeks I hope you will join me on it.