Category: A Very Short Story

Happy Birthday Patsy.

Only 18 klicks today.  Extremely  humid until about 10am. Then you can literally feel it lift and we had a beautiful easy walk. That is until we started past a number of fields and midgens (Northern Irish for mooshes or mozzies). I was ok but Jerry was ney a wee bonny as he had bites all over his face and bare legs.

Jerry the alien from the planet “ Argon.” Seriously he was in misery due to the bites. And that has been our existence here. Every day seems to bring its own set of challenges. Torrential rain of biblical proportions, then boots caked in mud, trails covered with rocks boulders and stone, flash flooding then extreme heat and humidity that is through the roof. Finally today we get great walking temperature and then nature laughs at us to say not so fast Johnnie and throws the third plague of Egypt at us with swarms of flies and mozzies. Thanks Moses!

We are half way there and in our 4th day on the Maseta. Tomorrow will be our last on this broad plain but the most challenging. We have a 17 kilometer hike with no shade, water, or villages. We will do 28 klicks overall. That is why today was short so that tomorrow we will tackle the 17 km right away and when it is cool. I don,t know if you can tell by the pics but this area reminds me of the prairies back home.El Alberto Condido Spain.

Santo Manitoba Spain.

And this is my other aussie walking colleague. But with the other aussie ying she is my aussie yang. She is a real sweetheart. She is 75 and keeps up with all of us. She is like the ever ready rabbit in that she just keeps going and going and going. Her name is Maryanne. She is small, wiry, thin as a waif but very headstrong and determined.

We also call her the bag lady as she has a bevy of little bags attached to her backpack filled with nuts, fruit, knick knacks and other stuff. Come to think of it we haven,t run into the aussie yang for a few days now. Thank you for that…..eeeeyeah mate!

Best to expand the pic on your device to see clearly.

 

Covering two days here. Burgos to Hornillos was 21 km and Hornillos to Castrijiriz was another 20. Hot, hot, hot. Did I say it was hot? Well it was. Beautiful sunrise… this was taken around 730 am.

And heavenly intervention.

We are walking in an area called the Meseta. This is a broad dry plain almost devoid of shade and trees of any sort. It covers the central interior of Spain. When they say “ it never rains in Spain except on the plain” it is the Meseta that they are referring to. Best to start early and knock off about 10 km before our first break. Then start off after a short break and cover the last 10 or so. We,re sticking to about 20 a day until it cools off, which we expect starting Monday, 11 th. Hopefully that is.

The Albergue last night in Hornillo was awful and to make matters worse we ran into the annoying Australian woman. She is some piece of work.  Her irritating presence was offset by a lovely Italian woman walking with her mother. We had dinner with them. They were wonderful to have dinner with. Except for the flies, the food here is excellent. Lots of it and cheap wine to wash it all down. But the Australian woman who sat at a nearby table nattered on all evening about nothing in her worst, cat scratching working class aussie accent. Eee yeah, oh eeeyeah, eeeyeah yeah mate, Eee yeeah. And btw, I’m not your mate.

We stopped at an old derelict monastery built in the 14th century. It was a welcome respite except for the koom bye ah armosphere among the younger people here. Don,t they know that us boomers had that all sown up at Woodstock 1969? It is all a fantasy but alas, d,accord they will have to find out for themselves.

At Castrojeriz. Staying at a monastery that has been renovated.

Jerry is back. I still can,t understand him but somehow we get along. I learn something from him every day. Today it is the word “crack” which means  to chat or “buts” which means a bun, or “ cack” which means underwear. It is all the Queens English he says. Yeah right I says and tell him I have to go for a “crunch.” A what he says. Never mind I says and tell him it is the King,s English and leave it at that.

Read ya later

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What a beautiful city. Home base of El Cid. Who is El Cid you may ask? Well,he was the Spanish hero and medieval warrior who kicked moorish butt out of Spain and restored catholicism and Spanish hegemony to the Iberian peninsula. Love it. Just like Charles “THE HAMMER” Martel in France, he halted the muslim ingress into Europe and the establishment of Islam. They sound like WWF characters to me. Impressive dudes. Life would be a lot different here today but for the bravery and leadership of these individuals.

When I checked in I asked the young woman where the statue to Charlton Heston was. She laughed as she kew right away what I was talking about. You see they made a movie back in the 1960s called El Cid starring…ta da…Charleton Heston. Burgos is the birthplace of….El Cid…and not Charlton Heston, as that ignorant woman from South Carolina would surmise. Elderly she was but had no clue where Vancouver was. I said to her that my wife was leaving for Savanna in a few days. Did she know where that city was? Cruel, I know, but ignorant people who should know better really irritate me. The Spanish know and she should too.

Of course Burgos has a cathedral and what a cathedral it is too.

Expand the photo and you will see Christ depicted at the centre top with Mary on one side of him and an archangel on the other. The middle relief illustrates those who are saved (left) to those who are damned for eternity (right). The bottom illustration has the 12 Apostles front and centre. We could not get inside to have a peak. Imagine that all of this was done by one man chipping away for years.

All of a sudden I felt really holy. My socks were holy and my undershorts were beginning to feel holy…and airy too. Have to find a Spanish discount store. Alas Burgos has no Walmart, thank goodness. Only very high end and chic clothing stores.

Seriously though, walking amongst these architectural treasures and down the winding streets and pathways a feeling of peace and happiness overcomes the soul. You feel blessed with having been alive with a strong sense of being with oneself as well as a belonging to something existential that is unexplainable yet somehow recognizable. You are part of something much bigger. Hard to explain.

Burgos is also very modern:

Boy oh boy….how I love this country.

Read ya later.