Camino de Santiago Day 14: Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz
In one sense every day's the same: you get up, walk, eat, meet people, check in, sleep, repeat. And the towns and roads do sometimes blend into one. Castrojeriz, though, was same same but different
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At this stage I’ve very little knowledge of what’s going on at home. One of the highlights of being away, to be honest. A break for the mind. From the news. The only news story I’m aware of at the moment right now is the volcano that’s still erupting in the Canaries. And sure the night it happened I heard of someone from there whose only regret was that she wasn’t at home for the biggest news story in fifty years – nothing to worry about.
I hope I never hear any news again, it’s not worth it.
It’s kind of ridiculous when you go away the amount of people you meet who speak, like, five languages. I’m regularly embarrassed to be an English speaker who speaks, maybe, one and a half at push. And that half is made up of small fractions of several languages, none of them too proficient.
Wouldn’t it be great to live in a country where (a) you can’t understand the news, and (b) you would then get to learn more of another language every day. Every day learning new words with which to see the world. And maybe more importantly, being deprived of the lie of language for so long until you do. The words you’d be learning would be important ones, too:
‘food’
‘please’
‘thank you’
‘live’
‘dog’
‘orange’
And so on, and so forth.
Words that mean something. Sure once you get past intermediate level you’re basically just talking shite, anyway, aren’t ya? Take it from a writer – it’s all a lie.
The Camino makes you both long for a simpler and thus more honest existence, and teaches you what that simpler and more honest experience is. Just
‘walk’
‘talk’
‘eat’
‘sleep’
And so on, and so forth.
I know how to say that much.
That’s enough.
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Back out into the Meseta. Like a layered chocolate sponge cake sliced open. Dunno what the fuss is about. Long dusty roads – can’t beat them. As you walk you see that in such a vast open space it’s not so much the land that’s the dominant feature – but the sky. It’s enormous.
Last night I looked up and saw the stars. They might have been there for a few days now, but I only really thought to look up now that I couldn’t see anything else around me. Stars springing up, appearing one by one, not because it’s that time of night but because sometimes you have to focus your attention on the sky for them to appear – they don’t appear to those not at least trying to look. Gaze at one spot for a bit, simultaneously concentrate on it, and nothing at all, to allow your peripheral vision to open up. Such is the scope of the sky you’re trying to look at all of it at once – impossible, of course, but making the effort is good.
Focus and relax at the same time – your breath is a good reference point here, that’s why they all say that, so they do. ‘Focus on your breath’. Active and passive, whether you like it or not.
And then the stars appear and suddenly you’re trapped, in a snowglobe or a planetarium, the sky no longer an empty space but a physical thing. And you’re inside it, looking out.
Just another dusty beige town in a dusty beige part of the world
At the end of a dusty road in Spain. Of all the lovely little towns I’ve passed through, this one might be my favourite. Â
I mean, it was the same as all the others, wasn’t it? A church on the way in – though I actually went into it. I went into plenty of them, not all. Maybe you like the places more if you make the effort to go into its church.
Albergues, cafes and restaurants. Narrow cobbled streets. Locals drinking on plazas.
There’s an 89 year old man who still runs the tobacco shop in the corner of town. It’s a jumble sale in there – he sells everything. Some of it on shelves but most of it in great big piles: clothes and stationary and costumes and tools and tobacco and tourist gifts and god knows what else. Literally, god knows what else – when this guy goes the secrets of what this shop holds and where it goes will die with him, though it doesn’t look like it’ll be any time soon.
Before that, the great big ruin of a convent on the way in – must be five- or six- hundred years old. Or four, at least. Hold on, I’ll check the book: wow, 14th century. They’ve put an albergue in it and all. One of those places that’s built as much by the sky as the stone that’s supposedly holding it up. Like it was built to be a ruin, or only took on its true form when history left it behind, as Dyer would say.
You just walk around the corner and there it is in the middle of the road, arches spanning the tarmac, guiding you into its hollowed out interior. Like it’s been blown open to accommodate the wonder of the stars.
IncreÃble, sÃ, sÃ.
After the church in town I mosy up the street. The town is long and moulded around half of a great big mound of a hill, with a castle on top. It’s be a shame to leave town without going up. I wonder if I have the legs. I know I have the legs to walk 25km today, but do I have the legs to hike up a hill for what looks like about ten minutes? Or is it that I don’t have the head to deviate from my arbitrary plans I’d made this morning.
I’d planned on going Beyond again today – Castrojeriz was the recommended stop in the guidebook, so I wanted to stay somewhere else, to go further. Maybe I can go beyond by going up instead.
In the café the fella tells me don’t bother going to the next town – there’s nothing for 10km, and when you get there there’s nothing after 10km either.
Ah, fair enough. I’ll stay so.
Turned out to be a good decision.
Walking up the street I hear music coming from a townhouse, and as I approach the door, expecting to see an elderly couple sitting in their kitchen over a pot of tea, I see a small sign that says:
‘Bienvenidos’
And a view through the house from a movie or renowned photographer. At the back wall a full-sized window looking out over a green garden and framing the wondrous of the countryside – which is beautiful, of course, not boring like everyone says. An artistic space that a kind soul has opened to the public; meditation room upstairs, a gallery and garden down.
Some friends interrupt my attempts to soak up the zen of the garden – sometimes though, that’s what friends are for.
Later someone mentions leylines on the Camino – energy lines that cross the world and link people and places. They’re supposedly found at places like Stonehenge, or Giza, or Machu Pichu – the ancients were tapped into things we’ve no idea about, supposedly. Wouldn’t surprise me. And the Camino is known to have existed before Christianity turned it into a Thing (as it tends to do). Pagans used to follow the Milky Way to Fisterra (The End of the World) beyond Santiago on the Atlantic Coast, so they could see the sunset disappear over the known horizon of the earth, and bathe in a symbolic death and rebirth. Supposedly it also follows this energetic pathway, pilgrims guided by forces both visible and invisible for thousands of years.
 I get back to the albergue and the Italians have all randomly checked in, the only other guests – I’d already started to believe these energy lines are definitely real. I know we’re all walking the same path but there’s some strange amount of coincidences on the Camino. Things that seem like they should be random but never are.
There’s a castle above on the hill, and we’re all backpackers at the end of the day, so naturally we’re all drawn to head up to check it out. Some things are synchronicities, some things are probably just obvious and high probability that others would have the same idea as yourself. Â
Thousands of wind turbines like birthday candles on the horizon – ‘Mucho electricidad!’ as Nico says – we look down at sheep being herded and a floodlit soccer training session playing out, below. Life would be easier if you could just watch it from above.
Quite the perfect day, in just another dusty town on the Camino - the same as all the others.
I even had time for a nap earlier.
I guess this is the Road now though
They’re all blank slates,
Whatever you make of them.
(also, the Meseta is beautiful.)
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