Camino de Santiago Day 16: Fromista to Carrion de los Condes
A day of repetitive weather and landscape leads to a repetitive scene: drinking beer in a cafe and having repetitive conversations with other pilgrims. Turns out that's what life's all about.
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A flat, straight road, as far as I can remember. We’re out of the unique lost beauty of the early stages of the Meseta. Instead of the yellow dirt road undulating under open Big Sky, we’re on a flat gravel path that hugs a busy highway, surrounded not by waves of gorgeous land but a flat expanse of industrial-scale commercial farmland.
The sky is dull silver and the weather is damp, misty and grey.
The dullest day on the Camino so far – though only in a physical sense.
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I pass by a man pissing on a hedge and he hurries to finish up and walk along by me.
We walk and talk for several hours. The conversation varies, from his forthright admission at the start that in 80’s London he used to cross the road when approaching letterboxes cos he was so afraid the IRA would blow them up, to some more interesting and fruitful conversations on the potential beneficial outcomes of walking the Camino that so many pilgrims have sought and found for thousands of years.
He leaves me in Carrion de los Condes, 20km in. The next stretch of Camino is 18km with no towns or villages – a straight long rural road that must be undertaken in one go. I abandon my latest pipe-dream to go beyond and stop at Carrion, the latest official stop. My fellow walker continues on – he says he’d rather keep walking rather than
“sit in cafes drinking beer and having repetitive conversations with pilgrims”.
I consider that maybe he has a point. I’ve been having plenty of conversations with pilgrims, some deep, some repetitive, some superficial, but rarely unpleasant, though it has always been something I’ve been conscious of that the right way to do the Camino – that is, the way that I’d planned to from the start and idealised as my right way of doing it – was to go it alone, and from the beginning I’d been consciously trying not to get too attached to any others on the road.
I try to book something in the next village – all booked out. Nothing for 20-something kilometres. Looks like once again I’m not making it beyond, tragically resigned to stay in the same town as everyone else.
Carrion de los Condes – the names are getting ridiculous at this stage. They sound like levels from Donkey Kong Country.
I follow the map to one of the albergues in the book, with nothing much to distinguish the descriptions. For the first and only time I leave an accommodation after seeing it in person – it looks like I’ve stepped into a prison yard, though it’s a convent run by nuns.
I go to the only other albergue in town – also a convent run by nuns, and it also reminds me of a prison. This one has the advantage of not making you cross a yard after stepping through a door-within-a-gate style defence system to get into it, and there’s nowhere else affordable left. The lady’s wearing a combination of traditional habit and anti-viral gloves and mask that make her look like she’s disposing of anthrax as she instructs me to spray my backpack with disinfectant.
It’s early in the day and I don’t feel like spending my day in the prison with the one other inmate.
I go to local café.
I write for a bit at a small table facing out onto a busy corner of the town. The town is unusual compared to recent places – every street has a steady procession of local people. It’s a Saturday and there’s some kind of market on. There’s something weird about small towns here when there are people in them – people seem to walk through the town with some kind of purpose, slowly and in groups of an extended family, or more, rather than at home where the only groups are gangs of teenagers and generally people stride around on their own, their primary purpose seeming to be to get out of town, or get into a pub.
Pilgrims file by in drabs and drabs coming from the Camino road to my right past the café. Harvest season is in full swing as an intermittent flow of tractors, trailers, combines and other farm machinery whizzing by. The odd time some lad zips by on a dirt bike or a quad, out for fun rather than coming from the farm.
The weather is still as dull as a tin of wet biscuits, but there’s a steady workmanlike energy in the air underneath it. It’s invigorating in a different way to the blissful sunshine and typically beautiful views we’ve been blessed with the last couple of weeks.
I sit and I write.
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I’m interrupted by a lady sitting down near me – another pilgrim, that is, I hadn’t been interrupted by the few tables of rowdy natives of Carrion de los Condes enjoying a couple of afternoon vinos on the tables around me, or the oul lads smoking with bellies hanging out beside the doorway to my left, and I guess they hadn’t taken much notice of me either.
I recognise her from the road the last couple of days, she’d also been waved down with a gourd of local wine yesterday by Pepe, the generous roadside farmer. Her name is Barbara, from San Diego. Recently retired and travelling with her cousin, making the most of life while they can and loving every minute of it. She’s one of those heart-warming Americans you meet every now in then – perhaps in rarer supply than they used to be – who just radiates that
“Hey! We’re from California and life’s pretty great!”
energy.
In my mind, raised on a diet of childhood Hollywood propaganda, Saved by the Bell, Red Hot Chili Peppers videos, Tony Hawk’s skateboarding games and any number of American high-school and college movies, California in the late 80’s and early 90’s seemed like the peak of western civilisation.
Anyway, here was Barbara, transmitting that good old-fashioned Californian sunshine out into the world, lighting up the Camino in her own way and doing much to repair my jaded view of a once-proud people.
Maybe the place is gone to hell, but it certainly will go a lot faster with that moany attitude you have there, buddy.
We’d a great oul’ chat about the Camino, about the States (all good things, of course) and about Ireland. My dull day brightened up as another machine went flying by with bits of grass flying everywhere and dragging down the road, three lads in the cab, always with the salute.
I thought often about the guy from earlier’s condescending moan about “repetitive conversations with pilgrims” in the cafes of the Camino, and how he didn’t care much for it. I’d even considered if I had much time for it anymore. After this wonderful exchange, a new friend made on the road, more than just information exchanged, I realised I was actually quite fond of these so-called repetitive conversations, and I was thoroughly enjoying my glass of beer in a yet another Spanish café.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course you might get tired of the usual “Where you from?” and “What’s your name?” and even “Why are you doing the Camino?” Same old, same old. But life is mostly same old, same old, and you never know what someone is going to teach you.
Barbara left, my day brightened up somewhat.
That’s when things really got going.
Roberto, my fatefully linked travel buddy from Sicily arrives with a pint, looking like he means business. His English is limited, and he’d often resort to either getting a friend to translate any questions directed towards him, or withdraw from conversations and social groups to the safety of his camera, his pride and joy and ubiquitous companion, and something he was incredibly proficient with, a beautiful artist’s eye for emotion and people moving through places. We manage to connect despite our mutual language barrer - he speaks English slowly and I speak Italian non-existantly, only in stereotypical hand gestures and funny accents.
It’s amazing what you can learn from people when you give them the time and space that’s perhaps forced by linguistic or cultural barriers, and I feel privileged to have gotten to know him in a way that I know few on the road would have, whether or not they speak Italian.
Then the others arrive, in one of those moments where you’re secretly glad that these nice normal people are ordering drinks.
Then Colin from Canada arrives. Two more faces I don’t know. Then some more.
There’s a bit of a fiesta starting.
Sure grab a beer there, buddy.
A girl I don’t know sits next to me, carrying a beer and having recognised my Italian friends. The more the merrier. She’s Anna from Hungary.
“Are you doing the Camino, then?” I ask, with a straight face and a inquisitive tone
She’s taken aback at the question – “Well, of course. I mean, I wouldn’t sit here with all of you if I didn’t know these people, and….”
“Ah, I’m just fucking with ya”
“I mean, what the hell else would you be doing in – *checks notes* - “Carrion de los Condes on a grey Saturday afternoon in October.”
It’s a great line, to be fair.
More friends arrive. New ones and old ones. At this stage it’s quite accepted that we’re all travelling together, whether we know each other yet or not. This is the effect of being deep into the third week of a multi-week pilgrimage spanning the breadth of a country.
“What’s your name?”
“Where are you from?”
“Are you doing the Camino, are ya?”
More beers, more repetitive conversations. Sure how else are you supposed to get to know someone?
Inside some elderly men – all in their seventies and eighties – gather around the TV in the corner. I presume it’s the Barcelona v Athletico game on – Saturday evening, 8pm kickoff, but it’s a different spectacle altogether: a bullfighting competition. A bull flails around a sandy arena blood pissing down his back, the dapper fella in golden pantaloons with an air of smug superiority. A dozen men of age sit in a semi-circle like a flamenco dancer’s fan taking up half the bar. Eyes glued to the screen, none making a sound, no-one noticing the altogether more multi-cultural event that’s growing and evolving and getting louder outside the door, tractors still flying by well into the dusk.
Ireland, Italy, Canada, Hungary, France, Argentina, Brazil, Spain. Probably a few more I’m forgetting. A timelapse video of the evening descending into dusk would teach you a lot about human bonding and camaraderie.
Or maybe you’d learn nothing, maybe it was just a fun evening.
Some fatty roast pig and more tapas.
The bartender lands down with a tray full of shots – a bit of moonshine flavoured with honey, homemade upstairs by the owner, her father.
There’s singing, there’s new bonds made, there’s good times and – perhaps partly due to the amount of drink flowing – there’s plenty of repetitive conversation.
These repetitive questions turn into unique relationships. There are some things you can’t study or over-intellectualise.
At ten to ten we must depart, as there tends to be a curfew in the more traditional religious albergues. 10 o’clock usually – everyone in the door and lights out. They lock them too, sometimes you’d have no way in.
I get home and collapse into bed in the prison, fully-clothed, snoring no doubt.
I’m starting to think that these repetitive days and conversations are what life’s all about.
Just like if you’re trying to skip the Meseta by taking a bus, if you’re trying to skip getting to know people on the road because you think it’s boring or you’re above it – you’re kind of missing the point.
If you’ve done the Camino, are thinking of doing it, or are just interested in discussing the Camino or travel in general - then please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
Carrion de los Condes – the names are getting ridiculous at this stage. They sound like levels from Donkey Kong Country./ 😂