Camino de Santiago Day 20: Puente Villarente to Léon
After an intentionally quiet couple of days spent mostly alone, I make it to Léon. It both feels like a milestone and destination in its own right, and a calm before the storm that is the final third
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Léon is a massive milestone.
It’s our latest foray into The City – at this stage the archetype is more defining than the physical place – no offence to the people of Léon, but the idea of The City becomes a distinct space – that represents society at large.
The place from which you’ve been away.
How do you feel when you re-enter it? Or can you? How do you react to things like ‘real people’ – non-pilgrims and ‘normal things’ like supermarkets, traffic and people having misunderstandings.
The city is measure of any shifts in your perspective, it’s wild how much 3 days of walking or 10 can shift your perception.
Imagine how you’ll feel when you get back home.
You say you’re a new person now but do you still turn away beggars on the street? Maybe I just need to walk a few more days – then I’ll be an even better person
You’re aware of every single person around you. Every passing car. Each shop is an adventure in itself, a world to explore.
You say hello to everyone you pass, and most of them don’t say hello back. But many do. And you’re that bit more aware of them too.
The city feels like a release. It is. Every pilgrim you bump into has the same sigh of relief – we’ve made it. They mean past the Meseta, but I think it feels like we’ve already reached Santiago. It’s a strange one – like the capacity of our imaginations can only stretch so far.
Everyone in the same boat.
All able to get our heads around a journey so far – but only so far.
Is it because we’ve all passed the extent of the boundaries of all that is known – we’ve already reached the edge of the earth.
The preparation is complete: we’ve walked ourselves to our limits, physically and mentally, slowly walked ourselves into a breakdown.
So that now we break through.
And everything that lies ahead is unknown, a version of ourselves – and the world – we can’t even imagine.
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Leon is yet another beautiful mid-sized Spanish city on the Camino; or just another beautiful mid-sized Spanish city on the Camino. It depends who you ask. I thoroughly enjoy it, as I’ve enjoyed all of them, though nowhere has grabbed my heart quite as much as my head as Pamplona did, all those weeks ago.
Still, though, cities are good for cathedrals and drinking, and Leon’s cathedral might be the best yet.
My walk is only 12km today – the shortest walk of my entire Camino, so short that it felt a bit like cheating. It’s a dark, misty morning, and it’s only when I’ve been walking in it for over an hour that I realise I’m getting wet.
I get into Leon around 10am and find myself a café with breakfast and an open fourth wall onto a busy central street – my favourite place to sit.
I’m too early to check into my albergue so I do a couple of laps of town. I find another spot to sit in a narrow alley that looks like it gets lively at night. Windows open out onto misty streets, people everywhere with canvas shopping trolleys, sounds of plates being stacked in upstairs restaurants, old men on pokey machines and young people calling in for a morning drink. Where are all the office workers are this hour? Not alive, asleep at desks, compiling reports. This is where life is being lived. What do all these people do? Work is for cowards – this is real work, this real life, these people are alive.
I intentionally removed myself from the group, the crowd, the typical pilgrim these last couple of days. I wanted to reclaim myself, to ground myself for a couple of days. Sometimes you need to break habits just to prove you can, to send a message to yourself, even if that habit is being around other people, ones who are guaranteed to laugh at your jokes and say nice things to whatever you say. It was just what I needed.
But already by 7pm I can feel an excitement building in me – which I attribute to the forthcoming inevitable night out. But there must be more to it.
We’ve all been funnelled into Leon. Everyone you meet has the same sigh of relief, repeats the same lines about being “glad to be off the Meseta”. Leon is most definitely a milestone. I decide to take the following day off – my first one. I deserve the rest. Or maybe it’s just another new experience on the journey: a day where I don’t walk for once. How will I react to that?
We have passed the Meseta, and reached the first city in 8 days of walking. Deep down everyone knows it’s an achievement, despite it seeming rather arbitrary. The relief of some might be greater than that of reaching Santiago, looking back. Maybe we know we’re entering the final third. And if there is magic on the Camino, then surely it will happen at some point from here on in?
There is a tension in the air. A feeling that something is building. Everyone is on their own journey, and yet everyone knows it, feels it, even if they can’t describe it.
Something big is surely about to happen.
It feels like the calm before the storm, a deep inhale, a moment of silence.
But first: a release.
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