Sock superstition

John socks

Blisters are the bane of the Camino. Based on Camino Forum recommendations by many experienced pilgrims we decided to wear a thin liner sock inside a light Merino wool hiking sock.  

The system works, especially during those first few walking days when blisters are a critical concern. We’re now 180 miles in and neither of us have had even a hot spot.

Ning socks

This morning we rode the elevator with an Australian pilgrim who had also walked all the way from St. Jean Pied de Port in France with no foot problems, only to be hobbled two days ago by blisters that have laid him up.

That’s how we discovered our mutual (up to now undisclosed) sock superstition.  We’re both changing our liner socks but every day we wear the same pair of Merino hiking socks that we wore on Day 1, washed every fifth day or so when we do laundry. 

We are not going to tempt fate.

Even better, the Merino socks we’re wearing every day are Camino gifts from our friends Vicki and Jim. 

Thanks, you two – our dogs are happy.

Pilgrim parade

Roman bridge outside our

hotel window

We had walked nearly 20 miles the day before. So today was an abbreviated walking program with only 3.5 miles to our next destination, the medieval pilgrim resting place of Hospital de Orbigo. 

That crisp morning we skipped and danced more than we walked, and we arrived in the village around 9:30 am by crossing a long (19 arches!) 13^th century bridge. Our hotel lay at the foot of the bridge. Until our room was ready, we settled down at an outside table with a cup of coffee.

Settling in for the Pilgrim Parade

Every pilgrim walking through Hospital de Orbigo had to cross that bridge … with us as the welcoming party. It was Pilgrims on Parade!  So many familiar faces, hearty acknowledgements of recognition in English, French, and Spanish.

Elaine sat with us for a while. We moved from coffee to Coke Zero and a tapa. Jan and David settled in and we drifted into having lunch together. Time disappeared. It was 2:30 pm. We had been enjoying our Pilgrim Parade for five hours.  Life on the Camino ... enjoying the moment.  <Music up, James Taylor sings, “The secret of life is enjoying the passing of time …”> 

Here’s a side note, especially for fans of the Monty Python scene of a knight defending a bridge. In the Jacobean Holy Year of 1424, the honored knight Suero de Quiñones issued a challenge to the best lances in all of Europe, vowing to meet them in battle for 30 days on this stone bridge in order to prove his devotion to a noble lady who had rejected his declaration of love. Some 300 winning jousts and one month later, having proved his love for his lady, he considered himself released from his "prison of love". The victorious knight removed the iron collar he had worn around his neck as a symbol of his enslavement of love and took to the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrim.

This was the bridge we viewed from our hotel room! With a jousting ground being set up for the following festival weekend to celebrate the honorable knight Suero de Quiñones.

Walking the same pilgrimage route 1000 years later

Most of the towns on the Camino are very small just a few hundred people. 

Roncevalles, in the Pyrenees,
has less than 30 people living 
there

Two of our favorite overnight stops, Roncesvalles and San Juan, have less 

The Pilgrim hostel in Roncevalles 
can sleep  almost 200 people...

Volunteers work here.  

San Juan has been a Pilgrim 

stop since the 11th Century

than 30 full time residents. Tiny – and most have been there serving Pilgrims since the 11^th century.  

We’re walking the same paths.  Entering the same churches.  Following the same Camino as millions of other pilgrims have done over the centuries.  

Walking the same paths as pilgrims

for over 1000 years...

Who walked here 

before us?

It’s awe-inspiring.  

Pilgrim signs are

everywhere...

Donkeys on the Camino

My Camino sister, Mary from Oxford, England, introduced us to a book on the Camino 
called Spanish Steps.  It’s about an English bloke who believes that the only authentic way to walk the Camino is with a donkey, a throwback to using beasts of burden to lighten a pilgrim’s load. 


He found a stable that rented donkeys for the Camino, starting in France all the way to Santiago.  But the business had to fold because at the end of the Camino, people wouldn’t return the donkeys. Instead, they sold them to Gypsies.

These gypsies might buy your

 Camino donkey...

I love this story, and I’ve been searching for donkeys on the Camino ever since. 

We found one! 

But we have yet to see a Gypsy.


Jim Larson, mule skinner --

renaissance man...

Our friend Jim Larson in Idaho owned a pack mules to take his friends hunting in the mountains. Jim is a true renaissance man and he would love the Camino. 

I wonder if I can talk him into a donkey rental business?  

The Meseta

Castles appear on hills everywhere!

Factoring in our breaks we’re moving along at an average pace of 2.5 mph, so the geographic landscape slowly unfolds before us. After traversing mountain passes in the Pyrenees, we moved into the limestone foothills and gently undulating vineyards in the provinces of Navarra and La Rioja.

We crossed the wide Rio Ebro river valley, then ascended the Montes de Oca. This delivered us onto the high plains of the Meseta, a massive geologic formation that covers central Spain.

Rolling landscapes of the Meseta

Books we read had prepared us to be bored by the Meseta’s treeless landscape. But instead we’ve been fascinated by the Meseta’s endless rolling vistas of yellow, green, and brown fields with enormous cloud formations billowing across wide blue skies. We feel so tiny, a speck on the landscape moving along at ant’s pace.

Ning perseveres....

A couple of days ago we experienced the fury of Spain’s high plains.  We spent seven hours leaning into cold, howling Meseta winds, which whistled so loudly we had to yell or sign to each other. The force of the wind relentlessly opposed every step that we took and nearly brought Ning to tears. She persevered, a Camino lesson about tapping into inner strength. The warrior princess comes out when called.

The wind doesn't show in this photo...

Ahead of us we still have many more days of walking across the Meseta. When we leave the high plains we’ll clamber over another range of mountains on our way to Santiago de Compostela.

Clouds on the Meseta...

The path seems endless....note tiny pilgrims.  

Morning mist on the Meseta

There are more mountains in our future.  

Wind mills dot the landscape throughout Spain

These guys just watch us walk by...

We took a walk through heaven

The high plains of the Meseta are behind us. For the past week we’ve been climbing into the Leon mountain range, walking along steep ridges and passing through crumbling and nearly deserted stone villages.

Two days ago we made a 13-mile ascent and precarious descent over Irago Pass, the highest point along the entire French Way route. 

Maybe it was the juxtaposition from the flat brown Meseta to the vibrant colors and vistas of the mountains. It likely involved our spiritual set point after having now walked 350 miles.  

And there was certainly some emotionalism with this being the day that we laid down our stone at the base of the Ferro de Cruz (Iron Cross).

It all added up to a walk through heaven on that day.  We were carried in God’s hands, enveloped by a Spring riot of flowers in purples, yellows, whites, and blues, all set against soft vistas of mountains and sparkling skies.  

We stopped again and again to savor where we were at that moment. Burning it into our shared memories because we knew no photographs would capture what we were experiencing..

Ferro de Cruz – Cross of Iron

At the Ferro de la Cruz

Ferro de Cruz – the Cross of Iron - is an epic point on the Camino.  

Pilgrims carry stones from home to represent what they're carrying in their hearts. They leave these stones at the base of the Ferro de Cruz, now piled 30 feet high, in personal acknowledgement  of their pilgrimages.

John carried a trilobite, a fossil from 250 million years ago, to contemplate how brief life is. His was a prayer of gratitude.

  

Dona's husband Gary

My Dad and me
1959

I carried four stones. A stone for my dear friend Dona, who taught me about compassion in action, specifically for her husband she lost last year.

For my father, copper nuggets mined in the Upper Penninsula of Michgan, with great gratitude for all the gifts he gave me.  

Charlie Brock

Kyle's father, Jeff,
with Ben Brock

A stone for Andi and Kyle, for Kyle’s father Jeff, their beloved dog Charlie and other losses in their lives.  

Finally, a stone I share with Bonnie, the girls’ mother, who passed away 10 years ago. 

In these amazing women, each one of them caring, kind and smart, Bonnie left me an incredible gift – and I’m grateful every day.  

Bonnie and I will always share this love for them.  

Bonnie and her lovely daughters

Soundtracks

Quite a few pilgrims we encounter wear earbuds while walking, often listening to audio books.  Ning occasionally listens to the Rosary or daily prayers, and maybe a bit of a book when she’s struggling at the end of the day.  

John listens to nothing except what’s going on around him. Everyone does it his and her own way, there’s no right way on the Camino.

While walking alone, when things were pretty tough, John pushed himself through by singing in his most wonderfully off-key way.  He worked his way through the Beatles catalog, unfortunately getting stuck on what’s widely regarded as the worst song the Beatles ever released. But the syncopated melody propelled him up steep hills …

ob-la-DEE (plant the pole with a thud)

ob-la-DA (pole plant)

life goes ON (pole plant)

BRA! (pole plant)

la-la how the life goes on (pole plant)

REPEAT

Barry White (!) also made a guest appearance on John’s walk. “You'll never find, as long as you live, …”, mainly on the downhills.

Camino Angel Stories

There are exceptional things that happen every day on the Camino -- they inspire and move us. Once a car stopped with a jolly, "Buen Camino!" and gave us each a candy.

There seem to be Camino angels all around...

We kept seeing Serge on the Camino -- he looks a bit like a hobo.  But we learned he walks the Camino...back and forth...picking up trash.  The alberges along the way often give him free lodging and food -- but when John tried to give him a donation, he gracefully refused...

We spotted a man hobbling along ahead of us, disabled by his Camino injuries, bowed down by the weight of his backpack.  We watched an animated exchange between the injured man and another pilgrim.  We later learned in talking with Sean from Ireland that he had assessed the situation, walked ahead to drop his pack, then walked back and offered to carry the injured man's load. He said the man smiled and replied, "I need to suffer...", and kept hobbling along.  When we gave Sean a pin he said, "But I'm not Catholic...".  It doesn't matter...he was a Camino angel.  

The first time we met Joel from San Francisco, he was tending the blisters of a French woman he didn't know at an outdoor cafe.  It was a Christ-like moment...

This woman stationed herself in a remote location where a road crossed the Camino. In Spanish and broken English she explained to pilgrims how to navigate through an active road construction site that was blocking the trail ahead. on that day she saved hundreds of pilgrims from walking a 5 km detour.