Day 7
Getting up in the morning can be hard when you contemplate the pain (knees, toes, ankles, etc) that can almost set in as soon as you walk out the door, namely because the body has not yet caught up with repairs to the extent of the tear down this early in the walk. Regardless, I forced myself out of bed at 5am, let the albergue cat out for the morning, and geared up for the next leg.
My guidebook gave me an option for the real Frances or the the Trajan way, and I accidentally took the Frances way, which basically followed alongside a quite road versus another old Roman highway.
I’m discovering that walking in cold weather is all around miserable for me… both because I did not pack for cold weather (it being July) and because my bones and joints seem to have a distaste for it.
After stopping into a bar-cafe for breakfast and to let my feet rest, I made my way out of town and saw Angel having his breakfast on a park bench. Angel, like most pilgrims, have to the camino on a real tight budget, some as low as $20 euro per day.
Here’s a typical pilgrim budget…
– Bed – $0-5 euro (donation)
– Breakfast – $3-5 euro
– Lunch – $3-6 euro
– Dinner – $6-10 euro
– Total – $16-26.00 euro
Hard to beat that!
Also, a couple of times I’ve tried the private albergues rather than the municipal, perhaps looking for a bit more comfort or convenience, but there’s been two problems with that… 1) I end up with a different pool of people than who I’m used to seeing, and 2) the pool seems more “touristy” than “pilgrimy” (a word?).
In general, folks have seemed to have more of their guard up in the more expensive albergues and in general, the folks are more colorful in the municipals. So, I’ll be taking that option, or similar, whenever available.
I arrived about two hours early to the municipal albergue and had to wait across the street at the local bar-cafe, which seems to be a morning hub for the neighborhood, kind of like Starbucks back home, sort of, but with more socialization and mixed demographic.
After checking in, I started my normal routine including shower, and thus albergue had only curtains covering the shower stalls with open windows into the courtyard, so I struggled to finish my shower while dealing with the intermittent wind gusts and flying shower curtain :).
In the kitchen, while making my summer fruit salad for lunch, I met Lorich, a Frenchman of Spanish decent with a hippie get up about him. He and I talked a while and he gave some of his observations and advice on me dealing with anxiety, both with diet and exercise.
I also met an Irish couple, and learned how to pronounce my name in irish, which sounds like “jeerld.” The wife was pretty colorful, coarse jesting with the crazy Spanish hospitalera all afternoon.
In the courtyard there was also an English man of Jamaican decent, in his mid 60’s, and very talkative. He had finished his camino to Santiago and was waking back to St Jean.
After taking a few late calls back home, I hit the sack.
